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adjective
Changeful  adj.  Full of change; mutable; inconstant; fickle; uncertain. "His course had been changeful."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Changeful" Quotes from Famous Books



... summer, as he had loved the light spring days leading up to it: the long line of dancing days that had drawn them on and on ever since they had left their ship at Naples four months earlier. Four months of beauty, changeful, inexhaustible, weaving itself about him in shapes of softness and strength; and beside him, hand in hand with him, embodying that spirit of shifting magic, the radiant creature through whose eyes ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... gleaming trout, changeful as a prisoned rainbow, lured from his cool stream; and the poor deer chased from his forest home by savage dogs and cruel men, driven into crystal lakes, lassoed there with ropes, throats cut with dull knives, and backs broken with flying balls. Immortal ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... bigot's frown, my friend, O'ercast thy brow with gloom, For Autumn's sober brown, my friend, Shall follow Summer's bloom. Let smiles and sighs and loving eyes In changeful beauty shine, And shed their beams on Youth's gay dreams Of ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay

... inherited the fortune with the name of Nightingale through his mother. Lea Hurst, where Miss Nightingale passed the summer months of each year, is situated in the Matlock district, among bold masses of limestone rock, gray walls, full of fossils, covered with moss and lichen, with the changeful river Derwent now dashing over its stony bed, now quietly winding between little dales with clefts and dingles. Those who have travelled by the Derby and Buxton Railway will remember the narrow valleys, the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... of our Government towards Gordon, and I don't know enough of the question to be able to gainsay your conclusion, but it would seem at first glance that, considering the imperative reasons, the vast distances, the changeful condition of things, and the consequent changes of mind, the task of doing justice between the Government and this heroic envoy would be one of some complexity. With my repeated thanks,—I remain, dear sir, very ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... difficult to imagine the times when this little pretty country was treated by its folk as if it had been an ugly characterless waste, with no delicate beauty to be guarded, with no heed taken of the ever fresh pleasure of the recurring seasons, and changeful weather, and diverse quality of the soil, and so forth? How could people be so ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris

... vast and changeful realm the sky offers a greater opportunity for selection than any other part ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore

... Round never-to-be-reach'd desires, Whatever rapturously sighs That life is love, love sacrifice. All I am sure of heaven is this: Howe'er the mode, I shall not miss One true delight which I have known. Not on the changeful earth alone Shall loyalty remain unmoved T'wards everything I ever loved. So Heaven's voice calls, like Rachel's voice To Jacob in the field, 'Rejoice!' Serve on some seven more sordid years, Too short for weariness or tears; Serve on; then, oh, Beloved, ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore

... changeful sand doth only know The shallow tide and latest; The rocks have mark'd its highest flow, The deepest and the greatest; And deeper still the flood-marks grow:— So, since the hour I met thee, The more the tide of time doth flow, The less can I ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... details connected with the escape of the lovers; omitting, as a matter of prudence, the attempt of Giacomo Gradenigo on the life of Don Camillo. The unpractised and single-hearted girl heard him in breathless attention, the color of her cheek and the changeful eye betraying the force of her sympathies at each turn in ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper

... the labors of their own hands, civilized dwellings amid the tangled forest and the dreary morass. At a time when clan-feuds and bloodshed were rife, and princes rose and fell, and all was stormy and changeful, they had covered the islands with monastic schools, where the Scriptures were studied, ancient books collected and read, and native missionaries trained for their own country, and for the remotest parts of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various

... lying between Edinburgh and Glasgow, nature would seem to have collected and set forth specimens of every one of these terrestrial beauties. As to the heavens, they would be spread abroad as over the whole earth, with their changeful clouds, serene or veiled moon, their radiant sun, and clustering stars. The expedition had been planned so as to combine a view of all ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne

... ill with his critics, who, when in quest of explanations of his changeful courses, sought for them, as is the wont of the average politician, in the least noble parts of human nature. In his case they felt especially repelled by his imperial aloofness, the secrecy of his deliberations, and the magisterial tone of his judgments, even when these were ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... stands for her, is not in the least the true type. Frou-frou is a creature that can love, can suffer, can repent, can die. She is false in sentiment and in art, but she is tender after all; poor, feverish, wistful, changeful morsel of humanity. A slender, helpless, breathless, and frail thing who, under one sad, short sin, sinks down ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... first despatched to a boarding school as unmanageable, at the age of seven, and thereafter her life had been a changeful one, since her father could not live without her, and her mother would not keep her at home. She had always presented a lively contrast to her elder brothers, who were all that a parent's heart could desire, and too old to be much interested in their ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture

... the sea, my dear, The wand'ring waters, green and grey; Thine eyes are wonderful and clear, And deep, and deadly, even as they; The spirit of the changeful sea Informs thine eyes at night and noon, She sways the tides, and the heart of thee, ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang

... the knowledge of things that change, as they change and of their changes. The physical facts that we have learned in the last years about that changeful body the sun are ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder

... prime favourite with all alike. He had entered the service of the Vernons soon after the monasteries were dissolved, in the time of Henry VIII., and had grown old in his office. Throughout the critical and changeful reigns of Edward and Mary, as well as the early years of Elizabeth's time, he had, in spite of all the attempts made to oust him, retained his position as confessor to the family and priest of the chapel at Haddon, and, as he had christened Margaret, he was looking forward with pleasurable ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday

... In these changeful times, the history of the Inquisition is not the least mutable. The Inquisition, which was abolished, was again restored—and at the present moment, I know not whether it is to ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... certainly so; water obviously of the worst quality—yet water. Besides, were there not always refrigerators and condensing machinery? Upon which Swakopmund was forced into existence—planked down there bit by bit in the face of circumstance. Walk a trifle over a thousand yards from the edge of the changeful Atlantic through Swakopmund's deep sandy streets and you get the key to the town. For it ceases utterly, abruptly; from the door of its last villa, fitted with perfect furnishings from Hamburg, the bitter desolation that is the Namib Desert stretches away ...
— With Botha in the Field • Eric Moore Ritchie

... the senses and eyes, I know, the influences which stamp the world's history are wars, uprisings or downfalls of dynasties, changeful movements of trade, important inventions, navigation, military or civil governments, advent of powerful personalities, conquerors, etc.. These of course play their part; yet, it may be, a single new thought, imagination, abstract principle, even literary style, fit for the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... delightfully sweet disposition. He was not sure how much or how little intelligence she had—probably more than most women. But what did that matter? It would be impossible ever to grow weary or to be anything but infatuated lover when she had such changeful beauty. ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips

... Jove knows the poignant and delicious day when the lovers, undeclared, but sure of mutual passion, await the magic moment of avowal, with all its changeful consequences. I resume my fragmentary narrative at such a day in my life. As for me, I waited for the avowal as for an earthquake. I felt as though I were the captain of a ship on fire, and the only person aware ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett

... the snow of spring-time, nor night-old ice; The serpent when he sleepeth, nor girl's advice; The mind of changeful woman not long abideth, And fickleness of ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner

... to him to retain a believing conception of his own death. This influence of habit was necessarily strong in a man whose life was so monotonous as Marner's—who saw no new people and heard of no new events to keep alive in him the idea of the unexpected and the changeful; and it explains simply enough, why his mind could be at ease, though he had left his house and his treasure more defenceless than usual. Silas was thinking with double complacency of his supper: first, because it would be hot and savoury; ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot

... of Pritha! I manifest for thee Those hundred thousand thousand shapes that clothe my Mystery: I show thee all my semblances, infinite, rich, divine, My changeful hues, my countless forms. See! in this face of mine, Adityas, Vasus, Rudras, Aswins, and Maruts; see Wonders unnumbered, Indian Prince! revealed to none save thee. Behold! this is the Universe!—Look! what is live and dead I gather all in one—in Me! Gaze, as thy lips ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold

... of interlinking hands, of feet Tireless to spin the unseen, fairy woof, Of the entangling waltz. Bright eyebeams meet, Gay laughter echoes from the vaulted roof. Warm perfumes rise; the soft unflickering glow Of branching lights sets off the changeful charms Of glancing gems, rich stuffs, dazzling snow Of necks unkerchieft, and bare, clinging arms. Hark to the music! How beneath the strain Of reckless revelry, vibrates and sobs One fundamental chord of constant pain, The pulse-beat of the poet's heart that throbs. So yearns, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus

... established, as usual, by the foreigners; and heavy were the fluctuations of fortune, if we might judge from the changeful demeanour of those who frequented it. His Royal Highness never deigned to visit us; indeed, it could hardly be expected he should do so, when he did not even condescend to pay his respects to the ladies in the fort, or the party ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo

... learned details of Nell's varied life. She had lived in many places. As a child she remembered moving from town to town, of going to school among schoolmates whom she never had time to know. Lawrence, Kansas, where she studied for several years, was the later exception to this changeful nature of her schooling. Then she moved to Stillwater, Oklahoma, from there to Austin, Texas, and on to Waco, where her mother met and married Belding. They lived in New Mexico awhile, in Tucson, Arizona, in Douglas, and finally had come to lonely ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... 1593, and was baptized on September 21. He died on December 15, 1683, having lived in the reigns of Elizabeth, James I., Charles I., under the Commonwealth, and under Charles II. The anxious and changeful age through which he passed is in contrast with his very pacific character and ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang

... shift to and fro; change and change about; waffle, blow with the wind (irresolute) 605; oscillate &c. 314; vibrate between, two extremes, oscillate between, two extremes; alternate; have as man phases as the moon. Adj. changeable, changeful; changing &c. 140; mutable, variable, checkered, ever changing; protean, proteiform|; versatile. unstaid[obs3], inconstant; unsteady, unstable, unfixed, unsettled; fluctuating &c. v.; restless; agitated &c. 315; erratic, fickle; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... dresses then; if we may speak flippantly without offense to the simplicity of her majesty, she is then en pleine toilette. But any other of the twelve is more picturesque than the summer months: blustering March, with its gushing streams tossing off their icy fetters; changeful April, with its greening fields and glancing birds; sweet, budding, blossoming May; flowery June; fruitful September; golden, glorious October; dreary, thoughtful November; and all of Winter, with its potent majesty and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... sheltered by Mr. Donne, who, being now the father of sons, is living in Bury in order to educate them at the school where he and my brothers were as boys under Dr. Malkin. [William Bodham Donne, my brother John's school and college mate, for more than fifty years of this changeful life the unchanged, dear, and devoted friend of me and mine—accomplished scholar, elegant writer, man of exquisite and refined taste, and such a gentleman that my sister always said he was the original of the hero of Boccaccio's story of ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... he roamed with his Nature-worshipping mother, who taught him the beauties of clouds and trees and streams and flowers, the glory of the changeful pageantry of the sky, the exquisite grace of the bird atilt on a swaying branch. Through the glowing picture which Nature unfolded before him he looked into the heart of the truth symbolized there and gave ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett

... which, little by little, absorbed the empire, till it became the energy and the cause of all that undying but changeful principle of life and freedom which rightly understood is Europe, is thought to have been brought first to Ravenna by S. Apollinaris, a disciple as we are told of S. Peter, who made him her first bishop. ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton

... tendency, flying from the centre, working with little forethought straight before it, in the development of every thought and fancy; throwing itself forth in endless play of undirected imagination; delighting in brightness and colour, in beautiful material, in changeful form everywhere, in poetry, in philosophy, even in architecture and its subordinate crafts. In the social and political order it rejoices in the freest action of local and personal influences; its restless versatility drives ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... a drama of life. It was not written at one time or one place, but over a path of some years. Those years and places are a symbol of the ever-changeful thoughts and moods of man who communes much with the world concealed behind the veil of sense. It is the vivid portraiture of the soul, its sorrows, doubts, anxieties, and aspirations; it tells of the ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... by the communication trench at right angles to our own, and straight ahead towards the changeful ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... the transparency and rose-flush of tint so often seen in New England, and she was magnetic, earnest, impassioned. No photographs can do the least justice to Mrs. Eddy, as her beautiful complexion and changeful expression cannot thus be reproduced. At once one would perceive that she had the temperament to dominate, to lead, to control, not by any crude self-assertion, but a spiritual animus. Of course such a personality, with the wonderful tumult in the air that her large and enthusiastic following excited, ...
— Pulpit and Press (6th Edition) • Mary Baker Eddy

... delicate ether; it seemed to brighten and revive even in the utmost distance. The air had a delicious, balmy scent, as of summer itself, and seemed as if it were always going to remain so, and never know any more gloomy, thunderous days. The capes and bays over which the changeful shadows of the clouds no longer passed, were outlined in strong steady lines in the sunlight, and appeared to rest also in the long-during calm. All this made their loving festival sweeter and longer drawn out. The early ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti

... 'Triumph of Time,' who sweeps away the brief summer of lovers' delight, bringing them to autumnal regrets 'for days that are over and dreams that are done,' and lastly to wintry oblivion, we have almost a surfeit of voluptuous melancholy. In this, as in other poems, the sea, changeful in mood, alternately fair and fierce, a bright smiling surface covering a thousand graves, fascinating and treacherous, is the mythical Aphrodite, the fatal woman, merciless to men. All this is set out in lyrics which ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... nearly stationary, only drawing a trifle towards where Dick and his companions were; but the big boat continued its course, and so did the shoal of mackerel, making a beautiful ripple on the surface, that seemed as changeful as the ripple marks on their own backs, and in happy unconsciousness of the fact that their way back to sea was being steadily shut off, and that there were baskets getting ready, and horses being fed to bear them to the train, so that the next morning they would ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn

... or even whispered. There, in their mutable, but unerring characters, mixed with the earliest, as well as the latest signs of mortality, stand forever recorded, vows unredeemed, promises unfulfilled; perpetuating, in the movements of each particle, all in unison, the testimony of man's changeful will. God reads that book, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... rest, that there is 'effervescence' who doubts? Effervescence enough; Decrees passed by acclamation to-day, repealed by vociferation to-morrow; temper fitful, most rotatory changeful, always headlong! The 'voice of the orator is covered with rumours;' a hundred 'honourable Members rush with menaces towards the Left side of the Hall;' President has 'broken three bells in succession,'—claps on his ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... Johnnie dutifully, those changeful eyes of hers full of pensive, denied desire, as they swept the dainty gowns of the women before her. "I do—you're right. I wouldn't think of spending my money for a dress-body like that when I'm mighty near as barefoot as a rabbit this minute, and the little 'uns back home has ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke

... With changeful sound life beats upon the ear; Yet, striving for release, The most seductive string's Sweet jargonings, The happiest throat's Most easeful, lovely notes Fall ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare

... that she moved away serenely and beckoned me to follow ... I obeyed in haste and trembling ... long rays of rosy light swept after her like trailing wings, and as she walked, the golden nimbus round her form glowed with a thousand brilliant and changeful hues like the rainbows seen in the spray of falling water! Through lush green grass thick with blossom,—under groves heavy with fragrant leaves and laden with the songs of birds ... over meadows cool and mountain-sheltered, on we went—she, like the goddess ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... educated perfectly, and others trained only to serve him, or shall we have all educated equally ill?—Which, when the outcries of mere tyranny and pride-defiant on one side, and of mere envy and pride-concupiscent on the other, excited by the peril and promise of a changeful time, shall be a little abated, will be found to be, in brief terms, the one social question ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... winced at this. Allowing for exaggeration, which was the life of speech with her, he knew that Moya was giving him a bit of her true self, that changeful, changeless self which goes behind all law and "follows joy and only joy." Her voice dropped into its sweetest tones ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote

... lax and changeful in their own religious practice, the Parthians were, naturally, tolerant of a variety of creeds among their subjects. Fire altars were maintained, and Zoroastrian zeal was allowed to nourish in the dependent ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson

... spectacle,—and when he is gone the shadow of him haunts our sight: we see everywhere,—upon the spotless heaven, upon the distant mountains, upon the fields, and upon the road at our feet,—that dim, strange, changeful image; and if our eyes shut, to recover themselves, we still find in them, like a dying flame, or like a gleam in a dark place, the unmistakable phantom of the mighty orb that has set,—and were we to sit down, as we have often done, and try to record by pencil or ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... one job to another up and down the valley he goes, not listlessly and fatigued, but taking a sober interest in all he does. You can see in him very well how his forefathers went about their affairs, for he is plainly a man after their pattern. His day's work is his day's pleasure. It is changeful enough, and calls for skill enough, to make it enjoyable to him. Furthermore, things on either side of it—things he learnt to understand long ago—make their old appeal to his senses as he goes about, although his actual work ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt

... the Gospel songs, To all the Saints so dear, To every eventide belongs Throughout the changeful year. ...
— A Christmas Faggot • Alfred Gurney

... collections of men, you possess a marked love of virtue and an abhorrence of vice. But among vices there is none which the House abhors in the same degree with obstinacy. Obstinacy, Sir, is certainly a great vice; and in the changeful state of political affairs it is frequently the cause of great mischief. It happens, however, very unfortunately, that almost the whole line of the great and masculine virtues, constancy, gravity, magnanimity, fortitude, fidelity, and firmness, are closely allied to this ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... But something may be done that we will not; And sometimes we are devils to ourselves, When we will tempt the frailty of our powers, Presuming on their changeful potency. ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]

... life during the first years of the merry monarch's reign, obtainable from works of his contemporaries, present a series of brilliant, changeful, and interesting pictures. Scarce a day passed that their majesties, attended by a goodly throng of courtiers, went not abroad, to the vast delight of the town: and rarely a night sped by unmarked ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy

... is to all things Love, Balancing wrongs below by rights above; Evil seemed needful that the good be shown, And Good was swift that Evil to atone; While creatures, link'd together, each with each, Of one great Whole in changeful sequence teach, Life-presence everywhere sublimely vast And endless for ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... restrained within the octave, leading it into the dangerous but delectable land of extended harmonies. And how he chromaticized the prudish, rigid garden of German harmony, how he moistened it with flashing changeful waters until it grew bold and brilliant with promise! A French theorist, Albert Lavignac, calls Chopin a product of the German Romantic school. This is hitching the star to the wagon. Chopin influenced Schumann; it can be proven a hundred times. And Schumann under stood Chopin else he could ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... the streets, seeing her name on every bill-board, catching the glow of her subtle and changeful beauty in every window. She gazed out at him from brows weary with splendid barbaric jewels, her eyes bitter and disdainful, and hopelessly sad. She smiled at him in framework of blue and ermine and pearls—the bedecked, heartless coquette of the pleasure-seeking world. She stood in the shadow of ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... Now the god's changeful artifice displayed Fair flocks at pasture in a lovely glade; And folds and sheltering stalls peeped up between, And shepherd-huts ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... rarely felt anything more piercing than the grim cold of that journey. We crawled at a foot's pace through changeful snow-drifts. The road was obliterated, and it was my duty to keep a petroleum stable-lamp swinging to illuminate the untracked wilderness. My little girl was snugly nested in the hay, and sound asleep with a deep white covering of snow above ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... We both are pilgrims, wild and winding river! Both wandering onward to the boundless West— But thou art given by the good All-giver, Blessing a land to be in turn most blest:[2] While, like a leaf-borne insect, floating by, Chanceful and changeful is my destiny; I needs must follow where thy currents lave— Perchance to find a home, or else, perchance ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas

... Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, the greatest of the old Spanish writers, was born to a changeful and busy life. The year 1547 marked his birth, and during the sixty-nine years of his life he was constantly ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... field of grass and daisies, bordered the course of the little stream, the grass-blades and daisies seemed to wave in a tiny breeze that followed the water's flow; while under the rivulet they bent and swayed with every motion of the changeful current, as if they were about to dissolve with it, and, forsaking their fixed form, become fluent ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald

... crowding one upon another like remorse,—for the empty chair was Ginevra's. Elisa Piombo watched the expressions that now began to cross her husband's pallid face. Though long accustomed to divine his feelings from the changeful agitations of his face, they seemed to-night so threatening, and anon so melancholy that she felt she could no longer read a soul that was ...
— Vendetta • Honore de Balzac

... nightingale saluted them sweetly, greeting their friends Tristan and Iseult. The wild wood birds bade them welcome in their own tongue ... it was as if they had conspired among themselves to give the lovers a morning greeting. They sang from the leafy branches in changeful wise, answering each other in song and refrain. The spring that charmed their eye and ear whispered a welcome, even as did the linden with its rustling leaves. The blossoming trees, the fair meadow, ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese

... and bronze, and hoary white, and soft gray; and here and there a black rock, with livid shades of purple, and a bloom upon it like a raven's wing. Rocky islets, never trodden by human foot, over which the foam poured ceaselessly, were dotted all about the changeful surface of the water. And just beneath the level of my eyes was Olivia's face—the loveliest thing there, though there was so much ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton

... hammering thunder, beat upon the reefs and beaches. Now louder in one place, now lower in another, like the combinations of orchestral music, the constant mass of sound was hardly varied for a moment. And loud above all this hurly-burly I could hear the changeful voices of the Roost and the intermittent roaring of the Merry Men. At that hour, there flashed into my mind the reason of the name that they were called. For the noise of them seemed almost mirthful, as it out-topped the ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson

... remaining the while a mystery to all. The most gifted of nations failed to understand the greatest of her sons. Isabella d'Este, the first lady of her time, seeking vainly to obtain some product of his brush, was told that his life was changeful and uncertain, that he lived for the day, intent only on his art. His own thoughts reveal him in another light. "I wish to work miracles," he wrote. And elsewhere he exclaimed, "Thou, O God, sellest us all benefits, at the cost of our toil.... As a day well ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci

... atmosphere, the radiant brightness of the heavens, all combine to impart to mere existence a voluptuous gladness. To Siberians visiting the temperate climes of Western Europe, spring seems to be unknown beyond their lands. But these first days of new life are followed by a chill, gusty and changeful interval, arising from the atmospheric disturbances caused by the thawing of the vast snowy wastes. A relapse is then experienced analogous to that too often produced in England by late east winds. The apple blossom is now nipped by the night frosts ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... things was a passion, and one that had little gratification; but luckily, though good music, pictures, china, furniture, and "purple and fine linen" were all conspicuous by their absence, she could feast without money and without price on the changeful loveliness of the Santa Ynez mountains, the sapphire tints of the placid Pacific, and the gorgeous splendor of the Californian wild-flowers, so that her sense of ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... seemed in no haste to finish his work, and for some weeks came often to the sittings in that quiet room; for it grew more and more attractive to him, and while he painted the younger sister's changeful face he studied the beautiful nature of the elder and learned to love it. But no one guessed that secret for a long time; and Jessie was so busy racking her brain for a way to earn more money that she was as blind and deaf to much that went on before her as ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott

... quarter of an hour or a little more had gone by, when the light knock came at Mr. Linden's door that he had certainly learned to know by this time; and Faith came in, bearing a cup of cocoa. The troubled look had not entirely left her face, nor the changeful colour; but she ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner

... Frances; correctly speaking, one should put it the other way, but as a new actor on the scene of this little story it is natural thus to express it. Her face had something indescribably childlike about it; her blue eyes were almost wistful, though the whole expression was bright and happy and very changeful. Yet there was plenty of 'character'—no dearth of good firm lines, with yet an entire absence of anything denoting hardness or obstinacy; the whole giving from the first candid glance an impression ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth

... vain through, every changeful year Did Nature lead him as before; A primrose by the river's brim A yellow primrose was to him, And it ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers

... then on my way go wandering, Many a changeful season to follow, and many a scene of life, Yet at times through changeful season and scene, abrupt, alone, or in the crowded street, Comes before me the unknown soldier's grave, comes the inscription rude in Virginia's woods, Bold, cautious, true, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... in Ireland the Countess Cathleen, young, good, and beautiful. Her eyes were as deep, as changeful, and as pure as the ocean that washed Erin's shores; her yellow hair, braided in two long tresses, was as bright as the golden circlet on her brow or the yellow corn in her garners; and her step was as light and proud and free as that of the ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt

... and meads of flowers Our plows their furrows made, While on the hills the sun and showers Of changeful April played. ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck

... things which form the chief beauties of the land in which we dwell. The ever-varying lights of the Peninsula, and the splendid Malayan sky that arches over us are, in themselves, at once the crown of our glory, and the imparters of a fresh and changeful loveliness to the splendours of the earth. Our eyes are ever glutted with the wonders of the sky, and of the lights which are shed around us. From the moment when the dawn begins to paint its orange tints in the dim East, and later floods the vastness of the low-lying clouds ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... whatever other objections be made to it, it is unquestionably a work of genius—of wild, irregular, overwhelming imagination, and has that rich, varied movement in the verse, which gives a distant idea of the lofty or changeful tones of Mr. Coleridge's voice. In the Christobel, there is one splendid passage on divided friendship. The Translation of Schiller's Wallenstein is also a masterly production in its kind, faithful and spirited. Among his smaller pieces there are occasional bursts ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... to tell my readers about this winter. As but of a whole changeful season only one day, or, it may be, but one moment in which the time seemed to burst into its own blossom, will cling to the memory; so of the various interviews with my friends, and the whole flow of the current of my life, during that winter, nothing ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald

... of Fate's serenest weather Strikes through our changeful sky its coming beams; Somewhere above us, in elusive ether, Waits the fulfilment of our dearest ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various

... description, who, nevertheless, were considered as guests, and had their share both of the countenance of the entertainer and of the cheer of the day. In the distance, and fluctuating round this extreme verge of the banquet, was a changeful group of women, ragged boys and girls, beggars, young and old, large greyhounds, and terriers, and pointers, and curs of low degree; all of whom took some interest, more or less immediate, in the main action ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... quiet country, except one who has been born in it, or for whom at least childhood and boyhood and youth have opened door after door into the hidden phases of its life. There is no square yard on the face of the earth but some one can in part understand what God meant in making it; while the same changeful skies canopy the most picturesque and the dullest landscapes; the same winds wake and blow over desert and pasture land, making the bosoms of youth and age swell with the delight of their blowing. The winds are not all so full as are some of delicious odours gathered ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald

... instantaneously drop it half way down to the kelson. So, deprived of one leg, and the strange ship of course being altogether unsupplied with the kindly invention, Ahab now found himself abjectly reduced to a clumsy landsman again; hopelessly eyeing the uncertain changeful height he could ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... revolutions went too far, or did not go far enough; in expending our national strength in the unprofitable struggles of faction with faction, adventurer with adventurer: with every change we should become more changeful, and with every settlement more unsettled: one by one our distant colonies would follow the bright example of our people at home, and our commerce and trade would fall with our colonial empire. In fine, we should become in the eyes of the world what France now is—a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... profoundly true, though often enough not in the way that they are generally accepted. Had he possessed any powers of definition at that age, probably he would have described our accepted beliefs as shadows of the Truth, distorted and fantastically shaped, like those thrown by changeful, ragged clouds behind which the eternal sun is shining, shadows that vary in length and character according to the hour and ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard

... moral sense in children who were poor and unfortunate, who had to work, and get what pleasures they had in the streets. But how about the best families, where there were luxurious homes, books, education, amusement, kindness, love—all the supposed stimuli needed for the proper guidance of changeful vagrant minds? These good influences had failed. There was a greater moral abandonment ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey

... Abijah. First from one place and then another she glided after him in her early married life. He loved her and his little ones but the love of travel and change was strong within him. He was ever restless and changeful. During one of his roving fits he emigrated with his family from Nova Scotia to the United States. It was in the spring of 1805 that he and they landed in Newburyport. The following December his wife presented him with a boy, whom they called William Lloyd Garrison. Three years afterward ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... this weakness; they do not give themselves the trouble to study new characters, or at first hand, as of old; they sit at home and receive the congratulations of Society without paying due attention to that somewhat changeful lady, and they draw upon their memory, or their imagination, instead of studying from the life. Otherwise, when they do not give way to that temptation of indolence which arises from competence and success, there is no reason why their reputation should suffer, since, ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn

... was too full, too changeful, too secret to be thoroughly searched in little time. Neale bore his burden, although it grew heavier each day. And his growing work on the railroad ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey

... Beautiful as at first ascends the star3 From odorif'rous Ind, whose office is To gather home betimes th'ethereal flock, To pour them o'er the skies again at Eve, And to discriminate the Night and Day. Still Cynthia's changeful horn waxes and wanes Alternate, and with arms extended still She welcomes to her breast her brother's beams. 60 Nor have the elements deserted yet Their functions, thunder with as loud a stroke As erst, smites through the rocks and scatters ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton

... lover. She holds back no secret from him if he wills that he should learn it; she charms him with her many moods. Her laughter is the sunlight, and ere it has died away she has hidden coyly in a veil of mist; now she is tearful with the raindrops falling on her changeful face, but the light comes back with the silvery gleaming of her winding rivers. When her lover leaves her, and wanders off to wooings far away, she reproaches him by her silence; and when he has time to think, he remembers with regret and longing the ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt

... we left the land of the lizard. What wonders they are! From an inch to two feet in length, slim, slippery, and of many and changeful colors, they literally inhabit the land, and are as much at home in a house as out of it; indeed, the houses are never free of them. They sailed up the river with us, and crossed the lake in our company, and sat by the mountain ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard

... Ladies do it often," conceded Mickey. "I've seen them so changeful they couldn't tell when they called a taxi where they wanted to be taken." "Mickey, your observations on human nature would make a ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter

... in the adventures, but Demi enjoyed the beetles and butterflies immensely, drinking in the history of their changeful little lives as if it were a new and lovely sort of fairy tale for, even in his plain way, Dan told it well, and found great satisfaction in the thought that here at least the small philosopher could learn ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... gloomy-looking stones, or in dirtying one's fingers by analyzing soils, in a vain attempt to fathom the osteology or anatomy of our beloved earth, though my heart is thrillingly alive to the faintest shade of color and the infinite variety of styles in which she delights to robe her ever-changeful and ever-beautiful surface. In my unscientific mind, the formations are without form, and void; and you might as well talk Chinese to me, as to embroider your conversation with the terms "hornblende," "mica," "limestone," "slate," "granite," and "quartz" in a hopeless ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe

... admirably drawn, and quite showing the softness and Correggio-like touch of its leafage, and its symmetrical formality of design, while the flow of every leaf is changeful. ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... a mere outline of the landscape that spreads before you. Its changeful beauty of form and color, with the summer clouds floating over it, is not to be painted in words. I know of many a place where the scenery is more varied and striking; but there is a mandragora quality in the atmosphere here that holds you to the spot, and makes ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... had known the wharves of the Thames and the changeful drama of London Pool. He had been twice to Normandy, but to a lad French by birth, that was hardly a foreign land. Now he was to see countries neither English nor French—some of them not even Christian. Half Spain and all ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey



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