Fickleness

“ Fickleness means getting weary of a thing while the thing remains the same. But I have always been faithful to the elusive creature whom I have never been able to get a firm hold of, unless I have done so now. ”

“ He is fickle, people say, with a wise smile. But one always knows quite well why people go away, and why one goes oneself. Not having the sense of fickleness probably means that one is fickle. There is something behind the accusation and the maddening smile with which it is always made, that makes you say thank heaven. People who are not what they call fickle, but always the same, are always, in the midst of their bland security, depressed about life in general, and have “a poor opinion of humanity.” ”

“ Is he not so lovable, that he must have awakened this endeavour in many a breast? And isn't it but natural, if several have been successful in their endeavour?
MARWOOD. You defend him with just the same ardour and almost the same words with which I have often defended him already. It is no crime to have loved; much less still is it a crime to have been loved. But fickleness is a crime.
SARA. Not always; for often, I believe, it is rendered excusable by the objects of one's love, which seldom deserve to be loved for ever. ”

“ The poet here passes, by one of those sudden transitions for which he is remarkable, into the topic of the fickleness of fortune, which seems to have no immediate connection with what has gone before,—but only seems, for this very fickleness is but a fresh reason for making ourselves, by self-possession and a just estimate of what is essential to happiness, independent of the accidents of time or chance. ”

“ Conscious of this inevitable decay of each emotion, Friedrich Schlegel suggests that one should make a virtue of necessity, and declare that the higher life consists in a sort of enthusiastic fickleness. ”

“ He suffers more than is necessary, who suffers before it is necessary; ”

“ He saw that I was depressed, and began to talk teasingly:
"Do you know," he said—we were now at the steps of my boarding-house—"that you are a very fickle little person?"
"I? Why I'm foolishly faithful," I declared.
"I say you are fickle," he asserted with mock seriousness. "Now I know one chap that you used to think the world and all about, but whom you have completely forgotten. ”

“ As for those that think them herein so ridiculous, I would have them give an ingenuous answer to this one query, whether if folly or hanging were left to their choice, they had not much rather live like fools, than die like dogs? But what matter is it if these things are resented by the vulgar? Their ill word is no injury to fools, who are either altogether insensible of any affront, or at least lay it not much to heart. If they were knocked on the head, or had their brains dashed out, they would have some cause to complain ”

“ They invariably finish by becoming the dupes of their own fickle impressions, and are taken in the snares in which their vanity sought to inveigle others.
Could you but see the living tableau of one of those souls tyrannized by the imagination, the sight would arouse both your compassion and disgust; for hers is a fickle, inconstant, fretful and worried life. During the long dreary days not a single instant is completely and sincerely given to God. Her thoughts, affections, desires and occupations never rise above trivialness. ”

“ The King smiled.
“Well!—it would be better to make a fool of yourself generally than particularly! Folly is not so harmful when spread like jam over a whole slice of bread,—but it may cause a life-long sickness, if swallowed in one secret gulp of sweetness!” ”

“ Lying as I do now at the point of death, I find myself at last freed from the follies and prejudices which have been my ruin. The clouds roll away from my mind, and I perceive what a mad fool I have been for years. Most of all I see the madness that instigated me to turn against you, and to put against the loyal love of the best of sons my own miserable pride and the accusation of a lying scoundrel. ”

“ Why, sir, if a thousand pounds lay there I would not stretch out my hand to take one that did not belong to me. How ungrateful you must think me, and what a fool into the bargain after all my experience!”
“Ungrateful you are not, but you are naturally a fool—a weak, flexible fool. A man with a tenth of your gifts would lead you by the nose into temptation. But I warn you if you fall now conscience will prick you as it never yet has; you will be miserable, and yet though miserable perhaps will never rise again, for remorse is not penitence.” ”

“ Wherefore, by my story I purpose at one and the same time to shew you how great is the folly of all such, and how much greater is the folly of those who, deeming themselves mightier than nature, think by sophistical arguments to bring that to pass which is beyond their power, and strive might and main to conform others to their own pattern, however little the nature of the latter may brook such treatment. ”

“ If, then, you are constrained—now accustomed as you are to self-vindication—to acknowledge your unreasonableness, how much more will you be speechless in the last day when madness will admit of no palliation, and folly will appear without disguise! ”

“ They are thin and haggard with the toil, the perspiration stands upon their brow in beads; you feel that if there is another hill beyond the poster they must either get off or die. But this is the result of their own folly. ”

“ His wisdom was that of the self-deceived fool
Who quits the clear fount for the foul, stagnant pool,
Who puts out his eyes lest the light he descry,
Then shouts 'mid the gloom "how clear-sighted am I!" ”

“ She had all the faults peculiar to very weak people—faults which are of the meanest order; violent, for it requires strength of mind to curb emotion; obstinate, for with the obstinate opinion is made up of habit and conceit; and cunning for cunning is the genius of the fool. ”

“ We have sunk so low now that we try to act our exaggerations, and to live up to our lies. We call it "keeping up appearances;" and no more bitter phrase could, perhaps, have been invented to describe our childish folly. ”

“ In every nature there are elements of weakness, or worse than weakness. Supposing, for instance, that - that any public man, my father, or Lord Merton, or Robert, say, had, years ago, written some foolish letter to some one . . .
LADY CHILTERN. What do you mean by a foolish letter?
LORD GORING. A letter gravely compromising one's position. I am only putting an imaginary case.
LADY CHILTERN. Robert is as incapable of doing a foolish thing as he is of doing a wrong thing.
LORD GORING. [After a long pause.] Nobody is incapable of doing a foolish thing. Nobody is incapable of doing a wrong thing. ”

“ Thou art a fool, if so thou dost believe. Hold it for certain, that, if blandishments and supplications did not suffice, he would, whatever thou mightest think of it, have recourse to force. Observe we, then, towards them and theirs the same rule which they observe towards us and ours. Take the boon that Fortune offers thee; repulse her not; rather go thou to meet her, and hail her advance; for be sure that, if thou do not so, to say nought of thy lady's death, which will certainly ensue, thou thyself wilt repent thee thereof so often that thou wilt be fain of death. ”

“ All men have I despised for their folly, greed and vain-glory,—I have fought them with their own weapons of avarice, cunning, cruelty, and falsehood,—but THOU hast been even beneath MY contempt! 'Twas scarcely worth my while to fool thee, thou wert so easily fooled! ”

“ If you could only see what a miserable spectacle, what a fool exhibition, you make of yourself [Pg 107] on such occasions, when you go all to pieces and rave like a madman because you miss your train, or because you think some one insults you, when you step down from the throne of your reason and let the brute sit there and rule in your place, you would be so chagrined and mortified that you would leave nothing undone to rid yourself of your fault. ”

“ For as this wise man pitied and bewailed their palpable madness that were possessed with so gross an error, so they in return laughed at him as a doting fool and cast him out of their company. In like manner the common sort of men chiefly admire those things that are most corporeal and almost believe there is nothing beyond them. Whereas on the contrary, these devout persons, by how much the nearer anything concerns the body, by so much more they neglect it and are wholly hurried away with the contemplation of things invisible. ”

“ It is the supreme example of the childish folly that, for the next two years, we were to see always hand in hand with diabolical wickedness and cunning. And always the folly has robbed the cunning of its prey. ”

“ These reflections make you feel a little more cheerful, but only for a brief period; for the next moment you think what a fool you must be to imagine for an instant that anybody would be sorry at anything that might happen to you. ”

“ Only now and then, when all things do not fall exactly as I wish them, when foolish, wicked people will persist in doing foolish, wicked acts, affecting my comfort and happiness, I rage and fret a goodish deal. ”

“ She pushed his arm aside almost roughly.
"You are mad, milor!" she said, in a choked murmur. "Such foolhardiness, when your life is in deadly jeopardy, becomes criminal folly——"
"The best of life," he said airily, "is folly. ”

“ The truth is, a fickle dame is like a sunset, momentarily aglow for every one.” When the minister said this to him, the king fell into a musing, and thought—“Yes, that wise man has told me the truth. For a fickle dame is like human life; connexion with her is unstable, she changes every moment, and is terrible, bringing disgust at the end. The wise man never falls into the power of deep rivers or of women, both which drown him who falls into their power, while they exhibit wanton sportfulness. ”

“ I should but expose myself too far, and incur the guilt of being roundly laughed at, if I proceed to enumerate the several kinds of the folly of the vulgar. I shall confine therefore my following discourse only to such as challenge the repute of wisdom, and seemingly pass for men of the soundest intellectuals. ”

“ More detestable, because more powerful to do hurt, and with less excuse for doing it, is the Blab; the unctuous, tattling Blab, who creeps to your side with words softer than butter, but having war in his heart ”

“ I have been told, by some gentler people, that I am severe, misjudging, giving to those little foibles almost inseparable from human nature the name of vice, and this may be true; for you call yourself a foolish man—I call you vicious.—Nay start not, Murden ”

“ But I would have them to whom these things seem ridiculous to consider with themselves whether it be not better to live so pleasant a life in such kind of follies, than, as the proverb goes, "to take a halter and hang themselves." ”

“ And now I could plunge a dagger into my bosom, when I hear myself everywhere pitied, and observe the triumph of my enemies, who say that this is always the case with vain persons, whose heads are turned with conceit, who affect to despise forms and such petty, idle nonsense.
Say what you will of fortitude, but show me the man who can patiently endure the laughter of fools, when they have obtained an advantage over him. 'Tis only when their nonsense is without foundation that one can suffer it without complaint. ”

“ Blame yourself only for the consequences of your own folly. Edgar, in Lear, says, "This is the excellent foppery of the world! That when we are sick in fortune we make guilty of our disasters, the sun, the moon, and the stars: as if we were villains on necessity ”

“ Not for the first time in my life—not for the first time in this enterprise—I acted as only one could act who was possessed by some spirit of mischief for his own undoing. Even to myself the impulse which comes over me at times to play the fool—to say or do at the critical moment the one word or thing which ought to be left unsaid or undone, is altogether unaccountable. ”

“ Pardon me, but I am beside myself with rage and self-loathing. True, I have not been intentionally false, but there are circumstances in which folly, weakness, and stupid blundering are nearly as bad, and the results quite as bad. What can you say of the man who pays open suit and makes a distinct offer and pledge to a lady, and the retreats from that suit and breaks that pledge, and through no fault whatever in the lady herself? ”

“ I’ve seen more trouble come from long engagements than from any other form of human folly. ”

“ Let's proceed then, and compare the condition of any of your wise men with that of this fool. Fancy to me now some example of wisdom you'd set up against him; one that had spent his childhood and youth in learning the sciences and lost the sweetest part of his life in watchings, cares, studies, and for the remaining part of it never so much as tasted the least of pleasure; ever sparing, poor, sad, sour, unjust, and rigorous to himself, and troublesome and hateful to others ”

“ But soon he shook off this particular form of weakness, and thought, "What nonsense comes into a man's head, when he's once off his right balance—such wild nonsense, such mad nonsense. Drown her, poor innocent. ”

“ Thou wert a verie foole to rest so perswaded. Assure thy selfe, that if entreaties and faire meanes might not prevaile, force, and compulsion (whatsoever ensued thereon) woulde winne the masterie. Let us then use them, and the commodities unto them belonging, as they would us and ours. Use the benefit of thy Fortune, & beware of abusing her favour. She yet smiles on thee; but take heede least she turne her backe, it will then be over-late to repent thy folly. And if my Ladie die through thy disdaine, be assured, that thou canst not escape with life, beside open shame and disgrace for ever. ”

“ To feign the fool when fit occasions rise, Argues the being more completely wise.
It is easy therefore to collect how great a value ought to be put upon real folly, when the very shadow, and bare imitation of it, is so much esteemed. ”

“ She, rather tartly than otherwise, not out of malice, but of old habit, began to speak thus, "Many folk, knowing much, imagine that others know nothing, and so ofttimes, what while they think to overreach others, find, after the event, that they themselves have been outwitted of them; wherefore I hold his folly great who setteth himself without occasion to test the strength of another's wit. ”