"Wilful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Cornelius Dalton was put to the bar charged with the wilful murder of Bartholomew Sullivan, by striking him on the head with a walking stick, and when the old man stood up all eyes were turned on him. It was clear that there was an admission of guilt in his face, for instead of appearing erect and independent, he looked around with an expression of remorse ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Crepy-en-Valois, which had suffered less than other towns through which the enemy had passed, I saw a wilful, wanton, stupid destruction of men—no worse I think than other men, but with their passions let loose and unrestrained. They had entered all the abandoned houses, and had found some evil pleasure in smashing ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... ignorance of the whole matter was so great, that it was not surprising that she thought the mere alteration of the date would make the sampler of greater value. But what broke Elise's heart was the knowledge of Azalea's wilful deception. ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... should have been devoted to the same and to such a husband. Not quite in vain. Indeed, but for that grievous sin towards his eldest son, Mr. Ford's client would probably have become an utterly different man. But there is no rising far in the moral atmosphere with a wilful, unrepented sin as a clog. It was a miserable result of the weakness of his character that he could not see that the very nobleness of Lady Adelaide's should have encouraged him to confess to her what he dared not trust to his father's ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... dinner party, the better sort of people fight shy of him, and he is not invited again; if he profess himself a Buddhist or a Mahometan, it is assumed that he has not adopted those beliefs on serious conviction, but rather in wilful levity and eccentricity which does not deserve to be tolerated. Men have no right to make themselves bores and nuisances; and the common sense of mankind inflicts wholesome inconveniences on those who carry their ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... are very inadequate to the purpose. If criminality could be engraved on a graduated scale, their deaths ought in general to be written down at some intermediate point between accidental homicide and wilful murder. The persecution of this unfortunate race may be said to commence before they are born; and, though the strength of a nation depends much on its population, less care is taken to encourage it, than to produce mushrooms, or ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... fastening the halves of meal sacks to short sticks. The sight of these gave us some hope, but our belief that Rebels were constitutional liars and deceivers was so firm and fixed, that we persuaded ourselves that the flags meant nothing more than some wilful delusion for us. ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... human little boys and girls with every variety of temper and character, and sometimes hereditary disadvantages which it is hard to battle with. But patient forbearance and gentle treatment and time do so much for them. And often a kind farmer has asked to be allowed to keep, and "try again" the wilful little fellow who has tried to run away ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... the apron from her tear-stained face, and looked at him. It was true, in her moments of roused exposure she was a beautiful woman—a beautiful woman. At this moment, with her flushed, tear-stained, wilful distress, she was beautiful. ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... But it befell In the Royal garden on a day of spring, A flock of wild swans passed, voyaging north To their nest-places on Himala's breast. Calling in love-notes down their snowy line The bright birds flew, by fond love piloted; And Devadatta, cousin of the Prince, Pointed his bow, and loosed a wilful shaft Which found the wide wing of the foremost swan Broad-spread to glide upon the free blue road, So that it fell, the bitter arrow fixed, Bright scarlet blood-gouts staining the pure plumes. Which seeing, Prince Siddartha took the bird Tenderly up, rested it in his lap Sitting ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... in some minds there is a certain wilful and prejudiced self-blindness which no reasoning can overcome, and granting also that men very much preoccupied with any one pursuit (more especially a scientific one) will be apt to give but scant and divided attention to arguments upon other subjects such as religion ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... Fripp had no theological bearing whatever. It was due to an event which had occurred some years back, and which, I am sorry to say, had left that grimy old lady as indifferent to the means of grace as ever. Dame Fripp kept leeches, and was understood to have such remarkable influence over those wilful animals in inducing them to bite under the most unpromising circumstances, that though her own leeches were usually rejected, from a suspicion that they had lost their appetite, she herself was constantly ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... Jahveh's prohibitions of certain forms of immorality are strict and sweeping, his wrath is quite as strongly kindled against infractions of ritual ordinances. Accidental homicide may go unpunished, and reparation may be made for wilful theft. On the other hand, Nadab and Abihu, who "offered strange fire before Jahveh, which he had not commanded them," were swiftly devoured by Jahveh's fire; he who sacrificed anywhere except at the allotted place was to be "cut off from his people"; ...
— The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study - Essay #8 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... had become too frequent to produce much sensation, and was set down as a common risk of colonial life. When they heard that a servant was speared, they would exclaim, "Ah! is he killed? poor fellow!"—and having brought in a verdict of wilful murder, they left him to the forgetfulness of ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... she was pinning to the bosom of her gown. Her intent gaze met the mask of Shirley's ingenuous smile, reading in his telltale eyes a message which needed no court interpreter! Quickly she turned to her mirror to put the finishing touches to her coiffure, the golden curls so alluringly wilful. ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... royalist; one of those devoted royalists, as regarded both God and king, who would submit, for their sakes, to the stake or the block with rapture at being thought worthy to make the sacrifice. Well, I was wild and wilful, and even then would rather steal a thing than gain it by lawful means: not that I would have stolen aught to keep it, for I was generous enough; but I loved the danger and excitement of theft, and, on the occasion ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... said the counsellor—"it is that two hundred per year, with your father's indulgence, that makes you so wilful, sweetheart." ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... happens to a child," continued Harald, excitedly, "then directly to charge those belonging to it with a wilful murder! Can one imagine anything more shameful or more absurd. No, such snakes, at least, shall not hiss about the unhappy lady. And to crush them shall be ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... Seyberts's testimony. "Such accounts," he says, "if not wilfully exaggerated, must always fall short of the truth." It would be a curious question of casuistry to determine what a man ought to do in a case in which he cannot tell the truth except by being guilty of wilful exaggeration. We will, however, suppose, with Mr Sadler, that Dr Seybert, finding himself compelled to choose between two sins, preferred telling a falsehood to exaggerating; and that he has consequently underrated the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... absurd and inexplicable unless interpreted in a broad farcical spirit. 1. The running slave. 2. Wilful blindness. 3. Adventitious entrance. ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... guardian friend or mother Tell the woes of wilful waste; Scorn their counsel, scorn their pother— You can hang ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... back it was as if he had found the stranger whom they 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 and dreamy. ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... some wilful folk, lad," was Mr. Sutherland's remark, one evening after I was able to leave my room. "Ye hae risen frae y'r bed like the crocus frae snaw. An' Frances were hangin' aboot y'r pillow, lad, I'm nae sure y'd be up ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... before your mother married. While it is not your fault, only your misfortune, it would be wise for you to go where the facts are not so well known as in the congregation of St Blank's. There are people in that congregation who consider you guilty of a wilful deception in wearing the name you do, and of an affront to good taste in accepting the position you occupy. Many people talk of leaving the church on your account. Your gifts as a musician would win you a position ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... name of Yvon. As usual, he was the best beloved. In the morning, at his departure, and at evening, on his return, the baron always found Yvon waiting on the threshold to embrace him. With his hair falling to his waist, his graceful figure, his wilful air, and his bold bearing, Yvon was beloved by all the Bretons. At twelve years of age he had bravely attacked and killed a wolf with an ax, which had won him the name of Fearless. He deserved the title, for never was there ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... turn the moment to account. The warmth, fragrance and colour of her body appealed to his senses. He was pleasantly conscious that the bosom which he saw rise and fall slowly beneath him rose and fell at that moment for him, that the laughter and fragrance and wilful glances were his tribute. When he could stay no longer he took ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... Despond,' and 'Vanity Fair,' do not afford any ground for supposing that Bunyan had ever heard of this book; or that even if he had read it, he should have taken one hint from it. Here the incidents are, 1st that the wilful Pilgrim stops in a village crowd to see some juggler's tricks at a fair, and certain vermin in consequence shift their quarters from some of the rabble close to her, to her person. 2nd. That by following a cow's track instead of keeping ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... shown in the 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 ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... partly risen as he spoke, and the exertion seemed to choke him. The woman sat in dreadful silence, watching his veins rise upon his pale and wilful face. He caught at his throat with his fingers, and for a ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... understood that he would decline. But such lapses were few. On nine days out of ten, he did not feel the need of either making or receiving confidences; he shrank rather, with a peculiar shy dread, from personal unbosomings. Some imp housed in him—some wayward, wilful, mocking Irish devil—bidding him hold back, remain cool, dry-eyed, in face of others' joys and pains. Hence the break with Purdy was a real calamity. The associations of some five-and-twenty years were bound up in it; measured by it, one's marriage seemed a thing of ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... knew her own wilful heart. She had seen the world bow to every caprice of hers, but she never had one principle to guide her, except her own pleasure. She was now like a goddess of earth, fallen in an effort to reconcile impossibilities in human hearts, and became the sport ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... unhappily found among some of the readers who frequent our libraries. These abuses are manifold and far-reaching. Most of them are committed through ignorance, and can be corrected by the courteous but firm interposition of the librarian, instructing the delinquent how to treat a book in hand. Others are wilful and unpardonable offences against property rights and public morals, even if not made penal offences by law. One of these is book mutilation, very widely practiced, but rarely detected until the mischief is done, and the culprit gone. I ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... cunning, and skilful On earth, where his tabernacles are; But the sea is wanton, the sea is wilful, And who shall mend her and who shall mar? Shall we carve success or record disaster On the bosom of her heaving alabaster? Will her purple pulse beat fainter or faster For ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... admitted, and the question arose whether the opinion was fair in form. In the famous Whistler v. Ruskin cause there was no doubt about the critic's honesty—fancy doubting Ruskin's honesty! However, the jury thought that he went too far in his phrase "nearly approached the aspect of wilful imposture," and probably the word "coxcomb" was fatal, ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... in place of two hymns, Delian and Pythian, to Apollo, offer us half-a-dozen fragments. By presenting an array of discordant conjectures as to the number and nature of these scraps, he demonstrates the purely wilful and arbitrary nature of the critical method employed. {16b} Thus one learned person believes in (1) two perfect little poems; (2) two larger hymns; (3) three lacerated fragments of hymns, one lacking its beginning, the other wofully deprived ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... attacked Lavengro with much virulence and malice. If what they call criticism had been founded on truth, the author would have had nothing to say. The book contains plenty of blemishes, some of them, by-the-bye, wilful ones, as the writer will presently show; not one of these, however, has been detected and pointed out; but the best passages in the book, indeed whatever was calculated to make the book valuable, have been assailed with abuse and misrepresentation. The duty of the true critic ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... on flesh already raw and smarting. To predict that he would change yet again, when to change he branded himself a wilful murderer—no! That was more than he could endure. She must not think that of him. He held out his ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... she said. "I can truly say that I love you far betten than ever frank Van Buren was loved, and I know you to be worthy, too. I have been so wicked, Richard,—so wilful and impatient,—that I wonder you have not learned to hate my very name. I may be wilful still. My old hot temper is not all subdued, though I hope I am a better woman than I used to be when I cared for nothing but myself. God has been so good to me who have forgotten Him so long; but ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... if you like. Only it has affirmed my indifference. Mind you, not my natural indifference—I HAD none. But my studied, my wilful renunciation." ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... Coreans in general, and the women in particular, are at times extremely superstitious, which partly accounts for the violent scene in question, which arose out of a mere nothing, and nearly resulted in a most serious case of wilful infanticide. This is ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... Germany in all its varieties. She saw no gain in helping her brother to be Germanized, and she wanted him much to be civilized. She was the first young woman he was ever intimate with — quick, sensitive, wilful, or full of will, energetic, sympathetic and intelligent enough to supply a score of men with ideas — and he was delighted to give her the reins — to let her drive him where she would. It was his first experiment in giving the reins to a woman, ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... a degree of surprise that seemed to be tempered with the most pleasing and unaffected urbanity, replied, without being in the least disconcerted, sir, you mistake me: but I am sure you are too much of a gentleman to mean any wilful affront. ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... of the jury," he began; "the prisoner at the bar is charged with the wilful murder of John Smith, on the ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... you specially that I say it. I am sure that most now present know their duties of kindness, and fulfil them, better perhaps than I do mine. But I speak to you as representing your whole class, which errs, I know, chiefly by thoughtlessness, but not therefore the less terribly. Wilful error is limited by the will, but what limit is there to that of ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... thirty-seven feet, and to get outside the foundation of the rampart. Beyond that was a door leading to the second rampart. Trenck was forced to work naked, for fear of raising the suspicions of the officials by his dirty clothes, but in spite of all his precautions and the wilful blindness of his guards, who as usual were on his side, all was at length discovered. His hole was filled up, and a year's ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... He has already abused my patience beyond all bounds. He is wilful, ungrateful, idle, and stupid; and all the blame will fall on me, whom you have employed ...
— The Two Story Mittens and the Little Play Mittens - Being the Fourth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... shewed triumph at having, as she supposed, won her wager: "Repeat it once more before the caliph, who looks upon us all to be fools, would make us believe we have no sense of religion, nor fear of God; and tell your story to that wicked black slave, who had the insolence to assert a wilful falsehood." ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... was a grave and dignified man of forty-five. Virginie de Frontignac had been given him to wife when but eighteen,—a beautiful, generous, impulsive, wilful girl. She had accepted him gladly, for very substantial reasons. First, that she might come out of the convent where she was kept for the very purpose of educating her in ignorance of the world she was to live in. Second, that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... 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 equally sustained, ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... of a small Merrifield, and showed no signs of being set against his lessons. To be sure it was a bad way of spending a Sunday, to be laid up with ailments brought on by over-eating; but even this was better than spending it, like the former one, in wilful misbehaviour; and John, who knew that Papa, Mamma, brothers, and sisters all alike detested and despised real greediness, had been heartily ashamed of himself, both for this and his forfeits. A new week was a new starting-point, and he meant to spend this one well. For ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... tell her that: his own act had rendered it impossible, that act the outcome of wilful trifling with his infirmity, his itch ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... irresistible irradiations; every perversity of will which renders men as accountable and criminal for being ignorant as for acting against knowledge; and every form of practical mischief in which the natural tendency of ignorance, especially wilful ignorance, is shown. A great part of what the devout teachers of that people had to address to them, wherever they appeared among them, was in reproach of their ignorance, and in order, if possible, ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... 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 ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... was making the deposition was absolutely false? Gentlemen, I ask you what evidence you have upon which you are to find this noble person, not only guilty of a foul conspiracy, but also of the still higher crime of wilful and corrupt perjury? Gentlemen, I am quite satisfied, you will not feel that there is any evidence in this cause, which can weigh down the testimony which my learned friend has thought proper to put in. I say the oath of Lord Cochrane makes the evidence offered ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... became exceedingly jealous of their youngest brother, and, conspiring against him and their mother, made them live in a separate house, and took possession of the estate. Owing to overindulgence, the youngest prince had become very wilful. He never listened to any one, not even to his mother, but had his own way in everything. One day he went with his mother to bathe in the river. A large boat was riding there at anchor. None of the boatmen were in it. The prince ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... Corrie was sustaining a defense of his own. Upright against a column, scarlet with determination, Isabel pursued the wilful desire she had voiced ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... had their time without and within. Peace came to the summer heavens, and the pale stars took the brief night with beauty. But to the firmament of his soul no star of peace returned. There dwelt night and chaos. If his passion were blind, the blindness was wilful. For he saw clearly the end of what he meant to do, and chose it. Whatever his love might have been worth, he had been robbed of it, and for him life ended there. He was but an automaton of ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... possibly bring about a federation of the whole group of South African States. He was too impatient to let the situation mature quietly. He forced the issue by encouraging the foolish Jameson Raid of 1895. This, like all wilful resorts to violence, only made things worse. It alienated and angered the more moderate Boers in the Transvaal, who were not without sympathy with the Uitlanders. It aroused the indignation of the Cape Colony Boers, and embittered racial feeling there. It put the British cause in the wrong in the ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... reproducing the mere patina of age or the trickles of bad firing; the relief work in marble or metal which looks as if it had been rolled for centuries in the sea, or corroded by acids under ground. And the total effect, increased by all these methods of wilful blunting and blurring, is an art without stamina, tired, impotent, short-lived, while produced by an excessive expense of ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... you that Mr Spinney's gone—poor old man! There must be a coroner's inquest. Now, it would be as well if you were not to be found, for the verdict will be 'Wilful Murder!'" ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... athletes, the States—or see freedom or spirituality—or hold any faith in results. But I see the athletes—and I see the results glorious and inevitable—and they again leading to other results; How the great cities appear—How the Democratic masses, turbulent, wilful, as I love them, How the whirl, the contest, the wrestle of evil with good, the sounding and resounding, keep on and on; How society waits unformed, and is between things ended and things begun; How America is the continent of glories, ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... out loudly, and came fluttering down from their perches, and ran about in dismay, and the little girl ran after them. I saw it quite plainly, for I looked through a hole in the hen-house wall. I was angry with the wilful child, and felt glad when her father came out and scolded her more violently than yesterday, holding her roughly by the arm: she held down her head, and her blue eyes were full of large tears. 'What ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... tender and touching evidence of sweetness in the strong man who had been so readily accused of harshness by grasping courtiers. The ignorant ingratitude of the people was even perhaps more melancholy than the wilful ingratitude of the King. The great Colbert had to be buried by night, lest his remains should be insulted by the mob. He, whose heart had bled for the people's sore anguish, was rashly supposed to be the cause of that anguish. It was a sad conclusion to a great life. But he would have seen ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... crave Is endless life beyond the grave; That when the icy hand of death Shall seize their frames, and stop their breath, Their souls on wings of faith may rise To life and joy beyond the skies. O Father, grant me this request And I shall be supremely bless'd; Bend ev'ry stubborn, wilful knee, And draw each wand'ring heart to thee. But hark! I hear a cheering voice That bids my waiting soul rejoice. "Be still, and know that I am God," And bow submissive to the rod. It seems almost that voice from heav'n, Had spoke my childrens' sins forgiven, So suddenly had calmness stole ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... topics, though it always ended in assurances that Master Arthur would suffer for it if he did not perceive what was for his good. To which Arthur replied to the effect that he must suffer rather than deny his faith; and Yusuf, declaring that a wilful man maun have his way, and that he would rue it too late, went off affronted, but always returned to the charge ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... go," she urged. "It will be wilful murder. You made the attack. He was unarmed, and you used a pistol and a knife. Do you want ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... makers, whom we would not haue too precise Poets least with their shrewd wits, when they were maried they might become a little too phantasticall wiues, neuerthelesse because we seem to promise an arte, which doth not iustly admit any wilful errour in the teacher, and to th'end we may not be carped at by these methodicall men, that we haue omitted any necessary point in this businesse to be regarded, I will speake somewhat touching these viciosities of language particularly and briefly, leauing no little to ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... sundry japes and jokes the said brother John did lift up the said Mary Sowley and did take, carry, and convey her across a stream, to the infinite relish of the devil and the exceeding detriment of his own soul, which scandalous and wilful falling away was witnessed by three members of ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... art to encourage these joyous illusions. She who had before been so capricious, so nervous, wilful, became little by little submissive to the degree of an angelic softness. The future of her love depended on her husband, and she spared no pains to prevent the slightest suspicion from ruffling his calm confidence. ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... time we find (at fifteen) attached to the amazing regiment of giants, drilling at Potsdam; on very ill terms with his father, however, who sees in him mainly wilful disobedience and frivolity. Once, when Prussia and Hanover seem on the verge of war over an utterly trivial matter, our crown prince acquires momentary favour. The Potsdam Guards are ordered to the front, and the prince handles them with great credit. But the favour ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... set with little wilful thorns. And sweet as English air could make her, she. The Princess. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... she said, 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 what was ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... shepherdess, a nymph, an imaginary being from Arcady, from mythology, or from nowhere, but by such grave, dignified, official portraitures as the very fine engraving left by Rogers. Round the sharp-featured face, with closed, wilful lips, weary eyes, open, intelligent forehead, lace ruffs of various shapes, some very bushy, some quite flat and round-shaped like butterfly wings, are displayed in most imposing array. No imaginable kind of gum or starch could ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... peevish and purse-proud as the other: and this lawsuit begot higher oppositions, and actionable words, and more vexations and lawsuits; for you must remember that both were rich, and must therefore have their wills. Well! this wilful, purse-proud lawsuit lasted during the life of the first husband; after which his wife vext and chid, and chid and vext, till she also chid and vext herself into her grave: and so the wealth of these ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... confidantes," said Richard, "I want my cousin Ada to understand that I am not captious, fickle, and wilful about John Jarndyce, but that I have this purpose and reason at my back. I wish to represent myself to her through you, because she has a great esteem and respect for her cousin John; and I know you will soften the course I take, even though you disapprove of ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... then? We are, He tells us, made in His likeness. Then, according to His likeness we must behave. We must copy His love, by helping the poor and afflicted, the weak and the oppressed. But we must copy His severity, by punishing whenever we have the power, without cowardice or indulgence, all wilful offenders; and, above all, the man who destroys God's image in himself, by murdering and destroying the mortal life of a man made in the image of God. And more; if we be made in the likeness of God and of Christ, we must remember, morning and night, and all ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... before, and of this school he often bragged as the acme of desirability and wickedness. He was always telling boys what they did at "his old school," and he quite inflamed the minds of such as fell under his influence by marvellous tales of the wild and wilful things which he and his former school-fellows had done. Many and many a scheme of sin and mischief at Roslyn was suggested, planned, and carried out, on the model of Ball's ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... he said at last, "I hardly know how to advise you. It is a most unthankful task to try and invent anything, especially down here. People are so blindly obstinate and wilful that they will not listen to reason. Why not go steadily on with manufacturing in the regular way? What do you say, my young friend?" he added, ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... of them was a wilful murderer! Oh, Mr. Cole—Mr. Cole—go and see what has happened; come back and tell me! I dare not come. I will stay here and pray for strength to bear whatever news you may bring me. ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... help withal, availed me nought. So good luck go with thine hands. Now will we to bed, and to-morrow I will lead thee out on thy way; for to say sooth, there be some here who are not well pleased with either thee or me; and thou knowest that words are wasted on wilful men, but that ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... surely, the Hemlock spruce of America; which, while growing by itself in open ground, is the most wilful and fantastic, as well as the most graceful, of all the firs; imitating the shape, not of its kindred, but of ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... it. They seem to me wilful, unworthy of you, your reasons; it's perverse—yes, that is what it is, perverse! You are not really happy here; the life ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... or knew of its existence. Colette remained obdurate to his pleadings. She assumed that he was entirely to blame for the loss, and seemed to take a gleeful delight in showing him how perverse and wilful she could be. To-night he found himself less able than usual to cope with her caprices, so he began to talk of impersonal matters and dwelt upon the beauties of Bud's voice, and the astonishing way in which ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... mother is never rejected. In Hindu family life the respect and affection which the son has for his mother is a most touching and beautiful characteristic, which only intensifies the older he grows. The Indian boy is often wilful and disobedient and rude to his mother, but he makes up for this by his dutiful conduct when he grows to manhood. It is almost comical to find Hindus of mature years referring everything to their mother, ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... great deal of emotion on a dread which had no foundation in fact? What were we two sensible and, as a rule, practical men thinking of, that we should ascribe to either of these dainty belles of a conventional and shallow society the wish to commit a deed calling for the vigour and daring of some wilful child of nature? It was not to be thought of in this sober, reasoning hour. We had given ourselves over to a ghastly nightmare, and ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... Nicholas gently, but firmly, "the chances of war are often hard to bear, but you ought to recognise a great difference between the sufferings which are caused by wilful oppression, and those which are the unavoidable consequences ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... hanged on a gibbet at the common place of execution, on Wednesday, 8th September 1736, and all his movable property to be forfeited to the king's use, according to the Scottish law in cases of wilful murder.* ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... was right, my daughter," he said after a short silence, "and it is time for you to ponder well upon the significance of his words. You can't always be a wilful, headstrong little girl, running everywhere and doing just as you please. You have grown to be a woman in stature—you must be one in fact. You know I told you at first to be ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... not going to account for myself to you," but she remembered her mother's injunction. She had been on her very best behavior all Sunday, Monday, and up to now on Tuesday, but her fit of goodness was coming to an end. She was in the mood to be obstreperous, naughty, and wilful; but the thought of her mother, who was so gently following in the path ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... parochialism, a certainty that English beef, English beer, English morals, and English standards, were the ultimate excellence towards which a world of misguided foreigners might ultimately aspire, that self-satisfaction, different from pride, that glorying in prejudice, and wilful blindness to all features of national life which do not bear out the theory of an earthly paradise. "Tell me one thing, Lord Saltire; you have travelled in many countries. Is there any land, east or west, that can give us what this dear old England does—settled order, in which ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... thought of Williams and Lawson, and reproached himself for having acted that evening very, very foolishly. Alas! this was not the right term; it was more than foolishness to tamper with the voice of conscience, to violate principles which had been inculcated from childhood, to plot wilful deceit, and act a lie. Instead of saying he had acted foolishly, he should have said, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight Have mercy upon me, O God! Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquities, and cleanse me from my sin; ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder
... creed, but give themselves up to vain and empty doctrines, are regarded as heretics by Hegesippus, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement, and Origen. These doctrines are as a rule traced to the devil, that is, to the non-Christian religions and speculations, or to wilful wickedness. Any other interpretation of their origin would at once have been an acknowledgment that the opponents of the Church had a right to their opinions,[184] and such an explanation is not quite foreign to Origen in one of his lines of argument.[185] Hence the ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... the Abbot Malathgeneus, he cried out, 'O blessed abbot, let me come to the fire and warm myself and dry the snow from my beard and my hair and my cloak; that I may not die of the cold of the mountains, and anger the Lord with a wilful martyrdom.' ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats
... DEFEAT.—According to some of our more recent versions of this battle, the disaster is to be referred to the wilful disobedience, criminal inattention, and total incapacity of General Putnam. Several writers make the charge so pointedly and upon such an array of fact, that the reader is left to wonder how all this should have escaped the notice of the commander-in-chief ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... eat forbidden food without being observant of the sacrifices and vows ordained in the Vedas are regarded as wilful men. (They are regarded as fallen even here). Those, on the other hand, who eat such food in the observance of Vedic sacrifices and vows and induced by the desire of fruits in the shape of heaven and children, ascend to heaven but fall down on ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... father and thy mother," mean three things,—always 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
... at this, and with one stroke of his wand compelled all the wilful little people to come back to their places in the box, and then rendering the Princess invisible he took her with him in his chariot ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... they call a rencontre down there, where two gentlemen propose to kill each other on sight. Greenshaw's hold on him would be that he was the only witness of the fight, and that he could testify to a wilful murder if he chose. Haxard's real crime must be the ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... apprehend the parties who were supposed to be concerned in the murder; the coroner was sent for, and, the body being taken out of the earth the next morning, several fractures were found in the head: an inquest was held, and a verdict of wilful murder against some person or persons unknown was returned: witness particularly examined the fence: there appeared to have been a fire made under the lower rail, as if to burn out the mark: the blood seemed as if it were sprinkled over the rails. . ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... some early dishonest act, long since repented of, remains always Carker the junior; and about Captain Cuttle, and that poor, muddled nautical philosopher, Captain Bunsby, and the Game Chicken, and Mrs. Pipchin, and Miss Tox; and Cousin Feenix with wilful legs so little under control, and yet to the core of him a gentleman; and the apoplectic Major Bagstock, the Joey B. who claimed to be "rough and tough and devilish sly;" and Susan Nipper, as swift of tongue as a rapier, and as sharp? Reader, don't you know all these people? For myself, I ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... you the most meagre information," said Mr. Farrington. He was white and shaky, a natural state for a law-abiding man who had witnessed wilful murder. "I heard voices and went down to the door, thinking I would find a policeman—then I heard two shots almost simultaneously, and opened the door and found the two men as they were found by ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... quarrel between Jem Wilson and the murdered young man was brought forward, and gave his evidence, clear, simple, and straightforward. The coroner had no hesitation, the jury had none, but the verdict was cautiously worded. "Wilful ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... intricate and far-sought metaphor which had possessed Donne was accompanied in his work and even more in that of his followers with a passion for what was elusive and recondite in thought and emotion and with an increasing habit of rudeness and wilful difficultness in language and versification. Against these ultimate licences of a great artistic period, the classical writers invoked the qualities of smoothness and lucidity, in the same way, so they fancied, as Vergil might have invoked them against ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... guilty of wilful meanness or cruelty in his life; though, upon occasion, he could display a certain rough brutality. His normal attitude of mind was one of careless, kindly good-humour. From Finn's point of view, he was an extremely good sort of fellow, of ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... was shortly to return to England. Cecil Trafford admired him with a girl's unreason, and at last committed such an imprudence that the astute step-mother, seeing her opportunity, proposed the only reparation possible,—marriage. Cecil was a bright, pretty, wilful girl, and he liked her, yet he had a strong ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace." Here "sin wilfully" comprehends the blasphemy of the Spirit, and he evidently means, by the term, a wilful turning again to a life of sin, a deliberate giving up of the faith, and choosing sin instead. This is also used as a stimulus to the saints to exhort one another, and neglect not the assembling ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... The Duke was angry because Lord Chiltern had been violent;—and Lord Chiltern had been violent because Mr. Fothergill's conduct had been, to his thinking, not only sacrilegious, but one continued course of wilful sacrilege. It may be said of Lord Chiltern that in his eagerness as a master of hounds he had almost abandoned his love of riding. To kill a certain number of foxes in the year, after the legitimate fashion, had become to him the one great study of life;—and he did it with an energy equal ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... marry her. I've told her so all along, and I've begged her not to do it,—almost on my knees I have; but she wouldn't be said by me. She never would. She's always been that wilful that I'd sooner have her away from me than with me. Though she's a good young woman in the house,—she is, indeed, Mr Eames,—and there isn't a pair of hands in it that works so hard; but it was no use ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... terms, of the narrative contained in Calef's Minutes, as follows: "I do scarcely find any one thing, in the whole paper, whether respecting my father or myself, either fairly or truly represented." "The narrative contains a number of mistakes and falsehoods which, were they wilful and designed, might justly be termed great lies." He then goes into a specification of a few particulars, in which he maintains ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... Germanic machine. And that too has its assured end in German national assertion. Here, we have none of those convictions. We know we haven't finality, and so we are open and apologetic and receptive, rather than wilful.... You see all organisation, with its implication of finality, is death. We feel that. The Germans don't. What you organise you kill. Organised morals or organised religion or organised thought are dead morals and dead religion and dead thought. ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... great man. I was only a successful lector; more conscious in those days of the latter fact, and less of the former, be it admitted, than I am now. A man's avocation may be at once his ruin and his exculpation. I do not know whether I was more self-confident or even more wilful than other men to whom is given the autocracy of our profession, and the dependence of women which accompanies it. I should not wish to have the appearance of saying an unmanly thing, if I add that ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... yourself would say it was impossible. Very well, then. If you wish to do a service to your friend Natalie—if you wish to see her less unhappy, you know what advice to give her. A girl who perseveres in wilful disobedience is not likely to be very contented ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... like this,— To stand full-face to Thy High Majesties, Thy myriad worlds in solemn watchfulness,— Watching, watching, watching all below, And man in all his wilfulness for woe! —Dear Lord, one wonders that Thou bearest still With man on whom Thou didst such grace bestow, And with his wilful faculty for woe! ...
— 'All's Well!' • John Oxenham
... inclined to go without telling you anything about it, doctor," she said. "I was as keen upon it as the child. I am more disappointed than she will be. I have been wilful all my life, but I am glad I did not take my own way this time. It would have been a nice thing for poor Mary if I had been taken ill in some of those ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... without reflecting that if it is difficult to believe Nature self-existent, it is much more difficult to believe some self-existent Super-nature, capable of producing it. In their anxiety to get rid of a natural difficulty, they invent a supernatural one, and accuse Atheists of 'wilful blindness,' and 'obstinate deafness,' for not choosing so unphilosophic a mode of explaining universal mystery. Call upon them to define their 'all-creative Deity,' and they know not what to answer. ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... little pets, and a precious time I had of it with them. But, to be sure, now it's past and gone- -I can make plenty of excuses for them, poor things! They were so coaxed and flattered, and made so much of, what could be expected from them but tiresome, wilful ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... too; especially from little Fay, who, hitherto, had obeyed nobody. Tony, less wilful and not so prone to be destructive, was secretly still unwon, though outwardly quite friendly. He waited and watched and weighed Jan in the balance of his small judgment. Tony was never in any hurry to make ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... rejected the sanctions which society has imposed on the love of man and woman in the legal forms of marriage, it was not in a wilful and passionate spirit. There are reasons for believing that she was somewhat touched in her youth with the individualistic theories of the time, which made so many men and women of genius reject the ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... under the name of Hippocrates cannot all be ascribed to him. Many were doubtless written by his family, his descendants, or his pupils. Others are productions of the Alexandrian school, some of these being considered by critics as wilful forgeries, the high prices paid by the Ptolemies for books of reputation probably having acted as inducements to such fraud. The following works have generally been ...
— Fathers of Biology • Charles McRae
... A second wilful deception of his mother! As Managing Director of the Five Towns Universal Thrift Club, as proprietor of the majority of its shares, as its absolute autocrat, he was making very nearly four thousand a year. Why could he not as easily have said four as two to ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... text. How much more may error occur, then, when tenuous messages are being sent from high sources by the power of thought, and when the receiving instrument is so often imperfect, so frequently out of gear, and when that instrument in addition is more than a trifle wilful and tainted with selfishness. Inspiration is ever ready, it floats around us like tuned wireless vibrations waiting to be picked up by a sympathetic receiver. Yet so few receivers, being but human after all, are sensitive enough ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... seemed to have sprung from the little urchin-like girl of former days. Her house, with all its show of luxury, still had its bald spots. What struck the painter were some good pictures on the walls, a Courbet, and, above all, an unfinished study by Delacroix. So this wild, wilful creature was not altogether a fool, although there was a frightful cat in coloured biscuit standing on a console ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... Wayward and wilful I will admit them sometimes to be, and in evil hands their misdirected energies may for a time become the instruments of evil. Mistaken in judgment they may often be, for such is the lot of humanity, but regardless of ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... the evidence of her power shown in the subjugation of a being intellectually higher than his compeers. It was not so much the man she had cared for, as the sight of herself in a superior setting; a sure proof whereof might have been found in a certain wilful pleasure which she had drawn from constantly impelling him to acts and admissions which she knew to be ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... written good books and never tasted fame; but few, like Liggins of Nuneaton, have become famous by doing nothing. It only proves that some things can be done as well as others. This breed of men has long dwelt in Warwickshire; Shakespeare had them in mind when he wrote, "There be men who do a wilful stillness entertain with purpose to be dressed in an opinion of wisdom, gravity ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... Brown, while it so effectually demolishes Jackson's fable of Erving's treaty with Spain for the boundary of the Rio del Norte, and his libellous charge against our government for surrendering the territory which they had the option to retain, is, with this exception, as wide and as wilful a departure from the truth as the calumny of Jackson itself, ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... misinformed on this point,—the work in question having been, from the first, entitled an "Oriental Romance." A much worse mistake (because wilful, and with no very charitable design) was that of certain persons, who would have it that the poem was meant to be epic!—Even Mr. D'Israeli has, for the sake of a theory, given in to this very gratuitous assumption:—"The ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... creatures from their own way of doing their own work. It was not a question with Iris, whether she was entitled by any special relation or by the fitness of things to play the part of a nurse. She was a wilful creature that must have her way in this matter. And it so proved that it called for much patience and long endurance to carry through the duties, say rather the kind offices, the painful pleasures, which she had chosen as her share in the household where accident had thrown her. She ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... diversity of Indian religion, but are there no general characteristics which mark all its multiple forms? There are, and they apply to Buddhism as well as Hinduism, but in attempting to formulate them it is well to say that Indian religion is as wilful and unexpected in its variations as human nature itself and that all generalizations about it are subject to exceptions. If we say that it preaches asceticism and the subjection of the flesh, we may be confronted with the Vallabhacaryas who inculcate self-indulgence; if we say that ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... noble, brave, and passing kind. But, Rosalinde, when 'mid my father's vines, A child I roamed, I shunned the rich, ripe fruit Within my reach, and stretched my little arm Beyond its strength, for that which farthest hung, Though poorest too perchance. Years past away, The wilful child is grown a woman now, Yet wilful still, and wayward ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... me, Lady Cornelia," she said; "I am but a wilful girl with many things to learn. Perhaps you yourself know that purple robes do not ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... 