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Capricious Quotes

“A man so various, that he seem'd to be Not one, but all Mankinds Epitome. Stiff in Opinions, always in the wrong; Was every thing by starts, and nothing long: But, in the course of one revolving Moon, Was Chymist, Fidler, States-Man, and Buffoon: Then all for Women, Painting, Rhiming, Drinking; Besides ten thousand freaks that dy'd in thinking. Blest Madman, who coud every hour employ, With something New to wish, or to enjoy! Rayling and praising were his usual Theams; And both (to shew his Judgment) in Extreams: So over Violent, or over Civil, That every man, with him, was God or Devil. In squandring Wealth was his peculiar Art: Nothing went unrewarded, but Desert. Begger'd by Fools, whom still he found too late: He had his Jest, and they had his Estate.”

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Book:Absalom and Achitophel
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“The attitude which the man in the street unconsciously adopts towards science is capricious and varied. At one moment he scorns the scientist for a highbrow, at another anathematizes him for blasphemously undermining his religion; but at the mention of a name like Edison he falls into a coma of veneration. When he stops to think, he does recognize, however, that the whole atmosphere of the world in which he lives is tinged by science, as is shown most immediately and strikingly by our modern conveniences and material resources. A little deeper thinking shows him that the influence of science goes much farther and colors the entire mental outlook of modern civilised man on the world about him.”

ScienceInfluenceIgnoranceCivilizationResourcesBiasThinkBlasphemyCapriciousViewVenerationMaterialNobel LaureateThomas EdisonEdisonThomas Alva Edison
Book:Reflections of a Physicist
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“Justification by grace through faith' is the theologian's learned phrase for what Chesterton once called 'the furious love of G-d.' He is not moody or capricious; He knows no seasons of change. He has a single relentless stance toward us: He loves us. He is the only G-d man has ever heard of who loves sinners. False gods- the gods of human manufacturing- despise sinners, but the Father of (Yeshua) loves all, no matter what they do.”

KnowsMenHumansMatterFatherGraceHeardSeasonsNo Matter WhatPhrasesSinnerDespiseJustificationTheologianRelentlessManufacturingFuriousStanceMoodyCapriciousFalse Gods
Author:Brennan Manning
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“England and all civilised nations stand in deadly peril of not having enough to eat. As mouths multiply, food resources dwindle. Land is a limited quantity, and the land that will grow wheat is absolutely dependent on difficult and capricious natural phenomena... I hope to point a way out of the colossal dilemma. It is the chemist who must come to the rescue of the threatened communities. It is through the laboratory that starvation may ultimately be turned into plenty... The fixation of atmospheric nitrogen is one of the great discoveries, awaiting the genius of chemists.”

WayMayEnoughScienceNationsGrowsDifficultCommunityNaturalLandFoodGeniusMouthsDiscoveryResourcesEnglandPlentyDependentQuantityRescueThreatenedPerilLaboratoryDilemmaStarvationWheatChemistColossalCapriciousCivilisedFixationNatural PhenomenaNitrogen
Author:William Crookes
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“Woman is a delightful instrument of pleasure, but it is necessary to know its trembling strings, to study the position of them, the timid keyboard, the fingering so changeful and capricious which befits it.”

KnowsWomenPleasureStudyPositionInstrumentsStringsDelightfulTremblingKeyboardsCapricious
Book:Analytical Studies: Physiology of Marriage and Petty Troubles of Married Life
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“We cannot by a little verbal sophistry confound the qualities of different minds, nor force opposite excellences into a union by all the intolerance in the world. If we have a taste for some one precise style or manner, we may keep it to ourselves and let others have theirs. If we are more catholic in our notions, and want variety of excellence and beauty, it is spread abroad for us to profusion in the variety of books and in the several growth of men's minds, fettered by no capricious or arbitrary rules.”

IfsMenWorldWantMindMayLittlesBookDifferentForceGrowthQualityStyleTasteOppositesCatholicUnionsExcellenceNotionSpreadVarietyIntolerancePreciseArbitraryCapriciousSophistryDifferent Minds
Author:William Hazlitt
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“Throughout his last half-dozen books, for example, Arthur Koestler has been conducting a campaign against his own misunderstanding of Darwinism. He hopes to find some ordering force, constraining evolution to certain directions and overriding the influence of natural selection. [...] Darwinism is not the theory of capricious change that Koestler imagines. Random variation may be the raw material of change, but natural selection builds good design by rejecting most variants while accepting and accumulating the few that improve adaptation to local environments.”

MayHas BeensBookLastsCertainForceNaturalHalfAcceptingEnvironmentImagineInfluenceExampleDesignMaterialsTheoryEvolutionCampaignsLocalsDozenSelectionMisunderstandingAdaptationVariationNatural SelectionArthurRejectingRaw MaterialsConductingDarwinismGood DesignCapricious
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
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“I view the major features of my own odyssey as a set of mostly fortunate contingencies. I was not destined by inherited mentality or family tradition to become a paleontologist. I can locate no tradition for scientific or intellectual careers anywhere on either side of my eastern European Jewish background. I view my serious and lifelong commitment to baseball in entirely the same manner: purely as a contingent circumstance of numerous, albeit not entirely capricious, accidents.”

I CanSidesMy OwnViewsCareersSeriousCircumstancesMajorsIntellectualCommitmentTraditionBaseballAccidentsBackgroundsFortunateFeaturesMentalityEasternDestinedLifelongCapriciousOdysseyContingencyFamily Tradition
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
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“The life of a savage is beset by glowering terrors: from birth to death he lives in an animated world; where the sun and the stars, sticks, stones, and rivers are obsessed with his fate. He is busy all the time in a ritual designed to propitiate the abounding jealousies of nature. For his world is magical and capricious, the simplest thing is occult.”

WorldStarsSunFateBirthRiversStonesSticksBusyTerrorObsessedRitualSavagesSimplestAnimatedOccultCapricious
Book:The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy
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“I could not but smile to think in what out-of-the-way corners genius produces her bantlings! And the Muses, those capricious dames, who, forsooth, so often refuse to visit palaces, and deny a single smile to votaries in splendid studies, and gilded drawing-rooms--what holes and burrows will they frequent to lavish their favors on some ragged disciple!”

ThinkingWayRoomsStudyProduceGeniusRefuseCornersDenyDrawingFavorsHolesMuseDisciplePalacesSplendidCapriciousDamesRaggedGilded
Book:The Complete Tales of Washington Irving
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“living for oneself is a bad thing. The keenest intellectual pleasure comes from being able to return to the self after being absent from it for a spell. But living all the time inside the self, that most tyrannical, demanding and capricious of companions - no, one shouldn't do it.”

SelfAblePleasureReturnIntellectualOneselfCompanionBad ThingsSpellsAbsentCapricious
Book:Flaubert-Sand: The Correspondence of Gustave Flaubert & George Sand
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“Assume the worst. About everybody. But don't let this poisoned outlook affect your job performance. Let it all roll off your back. Ignore it. Be amused by what you see and suspect. Just because someone you work with is a miserable, treacherous, self-serving, capricious and corrupt asshole shouldn't prevent you from enjoying their company, working with them or finding them entertaining.”

SelfJobsEnjoyCompanyWorstFindingsPerformancesAssumingMiserableServingSuspectsEntertainingOutlookAmusedTreacherousSelf ServingCapriciousKitchen Confidential
Book:Tony Bourdain boxset: Kitchen Confidential & Medium Raw
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“The complaints of contemporary writes, who deplore the increase of luxury and deprevation of manners, are commonly expressive of their peculiar temper and situation. There are few observers who possess a clear and comprehensive view of the revolutions of society, and who are capable of discovering the nice and secret springs of action which impel, in the same uniform direction, the bland and capricious passions of a multitude of individuals.”

WritingActionPassionIndividualViewsSecretSituationHistoryClearNiceRevolutionCapableSpringIncreaseContemporaryLuxuryMannersPeculiarTemperDiscoveringUniformsMultitudesComplaintsObserversComprehensiveRoman EmpireExpressiveBlandCapricious
Book:The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
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“Indeed the worthy housewife was of such a capricious nature, that she not only attained a higher pitch of genius than Macbeth, in respect of her ability to be wise, amazed, temperate and furious, loyal and neutral in an instant, but would sometimes ring the changes backwards and forwards on all possible moods and flights in one short quarter of an hour; performing, as it were, a kind of triple bob major on the peal of instruments in the female belfry, with a skilfulness and rapidity of execution that astonished all who heard her.”

KindSometimesCharacterHoursAbilityInterestingWiseHeardGeniusHigherMajorsFemaleInstrumentsWorthyRingsMoodFlightPerformingInstantQuartersLoyalBobExecutionAmazedBackwardsBeing WiseHousewifeFuriousInteresting CharactersCapricious
Author:Charles Dickens
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“The Greeks understood perfectly that if there were divine beings they are capricious, unkind, malicious mostly, temperamental, envious and mostly deeply unpleasant because that you can say well yes, all right, if there is going to be god or gods then you have to admit that they're very at the very least capricious. They're certainly not consistent. They're certainly not all loving.”

IfsWellsDivineUnderstoodGreekConsistentEnviousUnkindMaliciousCapricious
Author:Stephen Fry
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“How truly does this journal contain my real and undisguised thoughts--I always write it according to the humour I am in, and if astranger was to think it worth reading, how capricious--insolent & whimsical I must appear!--one moment flighty and half mad,--the next sad and melancholy. No matter! Its truth and simplicity are its sole recommendations.”

IfsThinkingWritingDoeRealMatterMomentsReadingNextHalfHumourMadSimplicityMelancholySoleJournalRecommendationsCapriciousWhimsicalWorth ReadingInsolent
Author:Fanny Burney
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“I had some short struggle in my mind whether I should resign my lover or my liberty, but this lasted not long. I found myself as free as air and could not bear the thought of putting myself in any man's power for life only from a present capricious inclination.”

MenShouldMindLongFoundWomenLibertyMarriageStruggleAirBearsLoversSexismInclinationCapriciousMy Lover
Book:The cry: a new dramatic fable : in two volumes
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“[D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few.”

MenGovernmentEyeWealthAbilityPleasureLibertyMoralVirtueDemocracyIntellectualPropertyWitEvery ManCrueltyReputationSecureAnarchyProperty RightsDegeneratesMouldWantonCapriciousSubordinationMoral Virtues
Author:John Adams
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“And what is the religion of many persons but a kind of demonism that delights in human sacrifices and causes them to look with horror on the greatest part of mankind? Plutarch, it is well known, has observed very justly that it is better not to believe in a god than to believe him to be a capricious and malevolent being.”

BelieveHumansWellsLooksKindPersonsReligionCausesReligiousKnownSacrificeMankindHorrorDelightWell KnownCapricious
Book:The Correspondence of Richard Price: February 1786-February 1791
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“By trying to adjust to the findings that it once tried so viciously to ban and repress, religion has only succeeded in restating the same questions that undermined it in earlier epochs. What kind of designer or creator is so wasteful and capricious and approximate? What kind of designer or creator is so cruel and indifferent? And - most of all - what kind of designer or creator only chooses to "reveal" himself to semi-stupefied peasants in desert regions?”

TryingKindFindingsCreatorDesertDesignerRegionsIndifferentPeasantsBansCapricious
Book:The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever
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“But [the Arabs'] friendship was venal, their faith inconstant, their enmity capricious: it was an easier task to excite than to disarm these roving barbarians; and, in the familiar intercourse of war, they learned to see, and to despise, the splendid weakness both of Rome and of Persia.”

WarEasierWeaknessTasksFamiliarRomeDespiseSplendidIntercourseBarbariansEnmityCapriciousPersiaRoving
Book:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: The Modern Library Collection (Complete and Unabridged)
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