Capricious Quotes

• The mind is the most capricious of insects — flitting, fluttering.

  Virginia Woolf

  Mind, Fluttering, Insects

  Virginia Woolf (2003). “A Writer's Diary”, p.133, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• A consistent soul believes in destiny, a capricious one in chance.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Believe, Intelligent, Destiny

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• Love is a capricious creature which desires everything and can be contented with almost nothing.

  Madeleine de Scudery

  Love Is, Desire, Creatures

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• Nothing is more unjust or capricious than public opinion.

  William Hazlitt

  Public Opinion, Unjust, Opinion

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1476, Delphi Classics

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• Washington politicians basically view the People as a capricious and dangerous enemy, a dumb mob whose only interesting quality happens to be their power to take away politicians' jobs... When the government sees its people as the enemy, sooner or later that feeling gets to be mutual. And that's when the real weirdness begins.

  Matt Taibbi

  Jobs, Real, Government

  Matt Taibbi (2008). “The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire”, p.131, Spiegel & Grau

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• As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold.

  Jonathan Swift

  Love, Cold, Esteem

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• I do not understand the capricious lewdness of the sleeping mind.

  John Cheever

  Dream, Sleep, Mind

  "Roget's Thesaurus of Words for Intellectuals". Book by David Olsen, Michelle Bevilacqua (p. 67), October 15, 2011.

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• 

  Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Inspirational, Motivational, Positive

  Benjamin Disraeli (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Benjamin Disraeli (Illustrated)”, p.4990, Delphi Classics

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• The Christian god can easily be pictured as virtually the same god as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three headed monster cruel vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging three headed beast like god one only needs to look at the caliber of people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes fools and hypocrites.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Christian, Atheist, Hypocrite

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• Oh, Fortuna, you capricious sprite!

  John Kennedy Toole

  Fortuna

  John Kennedy Toole (1987). “A Confederacy of Dunces”

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• From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.

  Harry A. Blackmun

  Tinkering, Death Penalty, Human Rights

  Callins v.Collins (dissenting opinion) (1994)

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• Einstein repeatedly argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer.

  Fred Brooks

  Comfort, Arbitrary, Amusing

  "No Silver Bullet". Book by Fred Brooks, 1986.

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• There is nothing capricious in nature and the implanting of a desire indicates that its gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feel it.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Life, Nature

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• Reasonable orders are easy enough to obey; it is capricious, bureaucratic or plain idiotic demands that form the habit of discipline.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Order, Discipline, Demand

  1970 Stilwell and the American Experience in China, pt.1, ch.1.

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• Life does not require us to be consistent, cruel, patient, helpful, angry, rational, thoughtless, loving, rash, open-minded, neurotic, careful, rigid, tolerant, wasteful, rich, downtrodden, gentle, sick, considerate, funny, stupid, healthy, greedy, beautiful, lazy, responsive, foolish, sharing, pressured, intimate, hedonistic, industrious, manipulative, insightful, capricious, wise, selfish, kind or sacrificed. Life does, however, require us to live with the consequences of our choices.

  Richard Bach

  Funny, Beautiful, Wise

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• How dare you? How dare you create a world in which there is such misery that is not our fault? It's not right, it's utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid god who creates a world that is so full of injustice and pain?

  Stephen Fry

  Pain, Stupid, Mean

  YouTube Chanel "Secular Talk"/ "Stephen Fry Annihilates God", www.youtube.com. January 31, 2015.

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• Huamns, uregulated, are cruel and capricious; violet and selfish; miserable and quarrelsome. It is only after their instincts and basic emotions have been controlled that they can be happy, generous, and good.

  Lauren Oliver

  Selfish, Violet, Emotion

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• Cats are possessed of a shy, retiring nature, cajoling, haughty, and capricious, difficult to fathom. They reveal themselves only to certain favored individuals, and are repelled by the faintest suggestion of insult or even by the most trifling deception.

  Pierre Loti

  Appreciation, Cat, Deception

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• Memory is a capricious and arbitrary creature. You never can tell what pebble she will pick up from the shore of life to keep among her treasures, or what inconspicuous flower of the field she will preserve as the symbol of "thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." . . . And yet I do not doubt that the most Important things are always the best remembered.

  Henry Van Dyke

  Life, Memories, Lying

  Henry Van Dyke (2015). “Little Rivers”, p.68, eKitap Projesi

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• The sadistic narcissist perceives himself as Godlike, ruthless and devoid of scruples, capricious and unfathomable, emotion-less and non-sexual, omniscient, omnipotent and omni-present, a plague, a devastation, an inescapable verdict.

  Sam Vaknin

  Devastation, Emotion, Narcissist

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• Because the Illinois death penalty system is arbitrary and capricious - and therefore immoral - I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.

  George Ryan

  Illinois, Arbitrary, Death Penalty

  "Illinois Death Row Emptied". www.washingtonpost.com. January 12, 2003.

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• Social science virtually abhors the event. Not without reason; the short-term is the most capricious and deceptive form of time.

  Fernand Braudel

  Events, Reason, Social

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• Our law very often reminds one of those outskirts of cities where you cannot for a long time tell how the streets come to wind about in so capricious and serpent-like a manner. At last it strikes you that they grew up, house by house, on the devious tracks of the old green lanes; and if you follow on to the existing fields, you may often find the change half complete.

  Walter Bagehot

  Time, Wind, Law

  Walter Bagehot (1930). “The English Constitution: And Other Political Essays”, p.175, Lulu.com

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• Capricious, wanton, bold, and brutal Lust Is meanly selfish; when resisted, cruel; And, like the blast of Pestilential Winds, Taints the sweet bloom of Nature's fairest forms.

  John Milton

  Sweet, Selfish, Wind

  John Milton, John D'Alton (1741). “Comus: a masque, now adapted to the stage by John Dalton ... The fifth edition”, p.35

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• Or is it your reputation that's bothering you? But look at how soon we're all forgotten. The abyss of endless time that swallows it all. The emptiness of those applauding hands. The people who praise us; how capricious they are, how arbitrary. And the tiny region it takes place. The whole earth a point in space - and most of it uninhabited.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Bothering You, Endless Time, Hands

  Marcus Aurelius (2002). “Meditations: A New Translation”, p.38, Modern Library

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