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 ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... who habitually obeys the commands of others, without questioning, without resisting, and so perhaps become a pliant tool in the hands of powerful but unscrupulous men? Or shall he be allowed to go his own way and over-ride the wishes of others, to become, perhaps, a wilful victim of his own whims and moods, presenting a stubborn resistance to overwhelming forces that will in the end ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... replied the youth unmoved by her alarm, "the Gods are never absent from their votaries, so they be innocent and pure of spirit. For me! I am unconscious of a wilful fault, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... the fashion Lady Hamilton was said to do, and represented, like her, the Muses, and various statues. With the curtain and one light she managed to give a very statuesque effect. Mr. Lewis was evidently very proud of her grace and talent, and she had a pretty, wilful, bird-like way with him, that was fascinating, and did not seem, as I thought it must really be, mechanical. I felt, more than ever, how idle it must be to talk with her. The affectionate respect, the joyful uplooking of wifehood, was not to be taught by words, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... the crude theories of spiritualism is not altogether the result of wilful blindness. In our innermost minds, in the region beyond the grasp of the brain and its ready generalizations, we hunger for inexpressible reality, for life beyond the stars. We have eaten of the tree of sense-knowledge: we have seen, heard, felt, ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... day they straggled into Cologne—victims of a sad delusion. Alas, how bitterly they had paid for their wilful disobedience! ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... next room; a faint question from Philip, Anderson replying. What an influence this man of strong character had already obtained over her wilful, self-indulgent brother! She saw the signs of it in many directions; and she was passionately grateful for it. Her thoughts went wandering back over the past three weeks—over the whole gradual unveiling of Anderson's personality. She recalled her first ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions who are upon it to die of starvation in extremest agony, so far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will not say should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one wilful untruth, though it harmed no one, or steal one poor farthing ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... man," said Nettie; and the girl elevated that pretty drooping head, and flashed a whole torrent of brilliant reflections over the sombre figure beside her. He felt himself glow under the sudden radiance of the look. To fancy this wilful imperious creature a meek self-sacrificing heroine, was equally absurd and impossible. Was there any virtue at all in that dauntless enterprise of hers? or was it simple determination to ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... and had long since exerted her filial influence to the extent of going to her aunt, Mrs. Stanton, whenever she wished. She had come to be quite a sensation in her father's native village, his hosts of friends readily tracing a likeness to himself. She was a sweet, rather wilful maiden, not exactly pretty, but very refined ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... Brandilancia had looked upon these charms unmoved. All arrogance and self-confidence were gone or lay buried under the most appealing of coquetry, a shy tenderness apparently born of irresistible impulse showing itself in little wilful sallies, a glance or touch, seemingly instantly regretted, and followed by alternations of reticence. He admitted her bewitching but had no idea that he was himself bewitched. His was a literary passion. He was a student of life as well as ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... and departed, saying, 'We have seen the fiend sailing in a bottomless ship; let us go home and pray': but one young and wilful man said, 'Fiend! I'll warrant it's nae fiend, but douce Janet Withershins, the witch, holding a carouse with some of her Cumberland cummers, and mickle red wine will be spilt atween them. Dod I would gladly have a toothfu'! I'll warrant ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... about it—how he had arranged everything, got a room, meant to have his name painted on the door, meant to make his parents take their holiday on the north-east coast for a change, so that he could study the site, meant to work like a hundred devils, etc. He saw with satisfaction that the arrogant, wilful creature was impressed. ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... wrong who call you wilful, although the name they give you is not kind. Have you ever considered that you stand alone in the world, and that your perverseness must make your sick mother's illness worse to bear, her life more bitter? And what sound reason can you have ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... the man who first told us that we must exert our wills in art, was also himself eager in the discovery and enjoyment of all kinds of art in the past. He had his prejudices, the prejudices of a very wilful man and a working artist. 'What can I see in Rome,' he said, 'that I cannot see in Whitechapel?' But he enjoyed the art of most ages and countries more than he enjoyed his prejudices. He had the historical sense in art to a very high degree. He knew ...
— Progress and History • Various
... anything so small, So trifling or so mean, That we may never want at all, For service unforseen; And wilful waste, depend upon't ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... did anythin' wilful or disturbin' as a child me father always said it was the 'original sin' in me an' that I wasn't to be punished for it because I couldn't help it. Then he used to punish himself for MY fault. An' when I saw it hurt him I usen't to do it again—for ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... dollars. She gained fifteen—the funeral costing eighty-five." Another common form of humorous complication is taking an expression in a different sense from that it usually bears. "You cannot eat your cake, and have your cake;" "But how," asks the wilful child, "am I to eat my cake, if I don't have it?" Thackeray speaks of a young man who possessed every qualification for success—except ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... than this. Breach of promise is only a negative crime. The Allies went to the other extreme; their help took the form of positive wilful obstruction. The Japanese, by bolstering up Semianoff and Kalmakoff, and the Americans, by protecting and organising enemies, made it practically impossible for the Omsk Government to maintain its authority or existence. The most ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... hours, in his sister's office, might justly be regarded by her mother and aunts as an undesirable scholar for her, and that his sister's remonstrances ought not to have been scouted. She had done the thing in her simplicity, but it was through her own wilful secretiveness that her ignorance had not ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... very easy, Mrs. Kenerley," said Roger. "My word for it, these are wilful and prankish girls. I've known Miss Fairfield for years, and she's capable of any mischief. Miss Galbraith, ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... wilful little rascal with a mind of his own. He took to the Wolf because it had killed a Dog that had bitten him. He thenceforth fed the Wolf and made a pet of it, and the Wolf responded by allowing him to take liberties which ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... required, the vindictive widow to the life (this kind of life, you understand), and Miss HILDA BAYLEY played very charmingly the little wilful fiancee who—but no, I must keep ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 29, 1916 • Various |
