"Wilfulness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Latimer wished for no confidential communications. She had received at Brentwood full particulars of the alliance that was projected between the families of Fairfax and Burleigh, and considered it highly desirable. My lady's principle was entirely against any wilfulness of affection in young girls. In this she was always consistent, and Bessie's sentimental constancy to the idea of Harry Musgrave would have provoked her utter disapproval. It was therefore for Bessie's comfort that no opportunity was given her of ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... the crazy malevolence she cherished for her earliest lover: "Your relentless vindictiveness against Byron is not tolerated by any religion that I know of"; while through the rack of jibes, malisons, and ebullitions of wilfulness shines steadily his veneration for the great poet ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... out of him, Leaving his body as a paradise To envelope and contain celestial spirits. Never was such a sudden scholar made; Never came reformation in a flood With such a heady currance, scouring faults; Nor never Hydra-headed wilfulness So soon did lose his seat, and all at once, ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... his arrival in Europe, he was entrusted with a command in Portugal, against the French then occupying that country. He was much embarrassed by his own government, and the wilfulness of the people to rescue whom was his mission. The convention of Cintra arrested his successes. The stupidity of his superiors defeated his schemes of conquest. "Yet, even as things stood, the success achieved was of no ordinary character. The British soldiers had measured their swords ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... not understand my system, or any given part of it,—or by a determined act of wilfulness, you may, even though perceiving a ray of light, reject it in anger and disgust:—but this I will say,—that if you once master it, or any part of it, you cannot hesitate to acknowledge it as the truth. You ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... poor soul! I had a thousand times sooner hear you say that you cannot mend than that you can. For those who really feel they cannot mend—those who are really weary and worn out with the burden of their sins—those who are tired out with their own wilfulness, and feel ready to lie down and die, like a spent horse, and say, "God take me away, no matter to what place; I am not fit to live here on earth, a shame and a torment to myself day and night"—those who are in that state of mind are very near—very ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley
... impenetrable shroud that enveloped him, and the senseless form he held on his breast. And if he tried to follow on by that clue which Armine had left him, whirlwinds of dismay seemed to sweep away all hope and trust, while he thought of wilfulness, recklessness, defiance, irreverence, and all the yet darker shades of a self- indulgent and audacious ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... merely temporary, but with no indication of dissatisfaction or resistance. In truth she was not sorry that Jacqueline, whose companionship became more and more embarrassing every day, had cut the knot of a difficult position by a piece of wilfulness and perversity which seemed to put her in the wrong. The necessity she would have been under of crushing such a girl, who was now eighteen, would have been distasteful and unprofitable; she was very glad to get rid of her stepdaughter, always provided it could be done ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... preparations; taking very slight notice of the raillery of the young officers, answering Mrs. Evelyn with polite words, and silencing his mother as he came up with one of those looks out of his dark eyes to which she always forgave the wilfulness for the sake of the beauty and the winning power. She was completely conquered, and stepped back with ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... knowledge, while the plant or the animal building up its body from the plant has learned by inheritance to avoid the assimilation of matters noxious to it. Strictly speaking, arsenical poisoning does not belong to the subject of adulteration. It is not due to wilfulness but to stupidity, but it affords a lesson which cannot be taken too much to heart, that mankind, by relying too much upon "science'' in feeding, is on a path that is fraught with considerable danger. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... and wilfulness possessed them, they took to marauding, surrounded by the sons of the lords of the men of Erin. Thrice fifty men had they as pupils when they (the pupils) were were-wolfing in the province of Connaught, until Maine Milscothach's swineherd saw them, and he had never seen that before. He ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... the thought of this; For I did fright thee when I fleck'd a kiss With too much heat. I should have bow'd to thee, And left unsaid the word, deception-free, Which, like a flash, illumed the love within, My wilfulness was much to blame therein; But thou wilt shrive me, Sweet! of mine offence If passion-pangs be deem'd ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... of his brogues—a twopenny treasure that has been wept and prayed over by the faithful. Nobody, in a book for children, would have the heart to tell the tale of the Prince's later years, of a moody, heart-broken, degraded exile. But, in the hills and the isles, bating a little wilfulness and foolhardiness, and the affair of the broken punch-bowl, Prince Charles is a model for princes and all men, brave, gay, much-enduring, good-humoured, kind, royally courteous, and considerate, even beyond what may be gathered from this part of the book, while ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... understand what style is, or they would see the merits of our young one," he said to Mrs. Pendennis. "I call him ours, ma'am, for I bred him; and I am as proud of him as you are; and, bating a little wilfulness, and a little selfishness, and a little dandification, I don't know a more honest, or loyal, or gentle creature. His pen is wicked sometimes, but he is as kind as a young lady—as Miss Laura here—and I believe he would not ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with confidence, and I trust that they confide in me also as a religious heathen at least,—a good Greek. I, too, have principles as well founded as their own. If this person could conceive that, without wilfulness, I associate with her as far as our destinies are coincident, as far as our Good Geniuses permit, and still value such intercourse, it would be a grateful assurance to me. I feel as if I appeared careless, indifferent, and without principle to her, not expecting ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... them from Pharaoh, and had led them through the sea. Therefore those two alone of the grown-up men were allowed to set foot in the Promised Land. Till all the rest should have fallen in the wilderness, and a better race have been trained up, God would not help them to take possession. In their wilfulness they tried to advance, and were defeated, and thus were obliged to endure their forty ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... I had infinitely rather hear of thoughtless old age, and the indulgence due to that. When a man has done his work, and nothing can any way be materially altered in his fate, let him forget his toil, and jest with his fate, if he will; but what excuse can you find for wilfulness of thought, at the very time when every crisis of future fortune hangs on your decisions? A youth thoughtless! when all the happiness of his home for ever depends on the chances, or the passions, of an hour! A youth thoughtless! when the career of all his days depends on the opportunity ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... scenery of his mother's native Scottish Highlands. At the age of ten, on the death of his great-uncle, he succeeded to the peerage as Lord Byron, but for many years he continued to be heavily in debt, partly because of lavish extravagance, which was one expression of his inherited reckless wilfulness. Throughout his life he was obliged to make the most heroic efforts to keep in check another inherited tendency, to corpulence; he generally restricted his diet almost entirely to such meager fare as potatoes and soda-water, though he often broke out ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... unable to account. With a hazy idea that something had passed which he had not heard, he caused a diversion by sending Mrs. Church indoors for a pack of cards, and solemnly celebrated the occasion with a game of whist, at which Mrs. Church, in partnership with Mrs. Banks, either through sheer wilfulness or absence of mind, contrived to ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... The self-conscious fuss of their pedagogy is half-redeemed by the unconscious grace which called a school not a seed-plot of citizens, but merely a garden of children. All the first and best forest-spirit is infancy, its wonder, its wilfulness, even its still innocent fear. Carlyle marks exactly the moment when the German child becomes the spoilt child. The wonder turns to mere mysticism; and mere mysticism always turns to mere immoralism. The wilfulness is no longer liked, but is actually obeyed. The fear becomes a philosophy. ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... conjunction with her, which was his highest fulfilment also, with the perverseness of a wilful child he wanted to deny. With the wilfulness of an obstinate child, he wanted to break the holy connection that ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... the controversy comes round, as controversies often do, to the point whence it started, and the "party of order" repeat their charge against the rebel, that he is sacrificing the feelings of others to the gratification of his own wilfulness, he replies once for all that they cheat themselves by misstatements. He accuses them of being so despotic, that, not content with being masters over their own ways and habits, they would be masters over his also; and grumble because he will not ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... indeed deep rooted. Whatever heart she had not frivoled away in wilfulness had been caught and won by Forsythe, the first grown man who had ever dared to make real love to her. Her jealousy of Margaret was the most intense thing that had ever come into her life. To think of him looking at Margaret, talking to Margaret, ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... to hear that, Godfrey. Not that it makes any actual matter now, but because, after the warning I had given you to avoid the society of any people holding extreme opinions, it seemed to me you must have showed an incredible amount of wilfulness and folly in getting yourself mixed up with these desperate conspirators. I am heartily glad to find that I was mistaken, and that, except as regards that foolish business at the theatre, you have really not been to blame in the matter, and have been altogether a victim of circumstances. ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... home, she must have told her all. There was no one else; and the misery to be endured in silence was dreadful. Her dearest—her whole joy and hope—suffering, dying, and to hear all round her speaking of him with kindness, indeed, but what to her seemed indifference; blaming him for wilfulness, saying he had drawn it on himself,—it seemed to drive her wild. She conjured up pictures of his sufferings, and dreaded Guy's inexperience, the want of medical advice, imagining everything that was terrible. Her idol, to whom her whole soul was devoted, was passing from her, and no one pitied ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... changed, am I not, Mother?" said Missy, with a faint smile. "I've had a hard life—but an honest one, Mother. When I went away I was almost mad with the disgrace my wilfulness had brought on you and Father and myself. I went as far as I could get away from you, and I got work in a factory. I've worked there ever since, just making enough to keep body and soul together. Oh, I've starved for a word from you—the sight of ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... this one difference, among many others, that Bella was in no danger of being captivated by Alfred. She distrusted and disliked him. Indeed, her perception was so quick, and her observation so sharp, that after all she mistrusted his wife too, though with her giddy vanity and wilfulness she squeezed the mistrust away into a corner of her mind, and ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... anything could, the approach and contemplation of death might bring men to a sense of reason and self-knowledge. On the contrary, it seems only to deprive them of the little wit they had, and to make them even more the sport of their wilfulness and shortsightedness. Some men think that because they are going to be hanged, they are fully authorised to declare a future state of rewards and punishments. All either indulge their caprices or cling to their prejudices. They make a desperate ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... it was never well to meddle. One event bears many readings, and the tragedy of Catherine Elsmere's life took shape in the uneasy consciousness of the vicar's spouse as a more or less sharp admonition against wilfulness in match-making. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... often harshly treated because others regard the victim of defective inhibition as having gone deliberately to work, through wicked perversity and pure wilfulness, to make himself a nuisance, to persist in being a nuisance, and to refuse to be other than a nuisance, rather than exercise what more fortunate men are pleased ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... determination not to think of marriage for a time. The sudden change from her quiet, girlish life in Kensington to the prominence and the powers of a great queen, standing 'in that fierce light which beats upon a throne,' might well have excused a good deal of wilfulness had ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous
... was near to surrender. Had it not been for the persistent fear that her proud old father might suffer from her wilfulness, she would have thrown down the barrier and risked everything in the choice. Her heart was crying out hungrily for the love of this tall, mysterious ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... shaken by the girl's firmness,—by that, and by her own true affection for the sinner. In her bosom, what remained of the softness of womanhood was struggling with the hardness of the religious martinet, and with the wilfulness of the domestic tyrant. She had promised to Steinmarc that she would be very stern. Steinmarc had pointed out to her that nothing but the hardest severity could be of avail. He, in telling his story, had taken it for granted that Linda had expected her lover, ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... "I am growing old, my child. If I should die, what would become of you? I have no son; your Uncle Franz, who is but a year or two younger than I am, would reign, and he would not tolerate your madcap ways. You must marry at once. I love you in spite of your wilfulness. But you have shown yourself incapable of loving. Doppelkinn is wealthy. You ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... long, as of one to whom she has the deepest obligations; she was ready to rush into our arms when she first found that we knew him. He is a greater hero in her eyes, I sometimes fancy, than even you are. She does nothing (or fancies that she does nothing, for you know her pretty wilfulness) without writing ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... was never stung, being able to move a swarm in his bare hands unscathed. Afterwards they walked over part of the farmlands, and Ishmael's heart began to beat high with pride and joy. There is nothing more romantic than land—its wilfulness, its possibilities, its endless intimacies. Ishmael's land was to prove an exacting mistress, unlike the rich, sleek home counties, which only have to be stroked to smile and yield. On these granite heights the soil needed breaking every three years; if a field did very ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... character had a strong tincture of wilfulness, the result of invariably having her pleasure consulted, and always obtaining her own way. She did not relinquish her entreaties until Maurice, who had not lived long enough to be skilled in the art of successfully denying the petition ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... come