"Wilfully" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not refuse anything to a dear little dog coming to me and sitting up and begging for what he wanted. What is more, if I could Dora couldn't." She could have bitten out her tongue the next instant. What was she doing always speaking of Dora? What would he think? That she was wilfully dragging her sister's name into the conversation? And what had tempted her to say that Dora could not refuse anything to a dog, when she had refused her heart in exchange for his to ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... their friends as well as by their enemies: they have been accused of sacrificing a positive good to an uncertain hope,—of suffering their passions to hurry them into a war for which they had made no adequate preparation, and had not the means of making any,—that they wilfully, almost wantonly, incurred the fearful responsibility of staking the lives and fortunes of those who were looking to them for guidance upon the chances of a single cast. But the accusation is unjust. As far as human ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... still nervous, still avoiding the prisoner's eye, relentlessly pursued his course, unmindful—wilfully so, it appeared—of the harm he was doing himself, as ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... brought into contact with Christ, he would have been an ardent follower and disciple, and would have been regarded with a deep tenderness and love; his sins would have been swiftly forgiven. I do not wish to minimise them; he behaved ungratefully, inconsiderately, wilfully. His usage of his first wife is a deep blot on his character. But in spite of his desertion of her, and his abduction of Mary Godwin, his life was somehow an essentially innocent one. It is possible to paint his career in dark colours; ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... his mother's nature,' Cyril thought sadly. He could only do the best he could for them all. He was clever enough to see that his mother was wilfully shutting her eyes to her own mismanagement of Mollie, and that she preferred drifting on in this happy-go-lucky fashion. With all her energy and fits of industry, she was extremely indolent, and never liked taking trouble about anything. No; it was no use talking to her any more about Mollie, ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... are committed in thy name!" It is one of the oddest things in the world that the English should have elected to live so much in France, for there are probably nowhere two peoples so diametrically opposed on every point, or who so persistently and wilfully misunderstand each other, as ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... not true," I answered, taking her hands in mine and speaking perforce in a low tone that I might not betray my emotion. "If it were, it would mean that I have wilfully deceived you, that I have been false to our friendship; and how much that friendship has been to me, no one but myself ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... not clear, that he did not know what was right or necessary to do, and therefore that he might be excused if he did not do it, but he could close his eyes no longer. They had been dragged open to-night, and he could not wilfully close them again. As he strode up the narrow little snow path leading to his cabin he felt that he knew his duty, and he groaned out aloud in ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... loved, the sorrow that slowly consumes, but will not break the heart, has driven them wild; and they present the hideous spectacle of madmen, slowly dying by their own hands. But by far the greater part have wilfully, and with open eyes, plunged into the gulf from which the man who once enters it never rises more, but into which he sinks deeper and deeper ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... it faithfully and lovingly in every spare hour and in long nights of dreaming. Wilfully she departed from the set pattern and sewed into the cloth something of the beauty in her heart. In new and intricate ways, with soft shadowings and coverings, she wove in that white veil her own strange soul, and Mrs. Vanderpool watched her ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... teaching, largely shared by Plato, to make all virtue intellectual, a doctrine expressed in the formula, Virtue is knowledge; which is tantamount to this other, Vice is ignorance, or an erroneous view. From whence the conclusion is inevitable: No evil deed is wilfully done; and therefore, No man is ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... somewhat dear to us, it is because they are not true of him. The central purpose of a work of fiction is assuredly the portrayal of human passions. To this principle Mr. Trollope steadfastly adheres,—how consciously, how wilfully, we know not,—but with a constancy which is almost a proof of conviction, and a degree of success which lends great force to his example. The interest of the work before us is emphatically a moral interest: it is a story of feeling, the narrative ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... subordination among us, that may authorize us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another's uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for our's. Every one, as he is bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his station wilfully, so by the like reason, when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind, and may not, unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away, or impair the life, or what ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... thousand times!" she cried. "Oh, believe me, I did not wilfully murder my own child—I did not, indeed! Let me tell you. You are a just and merciful man, John Ford; let me tell you—you must hear my story; you shall give me my sentence—I will leave it in your hands. ...
— The Tragedy of the Chain Pier - Everyday Life Library No. 3 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... Mason seems a man easily led. Your influence, sir, is evidently potent with him: he will never set you at defiance or wilfully injure you." ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... repetition of these and similar acts of injustice too severely. Yet, are they not odious? I own the remembrance of them ever has been, and is, intensely painful; and the pain is almost unremittingly prolonged by what every man, who is not wilfully blind, must daily see passing in the world. [Mr. Wilmot sighed deeply] Well well! Would I could ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... person that is worthy of it, one who takes many lives, one who sells flesh, one who has abandoned his (sacred) fire, one who sells a knowledge of the Vedas,[111] one who slays his preceptor or a woman, one born in a sinful family, one who slays an animal wilfully,[112] one who sets fire to a dwelling house, one who lives by deceit, one who acts in opposition to his preceptor, and one who has violated a compact,—these all are guilty of sins requiring expiation. I shall now mention other acts that men should not do, viz., acts ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... or else wilfully misconstrue. I am not unconcerned, yet there is a very wide difference, I am sure. This girl is at the Gayety from deliberate choice; she as much as told me so. She is in love with that sort of life. Probably she has never known ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... forgetting to take the photographs—greatly owing to being almost certain that I should bring the skulls themselves safely back to Europe. But the unexpected always happens. We shall see later on how—after having carried those fossils safely for several months—they were, unknown to me, wilfully flung, together with a quantity of provisions, into a deep part of the Arinos River by my companions, and they ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... would have had to add it to the long list of days which haunt us in later life," he added almost to himself, "—one of the occasions for happiness which we have wilfully defaced. But there, I think I hear some one coming. It is probably Stafford. Won't ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... [30:5] He presented Himself before His Father, in the temple above, forty days after He had opened the womb of the grave. During the interval he appeared only to His own followers. [30:6] Those who had so long and so wilfully rejected the testimony of His teaching and His miracles, had certainly no reason to expect any additional proofs of His Divine mission. But the Lord manifests Himself to His Church, "and not unto the world," [30:7] and to such as fear His name He is continually supplying ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... insolence of his favourite; and she had scarcely begun to acquaint him with the details of the affair when Dupin entered unannounced, and in the most intemperate manner commented on her breach of good faith in having wilfully abused the forbearance of the sovereign and his ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... returned from Normandy, and made short work of the rebellion. The following year another outbreak occurring in Northumberland, William mischievously laid waste sixty miles of fertile country, and wilfully slaughtered one hundred thousand people,—men, women, and children. And yet we have among us those who point with pride to their Norman lineage when they ought to be at ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... consider this matter. A somewhat clever and an amusingly ill-natured English journalist, T. W. H. Crosland, not long ago wrote a book "knocking" us, in which he says "that having inherited, borrowed or stolen a beautiful language, they (that is, we Americans) wilfully and of set purpose distort and misspell it." Crosland's ignorance of all things American, ingeniously revealed in this lively bit of writing, is interesting in a person of, presumably, ordinary intelligence, ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... proper. And both parties agree to consider such map and declaration as finally and conclusively fixing the said boundary. And in the event of the said Commissioners differing or both or either of them refusing, declining, or wilfully omitting to act, such reports, declarations, or statements shall be made by them, or either of them, and such reference to a friendly sovereign or state shall be made in all respects, as in the latter part of ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... the dwindling span of poor old John Dangerous. I have many Mercies to be thankful for; of sins likewise without blin, and grievous ones, there may be a long list that I shall have to account for; but I can say that I never killed a man in cold blood, that I never wilfully wronged a woman, so long as she was not obstinate, that I never spake an unkind word to a child, that I always gave freely from that which I got freely, and never took from him who had little, and that I was always ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... to do so, and Pierston remained in his seat regarding the operation, which seemed entirely to engross her. It was extraordinary, indeed, to observe how she wilfully limited her interests; with what content she received the ordinary things that life offered, and persistently refused to behold what an infinitely extended life lay open to her through him. If she had only said the word he would have got ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... friendship with such a mere boor as young Heathcliff was only a trifling annoyance easily to be excused. And when his own father and mother died of a fever caught in nursing her he did not love her less for the sorrow she brought. A fever she had wilfully taken in despair, and a sudden sickness of life. One evening pretty Cathy came into the kitchen to tell Nelly Dean that she had engaged herself to marry Edgar Linton. Heathcliff, unseen, was seated on the other side ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... possible for a woman endowed with so much beauty, and possessed of such engaging manners, to be disregarded, in a court entirely devoted to love and gallantry; and accordingly she soon became an object of general admiration. This was by no means pleasing to my Lord Chesterfield, who, though he had wilfully repulsed her affections, was selfishly opposed to their bestowal upon others. Accordingly he became watchful of her conduct, and jealous of ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... undoubtedly one of those who, amid good surroundings, would have kept on the straight path easily enough. So could many. But human nature is, for the most part, made up of Alicks as well as Geoffs—of boys who wilfully choose to do wrong and to stray from duty. Like the genuine wheat and the tares, all must grow together side by ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... of Mansoul, what a goodly town will it be then!' 'Then,' said Mr. Moderate, 'it is not my manner to pass my judgment with rashness; but for these their crimes are so notorious, and the witness so palpable, that that man must be wilfully blind who saith the prisoners ought not to die.' 'Blessed be God,' said Mr. Thankful, 'that the traitors are in safe custody.' 'And I join with you in this upon my bare knees,' said Mr. Humble. 'I am glad also,' said Mr. Good-Work. Then said the warm man, ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... from possessing the personal gifts of the Kembles' sister. To Romney's studio Cumberland also brought Garrick, with some hope that the great actor might interest himself in favour of the painter. But Garrick was too closely allied with Sir Joshua; he was wilfully blinded to the merits of Romney. He criticised with most impertinent candour the works he found in the studio, pausing before a large family group of portraits and with an affected imitation of the attitude of the ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... the mutineers when the "boss" appeared in the dismantled kitchen and ordered them all off the premises. In vain they protested, laying the blame on first one and then another. Their day of grace was ended and no quarter shown. Wilfully and from sheer love of bickering, they had offended all sense of justice and propriety, and in unbroken ranks they ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... throw a glance at that form of endemic criminality known as the Camorra in this city, which has taken root here just as stabbing affrays have in certain centers of Turin, and the Mafia in certain centers of Sicily. In the first place, we must not be wilfully blind to facts and refuse to see that the citizens will protect themselves, if social justice does not do so. And from that to crime there is but a shot step. But which is the swampy soil in which this social disease can spread and persist like leprosy in tin collective organism? It ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... the door would open and his mother would be there. In this dream of her she appeared to him much as she had done once in Kensington High Street when he had wilfully strayed from her side and lost himself, and, being overwhelmed with the sense of his smallness and forlornness, had burst into a howl of grief. Then suddenly she had stood out from the midst of the sympathetic crowd—remote, stern and wonderful—and he had flung himself on her, knowing that whatever ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... of necessity knaves, Mr. Michelet; at least not wilfully so; but silly hysteric patients, of the spirit-rapping, revivalist order, victims of nervous ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... very fear of dying; some lifting their hands to the gods; but the greater part convinced that there were now no gods at all, and that the final endless night of which we have heard had come upon the world. Among these there were some who augmented the real terrors by others imaginary or wilfully invented. I remember some who declared that one part of Misenum had fallen, that another was on fire; it was false, but they found people to believe them. It now grew rather lighter, which we imagined ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... better to say nothing. Moreover, as Murphy duly remarked, while we talked over the wonderful doings of many and many a dog now lying in this sacred corner, "What could you possibly have expected in such a case, and from one of Us that you had wilfully ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... and to render the matter worse, if possible, they framed this law, as if it were only declaratory, and were intended to explain the natural extent of royal authority. The preamble contains, that the king had formerly set forth several proclamations which froward persons had wilfully contemned, not considering what a king, by his royal power, may do; that this license might encourage offenders not only to disobey the laws of Almighty God, but also to dishonor the king's most royal majesty, "who ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... of the child, but of you; my wife, in whom I trusted; who for five long years has wilfully deceived ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... waters of another flood will not invade the earth, the flood of Divine wrath will swallow up the world of the ungodly. None of God's Covenant signs stir them up to duty; and as to each Covenant sign they continue wilfully blind, to them no final sign of good will appear. But while by them no token of deliverance will be seen, to the righteous, the evidence of God's purpose to deliver them will be complete. And when his enemies, like the men of old ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... remained wilfully indifferent to these broadly insinuating tactics. He fancied, poor, deluded old man, that here was a choice opportunity to tell a tale of the seas after a fashion dear to his own heart, unshackled by the ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... mother's lap the child Who courts shy shelter from his own open air!— Hanging Harebell, Whose blue heaven to no wanderer ever closes, Though thou still lookest earthward from thy domed cell!— Fluttering-wild Anemone, so well Named of the Wind, to whom thou, fettered-free, Yieldest thee, helpless—wilfully, With Take me or leave me, Sweet Wind, I am thine own Anemone!— Thirsty Arum, ever dreaming Of lakes in wildernesses gleaming!— Fire-winged Pimpernel, Communing with some hidden well, And secrets with the sun-god ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... most natural thing in the world that Radisson, who had so often been to the wilds, should have mixed his dates. Every slip as to dates is so easily checked by contemporaneous records—which, themselves, need to be checked—that it seems too bad to accuse Radisson of wilfully lying in the matter. When Radisson lied it was to avoid bloodshed, and not to exalt himself. If he had had glorification of self in mind, he would not have set down his own faults so unblushingly; for instance, where he deceives M. Colbert of Paris. (2) Radisson does not try to ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... since it had helped to leave Lucia free. But not believing that the poor girl had been the object of a genuine, though transient passion, she for once was ready to judge her hardly, and to accuse her of having been wilfully and foolishly deceived. ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... gavest us thy daughters to be our wives; and from that day we have alway abode with thee, and have alway endeavoured to do that which was to thy service; and if we have at any time failed therein it hath not been wilfully, but for lack of better understanding. Now inasmuch as it is long time since we departed from Castille, from our father and from our mother, and because neither we know how it fares with them, nor they how it fares with us, we would ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... reason cannot have roome in our case, since ther are few so ignorant of the natural causes of thunder as to impute it to the raging of ill spirits in the air, tho the Mr. of Ogilvy at Orleans, who very wilfully whiles would maintain things he could not maintain, would not hear that a natural cause could be given of the thunder, but would impute it to evill spirits. I do not deny but the Devils wt Gods permission may occasion thunders ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... is intended to be amusing," said Lady Mary, her teacup trembling in her hand, "I can only say that, in my opinion, wilfully misunderstanding a simple statement is a very cheap ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... return to New France of Pierre Philibert. The news had surprised her to a degree she could not account for. Her first thought was, how fortunate for her brother that Pierre had returned; her second, how agreeable to herself. Why? She could not think why: she wilfully drew an inference away from the truth that lay in her heart—it was wholly for the sake of her brother she rejoiced in the return of his friend and preserver. Her heart beat a little faster than usual—that was the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... these and similar false reasonings, the young man thrust aside the better suggestions, from which he was at first inclined to retrace the false step he had taken; and wilfully shutting his eyes, resolved to go forward in his evil ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... allegories none was reiterated with more unwearied persistence than that of the Seven Deadly Sins (those sins which in the doctrine of the Church lead to spiritual death because they are wilfully committed). These sins are: Covetousness, Unchastity, Anger, Gluttony, Envy, Sloth, and, chief of all, Pride, the earliest of all, through which Lucifer was moved to his fatal rebellion against God, whence spring all human ills. Each of the seven, however, was interpreted as including ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... he preached to her the doctrine of this new Christian sect. He was a convert; his preaching was rather the eager recital of his own experience, which would out, like some dynamic force within him, than pressure brought wilfully to ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... ambassadors, thus plotting treason, stratagem, and massacre, is a dark and dreary one. The description of English sufferings for conscience' sake, under the Protestant Elizabeth, is even more painful; for it had unfortunately too much, of truth, although as wilfully darkened and exaggerated as could be done by religious hatred and Spanish bombast. The Queen was surrounded by legions of deadly enemies. Spain, the Pope, the League, were united in one perpetual conspiracy against her; and they relied on ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... British government, pledged in the treaty of Poorunder, inviolate and sacred, as well as by the special orders and instructions of the East India Company to fix his attention to the preservation of peace throughout India: all which important duties the said Warren Hastings did wilfully violate, in giving the sanction of the Governor-General and Council to the dangerous, faithless, and ill-concerted projects of the President and Council of Bombay hereinbefore mentioned, from which ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... malignity, or vengeance of culpable individuals; and to sacrifice innocence to gratify the vile passions of his vilest slave. I have not so bad an opinion of Bonaparte as to think him capable of wilfully condemning any person to death or transportation, of whose innocence he was convinced, provided that person stood not in the way of his interest and ambition; but suspicion and tyranny are inseparable companions, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... this a proof of God's goodness, for when He wished to afford an example of salvation as being procured by Him, He exercised His mighty power on the human body: but when He wished to picture to them His severity towards those who wilfully disobey Him, He foreshadows their doom by His sentence on the tree." This is the more noteworthy in a fig-tree which, as Chrysostom observes (on Matt. 21:19), "being full of moisture, makes the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... permitting the escape of the winged bird, she considered a moment, then deliberately murdered it by giving it a severe crunch, and afterward brought away both together. This was the only known instance of her ever having wilfully injured any game. Here we have reason, though not quite perfect; for the retriever might have brought the wounded bird first, and then returned for the dead one, as in the case of the two wild ducks. I give the above cases as resting on the evidence ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... communis, alienus, immunis, variis casibus serviunt." "If you do remember it," cries Jones, "I find you don't understand it; but I tell thee, friend, in plain English, that he who finds another's property, and wilfully detains it from the known owner, deserves, in foro conscientiae, to be hanged, no less than if he had stolen it. And as for this very identical bill, which is the property of my angel, and was once in her ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... moment, then wilfully turned to each other for the desired contact. She put her arms round him, she cleaved her body to his, and with her hands pressed upon his shoulders, on his back, she seemed to feel right through him, to know ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... another Ultimatum: insisting upon the definite acceptance of their demands. If such acceptance were not forthcoming within forty-eight hours, or if, after an undertaking was given, any obstacles were wilfully placed in its execution, they threatened to have recourse to their military and naval weapons. On the other hand, they promised to respect Greece's resolution {169} to keep out of the War, and pledged themselves not to allow the adherents of ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... of this jury, I propose to prove to your absolute satisfaction that this defendant, Jeffrey Whiting, did wilfully and with prepared design, murder Samuel Rogers on the morning of August twentieth last. I shall not only prove to you the existence of a long-standing hatred harboured by this defendant against the murdered man, but I will show to you a direct motive for the crime. And I shall not only prove ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... each of the beautiful, gentle eyes of the old man, who had never wilfully soiled himself with an impure thought, who was full of the sweetness of charity. Benedetto was so deeply moved ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... quoth he, plaintively, in pity half for himself so misunderstood, half for his interlocutor so wilfully blind, "I do solemnly assure you, once and for all, that I know nothing of this affair of yours. Till you so asserted, I had no knowledge that Monsieur, your honoured father, had been set on, and deeply am I pained to hear it. These ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... the fine fight that human nature was always making against stupendous odds stirred him to a fine and comprehending clarity. He had many faults. He was obstinate, often dull and lethargic, in many ways grossly ill-educated and sometimes wilfully obtuse—but he was a fine friend, a noble enemy, and a chivalrous lover. There was nothing mean nor petty in him, and his views of life and the human soul were wider and more all-embracing than in any Englishman I have ever known. You may say of course ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... errors should offend us. He who can wilfully attempt to injure another, is an object of pity rather than of resentment; while it is a question [30] in my mind, whether there is enough of a flatterer, a fool, or a liar, to offend ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... darkest frown, Threatening at once and nourishing the plant. We loved, but not enough, the gentle hand That reared us. At a thoughtless age allured By every gilded folly, we renounced His sheltering side, and wilfully forewent That converse which we now in vain regret. How gladly would the man recall to life The boy's neglected sire! a mother too, That softer friend, perhaps more gladly still, Might he demand them at the ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... at the bayonet's point at a loss to the Empire in men, money, and in prestige. If our commanders blunder, who is to blame but the criminally negligent officials who have supplied them with false or foolish data to work upon? The Empire has been betrayed, either wilfully or through crass idleness upon the part of men who have dipped deeply into the Empire's coffers, and the nation should demand their impeachment, apart from their position, place, or power, and punishment ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... now in abeyance, but were to spring to active life after the war. Forestry on a great scale; a part to be played in the preservation and development of the vast forest areas of America which had been so wilfully wasted; business and patriotism combined; fortune possible; but in any case the public interest served. He talked shrewdly, but also with ardour and imagination; she was stirred, excited even; and all the time she liked the foreignness of his voice, the ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to mention the circumstance, meantime, to any living being. As a matter of course, it was speedily confided, in like manner, to the whole population; and on the appointed day, crowds assembled to laugh at the credulity of one another. A poor tradesman of the town had taken wilfully the same fatal leap, only on the day preceding my visit. Many of the poor Indians are lost over the fall, when rum has been in plenty. A squaw was observed upon one occasion, with her canoe absorbed in the current, and she herself ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... fixed rules, by which it enforces social continuity and connection. To neglect these throws one off the ring; and, with rare exceptions, isolation is barrenness and death. One cannot even go into the street in a wilfully strange costume, without establishing repulsions and balking relations between him and his neighbors which destroy their use to each other. Every man is bound to the actual form of society by his necessities at least, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... say is false, an' yo' know it to be so. You have wilfully slandered one of the pures' an' nobles' men Gord ever made, an' nothin' but ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... still there was the experience which all of us know of waking in the morning with a feeling of dismay at what we have to do on getting up; the obvious duties in which perhaps we have grown stale; the things we have neglected; those in which we have made mistakes; those as to which we have wilfully done wrong; those which weary or bore or annoy or discourage us. Sometimes there are more serious things still: bereavements, or frightfully adverse conditions, or hardships we never expected brought on us ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... alphabet, is it probable that he would have suffered the communication to cease there! The Phoenicians were a commercial people—their colonies in Greece were for commercial purposes,—would they have wilfully and voluntarily neglected the most convenient mode of commercial correspondence?—importing just enough of the art to suffice for inscriptions of no use but to the natives, would they have stopped short precisely at that point when the art became useful to themselves? ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is, that you think over your intentions rationally. How is it possible, Sara, that you overlook your own inconsistency? You argue zealously against domestic life—against the duties of marriage, and yet, at the same time, wilfully determine to tie those bonds with a man who will make ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... witnessed. It was true that the demons had come with the one settled purpose of killing him, and there was no reason therefore why he should regret their death. But life to him was always precious, no matter in what form it might be enshrined. Life was the special gift of Heaven, and could not be wilfully destroyed without committing a crime ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... army had been irritated by a long resistance. Yet, supposing the fact to have been so, how often in the history of war must every reader have met with cases where honorable terms were granted to an enemy merely on account of his obstinate resistance? But then here, it is said, the resistance was wilfully pushed to the arbitration of a storm. Even that might be otherwise stated; but, suppose it true, a storm in military law confers some rights upon the assailants which else they would not have had—rights, however, which cease with the day of storming. Nobody denies that the French army ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... that our young vicar was very intimate at Chaldicotes; so much so that the groom knew him, and talked to him about the people in the house. Yes; he was intimate there: much more than he had given the Framley people to understand. Not that he had wilfully and overtly deceived any one; not that he had ever spoken a false word about Chaldicotes. But he had never boasted at home that he and Sowerby were near allies. Neither had he told them there how often Mr. Sowerby and Lord Lufton were together in London. Why trouble ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... mate. By feeding and breeding he was so much Dan's superior in vitality that, into whatever mischief the two got themselves, he was the leader. For all times the picture, seen by the light of a lantern, stands out in my mind how he bit at Dan, wilfully, urging him playfully on, when we swung out into the crisp, dark, hazy morning air. Dan being nothing loth and always keen at the start, we shot across ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... of self-reproach swept over me. Was it possible that I, like Mr. Trevor, had been deprived of all the morals I had ever possessed? Could it be that the district attorney was looking calmly on while Mr. Cooke wilfully corrupted the Far Harbor chief-of-police? As agonizing a minute as I ever had in my life was that which it took McCann to survey those cigars. His broad features became broader still, as a huge, red hand was reached out. I saw it close lingeringly over the box, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... him; there was nothing uncanny in his presence, there was nothing even unwilling, but he had that apparitional quality of some great minds which kept Shakespeare largely unknown to those who thought themselves his intimates, and has at last left him a sort of doubt. There was nothing teasing or wilfully elusive in Hawthorne's impalpability, such as I afterwards felt in Thoreau; if he was not there to your touch, it was no fault of his; it was because your touch was dull, and wanted the use of contact with such natures. The hand passes through the veridical phantom ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... things out." It seemed as though her thoughts loved wilfully to tease and confuse her. Then when she was completely tangled, and bewildered, her temper rose, slowly, stealthily, but with a mighty force behind it; suddenly as a flood bursts the walls that have been trying to resist it, it would sweep the chambers of her mind, submerging, ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... good authority on this point. The memoirs of the time will show either that she cannot have known or must have wilfully concealed the intrigues of various kinds in ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... She stood wilfully swaying a branch of the tendrilled arbor, and, he subtly felt, so dissatisfied with herself for her temporary disloyalty that she felt alien to them both: Marshby because she had wronged him by admitting another man to this intimate knowledge ...
— Different Girls • Various
... most perishable household wares, the poorest Japanese is able to enjoy that special peculiarity and synthesis of line and colour and perspective which strikes even initiated Westerns as so exotic, far-fetched and almost wilfully unintelligible. ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... necessarily be for the purpose of deception or fraud; pseudonyms or nicknames fall thus under the description of an alias. Where a person is married under an alias, the marriage is void when both parties have knowingly and wilfully connived at the adoption of the alias, with a fraudulent intention. But if one of the parties to a marriage has acquired a new name by use and reputation, or if the true name of any one of the parties is not known to the other, the use of an alias in these cases will not affect the validity ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... a reward in heaven, but the anchorites neglected every one, cut themselves adrift from the chance of performing them, and sought to merit heaven in their own way. Christ declared, "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you," but they wilfully lived apart from the sacramental life as surely ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... Leslie,' 'Jewel,' 'Angel,'" jested Mary, thrilling at the echo of a certain low, fluttered voice, that had sounded in her own ears and would wilfully repeat, ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... turned the wrong way) signifies wilfully wrong or erring, unreasonably set against right, reason, or authority. The stubborn or obstinate person will not do what another desires or requires; the perverse person will do anything contrary to what is desired or required of him. The petulant person frets, but may comply; the perverse ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... here, that Martin Alonzo Pinzon had wilfully parted company from the admiral while on the coast of Cuba: covetousness being probably the cause of this most undutiful proceeding. But, indeed, there is another instance of the insubordination of the mariners, which makes the wonder only still greater how Columbus could ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... which the conversation turned, made his defence, in French, with great solemnity: he hoped, he said, that the company would at least acknowledge he did not come from a nation of brutes; and consequently, that to wilfully offend any lady, was, to him, utterly impossible; but that, on the contrary, in endeavouring, as was his duty, to save and guard her, he had himself suffered, in a manner which he would forbear to relate, but which, he greatly apprehended, he should feel the ill effects of for many months: and ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... other man. But every woman, be she Queen or beggar-maid, craves to exercise one species of power at one era of her life. It is her prerogative, and though the ruth of love may live to regret it, and to grudge every passing pang inflicted, half wilfully half unwittingly, on the true heart, it may be questioned whether love would flourish better, whether it would attain its perfect stature, without the test of the brief check and combat ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... me four years ago, as kind as Sir Henry Royson would permit you to be towards one who had wilfully and irreparably insulted him. My feelings with regard to him have undergone no change. He may be dead, for all I know, or care. But you, I suppose, are still the trusted solicitor of the Cuddesham estate, and Sir Henry Royson, if alive, may have remained unmarried. In that event, I am heir ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... so far forgotten yourselves, the commands of God, and the curse that awaits you and those who deceive themselves the same way; reflect, before it be too late, on the evil into which you have willingly, wilfully, and without the least reasonable excuse, fallen, and on the guilt that must of necessity attach to your consciences thereby. Should you never meet those you encouraged to sin in this world, and therefore ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... then gave way to. Lizzie continuing to harp on the extraordinary enjoyment the whipping had procured her, after it was over, fired the imagination of Mary, until she was wound up to a pitch of actually longing to be whipped. In such a case it was easy to incur the penalty; she had but wilfully to neglect her studies, and she was sure to get it. This she accordingly did, and it resulted as before. When released, she rushed to the summer house, and without any preliminaries, called upon me to fuck ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... it does," cried Mrs. Crewe, "what is it to us? We have done nothing; we have given no offence, and made no disturbance. This person has frightened us all wilfully, and Utterly without provocation; and now she can frighten us no longer, she would brave us. Let her tell her own story, and how ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... froth and feathers to a man who has been working hard half a day, and as to the extravagance of such flimsy victuals—" She could keep quiet no longer, she was obliged to speak out, and she burst into a tirade against people who called themselves pious, and yet, wilfully shutting their eyes, were about to plunge into wicked wastefulness. She ate as she talked, however, and she had brought up John Wesley, and was about to give her notion of what he would have had to say about a fancy church for ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... disgust at the world in general, on the part of the apostles of that gospel. They give every token of hating their neighbors consumedly; argal, they are going to be madly enamored of them. Or, perhaps, this is the manner in which Universal Brotherhood shows itself in people who wilfully subject themselves to infection as a prophylactic. In the natural way we might find the disease inconvenient and even expensive; but thus vaccinated with virus from the udders (whatever they may be) that yield the (butter-)milk of human kindness, the inconvenience ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... their folds. "If she wanted to find people to give money to, she needn't hire ministers to go out and hunt for them. There are plenty of them here, right under her nose, and if she doesn't see them, it's because she shuts her eyes wilfully, and ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... natural things; the colour of the open air, the many forms of the country, the birds flying,—that one making for the sea; the abandoned boat, the dwarf roses and the wild lavender; nor had I thought of the beauty of mildness in life, and how by a certain avoidance of the wilfully passionate, and the surely ugly, we may secure an aspect of temporal life which is abiding and soul-sufficing. A new dawn was in my brain, fresh and fair, full of wide temples and studious hours, and the lurking fragrance of incense; that such a vision of life was possible I had ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... or Othello was produced? If these circumstances were better known to us, is it to be believed and will it be seriously asserted that our admiration for one or the other play would be augmented?" In penning this quirk, the eminent critic would seem to have wilfully overlooked the fact that a writer's life may have much or may have little to do with his works. In the case of Shakespeare it was comparatively little—and yet we should be glad to learn more of this little. ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... Gawaine, 'I know these things, and for their deaths I have grieved, but I warned them all, and as they sought their deaths wilfully I will not avenge them, nor think worse ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... few tears into the mauve cushions; she thought Esther was wilfully misunderstanding her; she wrote to Micky on the second day with ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... right to act according to his discretion; but it must always be at his peril, if he cannot prove, at least, that it appeared to be absolutely necessary; still more so, if he manifestly breaks through, wilfully or perversely, the very orders which himself received from his superior officer, and is consequently bound to see regularly carried ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... you think there are hundreds of thousands of your own sex who would wilfully falsify? Do you think that any could be found who would deliberately do this, and without hope of gain or reward? Yet I could point you to hundreds of thousands of letters received from women who write from the fulness of the heart ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham
... were gone, the fairy king, who with little Puck had been listening to their quarrels, said to him, "This is your negligence, Puck; or did you do this wilfully?" "Believe me, king of shadows," answered Puck, "it was a mistake; did not you tell me I should know the man by his Athenian garments? However, I am not sorry this has happened, for I think their jangling makes excellent sport." "You heard," said Oberon, "that Demetrius and Lysander are gone ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... vague voice in a dream he heard his own name pronounced; he heard a sonorous formula repeated in a heavy, dispassionate voice—"accused of having resisted a picquet of his Prussian Majesty's 11th Regiment of Uhlan cavalry, of having wilfully, maliciously, and with murderous design fired upon and wounded trooper Kohlmann of said picquet while in ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... So now she knew what he was going to say, the lie he would try to tell her. It was as if she knew every secret corner of the man's soul, had known it always really, and had merely veiled her eyes to him wilfully. Now the veil had been torn aside. Had Vickers given her this power to see into the heart of things, for always, so that the truths behind the veil she made ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... of her secret embarassment. "I, who have honored the family which I have so long served, above every other in the land, tell you that you can do it no greater good than to join it now, or inflict upon it any greater harm than to wilfully withdraw yourself from the position in which ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... him. Once he seems to have shut himself up with the intention of starving himself to death. As we come in reading his life on its harsh, untempered incidents, the thought again and again arises that he is one of those who incur the judgment of Dante, as having "wilfully lived in sadness." Even his tenderness and pity are embittered by their strength. What passionate weeping in that mysterious figure which, in the Creation of Adam, crouches below the image of the Almighty, as he comes ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... with you," he returned; "but in plain words, I do not like the tone in which you speak of her. It hurts me, and I do not believe you would wilfully give me pain." ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... groaning in your bed over your pains and rheumatisms, satisfy yourself still by thinking, that, at last, that lad will do something to better himself in life, and that the Pendennises will take a good place in the world. And is he the only one, who in his progress through this dark life goes wilfully or fatally astray, whilst the natural truth and love which should illumine him grow dim in the poisoned air, and suffice to light ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... regard themselves as submerged individualities. They wilfully sink all identity of their own in the traditions handed down to them, and live as mere representatives of a line which bears in common a noble name. This principle, which has something to recommend it, was adopted long ago into the system of the Guard of Maasau, the officers of which were ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... disposed to regard the planets as perverse sheep who had escaped from the fold of the stars to wander wilfully in search of pasture.* At first they were considered to be so many sovereign deities, without other function than that of running through the heavens and furnishing there predictions of the future; afterwards two of them descended ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... flames, with the falling of the houses, being so dreadful, little good could be done till evening, when the fire was happily stopped. Upwards of 60 houses in the middle of the town were burnt down, with all the shops, warehouses, stables, &c., adjoining. It is generally supposed to have been wilfully occasioned. ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... makes the Frenchman most revengeful is not the murder of his family or the defilement of his women, but the wilful killing of his land and orchards. The land gave birth to all his flesh and blood; when his farm is laid waste wilfully, it is as though the mother of all his generations was violated. This accounts for the indomitable way in which the peasants insist on staying on in their houses under shell-fire, refusing to depart till they are forcibly ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... chest. Once more, indeed, the camp was entitled to hold up its head. There were Women in the town! Ergo Home; ergo Civilization; ergo Society; and ergo all the rest. Heretofore Heart's Desire had wilfully been but an unorganized section of savagery; but your Anglo Saxon, craving ever savagery, has no sooner found it than he seeks to civilize it; there being for him in his aeon of the world no real content ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... what messages have been sent you to apprehend him? and yet not done. Why so? Forsooth I could not catch him. Yea, sir, it will be sworn and deposed to your face, that for fear of meeting him, you have winked, wilfully shunned his sight, altered your course, warned his friends, stopped both eyes and ears against his detection. Surely this juggling and false play little became an honest man called to such honour, or a nobleman put in ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... not know when I pleased her and I did not know when I distressed her. Chiefly I was aware of my mother as rather dull company, as a mind thorny with irrational conclusions and incapable of explication, as one believing quite wilfully and irritatingly in impossible things. So I suppose it had to be; life was coming to me in new forms and with new requirements. It was essential to our situation that we should fail to understand. After this space of years I have come ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... she, wilfully mistaking these tremors, "did I fright him then! Lord, how he do tremble! Oh, young man, you be a ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... system is bad, resting on a false foundation, and that it has worked ill and been bolstered up by him and his party till now it can no longer be supported, and it threatens to carry away with it that which is good in itself. We owe these things to those who wilfully introduced a moral confusion of ideas into their political machinery, and, by destroying the essential distinction between right and wrong, have deprived the things which are right of the best part of their security. I have never been ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... Linklater in astonishment; "why, will not that be rushing wilfully into danger?—scalding yourself, as I may say, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott |
