"Fickleness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... starved, empty heart to lead him into this girl's life. That he had been new to women and newer still to love did not permit him to excuse himself, and a hundred times he cursed his folly and stupidity, and what he thought was fickleness. ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... 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 an objection against the project, is ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... 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
... to see the fickleness of the world with respect to its favorites. Enthusiasm exhausts itself, and prepares the way for dislike. The public is always for positive sentiments, and new sensations. When wearied of admiring, it delights to censure; ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... of the reed, and the bloom of flowers, and the lightness of leaves, and the tapering of the elephant's trunk, and the glances of deer, and the clustering of rows of bees, and the joyous gaiety of sunbeams, and the weeping of clouds, and the fickleness of the winds, and the timidity of the hare, and the vanity of the peacock, and the softness of the parrot's bosom, and the hardness of adamant, and the sweetness of honey, and the cruelty of the tiger, and the warm glow ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... 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, ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... life, with a better code of morals. Even political groups have their reactions, in which, notwithstanding the great room for improvement, they stand for morality and justice. The relations of man to man are becoming better understood every day. His fickleness and selfishness are more readily observed in recent than in former times, and as a result the evils of the present are magnified, because they are better understood; in reality, social conditions are improving, and the fact that social conditions are understood and evils clearly observed promises ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... smile he got at 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
... beauty. Hollyhock Ambition. 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, Water Eloquence. May Flower Welcome. Marigold Sacred ...
— Your Plants - Plain and Practical Directions for the Treatment of Tender - and Hardy Plants in the House and in the Garden • James Sheehan
... While all this was occurring, the struggle in Peru had continued to show the fickleness of the fortunes of war. Rondeau had been appointed General-in-Chief of the Army of Peru; he, however, had proved himself a General of slow movements, and suffered several defeats. He also fell out with Guemes, and a battle ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... my shallows and miseries and set me afloat on my full sea. You will only come second in my affections to Mrs. Murray, to whom I shall simply never be able to repay all her kindness and goodness, so if you want to hurt me, Margaret, accuse me again of fickleness and ingratitude." ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... doesn't come; the sea, always the sea without a moment's weakness; in brief, not the stuff of which friends are made! When the knight appears and kills her monster, he loses his halo for Andromede, who cherishes her monstrous guardian. Perseus, a prig disgusted by the fickleness of the Young Person, flees, and the death of the monster brings to life a lovely youth—put under the spell of malignant powers—who promptly weds his ward. In Lohengrin, Son of Parsifal, the whole machinery of the Wagner ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... 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 embroiled his government with that of China. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... them information respecting the frontiers, and arrange about the marching of his troops. His constant word to them was forward! forward! For the precious time for action was slipping away, and he feared their Indian allies, so important to their security while on the march, might, with their usual fickleness, lose patience, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... the stable cat, and the grooms holding a voluble conversation with her, or among the cows at the bottom of the paddock, or feeding the pigs and fowls in the poultry yard. Generally she was attended by Fritz, a beautiful collie, who had, with the fickleness of his nature, transferred his affection from his master to her, and though uncertain in temper towards most, was never anything but amiable ...
— Probable Sons • Amy Le Feuvre
... we as brave men been defeated By brave men, we might have consoled ourselves With common thoughts of Fortune's fickleness: But that a sorry farce should be our ruin!— Did our earnest toilsome struggle merit No graver ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... the difference between love and friendship? And when the development of her understanding disclosed the true nature of this intercourse to her, her affections were already engaged to her friend, and all she feared was lest other attractions and fickleness might make him ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... 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 into her narrow self, the arbitress of Europe, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... to others that he is unable to bear with equanimity not only his own poverty but also the wealth of others. So also a man who has not been well deceived by his mistress thinks of nothing but the fickleness of women, their faithlessness, and their other oft-proclaimed failing—all of which he forgets as soon as he is taken into favor by his mistress again. He, therefore, who desires to govern his emotions and appetites from a love of liberty alone will strive as much as he can to know virtues and ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... only a few incidents are recorded. One abbot of the monastery, Niphon, was promoted in 1397 to the bishopric of Old Patras, and another named Theophanes was made bishop of the important See of Heraclea. An instance of the fickleness of fortune was brought home to the monks of the establishment by the disgrace of the logothetes Gabalas and his confinement in one of their cells, under the following circumstances:—In the struggle between John Cantacuzene and Apocaucus for ascendancy at the ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... but even my Lord of Chester—my fair father's great enemy—interceded with the Lord King in his behalf. We heard that my Lord of Chester spoke very plainly to him, and told him not only that he would find it easier to draw a crowd together than to get rid of it again, but also that his fickleness would ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... such full assurance of being able to bring Dora forward as a witness in his defense that Florence, for the first time, feels a strong doubt thrown upon the belief she has formed of his being a monster of fickleness. ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... had "a propensity for the [fair] sex." After two or three flirtations, he engaged himself, without the knowledge of his mother or guardian, to Nellie Calvert, a match to which no objection could be made, except that, owing to his "youth and fickleness," "he may either change and therefore injure the young lady; or that it may precipitate him into a marriage before, I am certain, he has ever bestowed a serious thought of the consequences; by which means his education is interrupted." To avoid this danger, Washington ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... She 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 ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... woman to whom he had once sung a song of another passion. It is very hard to answer a woman in such circumstances, because her womanhood gives her so strong a ground of vantage! Lady Laura might venture to throw in his teeth the fickleness of his heart, but he could not in reply tell her that to change a love was better than to marry without love,—that to be capable of such a change showed no such inferiority of nature as did the capacity for such a marriage. She could hit him with her argument; ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... cried, in affected surprise. "You were not wont, in past days, to consider my presence an insult, and I could never have believed fickleness a part of your nature. You are now of age, and have a right to listen to my defense, and my suit for ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... 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 that murder. ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of others needlessly one offends the divine will, 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 is designed to reconcile evil elections or sins with the ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... his master's enemies with the weapons of Demosthenes and Cicero. Wherever the scholar's steps were turned, he might be master of others, as long as he was master of himself. The complaints which he so often uttered concerning the cruelty of fortune, the fickleness of princes, and so forth, were probably no more just then than such complaints are now. Then, as now, he got his deserts; and the world bought him at his own price. If he chose to sell himself to this ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... 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 with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... people followed her, weeping and bewailing the fickleness of fortune. Griselda did not turn to them, nor speak, nor weep. She quietly went ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... With the fickleness of October weather (which is often as freakish as that of April), the golden afternoon had turned cloudy and raw before the girls returned home. By nightfall it was raining, and a rising, gusty wind had ruffled ...
— The Dragon's Secret • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... which deform and degrade the human type. On these diverse points, religious faith could scarcely show its effect; but he also declared himself to be irritable and violent—he confessed to a dangerous fickleness—still, he would readily have slandered himself in ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... 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 smites ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... changed with a suddenness that we are apt to think American, but which occurs more frequently in this hemisphere, or rather in this part of it, than in our own. The peculiarity of the American climate is its exaggeration rather than its fickleness; its passages from extreme heat to extreme cold, more than the frequency of its lesser transitions. One never thinks of an umbrella in America, with a cloudless sky; whereas, during the spring months in particular, there is no security against rain an hour at a time, near the western coast of Europe, ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... for a short time Lannes, reduced to his own troops, found himself in a difficult position. He was, moreover, ill from a fall from his horse, but succeeded in winning the battle, and drove before him, one after another, all the divisions of the enemy's army. With the cruel and heedless fickleness of revolutionary governments, the Junta of Aranjuez hurriedly cashiered Generals Blake and Castanos. The Marquis of Romana's soldiers having distinguished themselves at Espinosa, he was appointed general of the united armies. Already, in spite of the consternation which reigned in ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... but have failed signally, nor can they succeed while they seek a mechanical solution to what is really a manifestation of life. Could they see the hosts of sylphs winging their way hither and thither, they would know who and what is responsible for the fickleness of the wind; could they watch a storm at sea from the etheric view-point they would perceive that the saying "the war of the elements" is not an empty phrase, for the heaving sea is truly then a battlefield of sylphs and undines and the ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... are that he would instantly fall foul of and try to mar his own handiwork; and he quarrels with his own creatures as soon as he has written them into a little vogue—and a prison. I do not think this is vanity or fickleness so much as a pugnacious disposition, that must have an antagonistic power to contend with, and only finds itself at ease in systematic opposition. If it were not for this, the high towers and rotten places of ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... everything to mine. It was the worship of the devotee to his protecting saint. It was the faith that made me rise above misfortune and mishap, and led me onward; and in this way I could have borne anything, everything, rather than the imputation of fickleness. ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... when they were retiring to rest, and Caroline and Rosamond were in their mother's room, Rosamond, unable longer to keep her prudent silence, gave vent to her indignation against Count Altenberg in general reflections upon the fickleness of man. Even men of the best understanding were, she said, but children of a larger growth—pleased with change—preferring always the newest to the fairest, or the best. Caroline did not ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... and riding out alone before the people, he cried out, "I am your leader"; and himself promised to grant them all they asked. That promise was afterwards broken; but those who see in the breach of it the mere fickleness of the young and frivolous king, are not only shallow but utterly ignorant interpreters of the whole trend of that time. The point that must be seized, if subsequent things are to be seen as they are, is that Parliament certainly encouraged, ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... and invincible force that lies at the end of every existence. Doubtless, from one point of view, unhappiness must always remain the portion of man, and the fatal abyss be ever open before him, vowed as he is to death, to the fickleness of matter, to old age and disease. If we fix our eyes only upon the end of a life, the happiest and most triumphant existence must of necessity contain its elements of misery and fatality. But let us not make a wrong ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... have entire confidence in these charms, which are supplied by Moslem priests; but their confidence is based upon the supposed magic of the writing, irrespective of its religious meaning.[46:1] The failure of a charm to perform a cure is attributed to the ingratitude and fickleness of the spirits.[46:2] In Algeria it is not an uncommon experience of physicians who have prescribed for native patients, to meet such an one some days after, with the prescription either suspended from his neck, ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... success or oratorical display! Farewell to the distempered longings for office! Farewell to the dismal, blood-red phantom of martial renown! Fame and glory may then continue, as in times past, the reflection of public opinion; but of an opinion sure and steadfast, without change or fickleness, enlightened by those two sons of Christian truth,—love to God and love to man. From the serene illumination of these duties all the forms of selfishness shall retreat like evil spirits at the dawn of day. Then shall the happiness of the poor and lowly and the education of the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the destruction of men, O bull among men. Indeed, every one of these wait for opportunity in respect of men, like a hunter expectant of opportunities in respect of deer. Assertion of one's own superiority, desire of enjoying others' wives, humiliating others from excess of pride, wrathfulness, fickleness, and refusing to maintain those worthy of being maintained, these six acts of wickedness are always practised by sinful men defying all dangers here and hereafter. He that regards the gratification of lust to be one of life's aims, he that is exceedingly proud, he that grieves ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... gradually did he make the four or five paces between him and safety. The window was gained, and all were saved. The multitude in the street absolutely danced with triumph, and huzzaed, and yelled till you would have fancied their very throats would crack; and then, with all the fickleness of interest characteristic of a large body of people, pressed and stumbled, and cursed and swore, in the hurry to get out of Dunham Street, and back to the immediate scene of the fire, the mighty diapason of whose roaring flames formed an awful accompaniment to ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... 