caprice

Paula seemed struck by the generous and cheerful fairness of his remarks, and said gently, 'Perhaps your departure is not absolutely necessary for my happiness; and I do not wish from what you call caprice --'

A Laodicean : a Story of To-day Thomas Hardy 1884

There is hardly any one here who can understand what they call my caprice of entering the priesthood, and these good people tell me, with rustic candor, that I ought to throw aside the clerical garb; that to be a priest is very well for a poor young man; but that I, who am to be a rich man’s heir, should marry, and console the old age of my father by giving him half a dozen handsome and robust grandchildren.

March 22d. Part I.—Letters from My Nephew 1917

They are guarded better by their calculations than a virgin by her mother and her convent; and they have invented the word caprice for that unbartered love which they allow themselves from time to time, for a rest, for an excuse, for a consolation, like usurers, who cheat

Camille Alexandre Dumas fils 1859

Hervey, 'that she wondered that a man who was so well acquainted with the female sex should be surprised at any instance of caprice from a woman.'

Belinda 1801

There was a tendency to de-personalize this divine being, and with this came an absence of caprice, that is, the regularity of natural phenomena was made to depend on a regularity in the operation of their cause or causes.

CAUSATION JULIUS WEINBERG 1968

Yet that is the caprice, that is the unreasonable, the foul, the gross, the monstrous, the outrageous, incredible injustice of which we are hourly guilty towards the whole unhappy race of negroes.

The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus American Anti-Slavery Society

They are illustrations of a general physiological law that in some cases might be called a caprice of nature, in virtue of which the rudiments of a process that is to be effected at a future epoch are sketched out during an epoch already existing.

The Education of American Girls Anna Callender Brackett

How funny it would be, if the French some day, as a novelty, or what they would call a caprice, were to try the effect of truth; "though not naturally honest," as Autolycus says, "were to become so by chance."

Biographical Study of A W Kinglake Tuckwell, Rev W 1902

To behave according to caprice is to oscillate mechanically between two or more ready-made alternatives and at length to settle on one of them; it is no real maturing of an internal state, no real evolution; it is merely -- however paradoxical the assertion may seem -- bending the will to imitate the mechanism of the intellect.

Evolution créatrice. English Henri Bergson 1900

The husband's faithlessness is called a caprice, an adventure, a craving or madness of the senses.

His Excellency the Minister Jules Claretie 1876