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vagary
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  • Instead of protecting this child from the vagaries of fate, you condemned her to be a sacrifice for others, to absorb their misery and suffering so that they might live in peace.†   (source)
  • After a string of conventional vagaries, Pilar Ternera predicted: "You will not be happy as long as your parents remain unburied."†   (source)
  • After Jake's death they had talked a good deal about the vagaries of justice, and what might cause a pleasant man to go bad.†   (source)
  • Rather than having to haul rocks across the river and depend on the vagaries of transport up rutted roads, Haji Ali, in the end, had convinced Mortenson to use rock cut on hillsides only a few hundred yards distant from both banks.†   (source)
  • By now, he knows as much as most young adults about the vagaries of professional goals and heart's desiressometimes so clear, within easy reach, other times barely visible.†   (source)
  • Jeremy learned about the vagaries of the weather, ridiculous government edicts, and how Wyatt—the other gas station owner— would gouge Jeremy if he ever went there for gas, since he fiddled with the calibration on the pumps as soon as the Unocal truck pulled away.†   (source)
  • I f all went as planned, the maneuver would look like little more than a classic turning of the enemy's flank, but it took no great stretch of imagination to picture the unforeseen circumstances, the vagaries of chance that could play havoc.†   (source)
  • She considers the vagaries of sports, the happenstance of El Líder, a star pitcher in his youth, narrowly missing a baseball career in America.†   (source)
  • I was considering what she had suggested about our pretending to be other people, like figures in a Western novel, imagining how we could somehow exist outside of this place and time and circumstance, share instead the minute and sordid problems of such folks, the vagaries and ornate dramas of imperfect love.†   (source)
  • The vagaries of the digestive tract have no rhyme or reason.†   (source)
  • The vagaries of popular trends?†   (source)
  • He claimed no intricate or extensive medical knowledge, and had no use for the lay habit of venturing amateur diagnoses of illness; his training had, however, made him more than ordinarily enlightened about the chemical vagaries and ailments of the human body, and so the moment he first laid eyes on Sophie ("this sweetie," he murmured with enormous concern and gentleness, twisting the lock of her hair) he guessed, with dead accuracy as it turned out, that her ravaged appearance was the…†   (source)
  • The rest of the time he is much more concerned with sack time, the vagaries of sergeants, and the chances of wheedling the cook between meals.†   (source)
  • His lines are so classic…he really isn't influenced by the vagaries of popular trends."†   (source)
  • People bored Manchek; the mechanics of manipulation and the vagaries of subordinate personality held no fascination for him.†   (source)
  • Everybody was essentially himself—was riotously busy fulfilling the vagaries of human nature.†   (source)
  • She had never been one to worry long over the vagaries of human conduct or to be cast down for long if one line of action failed.†   (source)
  • He knew these sand-storms were but vagaries of the desert-wind.†   (source)
  • Life and love have such strange vagaries.†   (source)
  • Joan was a victim to swift vagaries of thought and conflicting emotions.†   (source)
  • The vagaries of fortune are indeed curious.†   (source)
  • Surely you do not mean to persist in that mulish vagary?†   (source)
  • "That's naked truth; and yet the gal has the vagaries.†   (source)
  • In religion he could be, as long as it suited him, the facile echo of Dorothea's vagaries.†   (source)
  • A vagary of nature, wherein she has displayed less of her infinite wisdom than is usual.†   (source)
  • "A strange vagary, this of hers, isn't it, Oak?" said Coggan, curiously.†   (source)
  • The vagary of Timothy Fairway was infectious.†   (source)
  • If she's up to such vagaries she must suffer for 'em.†   (source)
  • "But I can't be cured of my vagaries; them I plead guilty to.†   (source)
  • Vagary is as hard a word to turn into English as quadruped.†   (source)
  • But, as the quadruped is now formed, I call it a mere vagary of nature; no other than a vagary.†   (source)
  • 'This has nothing to do with Jim, directly; only he was outwardly so typical of that good, stupid kind we like to feel marching right and left of us in life, of the kind that is not disturbed by the vagaries of intelligence and the perversions of—of nerves, let us say.†   (source)
  • He could not understand the vagaries of the general, and knew nothing of the last achievement of that worthy, which had caused so much commotion in the house.†   (source)
  • These 'vagaries' were soon on exhibition before them; but they only moved their compassion and their sorrow, not their mirth.†   (source)
  • She had discovered that a lane opened out below the apple orchard and ran up through a belt of woodland; and she had explored it to its furthest end in all its delicious vagaries of brook and bridge, fir coppice and wild cherry arch, corners thick with fern, and branching byways of maple and mountain ash.†   (source)
  • "It's a pity she ever married abroad then," said May, in the placid tone with which her mother met Mr. Welland's vagaries; and Archer felt himself gently relegated to the category of unreasonable husbands.†   (source)
  • But having fallen in love with him, she had become inoculated with the virus of Evangelism and proselytizing which dominated him, and had followed him gladly and enthusiastically in all of his ventures and through all of his vagaries.†   (source)
  • It just crossed her mind, too, that he might have a faint recollection of his tender vagary, and was disinclined to allude to it from a conviction that she would take amatory advantage of the opportunity it gave her of appealing to him anew not to go.†   (source)
  • CHAPTER VIII Sometimes I think Wolf Larsen mad, or half-mad at least, what of his strange moods and vagaries.†   (source)
  • Sunday passed with equal doubts, worries, assurances, and heaven knows what vagaries of mind and spirit.†   (source)
  • All those that were present had been well drilled within the hour to remember that the prince was temporarily out of his head, and to be careful to show no surprise at his vagaries.†   (source)
  • While on the question of vagaries, I shall tell what befell Thomas Mugridge in the cabin, and at the same time complete an incident upon which I have already touched once or twice.†   (source)
  • Always dressed in the very latest vagary of fashion, Marguerite alone among the ladies that night had discarded the crossover fichu and broad-lapelled over-dress, which had been in fashion for the last two or three years.†   (source)
  • Now, we ask, which of the three arts has really represented human thought for the last three centuries? which translates it? which expresses not only its literary and scholastic vagaries, but its vast, profound, universal movement? which constantly superposes itself, without a break, without a gap, upon the human race, which walks a monster with a thousand legs?†   (source)
  • And more—is his feeling but the vagary of a sensitive boy, or has it the seasoning of suffering manhood to give it endurance?†   (source)
  • I am as confident of seeing Frank here before the middle of January, as I am of being here myself: but your good friend there (nodding towards the upper end of the table) has so few vagaries herself, and has been so little used to them at Hartfield, that she cannot calculate on their effects, as I have been long in the practice of doing.†   (source)
  • But the strangest part of the affair is the effect of this vagary, even on a sober-minded man like myself.†   (source)
  • Laurie turned the matter over in his mind so often that he soon brought himself to confess that he had been selfish and lazy, but then when a man has a great sorrow, he should be indulged in all sorts of vagaries till he has lived it down.†   (source)
  • He held the knife in his hand, and pushed its point between my teeth: but, for my part, I was never much afraid of his vagaries.†   (source)
  • At a period when such vagaries of thought most fully possessed me, and when we had been at work perhaps an hour and a half, we were again interrupted by the violent howlings of the dog.†   (source)
  • The changes that were rung upon dots, which in such a position meant such a thing, and in such another position something else, entirely different; the wonderful vagaries that were played by circles; the unaccountable consequences that resulted from marks like flies' legs; the tremendous effects of a curve in a wrong place; not only troubled my waking hours, but reappeared before me in my sleep.†   (source)
  • Here, amid a wide desert of caste and proscription, amid the heart-hurting slights and jars and vagaries of a deep race-dislike, lies this green oasis, where hot anger cools, and the bitterness of disappointment is sweetened by the springs and breezes of Parnassus; and here men may lie and listen, and learn of a future fuller than the past, and hear the voice of Time: "Entbehren sollst du, sollst entbehren."†   (source)
  • Instinctively we got back to the Liedenbrock sea, and I cannot say into what vagaries my mind would not have carried me but for a circumstance which brought me back to practical matters.†   (source)
  • Least of all, while avoiding her sight, ought Giovanni to have remained so near this extraordinary being that the proximity and possibility even of intercourse should give a kind of substance and reality to the wild vagaries which his imagination ran riot continually in producing.†   (source)
  • …exalted into the beneficent contriver of the whole occasion, actually took the top of the table; and, when he addressed them on the subject of my being bound, and had fiendishly congratulated them on my being liable to imprisonment if I played at cards, drank strong liquors, kept late hours or bad company, or indulged in other vagaries which the form of my indentures appeared to contemplate as next to inevitable, he placed me standing on a chair beside him to illustrate his remarks.†   (source)
  • At times, again, I was obliged to resolve all into the mere inexplicable vagaries of madness, for I beheld him gazing upon vacancy for long hours, in an attitude of the profoundest attention, as if listening to some imaginary sound.†   (source)
  • But in his most convulsive struggles, and in the wildest vagaries of his intellect, when no other thought retained its sober influence, he still showed an awful solicitude lest the black veil should slip aside.†   (source)
  • You can stay and put things right in your clothes-box, and recover strength to your knees after your vagaries.†   (source)
  • Not that this couple be in want of one, but 'twas well to show 'em a bit of friendliness at this great racketing vagary of their lives.†   (source)
  • …tends and protects them it loves out of allreason and robs them steadily and evades responsibilityand obligations by means toobarefaced to be called subterfuge even and is taken in theft or evasion with only that frankand spontaneousadmiration for the victor which a gentleman feels for anyone who beats him in a fair contest,and withal a fond and unflagging tolerance for whitefolks' vagaries like that of a grandparent for unpredictable and troublesome children, which I had forgotten.†   (source)
  • Here we have plain vagaries, surviving in spite of attack by orthographers.†   (source)
  • He will resist dictation out of the past, but he will follow a new messiah with almost Russian willingness, and into the wildest vagaries of economics, religion, morals and speech.†   (source)
  • One observes, of course, a polite speech and a common speech, but the common speech is everywhere the same, and its uniform vagaries take the place of the dialectic variations of other lands.†   (source)
  • For a long while, as we shall see, they sought to stem its differentiation by heavy denunciations of its vagaries, and so late as the period of the Civil War they attached to it that quality of abhorrent barbarism which they saw as the chief mark of the American people.†   (source)
  • MY 71st Year After surmounting three-score and ten, With all their chances, changes, losses, sorrows, My parents' deaths, the vagaries of my life, the many tearing passions of me, the war of '63 and '4, As some old broken soldier, after a long, hot, wearying march, or haply after battle, To-day at twilight, hobbling, answering company roll-call, Here, with vital voice, Reporting yet, saluting yet the Officer over all.†   (source)
  • There was a madman in Seville who took to one of the drollest absurdities and vagaries that ever madman in the world gave way to.†   (source)
  • propounded terms Of composition, straight they changed their minds, Flew off, and into strange vagaries fell, As they would dance; yet for a dance they seemed Somewhat extravagant and wild; perhaps For joy of offered peace: But I suppose, If our proposals once again were heard, We should compel them to a quick result.†   (source)
  • Pasamonte, who was anything but meek (being by this time thoroughly convinced that Don Quixote was not quite right in his head as he had committed such a vagary as to set them free), finding himself abused in this fashion, gave the wink to his companions, and falling back they began to shower stones on Don Quixote at such a rate that he was quite unable to protect himself with his buckler, and poor Rocinante no more heeded the spur than if he had been made of brass.†   (source)
  • "That Angelica, senor curate," returned Don Quixote, "was a giddy damsel, flighty and somewhat wanton, and she left the world as full of her vagaries as of the fame of her beauty.†   (source)
  • But I take all the blame upon myself for never having told your worships of my uncle's vagaries, that you might put a stop to them before things had come to this pass, and burn all these accursed books—for he has a great number—that richly deserve to be burned like heretics."†   (source)
  • "In truth and earnest, sir squire," said he of the Grove, "I have made up my mind and determined to have done with these drunken vagaries of these knights, and go back to my village, and bring up my children; for I have three, like three Oriental pearls."†   (source)
  • This Don Quixote, or Don Simpleton, or whatever his name is, cannot, I imagine, be such a blockhead as your excellence would have him, holding out encouragement to him to go on with his vagaries and follies.†   (source)
  • While he was taken up with these vagaries, then, the time and the hour—an unlucky one for him—arrived for the Asturian to come, who in her smock, with bare feet and her hair gathered into a fustian coif, with noiseless and cautious steps entered the chamber where the three were quartered, in quest of the carrier; but scarcely had she gained the door when Don Quixote perceived her, and sitting up in his bed in spite of his plasters and the pain of his ribs, he stretched out his arms to…†   (source)
  • …beginning to end, an attack upon the books of chivalry, of which Aristotle never dreamt, nor St. Basil said a word, nor Cicero had any knowledge; nor do the niceties of truth nor the observations of astrology come within the range of its fanciful vagaries; nor have geometrical measurements or refutations of the arguments used in rhetoric anything to do with it; nor does it mean to preach to anybody, mixing up things human and divine, a sort of motley in which no Christian understanding…†   (source)
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