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 into her narrow self, the arbitress of Europe, the tutelary angel ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... take pleasure in mortifying me. Do you deem me capable of such fickleness? Suppose for a moment, you are not what the world calls beautiful, you could not, by removing your mask, also strip yourself of the attractions of your conversation—of that voice that thrills through my heart—of that grace exhibited in your every movement! With such ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... habit is subjected to our examination, if it appear in any respect prejudicial to 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 of ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... the Adelantado. In truth, all might have come, for massacre, slow or swift, was certain if we stayed in Veragua. I read that the Adelantado, who was never accused of cowardice or fickleness, was himself determined. The settlement below the golden mines of golden Veragua ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... with him since. I saw the meeting of Octavia and Cleopatra;(192) the Newcastle was all haughtiness and coldness. Mr. Pelham, who foresaw the storm, had prudently prepared himself for the breach by all kind of invectives against the house of Leveson. The ground of all, besides Newcastle's natural fickleness and jealousy, is, that the Bedford and Sandwich have got the Duke. A crash @as been expected, but people now seem to think that they will rub on a little longer, though all the world seems indifferent whether they will or not. Mankind is so sick of all the late follies and ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... passion played around his heart with the hitting radiance of a wintry sunbeam flashing against an icicle, which may brighten it for a moment, but cannot melt it. Neither of these was precisely the ease, though such fickleness of disposition might also have some influence ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... is too much. I deserved distrust by my wretched folly and fickleness last year, but I did not know what you were to me then—my most precious one! Can you not trust me! Do you not know how I ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the motionless form of the woman whose love and confidence he had gained and who had been to him such a faithful wife in spite of his fickleness, he wept, and vowed; but what are tears and vows when the will has been weakened by self-indulgence? He looked about him helplessly. What was he to do? What could he do without her? He was almost a stranger to his children, and had no idea how to care for them. She had always carried the burden, ...
— The Hero of Hill House • Mable Hale
... that 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 ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... to fade And dwindle; yes, the heavens are opening now. Perhaps up there, this night, some lonely soul Gazes at earth, watches our dawning moon, And wonders, as we wonder." In that dark We knelt together . . . Very strange to see The vanity and fickleness of princes. Before his enemies had provoked the wrath Of Rome against him, he had given the name Of Medicean stars to those four moons In honour of Prince Cosmo. This aroused The court of France to seek a lasting place Upon the map of heaven. A letter came Beseeching him to find another star ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... knitting-needles clicked viciously; then she told Lois that this was the rubber, and she had better see to the tray. The young girl must have heard every word they said, though she had not lifted her bright eyes from her book, but she did not seem disturbed by the charge of fickleness on the part of Mr. Forsythe. He had not confided to her his reasons for not going abroad; all she knew was that the summer was the merriest one she had ever spent. "I feel so young," little Lois said; and indeed she had caught a certain careless gayety ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... life I form such wishes. You may see by this that I preserve still that sincere friendship which has united our hearts from our tenderest years:—recognize at least, my dear Sister, that you did me a sensible wrong when you suspected me of fickleness towards you, and believed false reports of my listening to tale-bearers; me, who love only you, and whom neither absence nor lying rumors could change in respect of you. At least don't again believe such things on my score, and never mistrust me till you ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... physical types are reasserting themselves. The folk of a Celtic type, whether pre-Celtic, Celtic, or Norse, have all spoken a Celtic language and exhibit the same old Celtic characteristics—vanity, loquacity, excitability, fickleness, imagination, love of the romantic, fidelity, attachment to family ties, sentimental love of their country, religiosity passing over easily to superstition, and a comparatively high degree of sexual morality. Some of these traits were already noted ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... wanting, and soon the whole of Europe— thanks to the indefatigable manner in which the Norwegians cultivated the European Press—resounded with accusations against the Swedish government, and the entire Swedish nation of unreasonableness, fickleness etc. etc.; it was important now to make good cause for the plans then already existing in Norway, plans which had probably been ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund
... himself with conjectures about the cause of this unexpected change, he received such intelligence from England, as, when joined with what he himself had perceived by her manner of writing, left him little or no room to doubt of her fickleness and inconstancy. Nevertheless, as he knew by experience that informations of that kind are not to be entirely relied upon, he resolved to be more certainly apprised: and, for that end, departed immediately for London, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... irrevocable that even itself may not change or modify it. To rescind a recent vote is, no doubt, as Sir Robert Peel said, a step not wholly free from objection. It should be an exceptional act, as one which, if often repeated, would give an appearance of capricious fickleness and instability to the opinions of Parliament, calculated to impair that respect for it which the whole state and nation are deeply concerned in upholding; but to refuse, under any circumstances, to confess a change of judgment, ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... which faded in one generation and became totally forgotten in another. What jealousies, what petty bickerings, what extravagances! With fancy and desire unchecked, what ingenious tricks they used to keep themselves in the public mind,—tricks begot of fickleness and fickleness begetting. And yet, it was a curious phase: their influence was generally found when history untangled for posterity some Gordian knot. In old times they had sung the Marseillaise and danced the carmagnole and indirectly plied the guillotine. And ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... It was a weighty matter with her. A belief in a successful rival might give Mr. —— pain,—might cause him to doubt her truth and affection,—might induce him to forget her, or cast her off in bitter indignation at her supposed fickleness. I could see in her face her alarm at these suppositions. Yes, it was a great temptation to do a very dishonorable action. A word from me would have ended the trial; for it is only in solitude that we are thus assailed. But ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... fickleness, Marseilles, whose name during the Terror had been, as one may say, the symbol of the most advanced opinions, had become almost entirely Royalist in 1815. Nevertheless, its inhabitants saw without a murmur the tricolour flag after a year's ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... not slight it. Remember you make the world noble; and, if you have an absorbing desire to work in some other way, watch every little loop-hole of opportunity, and see if you cannot make it large enough to jump through to a wider field. Let us all avoid fickleness, however,—the doing a little of this and of that: it is poor economy. To grow up to a work, to master it, we must first be slaves to it. Girls, everywhere, make progress slowly,—grow in efficiency, and do ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... drop off;[323] or rather like the foster-child of Hypsipyle, "sitting in the meadow and plucking flower after flower, snatching at each prize with gladsome heart, insatiable in its childish delight,"[324] so in the case of each of us, owing to our love of novelty and fickleness, the recent flower ever attracts, and makes us inconstant, frequently laying the foundations of many friendships and intimacies that come to nothing, neglecting in love of what we eagerly pursue what we have already possession of. To begin therefore with the domestic ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... indication with him of suppressed and violent emotion. Then he turned his head and regarded me with a slight smile. "Not altogether. You forget that the most faithless men have been the most faithful when they have found the one woman. Curiosity and fickleness are merely parts of a ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... 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 ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... hospitality at the "Blue Mass" mine should afterward have little part in his active life seemed not inconsistent with his habits. At present the mine was his only mistress, claiming his entire time, exasperating him with fickleness, but still requiring that supreme devotion of which his nature was capable. It is possible that Miss Carmen saw this too, and so set about with feminine tact, if not to supplement, at least to make her rival less pertinacious and absorbing. Apart from this object, ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... this,—How far are they affected by the original axiomatic truths? Truths are like the winds. Near the earth's surface winds blow in variable directions, and the weathercock becomes the type of fickleness. So there is a class of little truths, dependent upon ever-variable relations, with which it is the function of cunning, shrewdness, tact, to deal, and numbers of men seldom or never lift their heads above this weathercock region. Yet the upper air, alike of the spiritual and the physical ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... 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 degrees of guilt ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... in Vincoli, Rome. At the beginning of Michelangelo's connection with Julius II., he made plans for a magnificent monumental tomb for this pope, to be ornamented with more than forty statues and to be of great size (34-1/2 x 23 feet). The fickleness of the Pope caused a continual series of disappointments in the progress of the work, which was finally abandoned for the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel. After the death of the Pope, his executors were even less zealous for the completion of the tomb. A succession of contracts were made and broken, ...
— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... decided as you please, as long as you are quiet and gentlemanly in your words. Let me say one thing more," she added, very gravely. "If you enter on this affair, and then, in any kind of weakness or fickleness, give it up, I shall despise you, and so will all in this city who know about it. Count the cost. I'm too true a Southerner to look at you again if you trifle with a Southern girl. Your father will ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... little more than one half the sum! The same friend subscribes for a large paper of the present work, of which there are only eighteen copies printed: and of which my hard-hearted printer and myself seize each upon a copy. Will the same friend display equal fickleness in regard to THIS volume? If he does, he must smart acutely for it: nor will 15l. 15s. redeem it! It is justly observed, in the first edition of this work, that, 'analogous to large paper, are TALL copies: that is, copies of the work published on the ordinary size ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... accepted 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
... know what that inquiry means, Michael. You think that I am always so much taken up with new people that I forget my old friends; but you are wrong.' And then she added, a little reproachfully: 'That you of all people should accuse me of fickleness!' ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... as the gradual slowness, of that victory, are well set forth by the future history of the Apostle. We know how his fickleness passed away, and how his vehement character was calmed and consolidated into resolved persistency, and how his love of distinction and self-confidence were turned in a new direction, obeyed a divine impulse, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... the happiness of a tranquil family life. The next day, I told them that I had changed my mind, and should not go away, but should establish myself in Berlin. Of course, I received a torrent of gibes on my fickleness; for they did not understand my feelings in respect to the responsibility that I feared to ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... such thing as Fear, And no such word as Reason; And Faith was like a pointed spear, And Fickleness was treason; And hearts were soft, though blows were hard; But when the fight was over, A brimming goblet cheered the board, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... "If I can bring this off, I'll be a fracas buff celebrity. I don't have any illusions about the fickleness of the Telly fans, but for a day or two I'll be on top. If at the same time I had your all out support, pulling what strings ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... servants, as the King and his ministers were now considered to be. Louis and the National Assembly yielded to the menace, the court returned to Paris, politics grew hotter and more bitter, the fickleness of the mob became a stronger influence. Soon the Jacobin Club began to wield the mightiest single influence, and as it did so it grew ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... demi-monde is probable from this fact; as also from the poet's strong assertion that he had never been guilty of an intrigue with a married woman. The class to which she belonged were mostly Greeks or Easterns, beautiful and accomplished, often poetesses, and mingling with these seductive qualities the fickleness and greed natural to their position, of which Ovid somewhat unreasonably complains. To her are dedicated the great majority of the Amores, his earliest extant work. These elegant but lascivious poems, some of which perhaps were the same which he recited to ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... 