"Whimsy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the department could endeavor now to do was to restrict the conflagration's lateral spread, to keep the daemon in the track he had chosen, and not allow him to stray to east or west. But they reckoned without his whimsy. ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... Immorality; Nor properly of Raillery, his Adventures in general being too gross and disastrous;— The Humour appears, in the Representation of a Person in real Life, fancying himself to be, under the most solemn Obligations to attempt hardy Atchievements; and upon this Whimsy immediately pursuing the most romantic Adventures, with great Gravity, Importance, and Self- sufficiency; To heighten your Mirth, the hardy Atchievements to be accomplish'd by this Hero, are wittily contrasted by his own meagre ...
— An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Railery, Satire, and Ridicule (1744) • Corbyn Morris
... Leo. That wouldn't be playing the game. No matter what I felt at heart, I'd say, 'Bless you, my children.' But just the same—" He paused, and the laughter signals in the corners of his eyes advertised a whimsey—"I'd say to myself that Leo was making a sad mistake. You see, he doesn't ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... cup up to the brim, and insisted that he should drink what he called "clean caup out." "This love," he said, "is but a bairnly matter for a brisk young fellow like yourself, Master Jenkin. And if ye must needs have a whimsy, though I think it would be safer to venture on a staid womanly body, why, here be as bonny lasses in London as this Peg-a-Ramsay. You need not sigh sae deeply, for it is very true—there is as good fish in the sea as ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... Luther denied the infallibility of the Pope. He transposes all moral values, finds virtue often weakness and vice often strength, girds at all the cloud-spinning philosophers, and is one of the most brilliant and suggestive of modern writers, full of epigram and whimsy, and wielding the clumsy German tongue with rare grace and dexterity. But, as might be expected of the son of a parson, he pursues his reaction against conventional cant beyond the bounds of legitimate paradox, replacing the narrow by the narrower. Nietzsche ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill |
