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

  62 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Believe, Intelligent, Destiny

  31 Copy quote

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

  Madeleine de Scudery

  Love Is, Desire, Creatures

  22 Copy quote

• 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

  27 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Jonathan Swift

  Love, Cold, Esteem

  15 Copy quote

• 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.

  15 Copy quote

  Show source
• 

  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

  147 Copy quote

  Show source

• Oh, Fortuna, you capricious sprite!

  John Kennedy Toole

  Fortuna

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

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  115 Copy quote

• 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

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  17 Copy quote

• 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)

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  30 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  Stephen Fry

  Greek, Envious, Divine

  "The Importance of Unbelief". Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. December 8, 2009.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Not to be offensive, not to be capricious, not to be arbitrary, not to be neurotic, not to be an actor outer, you're just trying to get in and you're given so little time to get in gently, but it's always hard.

  William Hurt

  Trying, Arbitrary, Actors

  Interview with Daniel Robert Epstein, suicidegirls.com. September 18, 2005.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Any test that turns on what is offensive to the community's standards is too loose, too capricious, too destructive of freedom of expression to be squared with the First Amendment. Under that test, juries can censor, suppress, and punish what they don't like, provided the matter relates to "sexual impurity" or has a tendency "to excite lustful thoughts." This is community censorship in one of its worst forms. It creates a regime where, in the battle between the literati and the Philistines, the Philistines are certain to win.

  William O. Douglas

  Winning, Expression, Community

  "Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. June 24, 1957.

  56 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Christian god is a being of terrific character - cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Christian, Character, Religion

  46 Copy quote

• The desert is a capricious lady, and sometimes she drives men crazy.

  Paulo Coelho

  Crazy, Men, Desert

  Paulo Coelho (1998). “The Alchemist - 10th Anniversary Edition”, HarperSanFrancisco

  56 Copy quote

  Show source

• Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness. It was deeper and more intimate that the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwo’s fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself.

  Chinua Achebe

  Heart, Men, Okonkwo

  Chinua Achebe (1996). “Things Fall Apart”, p.9, Heinemann

  9 Copy quote

  Show source