"Willful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not you, dear. There now, that was my purchase. I set my mind on having you—buying you, as that is your word. I have paid my price, and got my bargain, and—you know, I was always an oddity, and rather willful, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... was nine years old. He hardly knew how to read; he had been so spoiled, and only did as he saw fit. He was willful, stubborn and quick-tempered. The father always gave in to him and let him have his own way. M. Duretour would always buy him all the toys he wished, and he fed him on cake and candies. Then Celeste would grow ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... same time accept my most hearty thanks and my dearest love. You have all been good, obedient, and cheerful, and have lightened many a heavy load. If when it pleased Providence to send us into this wilderness, it had been part of my lot to contend with willful and disobedient children; if there had been murmuring and repining at our trials; discontent and quarreling among yourselves, how much more painful would have been our situation. On the contrary, by your good humor and attention, your willing submission ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... man. You, of course, may say differently, and I do not know—I am only taking her word for it. But—if I understand it, your presence in Ohadi has caused a few disagreements between them and—well, you know how willful and headstrong girls will be. I believe she has ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... to speak, but as she sat dumb, helpless, overcome, he continued: "I tried to explain the mistake before, but your kindness cut me off. I can only say that, though you have given me a mother's care and a Christian's consideration under a misunderstanding, I trust you will not blame me for willful deception nor regret the goodness you have shown ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... made under their own eyes. Hence the woman suffrage movement has not yet been accepted as the legitimate outgrowth of American ideas—a component part of the history of our republic—but is falsely considered the willful outburst of a few unbalanced minds, whose ideas can never be realized under ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... and trouble at head-quarters. It was rather a hard state of things that the very peasants whom he was striving with all his power to serve should, by their insubordination—arising sometimes, it was true, from ignorance, but too often from willful misconduct—do even more than their masters to frustrate his beneficent designs. These troubles went on from time to time, till eventually a deputation of three hundred serfs made their way to St. Petersburg and solicited an audience of the emperor. His majesty, ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... by rewards more than by penalties. Such faults as willful disobedience, lying, dishonesty, and indecent or profane language, should be punished with severe penalties, after a child has been fully instructed in the evil of such practices. But all the constantly recurring faults ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... it was in my power to escape a moral penalty, by willful ignorance, was revealed to me, that I could continue the privilege of sinning with impunity. His answer was complicated, and he quoted several passages from the Scriptures. Presently he began to sing, and I grew lonesome; the life within ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... countervailing evidence, it shall be sufficient in the proper proceeding to authorize the revocation and setting aside of the order admitting such person to citizenship and the cancellation of the certificate of naturalization as having been obtained by concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation. ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... United States are guaranteed continuance in office only during "good behavior," and because impeachment is the only method of removal recognized by the Constitution, the "high crimes and misdemeanors" for which impeachment is the constitutional resource must include all cases of willful misconduct in office, whether indictable or not. This seems sound theory and appears today to be established theory. But sound or not, the managers of the Republicans were not a unit in urging it, while their opponents put ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... naturally wealthy region are greater than, unless under extreme necessity, I should be willing to intrust to any one man. They are such as, for myself, I could never, unless on occasions of great emergency, consent to exercise. The willful use of such powers, if continued through a period of years, would have endangered the purity of the general administration and the liberties of the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Johnson • Andrew Johnson
... a half million graves, wherein they had buried their slain, their bravest and best beloved, they forgot all bitterness for joy that peace had come. No people in the world had greater reason for severity than the victors in this strife. War, willful, unprovoked, without the shadow of justification, had been thrust upon them. This had been preceded by a series of usurpations the most unblushing ever endured by a free people. These were a part of the plan of a band of traitors, who had plotted for years to overthrow the existing order ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... Aside from the willful violation of those unwritten laws that have come to govern social intercourse, there are many who err because of excessive self-consciousness, which makes it difficult or impossible to put themselves at ease ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... willful mood and she was only a child. One or two years would make a difference. If his father made a great fortune, and after all no one knew where she came from—he could marry in very good families, girls in plenty had smiled on him during the ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... forehead in her agitation. Men of Lord Dreever's type appeal to the motherly instinct of women. As a man, his lordship was a negligible quantity. He did not count. But as a willful child, to be kept out of trouble, he had ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... Possibly ennui prompted this willful bit of womanhood to make a plaything of that picturesque child of nature, just as loneliness caused him to open his eyes to the existence of that, which in the logical and ordinary course of events, he would have entirely overlooked. But since ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... "Automobile Girls" had met with a situation that no amount of pluck or effort on their part could control. This was the most important experience of their whole lives, for their country was about to be betrayed! Once Barbara stamped her foot in her impatience. How dared Harriet Hamlin be so willful, so headstrong? Bab's face was white with anxiety and suspense. Her lips twitched nervously. Then in a flash her whole expression changed. The color came back to her cheeks, the light to her eyes. At the eleventh hour the way had ...
— The Automobile Girls At Washington • Laura Dent Crane
... determination to make this lady his wife. Pride was at the root of his being,—pride and a deep self-will; though because they were so sunken, and because poisonous roots can flower most deceivingly, he neither called himself nor was called of others a proud and willful man. He wished Evelyn for his wife; nay, more, though on May Day he had shown her that he loved her not, though in June he had offered her a love that was only admiring affection, yet in the past month at Westover he had come almost to believe that he loved her truly. ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... credit quite so easily, I was very handsome. In short, I was a beauty and a fortune, at the head of the society of the place, caressed, indulged, and flattered by all. This, if it did not spoil me, at least made me willful. I had many offers, and many intended offers, which I nipped in the bud, and I was twenty-three before I saw any one who pleased me. At last a vessel came in consigned to the house, and the captain was invited to dinner. ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... originals must be warned against this frequent fault in modern illustration (especially existing also in some of the painted casts of Gothic and Norman work at the Crystal Palace). It is not owing to any willful want of veracity: the plates in Arundale's book are laboriously faithful: but the expressions of both face and body in a figure depend merely on emphasis of touch, and, in barbaric art most draughtsmen emphasize ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... and some may still be found upon the shelves of public libraries. These MS. collections furnish a mine of inexhaustible riches to the student of manners. When checked by legal documents, they frequently reveal carelessness, inaccuracy, or even willful distortion of facts. The genius of the Novella, so paramount in popular Italian literature of that epoch, presided over their composition, adding intreccio to disconnected facts, heightening sympathy by the suggestion of romantic motives, turning the heroes or the heroines of their adventures ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... person singular of the verb, and the following words: clef, if, of, pal, sol, as, gas, has, was, yes, gris, his, is, thus, us. L is not doubled at the end of words of more than one syllable, as parallel, willful, etc. ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... it go with the consoling assurance that, as to a solution, "the Lord will provide." But the echoes of recriminations shouted by each side against the other; the cries of foul play; the accusations of willful injustice; the threats of complete annihilation of capital by organized labor, of organized labor by capital—must reach to heaven itself, and Providence might well pause in dismay. Constructive good will? ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... to rain it back on him some day," cried Don Ippolito with willful levity, and the stream leaped into the moonlight and seemed to hang there like a tangled skein of silver. "But how shall I shut it off when you are gone?" asked the young girl, looking ruefully at the ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... Tub: "A sect was established who held the universe to be a large suit of clothes. . . . If certain ermines or furs be placed in a certain position, we style them a judge; and so an apt conjunction of lawn and black satin we entitle a bishop." In Sartor Resartus Carlyle let himself go. It was willful, uncouth, amorphous, titanic. There was something monstrous in the combination, the hot heart of the Scot married to the transcendental dream of Germany. It was not English, said the reviewers; it was not sense; it was disfigured by obscurity and "mysticism." Nevertheless ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... forthcoming from one James Gollop for impersonating the Hon. J. Woodworth-Granger at an important political meeting in the city of Yimville were not immediately forthcoming, legal action would be taken for damages, on the ground of misrepresentation, false pretense and willful intent to damage the reputation and political career of one of the most distinguished men in the state. Another letter was a round robin, signed by several firms, demanding the immediate discharge ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... Calhoun, Esq.," and "duly certified by himself." The President's accompanying special message argues that the organic law of the Territory conferred the essential rights of an enabling act; that the free-State party stood in the attitude of willful and chronic revolution; that their various refusals to vote were a sufficient bar to complaint and objection; that the several steps in the creation and work of the Lecompton Convention were regular and legal. "The people of Kansas have, then, 'in their own way,' ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... of the most perfect of his compositions. It has much of the fearless felicity of youth; and its imagery has the sharp and vivid outline of ideas fresh from the brain. The subject—the development of his own great powers—raises him above that willful dallying with trivialties which repels us in some of his other works. And there is real vitality in the theme, both from our anxiety to know the course of such a mind, and from the effect of an absorbing interest in himself excluding that languor which sometimes seized him in ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... animal excitement, but from pain, delusion, error, of the worst ignorance, medical sciolism, and (alas! too late the plea of error was removed from my eyes) from terror and utter perplexity and infirmity—sinful infirmity, indeed, but yet not a willful sinfulness—that I brought my neck under it. Oh, may the God to whom I look for mercy through Christ, show mercy on the author of the 'Confessions of an Opium-eater,' if, as I have too strong reason to believe, his book ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... always comfort, somehow, when there has been no willful wrong. And there has been none here, ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... who have not received a regular medical education, sooner or later prove themselves to be worthless, the presumption—though not the certainty—is, whenever a new agent, or a new method or principle is proposed by an "outsider," that this, too, if not willful charlatanism, is a mistake; and therefore, the sooner it comes to an end the better it will be for the public health, and that neglect is the surest way ...
— A Newly Discovered System of Electrical Medication • Daniel Clark
... my lords, remember where we are: In France, amongst a fickle wavering nation; If they perceive dissension in our looks And that within ourselves we disagree, How will their grudging stomachs be provoked To willful disobedience, and rebel! Beside, what infamy will there arise When foreign princes shall be certified That for a toy, a thing of no regard, King Henry's peers and chief nobility Destroy'd themselves and lost the realm of France O, think upon the conquest of my father, My tender years; and let ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... woman is of age at eighteen, and as no indenture could be made binding after you had reached your majority, you are the victim of a deception. You are free, and if it can be proven that you have been defrauded by a willful deception, a suit for ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... I may never be so discouraged that I feel my life has been spent. Help me to so live, that I may not follow into hopeless days, but look for the bright and beautiful in to-morrow. Forgive me for all that I have asked for and accepted through willful judgment, and make me more careful in selecting my ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... a sort of men, whose visages Do cream and mantle like a standing pond, And do a willful stillness entertain, With purpose to be dressed in an opinion Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit, As who should say, "I am Sir Oracle, And when I ope my lips, let no dog bark!" O! my Antonio, I do know of these That therefore are reputed wise For saying nothing, when, I am sure, If they should ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... commissioners of the land office. They assumed to contain a statement of facts, evidencing on the part of the commissioners great indiscretion and want of judgment, if not corruption, in the sale of the public lands, and they charged the commissioners with a willful violation of the law. These resolutions, however, excepted Colonel Burr from any participation in the maleconduct complained of, inasmuch as the minutes of the board proved that he was not present at the meetings (being ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... was the bitter opposition of father and friends. The willful young heiress insisted on giving to the handsome officer from St. Mary's the preference over all her other admirers. It may be that a reaction from the strict rules and the severe tenets of her education gave to this young scion of another faith an additional charm. However ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... from March 4, 1853 to March 4, 1855. He was endowed by nature with a mind as strong as his body, and that was of Titanic proportions. He was an ardent partisan in behalf of any cause he espoused; was willful, aggressive, and dominating. He was, at the same time, genial and kindly in many relations of life, not without gifts of both wit and humor, and courageous to the point of absolute fearlessness. He had been well ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... purified ethical conception of his character. We have been learning to believe, more and more, in the justice, the righteousness, the goodness of God. In the oldest times men thought him cruel and revengeful; then they began to regard him as willful and arbitrary—his justice was his determination to have his own way; his sovereignty was his egoistic purpose to do everything for his own glory. We have gradually grown away from all that, and are able now to believe what Abraham ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... slept that night Lilly sat beside her. She loved the willful way the curls flung across the pillow. She leaned to the full deep-chested breathing; leaned to kiss the lips which, slightly parted, were perfect with the pollen ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... be in a foreign country where we cannot speak the language, but the loneliness of that condition is as nothing compared to the loneliness that is the product of an alienation that has been produced by either irresponsible use of the means of communication or a willful ...
— Herein is Love • Reuel L. Howe
... repay any one who will take the trouble to examine the files of these papers printed during the war, if he desires a curious entertainment. Among many willful misrepresentations of Morgan's as well as of other Confederate commands, many statements palpably false, and regarding events of which the writers could not possibly have obtained correct information, will be found under the most astounding ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... past from pass,) are exceptions to the foregoing rule. 2. If the word pontiff is properly spelled with two Effs, its eight derivatives are also exceptions to this rule; for they are severally spelled with one; as, pontific, pontifical, pontificate, &c. 3. The words skillful, skillfully, willful, willfully, chillness, tallness, dullness, and fullness, have generally been allowed to drop the second l, though all of them might well be made to conform to the general rule, agreeably to ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... was an idle boy, an idle youth, and an idle man. I poached when I had a chance. I lived on my wife's earnings. I went to the bad as deliberately as any one in the world did, but I do not remember that I ever told a willful lie." ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... Any person who shall procure himself to be enlisted in the military service of the United States by means of willful misrepresentation or concealment as to his qualifications for enlistment, and shall receive pay or allowances under such enlistment, shall be punished as ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... philosophy of life as the seats which kings occupy. Women in humble circumstances often possess richer minds, sweeter hearts, a nobler and profounder peace than those of magnificent surroundings. The disposition to make the best of life is what we want to make us happy. Those who are so willful and seemingly perverse about their outward circumstances, are often intensely affected by the merest trifles. A little thing shadows their life for days. The want of some little convenience, some personal gratification, some outward form or ornament, will blight a day's joy. They can often ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... willful destruction of Solar Guard property, and illegal operation of a uranium mine, Quent Miles!" said Walters. The spaceman ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman
... not think that," he answered sternly. "It would indeed be a clouded mind which could mistake mere disordered fancies for willful offenses against the truth. I have no doubt that when you have recovered from the effects of your late accident these vain thoughts and imaginations ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... disgust from Ellis interrupted the plea. The glare with which that employee favored his boss fairly convicted the seamed and graying editor of willful and captious immaturity. ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... bough above, screamed in mocking laughter at the dreamer beneath; an old drake, leading his family in a waddling row to the open stream below the little house, solemnly quacked his protest against such a willful waste of time; and a spotted calf thrust its head through the barn-yard fence to gaze at ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... as we do upon treasure taken in fair fight. In the one case we traffic with the Spaniards, who are our natural enemies; and it is repugnant, to a Christian man, to hand over even these poor negroes to such willful masters as these; in the other we are fighting for our queen and country. The Spaniards are the natural enemies of all good Protestants, and every ship we see, and every treasure bag we capture, does something to pare the nails of that ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... willful disregard of the nature and welfare of an animal is cruelty.—Overloading beasts of burden; driving them when lame; keeping them on insufficient food, or in dark, cold, and unhealthy quarters; whipping, goading, and beating them constantly and excessively are the most ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... Myeerah very well," he said. "It was eight years ago, and she was only a child. Even then she was very proud and willful, and the loveliest girl I ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... The willful murder of a freeman, or even of a slave, was punished with death, from the conviction that men ought to be restrained from the commission of sin, not on account of any distinction of station in life, but from the ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... fall round me, dim and grey, All those I love the most are far away, I look to Thee, and dry my willful tears— With love like Thine, I dread no lonely years. If 'tis Thy will, let bitter partings come, Sweet shall the meetings be in yonder Home; While here I have Thy love that cannot die, And could I feel ...
— Lays from the West • M. A. Nicholl
... stumbled on by {naive} and untutored programmers, hackers consider it the {canonical} example of a naive algorithm. The canonical example of a really *bad* algorithm is {bogo-sort}. A bubble sort might be used out of ignorance, but any use of bogo-sort could issue only from brain damage or willful perversity. ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... Malone. Where, however, others would see nothing but a spirit of frivolity, a love of admiration, dress, pleasure, in Kitty, Miss Sherrard peeped below the surface and discovered some really noble qualities. She determined to be very gentle to this wild, willful girl—to take her, in short, as ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... thy cause; No longer Glory prompts thee to applause; No longer Virtue breathing in thy breast, With all her conscious majesty confest, Still bright and brighter wakes the almighty flame, To rouse the feeble, and the willful tame, And where she sees the catching glimpses roll, Spreads the strong blaze, and all involves the soul; But cold restraints thy conscious fancy chill, And formal passions mock thy struggling will; Or, if thy Genius e'er ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... there, and they upbraided both the author and the singer of the verses, though Alexander and the younger men about him were much amused to hear them, and encouraged them to go on, till at last Clitus, who had drunk too much, and was besides of a froward and willful temper, was so nettled that he could hold no longer, saying, it was not well done to expose the Macedonians so before the barbarians and their enemies, since though it was their unhappiness to be overcome, yet they were much better men than ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... apparently the only one of the travelers who escaped, but as he was hastening to take the overland coach to the East at the time, his testimony could not be submitted to the coroner's deliberation. The facts, however, were sufficiently plain for a verdict of willful murder against the highwayman, although it was believed that the absent witness had basely deserted his companion and left him to his fate, or, as was suggested by others, that he might even have been an accomplice. It was this circumstance ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... period it is a wise man who makes a friend of a girl's mother, and if he does this he will generally be repaid in a twofold manner. No matter how willful a girl may be, her mother's opinion of her friends always ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... matter what prompted it. Whether it serves the purpose of amusement, as a jocose lie; or helps to gain us an advantage or get us out of trouble, as an officious lie; or injures another in any way, as a pernicious lie: mendacity is the character of our utterances, the guilt of willful falsehood is on our soul. A restriction should, however, be made in favor of the jocose lie; it ceases to be a lie when the mind of the speaker is open to all who listen and his narration or statement may be likened to those fables and myths and fairy tales in which is exemplified the charm ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... make. "Your father will thrash you when he comes home tonight," or, "You'd better not let your father see you doing that," or, "You wouldn't behave that way if your father was here," etc., are common threats which we hear directed at headstrong and willful boys. What is the result? Do such threats cause the love of the child for his father to increase? They make the child ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... stick to our train, which carries us through the Red Bank Cut to Ellerslie Station, where occurred the first accident of a serious character which has happened on this road for eighteen years, and which was due only to a willful violation of orders by an old and very trusted conductor. At Ellerslie are the Edgemoor Iron-works of Messrs. William Sellers & Co., where every known improvement in the manufacture of iron is being tested and applied. The next curve in the road ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... she gratifies every idle whim and indulges every depraved desire and perverted appetite—as thousands of mothers do—the result will surely be a peevish, fretful child, that will develop into a morose and irritable man or woman, imperious, unthankful, disobedient, willful, gluttonous, and vicious. ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... been disregarded. John Adams attributed all the distresses at this period to "a downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation;" an ignorance not yet dispelled. More truly could he have said that our distresses arose from willful neglect of the principle of accountability ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... "It's some of mine. You've saved me thirty pounds, Master Dawe, and you've given me good arguments to use against a willful woman that wants my fine new ship for her own toy. We'll not have any scroll-work." His ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... Hainaut, the fiscal-attorney is a domestic." More frequently he nominates some starveling advocate of a petty village in the neighborhood on wages which would not suffice to keep him alive a week." He indemnifies himself out of the peasants. Processes of chicanery, delays and willful complications in the proceedings, sittings at three livres the hour for the advocate and three livres the hour for the bailiff. The black brood of judicial leeches suck so much the more eagerly, because the more numerous, a still more scrawny prey, having paid ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... and we are sorry to say that, in numbers, the latter predominate; that honesty in horse dealing is not proverbial. But horse dealers, like other mortals, are apt to err in judgment; and all their acts should not be set down as willful wrong-doings. However, be their acts what they may, the general verdict is against their motives. Therefore, supposing we could bring any person or number of persons to believe the fact that a man conversant with horses might sell, as a sound horse, ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... just the way with Memory; nothing that she brings to us is complete. She is a willful child; all her toys are broken. I remember tumbling into a huge dust-hole when a very small boy, but I have not the faintest recollection of ever getting out again; and if memory were all we had to trust to, I should be compelled to believe ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... crimes against individuals which were punished with the death penalty. Willful murder, poisoning, parricide, were capitally punished. Adultery was punished by banishment, beside a forfeiture of considerable property. [Footnote: D, 48, 5.] Constantine made it a capital offense. The Romans made adultery to consist in sexual ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... Aunt Barbara turned a deaf ear to what she was saying, thinking only of Ethie, gone; Ethie, driven to such strait, that she must either run away or die; Ethie, the little brown-eyed, rosy-cheeked, willful, imperious girl, whom she loved so much for the very willful imperiousness which always went hand in hand with such pretty fits of penitence, and sorrow, and remorse for the misdeed, that not to love her was impossible. Where was she ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... him. If she made his approaches difficult, there was the more reason for believing that his proposal of marriage would not fall upon ungrateful ears. And, besides, Phil was just the sort of perverse, willful young woman to jump at a proposal, the more readily if the suitor was set apart from her by barriers that invited a ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... not contribute efficiently by their work to the common good. It carries them along somehow. But such members of the community are a burden and a source of weakness at all times. Therefore, for example, there are in most of our communities laws against vagrancy; that is, against willful and habitual idlers "without visible means of support," such ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... willful and damnable lies were brought up against me. Many things which had been said and done in moments of amusement and jocularity were remembered, as though I had said and done those things for wicked purposes. Everything that could be discovered or invented to injure me was laid to my ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... considerably below the usual height, but so perfectly proportioned that one utterly lost perspective. Even her thick, coarse dress could not conceal the exquisite mould in which she was cast. But her chief charm lay in a certain winsome vivacity, a willful waywardness, an ever- changing expression which showed her keenly alive and appreciative. Even now pure mischief looked out of ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... written to your parents," she said. "Quite right, my dear. But why put them into separate envelopes? They could go nicely in one. That, really, is willful waste, Nora, which we ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... case, of course, was a homicide. It usually was. From Beta, Constabulary Fifteen, Lieutenant George Lunt. Jack Holloway—so old Jack had cut another notch on his gun—Cold Creek Valley, Federation citizen, race Terran human; willful killing of a sapient being, to wit Kurt Borch, Mallorysport, Federation citizen, race Terran human. Complainant, Leonard Kellogg, the same. Attorney of record for the defendant, Gustavus Adolphus Brannhard. The last ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... brought him into court. A Mrs. Blany maintained that Doctor Pott had denied her a piece of hog flesh, and that his refusal had caused her to miscarry. The court accepted Mrs. Blany's contention that she believed the denial of the hog flesh caused her distress, but did not hold Pott guilty of willful neglect. ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes
... yielded too easily to the spell of the woods and the call of the old primeval nature. He might have escaped long ago, there had been many opportunities, but he could not see them. His blindness had been willful, the child of his own desires. He knew it too well now. He saw himself guilty and ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... "tell you how poor De Guiche became irritated, furious, exasperated beyond all control, at the different rumors which are circulating about this person? Must I, if you persist in this willful blindness, and if respect should continue to prevent me naming her—must I, I repeat, recall to your recollection the various scenes which Monsieur had with the Duke of Buckingham, and the insinuations which were reported respecting the duke's exile? Must ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... was happiness now, the misery belonged to tomorrow. But suddenly that last unrealized fact—at once immaterial and the most leaden reality of all—lost its weight. The greater freedom she had lately grown into became an absolute indifference, a half willful and half automatic shutting of her eyes to everything but the present, the actuality of Gerrit Ammidon walking by her side. She wanted him to speak, so that she could discover his thoughts, feelings; yet she was reluctant to have their companionship of silence broken: ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... he thought that he could go away and leave this willful Irish girl, whose very willfulness has caught and chained him, he knows now that the thought was ...
— Only an Irish Girl • Mrs. Hungerford
... correction was deserved. Such a spirit can never benefit a child. Some never think of reproving a real fault. It is only when an accident occurs, or some unintentional mishap is done, that the rod is ever used. To be sure there might be blame, but nothing compared with some acts of deliberate and willful transgression, when ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... their corporal oaths, acted upon the very question which the text affirms they "understood just as well, and even better, than we do now"; and twenty-one of them—a clear majority of the whole "thirty-nine"—so acting upon it as to make them guilty of gross political impropriety and willful perjury if, in their understanding, any proper division between local and Federal authority, or anything in the Constitution they had made themselves, and sworn to support, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the Federal ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... himself was taking long odds with little Berk Cecil, the boy having betted on his brother's riding, as though he had the Bank of England at his back. Indeed, save that the lad had the hereditary Royallieu instinct of extravagance, and, with a half thoughtless, half willful improvidence, piled debts and difficulties on this rather brainless and boyish head, he had much more to depend on than his elder; old Lord Royallieu doted on him, spoilt him, and denied him nothing, though himself a stern, austere, passionate ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... will perhaps recollect the abrupt and willful manner in which Mr. Miller threw up his interest as a partner of the company, and departed from Fort Henry, in company with these three trappers, and a fourth, named Cass. He may likewise recognize in Robinson, Rezner, and Hoback, the ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... Chamberlain to Her Imperial Majesty, descendant of the great Wallenstein, was the elder of the eleven children of Emmanuel Philibert, Count Waldstein, and Maria Theresa, Princess Liechtenstein. Very egotistic and willful in his youth, careless of his affairs, and an imprudent gambler, at thirty years of age he had not yet settled down. His mother was disconsolated that her son could not separate himself from occupations "so little suited to his ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... young girl's first love. But when I reflected that I was a slave, and that the laws gave no sanction to the marriage of such, my heart sank within me. My lover wanted to buy me; but I knew that Dr. Flint was too willful and arbitrary a man to consent to that arrangement. From him, I was sure of experiencing all sort of opposition, and I had nothing to hope from my mistress. She would have been delighted to have got rid of me, but not in that way. It would have ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... shades of political faith and congresses of every kind of economic folly; yet in a single century America has risen from the poorest of nations to the wealthiest in all the world. True it is that wealth is congested—that willful Waste and woeful Want go hand in hand—that the land is filled with plutocrats and paupers; but this distressing fact is due to the faults of our industrial system itself, and can never be reformed by ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... combined vigor with gentleness. He was willing to swear that the children of Anne were lawful heirs to the throne, because Parliament, he believed, could regulate the succession; but this did not satisfy the tyrannical monarch. In the latter portion of his reign he grew more suspicious, willful, and cruel. ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... to his annoyance, in a tendency to curl. He was a likable chap, popular with young and old of both sexes. His good looks came from his mother, together with the equable disposition that promised to be his as he grew older and learned better to control his emotions. When a youngster he had been willful at times and prone to flashes of fiery temper, a heritage, beyond doubt, from his father's chronic irascibility, but the discipline of boarding-school and college had taught him to restrain at least its outward manifestations. From Simon, too, he had inherited a flair for ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... Even Mrs. Lancaster, fast and daring and willful as she was, could not say, "I have money—more than I know what to do with: take it." Her eyes said as much, but Clare did not look at her eyes. A minute longer passed in embarrassed silence. Then somebody came up, and Victor was able to walk away. As he crossed the room he saw ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... Miss Thornton," said Annie; "all right, toss it here." Then, as Hester failed to comply, she ran back, knocking her schoolfellows out of place, and, snatching the parcel from Hester's hand, threw it high in the air. This was a piece of not only willful audacity and disobedience, but it even savored of the profane, for Annie's step was on the threshold of the chapel, and the parcel fell with a noisy bang on the floor some feet inside ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... above all other crimes! Sir, I call things by their proper names, stripped of the glozing drapery of conventional usage. You say 'honorable satisfaction'; I say murder! aggravated, unpardonable murder; murder without even the poor palliation of the sudden heat of anger. Cool, deliberate, willful murder, that stabs the happiness of wives and children, and for which it would seem that even the infinite mercy of Almighty God could scarcely accord forgiveness! Oh! save me from the presence of that man who can derive 'satisfaction' from the reflection that he ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... will suffice for all. It is of ludicrous enormity; nor do I believe any thing more flagrantly willful was ever done by himself. I heard Mr. C——, the sufferer, now a most respectable person in a government office, relate it with a due relish, long after quitting the school. The master was in the habit of "spiting" C——; that is to say, of taking every opportunity to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... tear the censure from the records. When Chief Justice Marshall issued a decree against Georgia which did not suit him, Jackson, according to tradition, blurted out that Marshall could go ahead and enforce his own orders. To the end he pursued his willful way, finally even choosing his ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... a time there was a child who was willful, and would not do at her mother wished. For this reason God had no pleasure in her, and let her become ill, and no doctor could do her any good, and in a short time she lay on her death-bed. When she had been lowered into her grave, and the earth was spread over her, all ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... second time to the widow West. She had brought with her to her new home a good-looking, long-legged, black-eyed, black-haired ne'er-do-well of a son, a year or so younger than Hiram. He was a shrewd, quick-witted lad, idle, shiftless, willful, ill-trained perhaps, but as bright and keen as a pin. He was the very opposite to poor, dull Hiram. Eleazer White had never loved his son; he was ashamed of the poor, slack-witted oaf. Upon the other hand, he was very fond of Levi West, whom he always called "our Levi," and whom he treated ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... the negress objected at once, bidding her be still, but Nina declared her intention of talking as fast and as loudly as she could, until her wish was gratified. Then Hannah threatened calling Arthur, thereupon the willful little lady rejoined, "I'll scream like murder, if you do, and burst every single blood-vessel I've got, so bring me the paper, please, or shall I got it myself," and she made a motion as if the would leap upon the floor, while poor old Hannah, regretting the task she had ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... cities appear—how the Democratic masses, turbulent, willful, as I love them, How the whirl, the contest, the wrestle of evil with good, the sounding and resounding, keep on and on, How society waits unform'd, and is for a while between things ended and things begun, How America is the continent of ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... This would be so upon well-established principles, even if the word "knowingly" had been omitted, but that word was inserted to prevent the possibility of doubt on the subject, and to furnish security against the inability of stupid or prejudiced judges or jurors, to distinguish between willful wrong and innocent mistake. If the statute had been merely that "if at any election for representative in Congress any person shall vote without having a lawful right to vote, such person shall be deemed guilty of a crime," there could have been justly no conviction under it without proof that ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... sign of the sky; a shadowy image, as truly a part of the great firmament of the human mind as the light of reason which it seems to interrupt. But the fair deceit and innocent error of it cannot be interpreted nor restrained by a willful purpose, and all additions to it by act do but defile, as the shepherd disturbs the flakes of morning mist with smoke from his fire ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... no need of Anglo-Saxon (or even of American-English!). I understood him at once; and though exceedingly curious to see how they would do it, I had not the heart to insist. I left them to manage their willful little ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... appeared again in the quarter. Another fact was that there was a grandson, a handsome young devil, who had come down occasionally to visit his grandmother, until he began his involuntary sojourn at Sing Sing. Another fact—this one the best known of all—was that two or three years before an impudent, willful young girl named Maggie Carlisle had ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... and yet because the parson's sermon fitted him rather close he took the sulks, and vowed he would never hear the good man again. It was his own loss, but he wouldn't listen to reason, but was as willful as a pig. ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... stationary; and what was my disappointment, on arrival, to find, in place of the expected herd, a young elephant of about four feet high, who, had missed the main body in the retreat and was now roaring for his departed friends! These young things are excessively foolhardy and willful, and he charged me the moment I arrived. As I laid the rifle upon the ground instead of firing at him, the rascally gunbearers, with the exception of Carrasi, threw down the rifles and ran up the trees like so many monkeys, just as I had jumped on one side and caught the young elephant by the tail. ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... disrespect and disobedience to Captain Myles Standish "to have his neck and heels tied together," it does not seem to have occurred to him to plead that he had never entered into the social compact; nor yet when the same wretched man, ten years later, was by a jury convicted of willful murder, and sentenced to death and executed. Logically, under the social-compact theory, it would have been competent for those dissenting from this compact to enter into another, and set up a competing civil government on the same ground; but what would have been the practical value of ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... by common consent turned their backs upon him and did not utter another word. The renegade understood the contempt expressed by those four silent backs, and the willful flush broke through the tan of his face. He had never hated them ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... give him due precedence. When the power of promotion is abused in the grand passages of life whether by People, Legislature, or Executive, the unjust decision recoils on the judge at once. That is not only a gross, but a willful shortness of sight, that cannot discover the deserving. If one will look hard, long, and honestly, he will not fail to discern merit, genius, and qualification; and the eyes and voice of the Press and Public should condemn and ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... not pleased at your being so willful," replied Anton. Lenore turned away without a word, gave her horse to a servant, and walked back in dudgeon ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... pilgrimage to Spain, Malta, Greece, and Constantinople, giving free rein to his humor for intrigue and adventure in the "lands of the sun," and gathering the material for many of his romances and poems. He became at once the picturesque figure of his day,—a handsome, willful poet, sated with life, with no regret for leaving his native land; the conqueror of hearts and the sport of destiny. The world was speedily full of romances of his recklessness, his intrigues, his diablerie, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... been proud, willful and highly strung. Her mother had died young. Her father after futile attempts to guide her steps in the right direction, finally concluded that it was better to let her have her head; she would run away with the bit anyway. She might break ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton |
