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Willful   Listen
adjective
Willful  adj.  
1.
Of set purpose; self-determined; voluntary; as, willful murder. "In willful poverty chose to lead his life." "Thou to me Art all things under heaven, all places thou, Who, for my willful crime, art banished hence."
2.
Governed by the will without yielding to reason; obstinate; perverse; inflexible; stubborn; refractory; as, a willful man or horse.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Willful" Quotes from Famous Books



... sincere and profound sorrow for the unintentional injustice into which I have been betrayed by too hasty a belief of false information. For this I am as anxious to make you reparation, as I am incapable of doing any person a willful injury. I will therefore cause the note in question to be erased in the following editions of my book; and in the remaining copies of the present, I will instantly insert a new page or sheet, if necessary; or should that be impossible, ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennaar • George Bethune English

... was neatly clad and clean-faced, and there was nothing perhaps but the long black hair and bright black eyes to remind him of his former apparition. "Are you busy?" she asked; "can you come with me?" and on his signifying his readiness, in her old willful way she said, "Come, ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... in her agitation. Men of Lord Dreever's type appeal to the motherly instinct of women. As a man, his lordship was a negligible quantity. He did not count. But as a willful child, to be kept out of trouble, he had a claim ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse

... see a young girl so close," fretted Mrs. Erwin. "But perhaps," she added, more cheerfully, "she'll be the easier managed, being so passive. She doesn't seem at all willful,—that's ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells

... morn, had Ellen looked upon her native village, though scarcely three hundred miles separated her from it. Now her heart beat quick and joyfully, for her husband had told her that business would call him to that vicinity in a few days, and she might accompany him. With all the willful eagerness of a child she set her heart on that visit, and from morning till night she would talk with her little boys of the journey to what seemed to her the brightest, most sacred spot on earth, next to her present home. And the home of one's childhood! ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur

... it was in my power to escape a moral penalty, by willful ignorance, was revealed to me, that I could continue the privilege of sinning with impunity. His answer was complicated, and he quoted several passages from the Scriptures. Presently he began to sing, and I grew lonesome; the life within me seemed ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard

... that night Lilly sat beside her. She loved the willful way the curls flung across the pillow. She leaned to the full deep-chested breathing; leaned to kiss the lips which, slightly parted, were perfect with the pollen ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... Whereupon willful Kitty set off, her dainty little head in the air, at a hand-gallop in the direction of the Band-stand; fully expecting, as she herself afterwards told me, that I should follow her. What was the matter? Nothing, indeed. ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various

... mother should have printed and hung up, so she may read it every time she nurses her child, the following motto: "DON'T OVERFEED BABY." Few, if any, babies die of willful starvation: many die as a result of overfeeding. Mistaken kindness and lack of judgment are responsible for one-half of all the troubles of infancy. Babies require much less than is constantly given them. The stomach of a baby at birth will not hold more than one ounce, which is ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague

... the midst of these alarms, it entered the willful head of Joan de Tany that she wished to ride to London town and visit the ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... the phial insecurely, and that nearly all its contents had oozed away. Some might have regarded this incident as an omen or a providential interference; but Ida was neither superstitious nor speculative in her nature; she was positive and willful, rather, and the current of her purposes always flowed strongly, though it might be ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... world affords, and at the same time accept my most hearty thanks and my dearest love. You have all been good, obedient, and cheerful, and have lightened many a heavy load. If when it pleased Providence to send us into this wilderness, it had been part of my lot to contend with willful and disobedient children; if there had been murmuring and repining at our trials; discontent and quarreling among yourselves, how much more painful would have been our situation. On the contrary, by your good humor and attention, your willing submission to privations, ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat

... angel, or accidental favourable circumstances and situations, or all together, preserved me, thro' this dangerous time of youth, and the hazardous situations I was sometimes in among strangers, remote from the eye and advice of my father, without any willful gross immorality or injustice, that might have been expected from my want of religion. I say willful, because the instances I have mentioned had something of necessity in them, from my youth, inexperience, and the knavery of others. I had therefore a tolerable character to begin ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin

... what not to do," broke out Semi-Colon, for the benefit of the girls; "and that a willful foul with carry a penalty. There goes Coach Shays in that little launch; he's going to get in that car belonging to Judge Colon, and be whirled along the road, which keeps pretty near the river all the way. So you see, ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman

... savage himself admits this. He admires the superior acquirements of the civilized man, and it is with pride that he will adopt such usages as do not interfere too much with his sloth, his passions, or his prejudices. But as the willful child or the idle schoolboy, who was never taught obedience, and never made to do anything which of his own free will he was not inclined to do, would in most cases obtain neither education nor manners; so it is much ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... treatment; to be virtually dismissed from a valuable business connection, all this is enough to sober any man above the grade of a moral idiot, and John was not that; he was simply a self-indulgent, pleasure-loving, thoughtless, willful fellow, without any great amount of principle. He took his medicine, however, said nothing, and did his share of the business from day to day doggedly, keeping away from his ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... blossom, torn away From its far moorings, nestled at her ease, Was seen slowly to skim the silver lake; While the huge flower seemed of itself propelled, Save that, by chance, a flushed and saucy face, Peeped from the waves, showing a little imp Who tugged at its stout stem with willful toil. KOLONA's limbs and bosom roseate glowed As the slant moonlight through the crimson flower Bathed her with blushes; but, when on the strand She lightly sprang, flinging her tresses back, A southern maiden ...
— The Arctic Queen • Unknown

... one's discretion, exercise one's discretion; take upon oneself, take one's own course, take the law into one's own hands; do of one's own accord, do upon one's own authority; originate &c (cause) 153. Adj. voluntary, volitional, willful; free &c 748; optional; discretional, discretionary; volitient^, volitive^. minded &c (willing) 602; prepense &c (predetermined) 611 [Obs.]; intended &c 620; autocratic; unbidden &c (bid) &c 741; spontaneous; original &c (casual) 153; unconstrained. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... Girls" had met with a situation that no amount of pluck or effort on their part could control. This was the most important experience of their whole lives, for their country was about to be betrayed! Once Barbara stamped her foot in her impatience. How dared Harriet Hamlin be so willful, so headstrong? Bab's face was white with anxiety and suspense. Her lips twitched nervously. Then in a flash her whole expression changed. The color came back to her cheeks, the light to her eyes. At the eleventh hour the way had been ...
— The Automobile Girls At Washington • Laura Dent Crane

... altering its form, indeed, like a flying cloud, but remaining a sign of the sky; a shadowy image, as truly a part of the great firmament of the human mind as the light of reason which it seems to interrupt. But the fair deceit and innocent error of it cannot be interpreted nor restrained by a willful purpose, and all additions to it by act do but defile, as the shepherd disturbs the flakes of morning mist with smoke from his fire ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... 1851; and again from March 4, 1853 to March 4, 1855. He was endowed by nature with a mind as strong as his body, and that was of Titanic proportions. He was an ardent partisan in behalf of any cause he espoused; was willful, aggressive, and dominating. He was, at the same time, genial and kindly in many relations of life, not without gifts of both wit and humor, and courageous to the point of absolute fearlessness. He had been well educated at Dartmouth College in his native State, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... and so strange a way of using it—had apparently given up the pursuit. Grom's curiosity burned within him, and he was angry at the woman because she could not speak to him in his own language, or at least in that of the Bow-legs. It seemed to him willful obstinacy on her part to refuse to understand the Bow-legs' tongue. He stooped over her, and roughly examined one of the wounds with his huge fingers. She winced, but made no complaint, only covering her baby with her hair and her arms in terror lest it should suffer ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts

... expression in a readiness to fight upon any and all occasions in defense of what they considered to be their personal honor. In young Andrew Jackson these characteristics appeared in a superlative degree. He was mischievous, willful, daring, reckless. Hardly an escapade took place in the community in which he did not share; and his sensitiveness and quick temper led him continually into trouble. In his early teens he swore ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg

... seek it at once. Jason, like his illustrious predecessor, resolved to go over the sea in search of the golden fleece. It was the most adventurous thing he ever did, and Maud thought it a hopeless and a willful act; yet she could do nothing but hold her peace, while her poor heart was as near to breaking as possible—much nearer to breaking than it is usually safe for a maiden's heart ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various

... suppose; and, moreover, what you may not credit quite so easily, I was very handsome. In short, I was a beauty and a fortune, at the head of the society of the place, caressed, indulged, and flattered by all. This, if it did not spoil me, at least made me willful. I had many offers, and many intended offers, which I nipped in the bud, and I was twenty-three before I saw any one who pleased me. At last a vessel came in consigned to the house, and the captain was invited to dinner. He was a handsome careless young ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... bringing them,—that its overweening loyalty placed a great country like Canada in s very silly attitude, the attitude of an overgrown, unmanly boy, clinging to the maternal skirts, and though spoilt and willful, without any character of his own. The constant reference of local hopes to that remote centre beyond seas, the test of success by the criterions of a necessarily different civilization, the social and intellectual dependence implied by traits that meet the most hurried ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... this willful bit of womanhood to make a plaything of that picturesque child of nature, just as loneliness caused him to open his eyes to the existence of that, which in the logical and ordinary course of events, he would have entirely overlooked. But since ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... came I perceived at once that she was fearless, very affectionate, and possessed a strong, pronounced, willful character; I saw, in short, that she was worth winning and loving. I liked her sisters also; but Betty was superior to her sisters. I departed from several established customs when I admitted the Vivians to this school, and I will own that I had ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade

... places where the razor or other weapon or instrument might by any possibility have been concealed, including the bedclothes, the mattress, the pillow, and the street into which it might have been dropped. But all theories involving the willful concealment of the fatal instrument have to reckon with the fact or probability that death was instantaneous, also with the fact that there was no blood about the floor. Finally, the instrument used was in all likelihood ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill

... together; and when she had married a certain Mr. Ashleigh, a man of great wealth, although their acquaintance had very much dropped into the background, yet still the stories about the beautiful and willful Lady Jane had delighted Rosamund when she was a little girl herself. Now, it seemed that Lady Jane was blessed with a daughter, and as naughty as she must have been in her own early days. This made matters ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade

... I may never be so discouraged that I feel my life has been spent. Help me to so live, that I may not follow into hopeless days, but look for the bright and beautiful in to-morrow. Forgive me for all that I have asked for and accepted through willful judgment, and make me more careful in ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz

... Willful, generous, forgiving, imperious, affectionate, improvident, bewitching, in short—was Laura at this period. Could she have remained there, this history would not need to be written. But Laura had grown to be almost ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... girl, besides, of wonderful beauty. It was this that found her favor in Malamalama's sight, for she was without family, and what Kanaka blood she possessed was that of slaves; but the chief must needs have his way, being a man of imperious temper and willful under advice; and so the little out-islander was married to him and elevated ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... forty years since he issued the first thin quarto edition of "Leaves of Grass," and, though the opposition to him has been the most fierce and determined ever recorded in our literary history, often degenerating into persecution and willful misrepresentation, yet his fame has steadily grown both at home and abroad. The impression he early made upon such men as Emerson, Thoreau, William O'Connor, Mr. Stedman, Colonel Ingersoll, and others in this country, and upon Professors Dowden and Clifford, ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... says if she should hear angry, passionate, or willful words from my lips she may learn and repeat them to my shame and sorrow. But oh I hope I never shall let her ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley

... of Habersham, All through the valleys of Hall, The rushes cried 'Abide, abide,' The willful waterweeds held me thrall, The laving laurel turned my tide, The ferns and the fondling grass said 'Stay,' The dewberry dipped for to work delay, And the little reeds sighed 'Abide, abide, Here in the hills of Habersham, Here in ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... coroner's jury had been summoned, who, after brief deliberation, returned a verdict of willful murder at the hands of some person or persons unknown, while engaged in the ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt

... the harbor master held the strings. The quiet—the immortal quiet—operated to restore his soul. But at such times Day would put the tips of her fingers mysteriously to her incarnadined dumb lips and appear to hearken on the seaward side. If a willful light came sometimes in her eyes ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... healthy and able families necessarily leads to the social, economical and political retrogression of the German people," it points out, and then goes on to enumerate the causes of this decline, which it thinks is partly due to the action of racial poisons but principally to the increasing willful restriction of the ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson

... you suppose that I am so willful that I could have entertained such feelings toward one whose mother I am, if this match had been to ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence

... seed that is to come up good in another. The historian, and still more the critical commentator on his own times, needs to be patient, calm, judicial, hopeful. Mr. Carlyle is impatient, fervid, willful, nay, despotic, and he is not hopeful, not hopeful enough. One healthily hopeful, and genuinely faithful, would not be ever betaking him to the past as a refuge from the present; would not tauntingly throw into the face of contemporaries an Abbot Sampson of the twelfth century as ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert

... her whole attention to the other." I let the palm leaf slip back, and drew down a fresh one, Phyllis watching me with interest. "The child the fairy left was still a child, for all her womanhood. She was willful and capricious; she rode, she fenced, she hunted; she was as unlike other women as could be. At last the King, who was her guardian, grew weary of her caprices. So he commanded that she marry. ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath

... of reproving a real fault. It is only when an accident occurs, or some unintentional mishap is done, that the rod is ever used. To be sure there might be blame, but nothing compared with some acts of deliberate and willful transgression, when ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... of the road? No-o.... Awareness carries with it its commands and penalties. A problem must have an answer. Conscious and willful beings beyond his own strength and importance became the only answer open to him at that stage of his mental evolution. And served the important need of bringing order to chaos. Let all things he could not do, and therefore ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton

... persons who have not received a regular medical education, sooner or later prove themselves to be worthless, the presumption—though not the certainty—is, whenever a new agent, or a new method or principle is proposed by an "outsider," that this, too, if not willful charlatanism, is a mistake; and therefore, the sooner it comes to an end the better it will be for the public health, and that neglect is the surest way ...
— A Newly Discovered System of Electrical Medication • Daniel Clark

... is, and a peaceful resignation to the will of God in conscious ignorance and trust. And yet the believer in this scheme of colossal and ghastly necromancy, when confronted with the unanswerable arguments against it, is sometimes found clinging to it with willful tenacity, and bitterly complaining of those who refute it, that they would rob him of his faith and give him nothing in exchange. Suppose a man to believe that in the year nineteen hundred the earth will be exploded, and that all men, except ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... were also crimes against individuals which were punished with the death penalty. Willful murder, poisoning, parricide, were capitally punished. Adultery was punished by banishment, beside a forfeiture of considerable property. [Footnote: D, 48, 5.] Constantine made it a capital offense. The Romans made adultery to consist in sexual intercourse with another man's ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... cast over the wall of the universe, into the waste places, among the broken shards of ruin! If there was a God—and the rage in his heart declared his being —why did he make him? To make him for such a misery was pure injustice, was willful cruelty! Henceforward he would live above what God or woman could do to him! He rose and went to the hay- field, whence he did not return till ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... there was a child who was willful, and would not do at her mother wished. For this reason God had no pleasure in her, and let her become ill, and no doctor could do her any good, and in a short time she lay on her death-bed. When she had been lowered into her grave, and the earth was spread ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers

... revolution, there were those in the east, and especially in New England, who suffered from myopia. They utterly failed to see the future of the republic, or the importance of holding the western country. To them, such men as Harrod and Kenton, Logan and Boone, were "lawless borderers" and willful aggressors on the rights of the red man. And yet, back of the crowning diplomacy of John Jay, that placed our western frontiers on the banks of the Mississippi, and extended our northern lines to the thread of the lakes, lay the stern resolution of the men of Kentucky and the ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce

... constable with a companion started out in search of Ned Sankey, having a warrant in his pocket for his arrest on the charge of willful murder. ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty

... willful and corrupt false statement in said affidavit or in answer to any material question propounded as ...
— The Disfranchisement of the Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 6 • John L. Love

... she said, turning to Mr. Wilton, "how shocked I am at all this, and at—at Ermengarde's willful disobedience; but," here she paused, and pressed her hand a little firmer upon the weeping girl's shoulder, "if it is any use, and because I was their mother's friend, I, too, would like to add my promise to Ermengarde's, and assure you that this ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... over the word "lover," and changed it, for to her Octavia still seemed a child, and though anxious for the alliance, she forbore to speak openly, lest the girl should turn willful, as she ...
— The Abbot's Ghost, Or Maurice Treherne's Temptation • A. M. Barnard

... he is jealous,) and winds up by saying: "For the English language to have been enriched with a national poetry which was not English but American, would have been a treasure beyond price." With which, as whet and foil, we shall proceed to ventilate more definitely certain no doubt willful opinions. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... in which the minimum recovery could be reduced from $250 to $100. The basic principle underlying this provision is that the courts should be given discretion to increase statutory damages in cases of willful infringement and to lower the minimum where the infringer is innocent. The language of the clause makes clear that in these situations the burden of proving willfulness rests on the copyright owner and that ...
— Reproduction of Copyrighted Works By Educators and Librarians • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.

... nature of things and especially in the nature of human nature, this nation—if its new ideas and its new brain tracks are to come to anything at all, they must have a spontaneous willful and comparatively free origin and organization ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee

... in her heaven she sits divine, Turning, I tell the world my bitter moan, Bidding it share its hopes and griefs with mine, Versing not what I would, but what I must, Wail of the wind, or sobbing of the wave; Ah! say you raised my bowed head from the dust, And held me backward from a willful grave; Say this, and her sweet pity will approve, And bind yet closer her dead bond ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various

... you all this, Miss Erema, you know very nearly as much as I do. To tell how the grief was broken to your mother, and what her state of mind was, and how she sat up on the pillows and cried, while things went on from bad to worse, and a verdict of 'willful murder' was brought against your father by the crowner's men, and you come headlong, without so much as the birds in the ivy to chirp about you, right into the thick of the worst of it. I do assure you, Miss Erema, when I look at your bright ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore

... royal garden on a day of spring, A flock of wild swans passed, voyaging north To their nest-places on Himala's breast. Calling in love-notes down their snowy line The bright birds flew, by fond love piloted; And Devadatta, cousin of the Prince, Pointed his bow, and loosed a willful shaft Which found the wide wing of the foremost swan Broad-spread to glide upon the free blue road, So that it fell, the bitter arrow fixed, Bright scarlet blood-gouts staining the pure plumes. Which seeing, Prince Siddartha took the bird ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... of the United States are guaranteed continuance in office only during "good behavior," and because impeachment is the only method of removal recognized by the Constitution, the "high crimes and misdemeanors" for which impeachment is the constitutional resource must include all cases of willful misconduct in office, whether indictable or not. This seems sound theory and appears today to be established theory. But sound or not, the managers of the Republicans were not a unit in urging it, while their opponents put forward with confidence and unanimity the theory that ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin

... man-prostitute. And everything together—this abundance of tiresome electric lights, the exaggeratedly bright toilettes of the ladies, the odours of modish, spicy perfumes, this ringing music, with willful slowings up of the tempo, with voluptuous swoonings in the transitions, with the tempestuous passages screwed up—everything fitted the one to the other, forming a general picture of insane and stupid luxury, a setting for an imitation of ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... her fancy a more impressive and spiritual existence. She clothed her genius in the brightest and gayest colors, sporting above the precipice of feeling, and making of it a background and a relief to heighten the charm of her seemingly willful fancy. Song came at her summons, and disarmed the serious questioner. In the eyes of her country's enemies she was only the improvisatrice—a rarely gifted creature, living in the clouds, and totally regardless of the things of earth. She could thus beguile ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various

... he nominates some starveling advocate of a petty village in the neighborhood on wages which would not suffice to keep him alive a week." He indemnifies himself out of the peasants. Processes of chicanery, delays and willful complications in the proceedings, sittings at three livres the hour for the advocate and three livres the hour for the bailiff. The black brood of judicial leeches suck so much the more eagerly, because the more numerous, a still ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... abroad on a two-years' pilgrimage to Spain, Malta, Greece, and Constantinople, giving free rein to his humor for intrigue and adventure in the "lands of the sun," and gathering the material for many of his romances and poems. He became at once the picturesque figure of his day,—a handsome, willful poet, sated with life, with no regret for leaving his native land; the conqueror of hearts and the sport of destiny. The world was speedily full of romances of his recklessness, his intrigues, his diablerie, and his munificence. These grew, upon his return in 1811 and the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... with, I have owned I was a fool; but things were dreary and I wanted a thrill. Then I had begun to feel nobody at home wanted me. Father and you were kind, but he seemed to think me an amusing, willful child. Grace always disapproved, and Mortimer sneered. They knew I was not their sort and very proper people are cruel if you won't obey their rules. I hated rules; Grace's correctness made me rebel. ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss

... "You refuse! Well, a willful man must have him way; and since you are so qualmish about a little bloodletting, we must try another plan. If I release you—for short as the time is, I can do it—will you promise me to go direct to the king this very night, and inform ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming

... always comfort, somehow, when there has been no willful wrong. And there has been none here, I ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... be rendered without a master's superintendence. The method differs, however, so materially from that generally adopted by drawing-masters, that a word or two of explanation may be needed to justify what might otherwise be thought willful eccentricity. ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin

... omitted,[270] that when I speak of those people who were really thus dangerous, I suppose them to be utterly ignorant of their own condition; for if they really knew their circumstances to be such as indeed they were, they must have been a kind of willful murderers if they would have gone abroad among healthy people, and it would have verified indeed the suggestion which I mentioned above, and which I thought seemed untrue, viz., that the infected people were utterly careless as to giving the infection ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe

... well," he said. "It was eight years ago, and she was only a child. Even then she was very proud and willful, and the loveliest girl I ever laid ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... was to have the face of the corpse photographed, before the coffin was closed. On the same day the jury agreed on their verdict: "Willful murder against ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins

... of disgust from Ellis interrupted the plea. The glare with which that employee favored his boss fairly convicted the seamed and graying editor of willful ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... philosophy—the Christian recreates the will. The Buddhist and Greek gods make no effort to help the lost man. The Christian God is dominated by love; He is therefore a missionary God, sending even His only begotten Son to reconcile and win the world of sinning, willful children back ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick

... while Lillias possessed the family gift of eloquence and charmed her audience by her witty, forcible and telling speeches. So numerous and so well attended have been these meetings during these and subsequent years, that it is impossible to exonerate men and women from the charge of willful blindness if they still misconstrue the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... you could not," Mrs. Mason returned, smiling. "I do not see that the case need be very different with men. Subserviency never won anybody's respect or love either. Neither does willful opposition, any more. Proper self-respect and a fair share of self-love is more sure of winning admiration, from men or women, than too little self-assertion or ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor

... OF HISTORY.—The loss of life and property in the willful destruction by fire and sword of the principal cities of ancient history—Nineveh, Babylon, Persepolis, Carthage, Palmyra, and many others—is largely a matter of conjecture. The following is a memorandum of the chief ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... been the only one to whom last night had been a disappointment. Beauclerk's determination to propose to her—to put his fortune to the touch and to gain hers—failed. Either the fates were against him, or else she herself was in a willful mood. She had refused to leave the dancing room with him on any pretext whatever, unless to gain the coolness of the crowded hall outside, or the ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

... short time. That sullen stolid girl who now sat before him, black and gloomy as a thunder-cloud, was his wife. He was going away, perhaps forever. He did not know exactly how to treat her; whether with indifference as a willful child, or compassionate attention as one deeply afflicted. On the whole he felt deeply for her, in spite of his own forebodings of his future; and so he followed the more generous dictates of his heart. Her utter loneliness, and the thought that her father might soon be taken away, touched him ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... President and the Government in these hours of trial, whether they make mistakes or whether they do not, words of cheer and encouragement; and, as events occur one after another, our criticisms should not be harshly made. When we find willful departure from what is just and true, when we find treason, we should not hesitate to speak the word of strongest denunciation against both the treason and the traitor. But where there is evident intention to be ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... functions of the several parts of the brain there is still very considerable doubt. With disease or willful destruction of the cerebral tissue the personal initiative is affected— the animal becomes more distinctly a mechanism; the cerebellum is probably concerned in the coordination of muscular movements; and the medulla is a centre for ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells

... The most willful and damnable lies were brought up against me. Many things which had been said and done in moments of amusement and jocularity were remembered, as though I had said and done those things for wicked purposes. Everything ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee

... upon his brain. His place was there! with them! not here! He had yielded too easily to the spell of the woods and the call of the old primeval nature. He might have escaped long ago, there had been many opportunities, but he could not see them. His blindness had been willful, the child of his own desires. He knew it too well now. He saw himself guilty ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler

... country where we cannot speak the language, but the loneliness of that condition is as nothing compared to the loneliness that is the product of an alienation that has been produced by either irresponsible use of the means of communication or a willful refusal to ...
— Herein is Love • Reuel L. Howe

... injustice will deepen an already deep resentment. The almost invincible prejudice against the foreigner is a serious hindrance to the regeneration of China. "This fact emphasizes the need for using every means possible for the breaking down of such a prejudice. Every careless or willful wound to Chinese susceptibilities, or unnecessary crossing of Chinese superstitions, retards our own work and increases the dead wall of opposition on the ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN

... is a formal right of neutrals to take no steps to protect their legitimate trade with Germany, and even to allow themselves to be influenced in the direction of the conscious and willful restriction of their trade, on the other hand, they have the perfect right, which they unfortunately do not exercise, to cease contraband trade, especially in ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... your parents," she said. "Quite right, my dear. But why put them into separate envelopes? They could go nicely in one. That, really, is willful waste, Nora, which ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade

... proposed to marry me. I loved him with all the ardor of a young girl's first love. But when I reflected that I was a slave, and that the laws gave no sanction to the marriage of such, my heart sank within me. My lover wanted to buy me; but I knew that Dr. Flint was too willful and arbitrary a man to consent to that arrangement. From him, I was sure of experiencing all sort of opposition, and I had nothing to hope from my mistress. She would have been delighted to have got rid of me, but not in that way. It would have relieved her ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)

... was not so, at least, with him. He feared the laws of nature, lest, in their callous and immutable procedure, they should preserve some damning evidence of his crime. He feared tenfold more, with a slavish, superstitious terror, some scission in the continuity of man's experience, some willful illegality of nature. He played a game of skill, depending on the rules, calculating consequence from cause; and what if nature, as the defeated tyrant overthrew the chessboard, should break the mold of their succession? The like had befallen Napoleon (so writers said) when the winter changed the ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith

... consultation between the jurors, who at once returned a verdict of "Willful murder by some person or ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty

... brief consultation, the jury agreed upon a verdict of willful murder against John Merton, a finding of which the coroner expressed his ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... sect was established who held the universe to be a large suit of clothes. . . . If certain ermines or furs be placed in a certain position, we style them a judge; and so an apt conjunction of lawn and black satin we entitle a bishop." In Sartor Resartus Carlyle let himself go. It was willful, uncouth, amorphous, titanic. There was something monstrous in the combination, the hot heart of the Scot married to the transcendental dream of Germany. It was not English, said the reviewers; it was not sense; ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... a dollar to a doughnut that that little fool tricked us by feigning unconsciousness, and has heard every word we uttered. Of course, it's to be regretted, but that doesn't change my plans a particle. I'll be the husband of the willful little heiress in an hour's time, or my ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey

... do like him, you wouldn't, would you, want to do anything—cruel to him? Anything that he might take as—a willful insult? Because it could be taken like ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster

... trouble at head-quarters. It was rather a hard state of things that the very peasants whom he was striving with all his power to serve should, by their insubordination—arising sometimes, it was true, from ignorance, but too often from willful misconduct—do even more than their masters to frustrate his beneficent designs. These troubles went on from time to time, till eventually a deputation of three hundred serfs made their way to St. Petersburg ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... disinterested motives of the purest kindness and affection, provided for you, comforted you, and shielded you from the world? Anita, I cannot believe it of you! I will leave you, now. I am positively overcome with this added shock of your ingratitude and willful deceit, coming so soon after the blow of my poor friend's death. I trust you will be in a thoroughly repentant frame of mind when next ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander

... natural temperament was in a high degree mirthful, and the encouragement she received from Jack and the hired men, con- stantly nurtured the inclination. When she had none of the family around to be merry with, she would amuse herself with the animals. Among the sheep was a willful leader, who al- ways persisted in being first served, and many times in his fury he had thrown down Nig, till, provoked, she resolved to punish him. The pas- ture in which the sheep grazed was founded on three sides by ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson

... of grave intimations of wrongdoing made by the Secretary and his subordinates, General Howard was court-martialed in 1874. In each of these trials, and in other attacks, the commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau was exonerated from any willful misdoing, and his work heartily commended. Nevertheless, many unpleasant things were brought to light: the methods of transacting the business of the Bureau were faulty; several cases of defalcation among ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... glory. Now here was Peter Junior going. He already had his beautiful new uniform, and he would march and drill and carry a gun, and halt and present arms, along with the older men she had seen in the great camp out on the high bluffs which overlooked the wide, sweeping, rushing, willful Wisconsin River. ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine

... imagine the joyful moment when her quest would be crowned with success, when she would see herself face to face with the handsome, willful girl, whom she yet must utterly fail to understand; for it would have been completely impossible for Cecile herself, under any circumstances, to treat her father as Lovedy had treated ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade

... and old of both sexes. His good looks came from his mother, together with the equable disposition that promised to be his as he grew older and learned better to control his emotions. When a youngster he had been willful at times and prone to flashes of fiery temper, a heritage, beyond doubt, from his father's chronic irascibility, but the discipline of boarding-school and college had taught him to restrain at least its outward manifestations. From ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston

... destructive criticism. One thing has been clearly proved in the course of the controversy, that the book can have but little historical value when not corroborated. Still there is a wide gap between inaccuracy and willful fabrication. Until the best judges of Italian style are agreed that the 'Chronicle' could not have been written in the second decade of the fourteenth century, the arguments adduced from an examination of the facts recorded in it are not strong enough to demonstrate a forgery. There is the further ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... thing to be polite; consequently, it is a stupid thing to be rude. To make enemies by unnecessary and willful incivility, is just as insane a proceeding as to set your house on fire. For politeness is like a counter—an avowedly false coin, with which it is foolish to be stingy. A sensible man will be generous in the use of it. It is customary in every country to end a letter with the words:—your ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... primary attributes of the divine. The power of God, in Christianity, for example, is still regarded as unlimited, but it is completely expended in the loving salvation of mankind. Where the divinity has ceased to be a willful power and has become instead the God of mercy and loving kindness, it is no longer necessary to placate him by material sacrifice, to win his favor by trivial earthly gifts. Divine favor is sought rather by aspiration after and the practice of a better ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... maid could wish for. Old Griggs was wrong, and could not deny it, and yet because the parson's sermon fitted him rather close he took the sulks, and vowed he would never hear the good man again. It was his own loss, but he wouldn't listen to reason, but was as willful ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... taken to pieces and put together—just as if I had been always in the habit of doing such things. Professor Smith came down and looked very hard at them and then said, "Well, nothing can beat a willful woman." Then followed divers negotiations with a very clever, but (with reverence) somewhat lazy gentleman of jobs, who occupieth a carpenter's shop opposite to mine. This same John Titcomb, my very good friend, is a character peculiar to Yankeedom. He is part owner and landlord of the house ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... Letter but by intreating you to impute my past Omission to any Cause you please excepting a Forgetfulness or willful Neglect. The making of Apologys is among Friends so formal a Business that I hardly know how to set myself about it. I am sure you will not be prevaild upon to suspect the Cordiality of my Affection for you. That I assure you would be punishing me more than I am conscious I deserve. I will frankly ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams

... this stalk it is difficult to say. A bright-eyed, sunshiny, willful baby, she had grown into an unaffected, attractive, breezy young woman, outwardly obedient, inwardly mutinous. She was generally calm in her mother's presence, never criticizing her openly, and her merry ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... root of his being,—pride and a deep self-will; though because they were so sunken, and because poisonous roots can flower most deceivingly, he neither called himself nor was called of others a proud and willful man. He wished Evelyn for his wife; nay, more, though on May Day he had shown her that he loved her not, though in June he had offered her a love that was only admiring affection, yet in the past month at Westover he had come almost ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... old story of the two who fought over the shield with a gold side and a silver side; because, as neither could see both sides at once, each considered the statement of the other a willful falsehood. Let us try, at least, to bear in mind that our relationship to this universe has been of long enough duration to permit of the evolution, and establishment of many series of laws which do not, as would seem at the first glance, conflict, or ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield

... curious that the vervain, or verbena, employed by brides for centuries as the emblem of chastity, should be one of the notorious botanical examples of a willful hybrid. Generally, the individuals of distinct species do not interbreed; but verbenas are often difficult to name correctly in every case because of their susceptibility to each other's pollen - the reason why the garden verbena may so easily be made to blossom forth into whatever hue the ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... is a happy woman. She has found something to love and something to do. These were all she needed to make her supremely self-respectful, happy, and, in the best degree, womanly. Willful, ambitious, sacrificing her young affections to gold at the first, and wasting years in idleness and unworthy intrigue, for the lack of affection and the absence of motive to usefulness and industry, she has found, at last, the secret of her woman's life, and has accepted ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland

... who shall procure himself to be enlisted in the military service of the United States by means of willful misrepresentation or concealment as to his qualifications for enlistment, and shall receive pay or allowances under such enlistment, shall be punished as a court-martial ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department

... willful mood as this, I went aloft one day, to stand my allotted two hours at the mast-head. It was toward the close of a day, serene and beautiful. There I stood, high upon the mast, and away, away, illimitably rolled the ocean beneath. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... parable. One of them was wise, and the other was very foolish. The one was a follower, a learner; he never forgot his second lesson, to follow the white flag. The other followed from the first only his own willful head and feet, and discovered too late that obedience is life. Until the bear found him, I have no doubt he was thinking, in his own dumb, foolish way, that obedience is only for the weak and ignorant, and that government is only an unfair advantage ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... two inches lower, and I was not killed, I will consecrate my life to taming the willful heart of Blue Beard and to vanquishing my rivals, be they ten, twenty, thirty, one hundred or ten thousand," replied the ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue

... told ye, she wouldn't o' busted open thataway now. It's nacherl, thar warn't room in the cup fer both the likker an' the ball. That's wastin' likker, Jim, an' my mother told me when I was a boy, 'Willful waste ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... teacher is a conventional theme of comedy, as is the disguising of a stranger to take the place of an absent father in order to confirm a young lover's suit. The main plot Shakespeare certainly left as he found it. It tells how an ungovernable, willful girl was made into a submissive wife by a husband who assumed for the purpose a manner even wilder than her own, so wild that not even she could endure it. This story is presented in scenes of uproarious farce in which there is little opportunity for subtle characterization ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken

... nocturnal and involuntary emissions as being due to masturbation. The child was allowed then to grow up paralytic, or with a deformed limb, or continually punished to correct what was imagined to be a condition of willful carelessness, irritability, or willful moral perversion. Perversion, stupidity, and irritability of the mind or temper were not known to depend, in many instances, on preputial irritation; children were, accordingly, worried and punished for something over which ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... you a story? Poor girl! you're wretched enough now, but you'd better know the truth at once. Listen to me: I was an innocent girl, like you, once. Not so beautiful, perhaps, and not so good; for I was always proud and willful, and loved to have my own way. I was a country girl, and had money left to me by my dead parents. A young man made my acquaintance. He was gay and handsome, and made me believe that he loved me. Well, I married him—do you ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood

... families abound in volumes of such tales, and some may still be found upon the shelves of public libraries. These MS. collections furnish a mine of inexhaustible riches to the student of manners. When checked by legal documents, they frequently reveal carelessness, inaccuracy, or even willful distortion of facts. The genius of the Novella, so paramount in popular Italian literature of that epoch, presided over their composition, adding intreccio to disconnected facts, heightening sympathy by the suggestion of romantic motives, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... have learnt, my dear Brother, by happy experience, and find great freedom and peace in my soul thereby. This makes me love the Moravian Brethren tho' I cannot agree with them in many of their principles. I cannot look upon them as willful deceivers, but as persons who hazard their lives for the sake of the Gospel. Mr. Wesley is as certainly wrong in some things as they, and Mr. Law as wrong also. Yet I believe both Mr. Law and Mr. Wesley and Count Zinzendorf will shine bright ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries

... saints to rain it back on him some day," cried Don Ippolito with willful levity, and the stream leaped into the moonlight and seemed to hang there like a tangled skein of silver. "But how shall I shut it off when you are gone?" asked the young girl, looking ruefully at the floating threads ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells

... designed for a trial of their compliance, and that a concession would be taken for a confession of weakness, as if they durst not do otherwise; while other some there are who say that it was rather out of arrogance and a willful spirit of contention, to show his own strength, that he took occasion to slight the Lacedaemonians. The worst motive of all, which is confirmed by most witnesses, is to the following effect. Phidias the Molder had, as has before been said, undertaken to make the statue of Minerva. ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... duty bound to inform you that, according to the laws of Indiana, a woman is of age at eighteen, and as no indenture could be made binding after you had reached your majority, you are the victim of a deception. You are free, and if it can be proven that you have been defrauded by a willful deception, a suit for ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston

... pleasurable animal excitement, but from pain, delusion, error, of the worst ignorance, medical sciolism, and (alas! too late the plea of error was removed from my eyes) from terror and utter perplexity and infirmity—sinful infirmity, indeed, but yet not a willful sinfulness—that I brought my neck under it. Oh, may the God to whom I look for mercy through Christ, show mercy on the author of the 'Confessions of an Opium-eater,' if, as I have too strong reason to believe, his book has been the occasion ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... said at last, "the whole case hinges on the evidence of this man Rogers—Holladay's confidential clerk—and from what I know of Rogers, I should say that he'd be the last man in the world to make a willful misstatement. He says that Miss Holladay entered her father's office late yesterday afternoon, stayed there ten minutes, and then came out hurriedly. A few minutes later Rogers went into the office and ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson

... are always to be found in the physician or patient; never in the law of cure. If I be not able to apprehend and duly estimate the symptoms of a given case, I must, of necessity, fail to cure. Or if the patient be unruly, stupid, or willful, he must pay the penalty. Frequently, the case has been rendered incurable by massive dosage or surgery. My system cures all that is curable when intelligently applied. And you will notice that in some instances there is an absolute dearth ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman

... as Tolstoi was, a conscious prophet; his spirit is freer, more willful, whimsical—almost perverse—and far more steeped in love of beauty. If you called him a prophet he would stamp his foot at you—as he will at me if he reads these words; but his voice is prophetic, for all that, crying in a wilderness, out of which, at the call, will spring up roses here and there, ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson

... cruel as to disturb us? Don't you see the trouble we are in?" He had no need of Anglo-Saxon (or even of American-English!). I understood him at once; and though exceedingly curious to see how they would do it, I had not the heart to insist. I left them to manage their willful little folk ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller

... with a heavy heart and full eyes, that my poor mother parted with me; perhaps she thought me an erring and a willful boy, and perhaps I was; but if I was, it had been a hardhearted world, and hard times that had made me so. I had learned to think much and bitterly before my time; all my young mounting dreams of glory had left ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... "A willful man must have his way," said Mr. Jellicorse at last. "We can not put him in the pound, Diana; but the least we can do is to provide him for a coarse, cold journey. If I know anything of our country, he will never see Scargate Hall to-night, ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... statement of facts, evidencing on the part of the commissioners great indiscretion and want of judgment, if not corruption, in the sale of the public lands, and they charged the commissioners with a willful violation of the law. These resolutions, however, excepted Colonel Burr from any participation in the maleconduct complained of, inasmuch as the minutes of the board proved that he was not present at the meetings (being absent on ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... certain published reports that the destruction of this grand old edifice was the result of malice or envy. This is ridiculous. All that I have to say on this matter is that I am positive that the attack on the cathedral at Rheims was not willful. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various

... whether, two hundred years hence, any enterprising explorer would be as fortunate as Mr. Layard and Sir H. Rawlinson have been in Babylon and Nineveh, and whether one single cromlech would be left for him to carry away to the National Museum of the Maoris. It is curious that the willful damage done to Logan Stones, once in the time of Cromwell by Shrubsall, and more recently by Lieutenant Goldsmith, should have raised such indignation, while acts of Vandalism, committed against real antiquities, are allowed to pass unnoticed. Mr. Scawen, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... he says. "It's some of mine. You've saved me thirty pounds, Master Dawe, and you've given me good arguments to use against a willful woman that wants my fine new ship for her own toy. We'll not have any scroll-work." His face shined with ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling

... Sally; I don't know! She was high-spirited as a girl, a little willful and impulsive, but with the best heart in the world. She lost her mother too soon; and in her girlhood we had no home—not even the half-homes possible to naval officers. She had a good natural voice and wanted to study music, so after we had been settled at Madison College a year I left her ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... done to deserve it, out of my royal care for your religion and your property. For the first, my proclamation is a true picture of my mind. He that cannot, as in a glass, see my zeal for the church of England, does not deserve any farther satisfaction, for I declare him willful, abominable, and not good. Some may, perhaps, be startled, and cry, how comes this sudden change? To which I answer, I am a changling, and that's sufficient, I think. But to convince men farther, that I mean what I say, there ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber

... or that the provocation was severe, he might be set free after a thirty days' period of mourning in solitude. Otherwise the murdered man's next of kin were authorized to take his life; and if they refrained from doing so, as often happened, he remained an outcast from the clan. A willful murder was a rare occurrence before the days of whiskey and drunken rows, for we were not a violent ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... go to Denver and consult another physician. When he told his physician what his intentions were, the doctor advised him not to attempt the trip himself, for he was too sick, but to send for the physician. The sick man was willful and forceful, and he was also afraid of the cost; and, being a plucky fellow, he declared that he could go just as well as not and that he ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.

... or any people with exclusive apostacy. In the end there is little to choose between one or another. Labour is not more culpable than capital, nor the proletarian than the industrial magnate and the financier, nor the nominal secularist than the nominal religionist. Nor am I charging conscious and willful acceptance of wrong in the place of right. It is the institution itself, industrialism as it has come to be, with all its concomitants and derivatives, that has betrayed man to his disgrace and his society to condemnation, and so long as this system endures ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram

... I consider to be for your good. You are willful, and violent, and headstrong. It is my duty to cure you, and although it is all very painful to me, at my time of life, to have such a charge thrust upon me, still, whatever it costs, it ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty

... haste. The hue and cry had been given by apparently the only one of the travelers who escaped, but as he was hastening to take the overland coach to the East at the time, his testimony could not be submitted to the coroner's deliberation. The facts, however, were sufficiently plain for a verdict of willful murder against the highwayman, although it was believed that the absent witness had basely deserted his companion and left him to his fate, or, as was suggested by others, that he might even have been an accomplice. It was this circumstance which protracted comment on the incident, ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte

... ignorance, have not yet grasped it. I'm mighty proud of my country, Mary Louise, and I believe this war is going to give us Americans a distinction that will set us up in our own opinion and in the eyes of the world. But always there is a willful objection, on the part of some, toward any good and noble action, and we must deal charitably with these deluded ones and strive to win them to an appreciation ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)

... will thrash you when he comes home tonight," or, "You'd better not let your father see you doing that," or, "You wouldn't behave that way if your father was here," etc., are common threats which we hear directed at headstrong and willful boys. What is the result? Do such threats cause the love of the child for his father to increase? They make the child actually afraid of ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler

... Kennedy, who had thought a great deal about this willful child, said to her brother, "Don't be discouraged about Katy; you and Biddy will save the dear ...
— Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... the bolt, and slipped into the apartment of the hen and chickens. They cried out loudly, and came fluttering down from their perches, and ran about in dismay, and the little girl ran after them. I saw it quite plainly, for I looked through a hole in the hen-house wall. I was angry with the willful child, and felt glad when her father came out and scolded her more violently than yesterday, holding her roughly by the arm; she held down her head, and her blue eyes were full of large tears. 'What are you about here?' he asked. She wept ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... of restrained inward contempt played over her face. She raised her eyebrows in scorn and pity when she looked at or spoke to Mariana, and she would fix her wonderful eyes, full of tender remonstrance and painful disgust, on the willful girl, who, after all her "fancies and eccentricities," had ended by kissing an insignificant ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev

... like you," he answered, harshly; "I have a man's feelings. You have often told me I am passionate and willful—well, you were right." ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... to leave the Union. While the Government at Washington has shown the utmost forbearance, they have manifested the greatest insolence, as well as disregard of the most sacred rights of the Union. An Absalom the most willful and impetuous of his father's family, and yet the most caressed and indulged, requites every debt of parental kindness by seeking through treachery and the prostitution of all his privileges to raise an insurrection in the household of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various

... fifteen minutes to downright work, but had dawdled and lounged in a most exasperating manner, and at times exhibited a dullness that was very hard to bear patiently, because Marion felt so certain that it was either feigned or the result of willful inattention. Several times had Marion to speak decidedly to the young ladies in her seat, once or twice directly to Grace herself, and at last, losing all patience with her, ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden

... don't know what to do, of course!" she admitted. "But I've got to do something. I've got to show Mr. Van Buren I'm not a willful party to these horrible things. I don't believe I'll ever get my money back. I don't want a share of a stolen mine. I'd be glad to let the money go, and more—all I've got in the world—if only I could prove to Van that I haven't deceived him, haven't taken part in anything wrong—if only ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... their corporal oaths, acted upon the very question which the text affirms they "understood just as well, and even better, than we do now"; and twenty-one of them—a clear majority of the whole "thirty-nine"—so acting upon it as to make them guilty of gross political impropriety and willful perjury if, in their understanding, any proper division between local and Federal authority, or anything in the Constitution they had made themselves, and sworn to support, forbade the Federal Government ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner

... who succeeded him in 1550, seems to have had the same affection for learning; but he was willful, harsh, and cruelly ambitious, and cared, an old writer says, for nothing so much as perpetuating the race of the Gonzagas in Mantua. He was a hunchback, and some of his family (who could not have understood his character) ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells



Words linked to "Willful" :   willfulness, willful neglect, disobedient, self-willed, headstrong, froward, voluntary, wilful



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