to deal with man and any of his attributes, or as we find them at any age, we ought to look upon him, in my estimation, as animated in some measure by his self-foreshadowing best. And whether it is dreams with which we have to do, or neurotic conflicts, or wilfulness, or regression, we shall learn to see, more and more, as we become accustomed to look for evidences thereof, the signs of this sort of promise, just as we might hope to learn to find, more and more, through the inspection ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... an odd little girl, full of fire and passion and wilfulness. Blindly and adoringly Billy had followed her until her departure from the ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... not even too definite a thought to feed the heart upon. For strip the idea of its fair accessories, its delicate art, and what have we but the sad belief, drawn from the dark ages of the world, that the wrathful Creator of men, full of gloomy indignation at their perverseness and wilfulness, needs the constant intercession of the Eternal Son, who is too, in a sense, Himself, to appease the anger with which he regards the sheep of his hand. I cannot really in the depths of my heart echo that dark belief. I do not indeed know why God permits such ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... moves tongue and lips in a marvelous fashion, and often says ptoe-ptoe, pt-pt, and verlapp, also dla-dla, without meaning, no matter what was the form of the word pronounced to him. In such practice there often appears likewise a wilfulness, showing itself in inarticulate sounds and the shaking of the head, even when it is merely the repetition of easy like-syllabled words that is desired. Hence, in the case of new words, it is more difficult than before, or is even impossible ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... all very well, if he had not added to such kindly and unobtrusive evidence a certain wilfulness in discharging what he called debts. When his mother worked for him, he paid her by showering about her his bright animal spirits, with even more affluence than his gay, taunting, teasing, loving wont. If Lucy Snowe were discovered to have put her hand to such ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... doubtful weather. Sidney is the very Spring—the later May. And in prose he is the authentic, only Spring. It is a prose full of young joy, and young power, and young inexperience, and young melancholy, which is the wilfulness of joy; ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... other's mocking glance defiantly. With a sudden wilfulness, born of the incessant opposition she encountered, she determined to let Miss Carson's second challenge go unanswered. She had tried—tried desperately—to win the affection, or even the bare liking, ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... man very well learned and grave, but somewhat sour and of no plausible utterance: the gentleman's chance was to say: 'My lord, the simple woman is not so much to blame as her leud abettors, who by violent persuasions have led her into this wilfulness.' Quoth the Judge; 'What need such eloquent terms in this place?' The gentleman replied, 'Doth your lordship mislike the term (violent)? and methinks I speak it to great purpose; for I am sure she would never have done it, but ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... To what desperate extremities has she been reduced by her unfortunate wilfulness. Gerard, will you tell me frankly your ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... is not the original and inevitable evil of man's nature, which fill your streets with lamentation, and your graves with prey. It is only that, when there should have been providence, there has been waste; when there should have been labour, there has been lasciviousness; and wilfulness, when there should have ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... that the quiet, sallow-faced, gentle-mannered little girl, whom she had first known at the convent school, was developing a character which might some day astonish every one who should attempt to oppose her. It had been a growth of strength, with an accentuation of wilfulness, and it had not been at all ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... that Jackson chose unfrequented roads, therefore narrow, therefore worse than other roads, to the end that his policy of utter secrecy might be the better served; but to the majority his course seemed sprung from a certain cold wilfulness, a harshness without object, unless his object were to wear out flesh and bone. The road, such as it was, was sheeted with ice. The wind blew steadily from the northwest, striking the face like a whip, and the fine rain and snow continued to fall and to freeze as it fell. ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... uncharitable expressions and uncomely reflections tossed to and fro as look like the effects of settled prejudice and resolved animosity, though we are much rather willing to account them the product of weakness than wilfulness: however, we must needs say, that, come whence they will, they have a tendency to make such a gap as we fear, if not timely prevented, will let out peace and order, and let in confusion and ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... come back for me," replied Mrs. Baynton, in a depressed tone. "What with her delicate health, and what with her wilfulness, I have always had trouble with her. Dr. West was the only one—But I can't refer to those matters. Flore is broken-hearted. Poor Flore! she has never given me an hour's grief in her life. Kitty has given me little else. And now to ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... attention. But, as a matter of fact, all, or almost all, of his defects are not only counterbalanced by merits, but are themselves, in a great degree, exaggerations or perversions of what is intrinsically meritorious. With less wilfulness, with more attention to the literature, the events, the personages of his own time, with a more critical and common-sense attitude towards his own crotchets, Borrow could hardly have wrought out for himself (as he has to an ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... very hard to please. I ought to punish your wilfulness by some dreadful doom. Do not cry out again. I will not hear you. My decision is fixed. Mardonius shall bestow you in marriage to a man who is not even a Persian by birth, who one year since was a disobedient rebel against my power, who even now contemns ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... played when I tried to teach him! Then Fulk tried, and he was tame for three days, but then came idleness, wilfulness, anger, punishment, but he laughed to scorn all that we could find in our hearts ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... long-cursed man was counted cursed; Christ, God and Man, Whom God the Father strook And shamed and sifted and one while forsook:— Cry shame upon our bodies we have nursed In sweets, our souls in pride, our spirits immersed In wilfulness, our steps run all acrook. Cry shame upon us! for He bore our shame In agony, and we look on at ease With neither hearts on flame nor cheeks on flame: What hast thou, what have I, to do with peace? Not to send peace but send a sword He came, ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... whole current of his feelings ran directly otherwise. The abuse with which, in his anger against the Edinburgh Review, he overwhelmed every thing Scotch, is an instance of this temporary triumph of wilfulness; and, at any time, the least association of ridicule with the country or its inhabitants was sufficient, for the moment, to put all his sentiment to flight. A friend of his once described to me the half playful rage, into which she saw him thrown, one day, by a heedless ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... stubborn wilfulness and unfeeling carelessness of consequences that characterized his temper, he plunged into all manner of vicious indulgences; but what seemed to attract him the most irresistibly, and fix him the most firmly, was a fondness for gambling. The "time-honored" ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... son of Berokah (11), said, "Whosoever profanes the Name of Heaven (12) in secret will suffer the penalty for it in public; and this, whether the Heavenly Name be profaned in ignorance or in wilfulness." ...
— Pirke Avot - Sayings of the Jewish Fathers • Traditional Text
... fulfils this solemn obligation of which I have told you—and he must be honourable, dear Mrs Varden, or he is no son of mine—a fortune within his reach. He is of most expensive, ruinously expensive habits; and if, in a moment of caprice and wilfulness, he were to marry this young lady, and so deprive himself of the means of gratifying the tastes to which he has been so long accustomed, he would—my dear madam, he would break the gentle creature's heart. ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... and upbraiding. Then she slowly turned her painful eyes upon Miss Monro's face, and moved her lips without a sound being heard, and fainted dead away. In all her life she had never done so before, and when she came round she was not like herself; in all probability the persistence and wilfulness she, who was usually so meek and docile, showed during the next twenty-four hours, was the consequence of fever. She resolved to be present at the wedding; numbers were going; she would be unseen, unnoticed in the crowd; but whatever befell, go she would, and neither the tears nor the prayers ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... youthful amusements beyond the verge that religion and reason demanded. Jeanie had sense enough to see that a sudden and severe curb upon her sister's hitherto unrestrained freedom might be rather productive of harm than good, and that Effie, in the headstrong wilfulness of youth, was likely to make what might be overstrained in her father's precepts an excuse to herself for neglecting them altogether. In the higher classes, a damsel, however giddy, is still under the dominion of etiquette, ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... sewing, and whose earnings by charing cannot support herself and four children, heard Miss Macpherson speak at the Moorgate Street Hall Noon Prayer-Meeting, and was led to bring little Alice to her, pleading for Christian care. Amid many tears she tells of the wayward wilfulness of the elder girl, out at all hours of day and night, and whose pernicious example is too likely to ruin ...
— 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 interference of the will. It is only under some express excitement, that the faculty of will mounts its throne, and exercises its empire. When the child smiles, that act is involuntary; but, when he cries, will presently comes to mix itself with the phenomenon. Wilfulness, impatience and rebellion are infallible symptoms of a mind on the alert. And, as the child in the first stages of its existence puts forth the faculty of will only at intervals, so for a similar reason this period is but rarely accompanied ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... but he thought the more. The reader must have perceived that Jack's notions of equality were rapidly disappearing; he defended them more from habit, and perhaps a wilfulness which would not allow him to acknowledge himself wrong; to which may be added his love of argument. Already he had accustomed himself to obedience to his superiors, and, notwithstanding his arguments, ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... well do. And yet Polly had originally no actual intention or desire to do wrong. Simply she had yielded to a sudden impulse, to an intense curiosity. But now things were different; for Polly was realizing her wilfulness completely, and instead of repenting and turning back to confess her folly, was every moment trying to plan by what method her ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Outside World • Margaret Vandercook
... its wild course directly in front of the haunted forest, so as to change the peninsula into an island. "Oh God!" he thought to himself, "if Undine has ventured a step into that fearful forest, perhaps in her charming wilfulness, just because I was not allowed to tell her about it; and now the stream may be rolling between us, and she may be weeping on the other side alone, among phantoms ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... pride and wilfulness in it too,' said she; 'and look what a rebuke Heaven gives me! it is not I that rescue Andrew; it is Harry and ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling
... and impatience she rebutted every reason Job adduced for his plan; and of course, thus opposed, by what appeared to him wilfulness, he became more resolute, and angry words were exchanged, and a feeling of estrangement rose up between them, for a time, as they ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... hesitation, almost with fear, that I began with Gwen; but even had I been able to foresee the endless series of exasperations through which she was destined to conduct me, still would I have undertaken my task. For the child, with all her wilfulness, her tempers and her pride, made me, as she did all others, ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... general history; I mean "the foolish face of praise," the forced smile which we put on in company where we do not feel at ease, in answer to conversation which does not interest us. The muscles, not spontaneously moved but moved by a low usurping wilfulness, grow tight about the outline of the face, and make the most disagreeable sensation; a sensation of rebuke and warning which no brave young ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... gone to the mission-field with the firm resolve to do the work in only one way. Such a resolve has ever seemed to me most unwise, savouring more of wilfulness than of holy steady purpose to do the Master's work. The missionary ought to go out ready to part with every preconceived notion at the call of providential direction and the Spirit's guidance, prepared to do with all his might whatever he may have the opportunity ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... curly that it was ever in rebellion against the custom of Friends, which would have had it flat on the temples. Indeed, I never saw it so, for, whether at the back or at the front, it was wont to escape in large curls. Nor do I think she disliked this worldly wilfulness, for which nature had provided an unanswerable excuse. She had serious blue eyes, very large and wide open, so that the clear white was seen all around the blue, and with a constant look as if of gentle surprise. In middle life she was still pliant and well ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... that the young man could find no answer to that, for he made none. "At least once, my lord, Ethelred's wilfulness has shown in his son, when he set aside the King's command to take possession of Sigeferth's widow and her estates. And I think it was Ethelred's temper that moved him to spend an energy, much better directed against the Pagans, in laying ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... ii. 1, 2, 3, with Luke xix. 14, 27; whence it comes to pass, that the governing and kingly power of Christ hath been opposed in all ages, and especially in this of ours, by quarrelsome queries, wrangling disputes, plausible pretences, subtle policies, strong self-interests, and mere violent wilfulness of many in England, even after they are brought under the oath of God to reform church government according to the word of God. Yet it will be easily granted that there should be a government in the Church of God, otherwise ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... clouds and Kasoro's wilfulness were still against me, and the weather did not give hopes of a change, I sacrificed the taking of the latitude to gain time. I sent Bombay with Kasoro to the palace, asking for the Sakibobo himself to be sent with an order for five boats, five cows, and ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... course, the simple and hardy education proper to the natives of the mountainous island of his birth, and in his infancy was not remarkable for more than that animation of temper, and wilfulness and impatience of inactivity, by which children of quick parts and lively sensibility are usually distinguished. The winter of the year was generally passed by the family of his father at Ajaccio, where they still preserve and exhibit, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... remonstrance; but the slightest insinuation of a difference of opinion was sufficient to fan the embers of Henrietta's distemperature into a conflagration. The blaze was not strong, indeed; for the lady had always been accustomed to find a fit of wilfulness, or of affected despondency, more available and becoming than one of hasty anger. But she was tolerably expert in those piquant flippancies of speech which harass the enemy like a straggling fire; and could contrive, when it suited her purpose, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 548 - 26 May 1832 • Various
... the drum beating and the fife playing as we were going to the kirk. The people were really mad and vicious, and flung dirt upon us as we passed, and reviled us all, and held out the finger of scorn at me; but I endured it with a resigned spirit, compassionating their wilfulness and blindness. Poor old Mr Kilfuddy of the Braehill got such a clash of glar on the side of his face, that his ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... treasures with me because of their weight, and will pledge them in their hands. Let them come for the chests at night, that no man may see them. God knows that I do this thing more of necessity than of wilfulness; but by God's good help I shall redeem all." Now Rachel and Vidas were rich Jews, from whom the Cid used to receive money for his spoils. And Martin Antolinez went in quest of them, and he passed through Burgos and entered into the Castle; and when he ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... possible by the presence of Goody Jellicot. Then, indeed, it is true the Independent, or whatever he was, used to follow her with his addresses to very little purpose; for Phoebe seemed as deaf, through wilfulness, as the old matron by natural infirmity. This indifference highly incensed her new lover, and induced him anxiously to watch for a time and place, in which he might plead his suit with an energy that should command attention. Fortune, that malicious goddess, who so often ruins ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... surprise divers of their towns, and deliver them to the King of Spain. All such untruths contained matter so improbable, that it was most, strange that any person; having any sense, could imagine them correct. Having thus slightly animadverted upon their wilfulness, unthankfulness, and bad government, and having, in very plain English, given them the lie, eight distinct and separate times upon a single page, she proceeded to inform them that she had recalled her cousin Leicester, having great cause to use his services in England, and not ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... 1790 a youth destined to lend even greater interest than Paoli to that name—"Corsica has been a prey to the ambition of her neighbors, the victim of their politics and of her own wilfulness.... We have seen her take up arms, shake the atrocious power of Genoa, recover her independence, live happily for an instant; but then, pursued by an irresistible fatality, fall again into intolerable disgrace. For ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... toil, and wholly overcome by grief and despair, I lay down between two ridges, and heartily wished I might there end my days. I bemoaned my desolate widow and fatherless children. I lamented my own folly and wilfulness in attempting a second voyage against the advice of all my friends and relations. In this terrible agitation of mind, I could not forbear thinking of Lilliput, whose inhabitants looked upon me as the greatest prodigy that ever appeared in the world; where I was able to draw an imperial ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... the early period shows Debussy developing freely and naturally. The independence of his thinking is unmistakable, but it does not run into wilfulness. There is no violent break with the past, but simply the quickening of certain French qualities by the infusion of a new personality. It seemed as if a new and charming miniaturist had appeared, who was doing both for piano and song what had never been done before. The style of the two Arabesques ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... exercise of them into the tumult of familiar life: even crime is disarmed of half its horror and all its contagion by being represented as the fatal consequence of the unfathomable agencies of nature; error is thus divested of its wilfulness; men can no longer cherish it as the creation of their choice. In a drama of the highest order there is little food for censure or hatred; it teaches rather self-knowledge and self-respect. Neither ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... into the plank. His bone leg steadied in that hole; one arm elevated, and holding by a shroud; Captain Ahab stood erect, looking straight out beyond the ship's ever-pitching prow. There was an infinity of firmest fortitude, a determinate unsurrenderable .. wilfulness, in the fixed and fearless, forward dedication of that glance. Not a word he spoke; nor did his officers say aught to him; though by all their minutest gestures and expressions, they plainly showed the uneasy, if not painful, consciousness of being under a troubled master-eye. ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... with horror and terror, who has a wonderful apparel, both raiment and weapons and appearance and splendour and dress; he raises himself with the prowess of a warrior, with achievements of ——, with the pride of wilfulness, with a going through battle to rout overwhelming numbers, with wrath upon foes, with a marching on many hostile countries without protection. In truth, mightily have they come on ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown
... the will to love, which is the will to experience in a certain way; and out of that will to love right action will naturally ensue. Is this a platitude? If it is, it is flatly contradicted by the German doctrine of wilfulness. For the Germanic hero exercises his will always upon other men and things, not upon himself; and we all admire this Germanic hero, when he is not an obvious danger to us all, and when he is not made ridiculous by the German presentment of him. We all believe that the will is to be exercised ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... to this insanity of a rational mind. For a moment she forgot those about her, and her thought journeyed swiftly back to the old happy days. "Yes, there is a species of insanity in my veins." She turned to them again. "But it is the insanity of a sane person, the insanity of impulse and folly, of wilfulness and lack of foresight. As Mr. O'Mally said, I have gone and done it. What possessed me to say that I am the princess is as inexplicable to me as to you, though you may not believe it. But for me ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... home said a word of blame to Gertrude. There was no need. They had heard the whole story and they only pitied her, and her grief was far greater than their own, they thought, for there was no self-blame, no shadow of deception, no regret of wilfulness in their sorrow. Even Conway felt unutterably tender towards this least dear of his sisters, when he came in from a fruitless errand, and found the proud, dark head resting on little Maud's high chair, while Gertrude's whole frame ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... without, neglect the means of cultivation in word and tone which should lead to a sense of rhythm and obedience to law in all human expression. But an early development of rhythmic movement would prove most wholesome, and would remove much wilfulness, impropriety and coarseness from his life, movements, and action, and would secure for him harmony and moderation, and, later on, a higher appreciation of nature, music, poetry, ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... doctrines and general principles—in fact, he is rather too fond of them—but his object is anything rather than mere arid deduction and codification. He has the aesthetic sense as thoroughly as Hazlitt and Lamb, but without the wilfulness of either, or at least with a different kind of wilfulness from that of either. Finally, in one of the numerous ways in which he shows that his subject is alive to him, he mixes it up with the queerest personalities and sudden zigzags, with all manner of digressions and ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... ever seen; and as I knelt beside the coffin, where the pale hands that lay cross-folded on the breast, the motionless features, and the dreadful stillness of the whole figure, spoke eloquently of the change that had taken place, I thought of my many acts of wilfulness, ingratitude, and unkindness, which had often pained the loving heart that had now forever ceased to beat. Could I but see those still features again animated with life, I felt that never again would my tongue utter aught but words of kindness; but it ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... excite scandal or temptation. Scurrilous discourse even among men he abhorred; and though he sometimes took pleasure in wit and mirth, yet that which was mixed with impurity he never could endure." A higher conception of duty coloured men's daily actions. To the Puritan the wilfulness of life, in which the men of the Renascence had revelled, seemed unworthy of life's character and end. His aim was to attain self-command, to be master of himself, of his thought and speech and acts. A certain gravity ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... his books. There is no purity or grace or feeling or spotless charm in his verse which did not belong to the man. There was never an explanation to be offered for him; no allowance was necessary for the eccentricity or grotesqueness or wilfulness or humor of genius. Simple, modest, frank, manly, he was the good citizen, the self-respecting gentleman, the ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... in spite of her wilfulness, and when she ended her little speech, by tucking her hand through the Judge's arm, and looking up at him mischievously, ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... toil, and wholly overcome by grief and dispair, I lay down between two ridges, and heartily wished I might there end my days. I bemoaned my desolate widow and fatherless children. I lamented my own folly and wilfulness, in attempting a second voyage, against the advice of all my friends and relations. In this terrible agitation of mind, I could not forbear thinking of Lilliput, whose inhabitants looked upon me as the greatest prodigy that ever appeared in the world; ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... every conversation; but still Mr. Leigh was a gentleman's son, and it would not do to be rude to a neighboring squire and a good customer; and Rose was the rich man's daughter and they poor cousins, so it would not do either to quarrel with her; and besides, the pretty maid, half by wilfulness, and half by her sweet winning tricks, generally contrived to get her own way wheresoever she went; and she herself had been wise enough to beg her aunt never to leave them alone,—for she "could not a-bear the sight of Mr. Eustace, only she ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... days, and shortened those of the adored partner of his guilt. Let my confession be public, that warning may be taken from my example; and may the sincerity with which I acknowledge my offence, and the tears which I have shed, efface it from the accumulated records of the wilfulness and disobedience ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... in utter confusion. 'I—I—did not know you were here, sir!' she began. 'I was out for a little walk.' She could get no further; her eyes filled with tears. That spice of wilfulness, even hardness, which characterized her in Jim's company, magically disappeared in the presence ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... prayed the Prioress, with folded hands, "give me patience in dealing with wilfulness; grant me wisdom to cope with unreason; may it be given me to share the pain of this heart in torment, even as—when thou didst witness the sufferings of thy dear Son, our Lord, on Calvary—a sword pierced through thine ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... that which makes of God pure will; that is, which exaggerates personality (since personality is in will), making the Divine One an Infinite Free Will, or an Infinite I. But will divorced from reason and love is wilfulness, or ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... for it, not venturing on words, for fear of disturbing the patient; but Jeffy, with unpardonable wilfulness, danced out of my circuit, and at the same instant the sick man turned his head, and beheld Jeffy in the possession of his property. Jeffy looked very repentant, said in low, deprecatory tones, "I'm sorry," and, depositing the wig in the drawer, hastened to escape, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... always makes Choice of his Man, which is one that has the greatest Mouth, whom he brings to the Market with a Bowl to put it in. The Seller looks narrowly to the Man's Mouth that measures it, and if he happens to swallow any down, either through Wilfulness or otherwise, the Merchant or some of his Party, does not scruple to knock the Fellow down, exclaiming against him for false Measure. Thereupon, the Buyer finds another Mouthpiece to measure the Rum by; so that this Trading is very agreeable to the Spectators, to ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... told a pitiful story of the wilfulness of her son; that she was obliged to do just as he said, and if he wanted anything, however absurd it might be, she was obliged to give it to him, or he made the house too "hot" for her. Her husband had died when the children were small, and the ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... woman's point of view; and in the long evenings which he spent with these women he sometimes had to force himself to appear interested in their conversation. He was as far removed from one as from the other. Emily's wilfulness puzzled him, and he did not seem to have anything further to talk ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... Italian cunning. He presents a succession of documents—gives a series of contemporary instances to prove it. Then, having got that fixed in your head by blow after blow, he passes on to another phase of his character, his coldhearted amorousness, his power of work, his spoiled child wilfulness, or some other quality, and piles up his illustrations of that. Instead, for example, of saying that the Emperor had a marvellous memory for detail, we have the account of the head of Artillery laying the list of all the guns in France ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... precisely the same time, discourses at some length on the then prevailing epidemic of whimsicality, showing that shallowness beheld in the then existing interest in humor a justification for all sorts of eccentric behavior and inconsistent wilfulness. ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... the laws of physiology? from an ignorance of which I shall mention no other case here save one—that too often from ignorance of signs of approaching disease, a child is punished for what is called idleness, listlessness, wilfulness, sulkiness; and punished, too, in the unwisest way—by an increase of tasks and confinement to the house, thus overtasking still more a brain already overtasked, and depressing still more, by robbing it of oxygen and of exercise, a system already depressed? Are you aware, ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... strong handwriting—the hand of one accustomed to forming the smaller letters of ancient tongues into a current script. "To Mistress Winifred Charteris," it ran. "Dear Lady: That I have offended you by the hastiness of my words and the unforgivable wilfulness of my actions, I know, but cannot forgive myself. Yet, knowing the kindness of your disposition, I have thought that you might be better disposed to pardon me than I myself. For I need not tell you, what you already know, that the ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... becomes tri-nitro-toluol. Realizing that people could not be expected to use such a mouthful of a word, the chemists have suggested various pretty nicknames, trotyl, tritol, trinol, tolite and trilit, but the public, with the wilfulness it always shows in the matter of names, persists in calling it TNT, as though it were an author like G.B.S., or G.K.C, or F.P.A. TNT is the latest of these high explosives and in some ways the best of them. Picric acid has the bad habit of ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... not himself comprehend it much more clearly. Some strange freak of wilfulness impelled him to pursue this unintelligible persecution. "I've said nothing about any offense," he declared, in a hard, deliberate voice. "It is your own word. All the same—I mention the name of a lady—a lady, ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... appeared the beauty, who isolated herself in the consciousness of her charms and in the perfection of her varied culture, and exhibited herself to the public admiration. The tendency to idiosyncrasy often approached wilfulness, caprice and whimsicality, and opposition to the national moral sense. A Diogenes in a tub became possible; the soulless but graceful frivolity of an Alcibiades charmed, even though it was externally condemned; a Socrates ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... she had brought with her from London. Having begun in simplicity, in simplicity she had continued, partly because she had been too industrious and too earnest for luxurious caprices, partly because she had never been accustomed to anything else but simplicity, and partly from wilfulness. It had pleased her to think that she was piling tens of thousands upon tens ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... Antoinette, Mr. Ritchie," he continued; "she is a strange mixture of wilfulness and caprice and self-sacrifice, and she has at times a bit of that wit which has made our house for generations ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... lines, and after trying in vain to make his pupils continue their studies, and putting up with a great amount of disobedience on their part, he began to reproach them in his mild way. He was one of the gentlest and most amiable of men, but the wilfulness of the boys had at length compelled ...
— The King's Sons • George Manville Fenn
... now I am not surprised; for our harrowing experiences and the hopelessness of our situation and the wilfulness of Desiree were enough, Heaven knows, to jerk his nerves; but at the time I regarded his actions as those of a thoughtless fool, and told him so, thinking to divert his anger to myself. He took ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... she said. "It is less than three miles to Muller's, but the homestead-boys would make you a prisoner if you went there. Can't you see that would be horrible for Flo and me? It was my wilfulness that made ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... what has come to be the only satisfying harmony in dramatic art. It takes the place, in our modern world, of the Necessity of the Greeks; and is not less impressive because it arises from the impulse and unreasoning wilfulness of man rather than from the implacable insistency of God. It is with perfect justice, both moral and artistic, that the fatal crisis, though mediately the result of accident, of error, is shown to be the consequence and the punishment of wrong. A tragedy resulting ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... suggestio falsi (well-known gods against whom they often offended); further, that they were malignant in their dispositions, untrustworthy in their characters, pernicious and revolutionary in their influences, abandoned to the devils of wilfulness, pride, and a most intolerable conceit. Ninthly, and lastly, they were to have a care and to be ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... and judge him: but being over-ruled in that, and required to make his Answer, he was still pleased to continue contumacious, and to refuse to submit or answer. Hereupon the Court, that they may not be wanting to themselves, to the trust reposed in them, nor that any man's wilfulness prevent justice, they have thought fit to take the matter into their consideration, they have considered of the Charge, they have considered of the Contumacy, and of that Confession, which in law doth arise upon that contumacy; ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... cultivating cheerfulness, were manifest on the surface, and could be appreciated by those who knew him in society, most probably even exaggerated as salient traits, on which he himself insisted WITH A SORT OF GAY AND OSTENTATIOUS WILFULNESS." ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... he is removed to an inaccessible distance, and chained in icy fetters on untrodden mountain-peaks, where the vulture ever devours his fair heart, which sympathises continually with the follies and the sorrows of mankind? Of what punishment, then, must not those be worthy, who by their own wilfulness and self-confidence bind again to Caucasus the fair Titan, the ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... would have been slower to strike. But his intelligence had been surcharged with hate these many years, and since the day he had been deserted it had ceased to control his actions—a passionate and reckless wilfulness had governed it. But now, after the first shock and stupefaction, it seemed to go back to where it was before Marcile went from him, gather up the force and intelligence it had then, and come forward again to this supreme moment, with all that life's harsh experiences ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... realizing suddenly that he was an old man, broken, infirm; that his life with its influence for good or evil was already at an end; he could never change his character now, no matter how keenly he might realize his defects. Poor little Nannie's wilfulness was at last forgiven, but the forgiveness was fifteen years too late. Why could not that moment of insight have come earlier to Colonel Gaylord, have come in time to ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... please? I could find in my heart—But you know my mind. I insist upon it that you let Grimes court you, and that you lay aside your sulks, and give him a fair hearing. Will you do that? If then you persist in your wilfulness, why there, I suppose, is an end of the matter. Do not think that any body is going to marry you, whether you will or no. You are no such mighty prize, I assure you. If you knew your own interest, you would be glad to take the young fellow while ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... her less, and then was puzzled to find time hanging so empty, so wretchedly empty, on his hands. When they were together in these days they found less to talk about, and had it not been for the Silver Fleece which in magic wilfulness opened both their mouths, they would have found their companionship little more than a series of awkward silences. Yet in their silences, their walks, and their sittings there was a companionship, a glow, a satisfaction, as came to ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... (when he had to go across town for me on an errand, he always made a circuit of the outskirts), to his dislike for the discipline of the Chinese and English school to which I proposed to send him, to his fondness for the free, vagrant life of the mines, to sheer wilfulness. That it might have been a superstitious premonition did not occur to me until ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... indubitable weakness of the bad, and it is clear that Plato's judgment was true; the wise alone are able to do what they would, while the wicked follow their own hearts' lust, but can not accomplish what they would. For they go on in their wilfulness fancying they will attain what they wish for in the paths of delight; but they are very far from its attainment, since shameful deeds ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... of this hope without an object was so great that Rose was afraid to look a man in the face lest he should perceive in her eyes the feelings that filled her soul. By a wilfulness, which was perhaps only the continuation of her earlier methods, though she felt herself attracted toward the men who might still suit her, she was so afraid of being accused of folly that she treated them ungraciously. ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... "handful" (St. Angelo I mean, not WEBB, who is very slight), and evinces a strong desire to run in any direction but the one desired of him! I think Mr. MILNER should have him trained on a zigzag method, when his natural wilfulness would cause him to run straight when racing! This is an excellent idea, and I have others equally good (applicable to all styles of horses), which I intend to suggest to different trainers on my next ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 23, 1892 • Various
... will have no man true to me, your Grace, But one that pares his nails; to me? the clown! For like his cloak, his manners want the nap And gloss of court; but of this fire he says, Nay swears, it was no wicked wilfulness, ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... who, in spite of her wilfulness, really loved her mother with all her heart, was much grieved when she saw her looking so sad, and often asked her what was the matter; but the Queen, who didn't want her to find out the truth, only said that ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... And with all his confidence in his cause, and also in his power and his call to use it, he had a curious shyness and self-distrust as to his own way of doing what he had to do; he was afraid of "wilfulness," of too great reliance on intellect. He had long been accustomed to observe and judge himself, and while conscious of his force, he was fully alive to the drawbacks, moral and intellectual, which wait on ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... learns first of all to see God in everything, and still to say, 'Thy will be done.' He knows that a child of God cannot possibly be in any situation without the will of His Heavenly Father, even when that will has been to leave him to his own wilfulness for a time, or to suffer the consequences of his own or others' sin. He sees this, and in accepting his circumstances as the will of God to try and prove him, he is in the right position for now knowing and doing what is right. Seeing and honouring God's will thus in ...
— Holy in Christ - Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children to be Holy as He is Holy • Andrew Murray
... fighting the battles of their country; others, late at night, were relating their adventures to a new prisoner; others, lamenting their aberrations from rectitude, and disobedience to parents, and headstrong wilfulness, that drove them to sea, contrary to their parents' wish; while others, of the younger class, were sobbing out their lamentations at the thoughts of what their mothers and sisters suffered after knowing of their imprisonment. Not unfrequently the whole night was spent in this way; and when, about ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... with Portia's adroit Nerissa, or Desdemona's Emilia? By giving her the Nurse for her confidante, the sweetness and dignity of Juliet's character are preserved inviolate to the fancy, even in the midst of all the romance and wilfulness of passion. ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... For this very wilfulness the gasoline motor is the most fascinating machine of all. It possesses the subtle attraction of caprice; it constantly offers something to overcome; as in golf, you start out each time to beat your own record. The machine is your tricky and resourceful opponent. When you think ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... placing her kerchief to her eyes. "I wish you would not forgive me for having brought you into this hard case. I wish you would upbraid me. I will pray to the Blessed Virgin night and day to protect you from this trouble my wilfulness has brought upon you. Never again will I be wilful, dear uncle, never again—with you. At Strasburg I will make ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... the child of truth, begotten by virtue and kindness; when Nature in the temper of the spirit made even the balance of indifference. His eye is clear from blindness and his hand from bribery, his will from wilfulness and his heart from wickedness; his word and deed are all one; his life shows the nature of his love, his care is the charge of his conscience, and his comfort the assurance of his salvation. In the seat of justice he is the grace of the law, and in the judgment of right the honour of reason. He ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... participant in his fears and desires, that apparition of the motionless veiled form haunted her with access of horror. If she slept it came into her dreams, and her waking thoughts strove with hideous wilfulness to unmuffle that dead face. When horror failed, its place was taken by a grief so intense that it shook the fabric of her being. She had no relapse in health, but convalescence was severed from all its natural joys; she grew ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... calumniators, her restoration to a high place in society, and to family ties, the destruction of Reginald Eversleigh's designs on Lady Verner's property, and—greatest, best boon of all—the recovery of her child. Her own devices, her own wilfulness had but led her into deeper danger, into more bitter sorrow; but Providence had done great things for her by the hands of this stranger, between whom and herself there existed so ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... precept or for heaven; that he comes out with things that never suggest themselves to the imagination of grown-up people, and that he does everything that takes one by surprise. The result is that his father and mother are driven to their wits' ends. But wilfulness is natural to young children. Reckless expenditure is a common characteristic of young men. Antipathy to school is a common feeling with young people. Yet there are ways and means to bring him round. The worse with him is that his disposition ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... other, to escape. He was soon recaptured, and brought before the Court of Justiciary, James himself being present. Fian now denied all the circumstances of the written confession which he had signed; whereupon the king, enraged at his "stubborn wilfulness," ordered him once more to the torture. His finger nails were riven out with pincers, and long needles thrust up to the eye into the quick; but he did not wince. He was then consigned again to the boots, in which, to quote a pamphlet published ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... The soul that suffers more than other souls is little regarded here. The tragedy of the sensitive soul, always acute, becomes terrible when that soul is made king here by one of the accidents of life. As a king, Richard neglects his duties with that kind of wilfulness which the world never fails to punish. The wilfulness takes the form of a shutting of the eyes to all that is truly kingly. He rebukes devotion to duty by banishing Bolingbroke, who tries to rid him of a traitor. He rebukes old age and wisdom in the truly great person of old John of Gaunt. ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... of remorse for her wilfulness, which had occasioned Harald's accident, so grateful for his care for her, that every bitter feeling as well towards him as to Alette, had vanished from her heart. She felt now only a deep, almost painful necessity of showing her devotion to them; and to give them some pleasure, she would ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... disliked it less for that than for itself, for its hot rooms, society gossip, vapid men and spiteful women. Mr. Kilroy could rarely persuade her to accompany him, and never induce her to stay. Having her with him was just the one thing that he was a little persistent about, and her wilfulness in this respect had been a real trouble to him. He had come now to see if she continued obdurate, and he came meekly and with conciliation in his whole attitude. She thought, however, that she knew how to get rid of him, how to make him return alone in a week of his own accord, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand |