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 ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and estate." The honest writer refused to partake of a splendid entertainment with which Gilbert Glossin, Esquire, now of Ellangowan, treated the rest of the company, and returned home in huge bitterness of spirit, which he vented in complaints against the fickleness and caprice of these Indian nabobs, who never knew what they would be at for ten days together. Fortune generously determined to take the blame upon herself, and cut off even this ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... 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
... five pounds on purpose that he might be enabled to spend that very Sunday with some officers of the Suffolk volunteers at Ipswich. And hearing this, he would walk out among those rich heaps, at the back of his farmyard, uttering deep curses against the falsehood of men and the fickleness of women. ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... tried every new colour; and often, as is well known, failed.... My fickleness in the mode of colouring arose from an eager desire ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... of the fact of their fickleness, I would buy a dozen or two of the auratum lilies, for even if they last but for a single year, they are so splendid that we can almost afford to treat them as a fleeting spectacle. As the speciosum lilies (I wish some one would give them a more gracious ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... aggrieved than now did the dejected Corporal. His master had not yet even acquainted him with the cause of the countermarch; and, in his own heart, he believed it nothing but the wanton levity and unpardonable fickleness "common to all them ere boys afore they have seen the world." He certainly considered himself a singularly ill-used and injured man, and drawing himself up to his full height, as if it were a matter with which Heaven should be acquainted at the ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... condemned, and which he should have known that he wanted the peculiar ability to bring to a successful and honorable conclusion, he might never have been President, but his fame would have been of a higher order. History might have overlooked the act of political fickleness in his earlier career, which was so warmly resented by many of his contemporaries. Abandonment of party is too common and often too justifiable to be accounted as necessarily a crime; and it can rarely be said with positiveness, whatever the probabilities, ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... One-third of Jim Polk may be human, but the other two-thirds is politician. He will flatter that lady into confidences. She is well nigh distracted at best, these days, what with the fickleness of her husband and the yet harder abandonment by her old admirer Pakenham; so Polk will cajole her into disclosures, never fear. In return, when the time comes, he will send an army of occupation into her country! And all the while, on the one side and the other, ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... Glover was obliged to remain contented, though extremely anxious for the postponed explanation. It could not be levity or fickleness of character which induced his daughter to act with so much apparent inconsistency towards the man of his choice, and whom she had so lately unequivocally owned to be also the man of her own. What external force there could exist, of a kind powerful enough to change the resolutions she had so decidedly ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... the fire having been lighted, every one withdrew except the king and queen. She then said to him: "You know how faithless you have been to me, and with this handsome body you will be a much greater attraction to other women. I know the fickleness of your disposition. Can you expect that I will confer on you this beauty for the sake ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... of March in the great, southward-reaching bight of the Tennessee River is the pattern and form of fickleness climatic. Normally it is the time of starting sap and swelling buds and steaming leaf beds odorous of spring; the month when the migratory crows wing their flight northward, and Nature, lightest of winter sleepers in the azurine ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... pointed out above as likely to ensue from a desultory and intermittent mode of dealing with Malay piracy have revealed themselves even sooner and in a more formidable manner than I had anticipated. The weak and covetous sultan of Borneo has, with more than the usual fickleness of Asiatics, already forgotten the lessons we gave him and the engagements he solemnly and voluntarily contracted with us. Mr. Brooke's faithful friends, Muda Hassim and the Pangeran Budrudeen, with numbers of their families ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... in their amiability and fickleness closely resemble the Parisians, passed in a moment from an apparently deep-seated hatred of Napoleon, to the most unbounded confidence. The still bleeding wounds of Wagram were forgotten; every one thought ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... de Besenval appears mightily surprised at the Queen's sudden coolness, and refers it to the fickleness of her disposition. I can explain the reason for the change by repeating what her Majesty said to me at the time; and I will not alter one of her expressions. Speaking of the strange presumption of men, and the reserve with which women ought always to treat ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... for such unionising suggestions. They had gone out of fashion for sixty years to come. Reaction had set in. Public sentiment, frequently reproached for its fickleness, but in reality protective in its vacillation, demanded a change. Federalism had lost prestige. Its leaders were at enmity. Washington, its unconscious mainstay, ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... it soon; she is so young. She will soon get over that gay frippard's fickleness. To-morrow I will start upon my little errand cheerfully. After that she will come round; they ...
— Frida, or, The Lover's Leap, A Legend Of The West Country - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... the man whom he had selected for her husband. They were married: but she deceived herself; as soon as the ceremony was over, the courage which had supported her gave way, her former feelings returned stronger than ever, and she hated herself for her fickleness. Her heart whispered that it was impossible that one possessing every great and every amiable quality, as did her lover, could ever have proved faithless, or would have abandoned one who loved him so dearly. As she sat in the garden and wept, a slight noise ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... doubtless they receive their reward; but if we would derive the advantages to Character that result from a wise Companionship, we must select our friends without undue regard to the opinions of the world, and impelled by a desire for moral or intellectual advancement. Falsehood and fickleness in friendship result from its being built upon merely selfish or circumstantial foundations. When built upon mutual respect and affection, it contains no element of decay or change; and they who trust to any other foundation ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... tribunal has the right to summon him?—And they dare to condemn him!—Does the king condemn him, or the duke? And the Regent withdraws herself! Orange hesitates, and all his friends!—Is this the world, of whose fickleness and treachery I have heard so much, and as yet experienced nothing? Is this the world?—Who could be so base as to hear malice against one so dear? Could villainy itself be audacious enough to overwhelm with sudden destruction the object of a nation's homage? Yet so it ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... and reputation, because 'an aery [i.e. nest] of children, little eyases [i.e. young hawks],' dominated the theatrical world, and monopolised public applause. 'These are now the fashion,' the dramatist lamented, {214b} and he made the topic the text of a reflection on the fickleness of ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... just than his deliberate moral opinions; as if 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, not ignoble figure,—the ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... that God might be accused of fickleness. Before, when he was about to punish man, he assigned as a reason for his purpose the fact that the imagination of man's heart is evil; here, when he is about to give unto man the gracious promise that he will not thereafter show ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... the plain is in vegetables, for the use of Paris; though there is occasionally a vineyard, or a field of grain. The weather has become settled and autumnal, and is equally without the chilling moisture of the winter, or the fickleness of the spring. The kind-hearted peasants see me pass among them without distrust, and my salutations are answered with cheerfulness and civility. Even at this trifling distance from the capital, I miss the brusque ferocity that is so apt to characterise the deportment of its lower ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... phenomenon of panic, sympathetic hope and despair, is exhibited by every stock-exchange, and is not peculiar to political life. And when political opinion is not manufactured solely in the reverberating furnace of a city, fickleness ceases to characterise democracy; and, in fact, is not found in Switzerland, or the United States, nor in France so far as politics, ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... to her—"My child, remember the country is not the town—the meadow is not a ball-room; you know well that we have promised you to the soldier, Marcel, who loves you, and expects you to be his wife. You must conquer this fickleness of mind. A girl who tries to attract ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... 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 all inclined to depreciate whatever we have overpraised, and, on the other ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... minutes ago, there was a consultation going on with Harry as to what she should wear. I don't think it will last more than half an hour; and then she was coming to try to persuade you to keep her fickleness ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... unhappiness into which Oswald was plunged was increased by the fact that his letters to Corinne received no replies. Had her love ceased when his presence was removed? His friends told him of the fickleness of Italian women, and he began to believe that she had deserted him. The truth was that Corinne was not in Italy to receive his letters. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... 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 are ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... more brightness in her eyes, and more 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 more their legs ached from such ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... peristyles, did not in his eyes deserve the term "human." Hence he gave no answer whatever to the applause, or the kisses sent from lips here and there to him. He was relating to Marcus the case of Pedanius, reviling meanwhile the fickleness of that rabble which, next morning after the terrible butchery, applauded Nero on his way to the temple of Jupiter Stator. But he gave command to halt before the book-shop of Avirnus, and, descending from the litter, purchased an ornamented ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... aching sadly to-day, owing to the excitement of her brother's visit and the harsh words which passed between him and his sisters, he telling them, jokingly at first, that he was tired of getting married, and half resolved to give it up; while they, in return, had abused him for fickleness, taunted him with their poverty, and sharply reproached him for his unwillingness to lighten their burden, by taking a rich wife when he ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... brilliant piece of work in STRIFE is Galsworthy's portrayal of the mob, its fickleness, and lack of backbone. One moment they applaud old Thomas, who speaks of the power of God and religion and admonishes the men against rebellion; the next instant they are carried away by a walking delegate, who pleads the cause of the union,—the union that always stands for compromise, ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... been subject to their influence know that there is nothing more uncertain than the winds. Their fickleness has passed into a proverb; but their inconstancy, as well as their power, from the fanning air to the destructive tornado, are to be traced to causes that are sufficiently clear, though hid in their nature from the calculations of our forethought. The tempest of the night was ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... disposed to comply with my invitation, I desired that he would go over to Fort Providence, and remain near the Indians whom he had engaged for our service. I feared lest they should become impatient at our unexpected delay, and, with the usual fickleness of the Indian character, remove from the establishment before we could arrive. It had been my intention to go to them myself, could the articles, with which they expected to be presented on my arrival, ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... with more readiness and effect than others, will ordinarily prosecute and finish their course with proportionably higher reputation. Indeed, to the want of a thorough initiation into the rudiments of learning may be traced much of that indolence and fickleness and easy yielding to temptation, by which the mind, untaught in the labor of successful occupation, and discouraged by the failure of its imprudent efforts, is presently paralyzed, and lost to every honorable and useful purpose. If then it may be provided that early instruction shall be ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... time of stress when Minna began to suffer from the fickleness of some one nearer to her than fortune. Wagner began to cast meaning glances over the garden wall. As Mr. Henderson says: "He was as inconstant as the wind, a rover, and a faithless husband. His misdoings amounted to more ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... for the Baesle. Poor girl! But while the hollyhock was taking the bee's fickleness so solemnly, a rose was revenging her upon him. A more serious—for Mozart a very serious—affair, was his infatuation with Aloysia Weber, a fifteen-year-old girl with much beauty ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... 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
... 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, ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... perceived the symptoms of a new scene of difficulty. The sailors now began to contemplate the dangers and uncertain issue of a voyage, the nature and length of which were left entirely open to conjecture. Besides the fickleness and timidity natural to men unaccustomed to the discipline of a seafaring life, several circumstances contributed to inspire an obstinate and mutinous disposition; which required the most consummate art as well as fortitude ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... themselves the hatred felt against disagreeable or doubtful regulations, and if they did not do this quite in unison with her mood, they had to fear her blame and displeasure. She was not free from the fickleness of her family: but on the other hand she displayed also the amiable attention of a female ruler: as when once during a speech she was making in a learned language to the learned men of Oxford, on seeing the Lord Treasurer standing ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... your lead and line, shoulder your birch canoe, as the old sea-kings used, and thrid the deep forests, and scale the purple hills, till you come to water again, when you will unroll your lead and line for another essay. Is that fickleness? What else can you do? Must you launch your bark on the unquiet stream, against whose pebbly bottom the keel continually grates and rasps your nerves—simply that your reputation suffer no detriment? Fickleness? There is no fickleness about ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... similar performance with Stephen Smith the year before. Elfride had not; but she had begun to take for her maxim the undoubted truth that the necessity of continuing faithful to Stephen, without suspicion, dictated a fickle behaviour almost as imperatively as fickleness itself; a fact, however, which would give a startling advantage to the latter quality should it ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... might have a job for him; but now Hiram was not looking for a job. He had given himself heartily to the project of making the old Atterson farm pay; nor was he the sort of fellow to show fickleness in ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... a beautiful thought," put in Mr. Whitechoker. "It is, I presume, an allegory to contrast faithful devotion and constancy with unfaithfulness and fickleness. Such thoughts occur only to the wholly gifted. It is only to the poetic temperament that the conception of such a thought can come coupled with the ability to voice it in fitting terms. There is a grandeur about the lines the Idiot has quoted ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... once, and we fell (figuratively speaking) upon each other's neck. Her shop was empty, the whole quarter had trooped off to the review. After mingling our tears (again figuratively) over the fickleness of the capital, I inquired if she ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... instigation of Gobel, who was, in reward, appointed bishop of Paris, and whose nephew, Rengger, shortly afterward became a member of the revolutionary government in Berne. In Geneva, during the preceding year, the French faction had gained the upper hand. The fickleness of the war kept the rest of the patriots in a state of suspense, but, on the seizure of the left bank of the Rhine by the French, the movements in Switzerland assumed a more serious character. The abbot, Beda, of St. Gall, 1795, pacified his subjects by ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... separation between the President and his party. Edwin D. Morgan so understood it, and although he had heretofore sustained the President, he now stood with the Radicals. Raymond also knew the gravity of the situation. But Raymond, who often wavered and sometimes exhibited an astonishing fickleness,[1054] saw only one side to the question, and on April 9 when the House, by a vote of 122 to 41, overrode the veto, he was one of only seven Unionists ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... we believe such an accusation. Trace a man's career from his cradle to his grave and mark how Fortune has treated him. You will find that when he is once dead she can for the most part be vindicated from the charge of any but very superficial fickleness. Her blindness is the merest fable; she can espy her favourites long before they are born. We are as days and have had our parents for our yesterdays, but through all the fair weather of a clear parental sky the eye of Fortune can discern the coming storm, and she laughs as she places her favourites ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... though the work was done by the 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
... fairest face, after the first heyday of his youth was past, as worth the pain its owner's caprices could inflict. For, as seen under that phase, woman was apt to be both mercenary and capricious; and if the poet suffered, as he did, from the fickleness of more than one mistress, the probability is—and this he was too honest not to feel—that they had ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... as readily as would any five-year-old child, this invitation to go motoring. And it banished the memory of Lady's fickleness. ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... the people, which made them nearly always welcome a fresh master with enthusiasm, soon led them from love and obedience to hatred, and finally to revolt. Merodach-baladan trusted to the Kalda to help him to maintain his position, and their rude barbarity, even if it protected him against the fickleness of his more civilised subjects, increased the discontent at Kutha, Sippar, and Borsippa. He removed the statues of the gods from these towns, imprisoned the most turbulent citizens, confiscated their goods, and distributed them among his own followers; the other cities took no part in ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... be a subject of bitter 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
... taking 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 ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... Anugita, and you will find that Arjuna after the great battle, forgetting the teaching that was given him on Kurukshetra, asked his Teacher to repeat that teaching once again. And Shri Krishna, rebuking him for the fickleness of his mind and stating that He was much displeased that such knowledge should by fickleness have been forgotten, uttered these remarkable words: "It is not possible for me to state it in full in that way. I discoursed ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... in this state in Isauria, and while the king of Persia was involved in wars upon his frontier, repulsing from his borders a set of ferocious tribes which, being full of fickleness, were continually either attacking him in a hostile manner, or, as often happens, aiding him when he turned his arms against us, a certain noble, by name Nohodares, having been appointed to invade Mesopotamia, whenever occasion might serve, was anxiously exploring our territories with a view to ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... make quite as much sensation as 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
... sense-experience could reach her mind. She had seen tragedies of animal life, lonely death-struggles, horrible flights and more horrible captures, she had seen joyous wooings, love-pinings, partings, and bereavements. She had seen maternal fickleness and maternal constancy, maternal savagery; the end of mated bliss and its—renewal. She had seen the relentless catastrophes of storm. There had been starving winters and renewing springs, sad beautiful autumns, the riotous ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... extinguished the hope which the young Prince might have entertained of one day becoming Stadtholder. But God laughs at the presumption of man, who wants to raise and prostrate the powers on earth without consulting the King above; and the fickleness and caprice of the Dutch combined with the terror inspired by Louis XIV., in repealing the Perpetual Edict, and re-establishing the office of Stadtholder in favour of William of Orange, for whom the hand of Providence had traced out ulterior destinies on the hidden ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... themselves unto them, might they but have the colour of an invitation to do it under. Yea, so far as I could gather, the town had been surrendered up to them before now, had it not been for the opposition of old Incredulity, and the fickleness of the thoughts of my Lord Will-be-will. Diabolus also began to rave, wherefore Mansoul, as to yielding, was not yet all of one mind, therefore, they still lay ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the 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
... that fickleness which seems in some way communicable from wicked cities to virtuous villages, East Patten suddenly ceased to exhibit unusual interest in the pair of warriors, for a new excitement had convulsed the village mind to its ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... sailed from St. Fiorenzo on this destination; but fell in, off Cape del Mele, with the enemy's fleet, who immediately gave his squadron chase. The chase lasted four-and-twenty hours; and, owing to the fickleness of the wind, the British ships were sometimes hard pressed; but the want of skill on the part of the French gave Nelson many advantages. Nelson bent his way back to St. Fiorenzo, where the fleet, which was ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... 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; but having become convinced that Parthia was the stronger power of the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... his temple at Dodona been caught? I answered all these questions, and he proceeded:—'Tell me, Menippus, what are men's feelings towards me?' 'What should they be, Lord, but those of absolute reverence, as to the King of all Gods?' 'Now, now, chaffing as usual,' he said; 'I know their fickleness very well, for all your dissimulation. There was a time when I was their prophet, ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... Bannerworth is not now the person she was when first I knew her and loved her. Such being the case, and she having altered, not I, she cannot accuse me of fickleness. ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... Which for the length of forty years I held, If in my sixtieth year my good old name Can purchase for me a revenge so full. Start not at what I say, sir generals! My real motives—they concern not you. And you yourselves, I trust, could not expect That this your game had crooked my judgment—or That fickleness, quick blood, or such like cause, Has driven the old man from the track of honor, Which he so long had trodden. Come, my friends! I'm not thereto determined with less firmness, Because I know and have looked steadily At that on which I ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... you—all stories, prose and verse. If I had such a memory as Benwick, I could bring you fifty quotations in a moment on my side the argument, and I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman's fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... of both, Gerard replied that the king had already approved the treaty, that it was now engrossed on parchment, and that a new arrangement would entail "inconvenience and considerable delay." But finally, not without showing some irritation at the fickleness of the commissioners, he was brought to agree that Congress might ratify the treaty either with or without these articles, as it should see fit. This business cost Franklin, as an annoying incident, an encounter with Mr. Izard, and a ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... of this 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 ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... description of her, of Lyesse, of Delight, and of the God of Love himself, with his bow-bearer Sweet-Glances, who carries in each hand five arrows—in the right Beauty, Simpleness, Frankness, Companionship, Fair-Seeming; in the left Pride, Villainy,[145] Shame, Despair, and "New-Thought"—i.e., Fickleness. Other personages—sometimes with the same names, sometimes with different—follow in the train; Cupid watches the Lover that he may take shot at him, and the tale is interrupted by an episode giving the story of Narcissus. Meanwhile ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... for a considerable space. "I must set this matter right," thought honest George, "as she loves him still—I must set his mind right about the other woman." And with this charitable thought, the good fellow began to tell more at large what Bows had said to him regarding Miss Bolton's behavior and fickleness, and he described how the girl was no better than a little light-minded flirt; and, perhaps, he exaggerated the good humor and contentedness which he had himself, as he thought, witnessed in her behavior in the scene with ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the 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. Her love for her old friend, ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... trifles 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 would ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... they came to the main land, rarely brought their captives: they were in danger of losing them. Their fickleness or revenge, was sometimes fatal: in 1824, a party, engaged in an expedition to entice the girls of a tribe, took with them one who had a half-caste infant, and sent her on shore as a decoy. She returned, bringing promises from her countrywomen to appear the following day; but at that time the blacks ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... begin then," said Miss Mills. "Oh, don't talk to me about it, children. May you never understand what I am suffering! Oh, the fickleness of some people! The promises that are made only to be broken! You trust a person, and you are ever so happy; and then you find that you have made a great, big ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... of all his entreaties to George, all his attempted bribery, his broken-hearted sorrow when he failed, he seemed to be now content. Indeed, he had made no opposition to the match. When Caroline had freely spoken to him about it, he made some little snappish remark as to the fickleness of women; but he at the same time signified ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... 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 ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the mountaineers. His petition had no effect, and three missionaries of great merit and learning were sent. By dint of great hardships, and, by living in the same manner as the Indians, they succeeded in baptizing many; but when they learned the fickleness of the Indian nature, and that it was as easy for them to become baptized as it was to take to the mountains to continue their former mode of life, the missionaries proceeded more cautiously in giving them the benefit of ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... one they have left, regardless of the fact that no two careers have the same gage, that every man builds his own road upon which another man's engine can not run either with speed or safety. This fickleness, this disposition to shift about from one occupation to another, seems to be peculiar to American life, so much so that, when a young man meets a friend whom he has not seen for some time, the commonest question to ask is, "What are you ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... Scriptures, which you can do with a very small amount of research, and quote no less than the words of God himself: Ego autem dico vobis: diligite inimicos vestros. If you speak of evil thoughts, turn to the Gospel: De corde exeunt cogitationes malae. If of the fickleness of friends, there is Cato, who will give you ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra |
