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whimsical
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  • He would say with a whimsical smile to his mother, the good but over-careful housewife:   (source)
    whimsical = playful
  • his whimsical smile   (source)
    whimsical = playful and impulsive
  • remembering Edna's whimsical turn of mind of late   (source)
    whimsical = impulsive
  • Only one of those whimsical little incidents which will happen when you have four million human beings all jostling each other within the space of a few square miles.   (source)
    whimsical = determined by chance or impulse rather than by necessity or reason -- often playful
  • whimsical, wild, comical as he is   (source)
    whimsical = playfully impulsive
  • Ichabod became the object of whimsical persecution to Bones and his gang of rough riders.   (source)
    whimsical = determined by impulse rather than by reason
  • Even on cold, damp days, they glided through misty thickets, her collecting, him playing whimsical tunes on his harmonica.†   (source)
  • Hard to fathom, in my opinion: as carnality goes it's old hat, the foul language nothing you can't hear any day on the street corners, the sex as decorous as fan dancers — whimsical almost, like garter belts.†   (source)
  • IN THE YEAR 1919, EDGAR'S GRANDFATHER, WHO WAS BORN WITH an extra share of whimsy, bought their land and all the buildings on it from a man he'd never met, a man named Schultz, who in his turn had walked away from a logging team half a decade earlier after seeing the chains on a fully loaded timber sled let go.†   (source)
  • Whimsical, Josh?†   (source)
  • In particular, the young man was taken with the whimsical architecture of the churches and the rambunctious tenor of the language.†   (source)
  • Mr. Chickering should have wept—not only for the whimsy with which he'd instructed Owen Meany to "Swing away!"†   (source)
  • The decent Americans I'd seen on television seemed a whimsical people, always making jokes, like Kate and Taylor.†   (source)
  • Shoulder to shoulder, half standing, half sitting, they faced their childhood home whose architecturally confused medieval references seemed now to be whimsically lighthearted; their mother's migraine was a comic interlude in a light opera, the sadness of the twins a sentimental extravagance, the incident in the kitchen no more than the merry jostling of lively spirits.†   (source)
  • He sighed whimsically.†   (source)
  • He acted out of whimsy or anger.†   (source)
  • I would have described Lacey as a bit less whimsical, however.†   (source)
  • Apparently there was an incident on the subway …. conflicting stories there, Daddy said one thing and the cops said another but —" he lifted his eyebrows, with a sort of mannered, black-humored whimsy—"off went Daddy to the ding farm!†   (source)
  • Reinhold Messner The Crystal Horizon n my backpack was a banner from Outside magazine, a small pennant emblazoned with a whimsical lizard that Linda, my wife, had sewn, and some other mementos with which I'd intended to pose for a series of triumphant photos.†   (source)
  • The map showed me that we were standing on a sudden whimsical twist in the river.†   (source)
  • A whisper of a smile forms on the corners of her mouth, whimsical, indolent, complacent rather than content.†   (source)
  • Is he one of those whimsical swamis with a snow-white beard?†   (source)
  • You are straying, indulging in whimsy.†   (source)
  • Jenny covered the floor with soft rugs, hung cheerful drawings, and dangled whimsical mobiles from the ceiling.†   (source)
  • Hatsue had been taken from his life by history, because history was whimsical and immune to private yearnings.†   (source)
  • Usually these relatives labored on the other side, in the United States, and their absences would last until the child was old enough to attempt the crossing, or until the relative was exhausted enough to return, or on occasion, quite often, forever, because life and its end are unpredictable, especially at a distance, where death seems to operate with such whimsical aim.†   (source)
  • It was too whimsical a sighting for the archbishop to pronounce as authentic, but still.†   (source)
  • Offstage it was whimsical, as if some joke were bursting to be told.†   (source)
  • He flung her a whimsical, sidelong glance, as, having finished their lunch, they rose and moved on.†   (source)
  • He considered it a trick of his whimsical fate to have searched for the sea without finding it, at the cost of countless sacrifices and suffering, and to have found it all of a sudden without looking for it, as if it lay across his path like an insurmountable object.†   (source)
  • "People have their whimsies," he said.†   (source)
  • With his wife, Edith, he raised seven whip-smart, buoyant children: Jim, Johnny, Bill, Edie, Betty, Norah, and a little girl whom, with characteristic Pollard whimsy, they called Bubbles.†   (source)
  • Humanity owes its existence to a bit of cosmic whimsy.†   (source)
  • Inside a suede pouch was a set of earrings, large silver rings around a pair of whimsical moons made from diamonds.†   (source)
  • Colonel Korn was struck with a whimsical thought.†   (source)
  • They live—or would like to live—in the splendid mansions and townhouses South of Broad Street, or SOB, the rather mythical and whimsical Maginot Line of society.†   (source)
  • It was Lalla who told us that the twenties were "so whimsical, so busy—that we were always tired."†   (source)
  • And we much prefer it to the tyrannical ravings of a whimsical monarch, or in your case, a child queen.†   (source)
  • Observers in the audience have heard the pop and are amazed by the sudden appearance of a famous matinee idol making a cameo on the stage right before their very eyes—perhaps adding some comical whimsy to this very special evening.†   (source)
  • I don't think even Mom realized what a wacky and whimsical adventure we were starting out on.†   (source)
  • He may have stirred additional resentment by offering arguments against the collective, ritualistic view of religion shared by most Athenians or by contending that gods could not, as Athenians believed, behave immorally or whimsically.†   (source)
  • There was the same whimsy to both.†   (source)
  • But this was a bootless piece of whimsy and I was really in the dark.†   (source)
  • Perhaps it was too whimsical.†   (source)
  • It was a foolish thought, a child's whimsical reflection that would have entered and left almost unnoticed at any other time.†   (source)
  • His fever," Control added with a whimsical smile, "is recurrent."†   (source)
  • He paused, and then he added whimsically, "If it had, we wouldn't be here talking about it.†   (source)
  • (This is not whimsy; they're cold and their interest in fuel is serious) Is it dry?†   (source)
  • It is Sunday, sir, and n-n-not a day f-for whimsy.   (source)
    whimsy = playfulness
  • benefited and suffered under a whimsical boss
  • whimsical despotism   (source)
    whimsical = determined impulsively
  • Martin blinked, with a sort of befuddled whimsy.†   (source)
  • "But colored lights are whimsical," Josh argues.†   (source)
  • Yeah, well, I thought, that's the whimsy of recombinant DNA.†   (source)
  • Only risk was that this awakened machine was whimsical.†   (source)
  • He has a French face, lean, whimsical, all planes and angles, with creases around the mouth where he smiles.†   (source)
  • She was worried, worried that I would think less of her for pandering to the whimsy of some paranoid lordling.†   (source)
  • There is little time for whimsy.†   (source)
  • Painted in a simple if traditional style, available in a hundred Moscow shops, the matryoshka was just that sort of whimsical toy that two parents would bring home to their child from a trip to Russia.†   (source)
  • Tabby Wheelwright looked like a starlet—lush, whimsical, easy to talk into anything; she looked eager to please, or "a little simple," as my Aunt Martha observed; she looked touchable.†   (source)
  • On one side of that divide was a girl of five or ten or twenty with a quiet demeanor and a whimsical imagination who relied upon him for companionship and counsel; while on the other side was a young woman of discernment and grace who need rely on no one but herself.†   (source)
  • "No fun," I'd heard her say with a half-whimsical sigh, wrinkling her nose, when people inquired about her mother.†   (source)
  • THE HEADMASTER HAS A CERTAIN SINGULAR POWER: BUT WAS IT NECESSARY FOR HIM TO DEMONSTRATE HIS POWER SO WHIMSICALLY?†   (source)
  • For this cabinet could be proud of all it contained: French soaps wrapped in waxed papers; British lathers in ivory drums; Italian tonics in whimsically shaped vials.†   (source)
  • Why the Rev. Lewis Merrill had so whimsically prayed that my mother would drop dead was such an old, tired story.†   (source)
  • Sefior Calderon, I certainly did not intend to slight your queen in the least, nor did I in any way mean to imply that she was either a tyrant or whimsical.†   (source)
  • It was this woman, whom he would have knocked senseless, who shuffled into the police station and did a little number for the cops—opening herself up wide for their amusement, their pity, their scorn, their mockery, their disbelief, their meanness, their whimsy, their annoyance, their power, their anger, their boredom—whatever would be useful to her and to himself.†   (source)
  • She shook me, called me her "precious little sleepyhead" and said during the night she made plans for us to leave the old world behind and whip out into the wild blue yonder on a wacky and whimsical adventure.†   (source)
  • He sat up in bed with his back resting against the headboard, lit a cigarette, smiled slightly with wry amusement, and stared with whimsical sympathy at the vivid, pop-eyed horror that had implanted itself permanently on Major Danby's face the day of the mission to Avignon, when General Dreedle had ordered him taken outside and shot.†   (source)
  • Jose Arcadio Buendia, with the whimsy of his nineteen years, resolved the problem with a single phrase: "I don't care if I have piglets as long as they can talk.†   (source)
  • Cindy's grandmother was a squat, whimsical old woman who offered me a beer soon after I sat down in her kitchen.†   (source)
  • …or neighborhood, but in the delightful and haphazard way of those romantic strangers of Hollywood daydreams, those lovers-to-be whose destinies became intertwined from the first twinkling of their chance encounter: John Garfield and Lana Turner, for instance, utterly doomed from the instant of their mingled glance in a roadside café, or, more whimsically, William Powell and Carole Lombard on hands and knees at the jeweler's, their skulls colliding as they search for an elusive diamond.†   (source)
  • She got in and rode with him for two miles before realizing that the whimsies of nighttime reception were bringing them KCUF down from Kinneret, and that the disk jockey talking was her husband, Mucho.†   (source)
  • Willie interposes some drunken whimsical exposition to Larry.†   (source)
  • Even the faint smile, whimsical, quizzical, perhaps of despair, did not leave his face.†   (source)
  • We do not follow an idle experiment, a mere whimsy.†   (source)
  • Never again would I expose myself to my father's humor; his whimsical persecution had convinced me, as no rebuke could have done, of the folly of living beyond my means.†   (source)
  • Now he (Quentin) could read it, could finish it—the sloped whimsical ironic hand out of Mississippi attenuated, into the iron snow: —or perhaps there is.†   (source)
  • He told her that he had been working for that since he was four years old; perhaps he was being humorous, whimsical.†   (source)
  • But he very early came to know a little of the poetry of Ben Jonson, whom Margaret looked on as a literary Falstaff, condoning, with the familiar weakness of the schoolmarm, his Gargantuan excess as a pardonable whimsy of genius.†   (source)
  • Then, looking up, as her husband passed her once more, she was relieved to find that the ruin was veiled; domesticity triumphed; custom crooned its soothing rhythm, so that when stopping deliberately, as his turn came round again, at the window he bent quizzically and whimsically to tickle James's bare calf with a sprig of something, she twitted him for having dispatched "that poor young man," Charles Tansley.†   (source)
  • But like all supernatural brides, the minutethe husband offends in the least their whimsical notions of marital propriety, they disappear without a trace.†   (source)
  • It was repeated as a whimsical joke and it created about her name a vague impression of eternal youth.†   (source)
  • He thought whimsically that if moonlight had a sound also, it might well be the Rameau gavotte he had heard so recently; and that set him thinking of the little Manchu.†   (source)
  • She smiled at Scarlett, whimsically, as the music ended, making a little moue of apology as she dabbed with her handkerchief.†   (source)
  • But the powerful charm of Gant's house, of its tacked and added whimsy, its male smell, its girdling rich vines, its great gummed trees, its roaring internal seclusiveness, the blistered varnish, the hot calfskin, the comfort and abundance, seduced him easily away from the great chill tomb of Dixieland, particularly in winter, since Eliza was most sparing of coal.†   (source)
  • Lord Dudley, THE TIMES said when Lady Dudley died the other day, 'a man of cultivated taste and many accomplishments, was benevolent and bountiful, but whimsically despotic.†   (source)
  • …cast upon it which had resolved on the paper the instant before he looked at it and which might fade, vanish, at any instant while he still did: the dead tongue speaking after the four years and then after almost fifty more, gentle sardonic whimsical and incurably pessimistic, without date or salutation or signature: You will notice how I insult neither of us by claiming this to be a voice from the defeated even, let alone from the dead In fact, if I were a philosopher I should deduce…†   (source)
  • He greeted me with one of his whimsical smiles.†   (source)
  • [whimsically] Then you ought to be: where are your principles?†   (source)
  • She kissed Gerty with a whimsical murmur.†   (source)
  • Then added, with the whimsical smile I adored, "but I am only one, small woman."†   (source)
  • Chance has put in our way a most singular and whimsical problem, and its solution is its own reward.†   (source)
  • In the midst of these whimsical fancies she heard a new strange sound among the leaves.†   (source)
  • To perfect the ballads was now her whimsical desire.†   (source)
  • She smiled at me whimsically, gloriously, and I knew there was no need for forgiveness.†   (source)
  • I felt myself in that whimsical state of uneasiness lately; but I shall be spared it now.†   (source)
  • The manufacturers have learned that this taste is merely whimsical.†   (source)
  • Belly and guts! a truce to your whimsical nonsense!†   (source)
  • The little god o' the world sticks to the same old way, And is as whimsical as on Creation's day.†   (source)
  • "But perhaps he may be a little whimsical in his civilities," replied her uncle.†   (source)
  • But perception is not whimsical, it is fatal.†   (source)
  • Kindly allow me to sort them out using this whimsical system of classification.†   (source)
  • Whimzh—whimsy.†   (source)
  • We continued silent while the maid was with us—as silent, it whimsically occurred to me, as some young couple who, on their wedding journey, at the inn, feel shy in the presence of the waiter.†   (source)
  • On and on she went, across Piccadilly, and up Regent Street, ahead of him, her cloak, her gloves, her shoulders combining with the fringes and the laces and the feather boas in the windows to make the spirit of finery and whimsy which dwindled out of the shops on to the pavement, as the light of a lamp goes wavering at night over hedges in the darkness.†   (source)
  • One of the first examples that he had learnt in Latin had run: INDIA MITTIT EBUR; and he recalled the shrewd northern face of the rector who had taught him to construe the Metamorphoses of Ovid in a courtly English, made whimsical by the mention of porkers and potsherds and chines of bacon.†   (source)
  • At times her whimsical fancy would intensify natural processes around her till they seemed a part of her own story.†   (source)
  • He exaggerated the Americanisms which he knew always made the Englishmen laugh and poured out a breathless stream of conversation, whimsical, high-spirited, and jolly.†   (source)
  • Dallas's eye brows went up whimsically.†   (source)
  • [left alone with Octavius, stares whimsically at him] Tavy: do you want to count for something in the world?†   (source)
  • Barbara gravely lays her hand on his shoulder, and he looks up at her in a sort of whimsical desperation].†   (source)
  • Even Clavdia Chauchat had exchanged her customary sweater for a gown with a hint of whimsy, or rather patriotism.†   (source)
  • …when he composed it, and would express to all those who should hear it played in centuries to come—than as a pledge, a token of his love, which made even the Verdurins and their little pianist think of Odette and, at the same time, of himself—which bound her to him by a lasting tie; and at that point he had (whimsically entreated by Odette) abandoned the idea of getting some 'professional' to play over to him the whole sonata, of which he still knew no more than this one passage.†   (source)
  • As they drew nearer she was whimsically struck by a kind of family likeness between Miss Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce.†   (source)
  • He said to himself, in the melodramatic tones of a whimsical boy, that the schoolmaster had drawn at that well scores of times on a morning like this, and would never draw there any more.†   (source)
  • I've always wished I had a chance to belong to a Little Theater, and give some European plays, or whimsical like Barrie, or a pageant."†   (source)
  • Whimsical and inventive.†   (source)
  • He recollected Cronshaw's whimsical metaphor of the Persian carpet; he had thought of it often; but Cronshaw with his faun-like humour had refused to make his meaning clear: he repeated that it had none unless one discovered it for oneself.†   (source)
  • Most women are moody and whimsical.†   (source)
  • And Maisie Johnson, as she joined that gently trudging, vaguely gazing, breeze-kissed company—squirrels perching and preening, sparrow fountains fluttering for crumbs, dogs busy with the railings, busy with each other, while the soft warm air washed over them and lent to the fixed unsurprised gaze with which they received life something whimsical and mollified—Maisie Johnson positively felt she must cry Oh!†   (source)
  • It was to this breezy and whimsical spot that Jude ascended from the nearest station for the first time in his life about four o'clock one afternoon, and entering on the summit of the peak after a toilsome climb, passed the first houses of the aerial town; and drew towards the school-house.†   (source)
  • Her lips wavered into a smile—she had been distracted by the whimsical remembrance of the confidences she had made to him, two years earlier, in that very room.†   (source)
  • Richard III, too, is delightful as the whimsical comedian who stops a funeral to make love to the corpse's widow; but when, in the next act, he is replaced by a stage villain who smothers babies and offs with people's heads, we are revolted at the imposture and repudiate the changeling.†   (source)
  • "And rescue us from ourselves," she completed, with a most adorable smile, whimsical as I had never seen it, for it was whimsical with love.†   (source)
  • Reason had had nothing to do with his whimsical conversion, which was perhaps the mere freak of a careless man in search of a new sensation, and temporarily impressed by his mother's death.†   (source)
  • Between the post were ranged the milchers, each exhibiting herself at the present moment to a whimsical eye in the rear as a circle on two stalks, down the centre of which a switch moved pendulum-wise; while the sun, lowering itself behind this patient row, threw their shadows accurately inwards upon the wall.†   (source)
  • As she rose to go she turned to me with the whimsical way she had, and said: "Something is going to happen—is happening, for that matter.†   (source)
  • "If I were inclined to joke, I should say, How much this seems like Paradise!" he remarked whimsically, looking at her with an inclined head.†   (source)
  • He had been over the Hall in the course of the morning and whimsically described the family pictures as we walked.†   (source)
  • That a merchant, who has large connections, a jurisconsult, a doctor, a chemist, should be thus absent-minded, that they should become whimsical or even peevish, I can understand; such cases are cited in history.†   (source)
  • With a wild whimsiness, he now used his coffin for a sea-chest; and emptying into it his canvas bag of clothes, set them in order there.†   (source)
  • He was himself conscious that, except that whimsical gentleman married to Kitty Shtcherbatskaya, who had a propos de bottes poured out a stream of irrelevant absurdities with such spiteful fury, every nobleman with whom he had made acquaintance had become his adherent.†   (source)
  • To Danglars Monte Cristo also wrote, requesting him to excuse the whimsical gift of a capricious millionaire, and to beg the baroness to pardon the Eastern fashion adopted in the return of the horses.†   (source)
  • For some years Wilson had been privately at work on a whimsical almanac, for his amusement—a calendar, with a little dab of ostensible philosophy, usually in ironical form, appended to each date; and the judge thought that these quips and fancies of Wilson's were neatly turned and cute; so he carried a handful of them around one day, and read them to some of the chief citizens.†   (source)
  • It was perhaps this whimsical gait that helped to mark his character more than ever as that of the humorous invalid—the invalid for whom even his own disabilities are part of the general joke.†   (source)
  • 'Might I ask you,' said Nicholas, hesitating between the respect he ought to assume, and his love of the whimsical, 'might I ask you what the unities are?'†   (source)
  • The speaker, with a whimsical good humour upon him all the time, looked over the parapet-wall with the greatest disparagement of Marseilles; and taking up a determined position by putting his hands in his pockets and rattling his money at it, apostrophised it with a short laugh.†   (source)
  • We achieved the rest of our journey pleasantly, sometimes recurring to Doctors' Commons, and anticipating the distant days when I should be a proctor there, which Steerforth pictured in a variety of humorous and whimsical lights, that made us both merry.†   (source)
  • In his rivalry he might have been supposed actuated solely by a whimsical desire to thwart, astonish, or mortify myself; although there were times when I could not help observing, with a feeling made up of wonder, abasement, and pique, that he mingled with his injuries, his insults, or his contradictions, a certain most inappropriate, and assuredly most unwelcome affectionateness of manner.†   (source)
  • Certainly one of the persons about whom Maggie's fears were furthest from troubling themselves was her aunt Pullet, on whom, seeing that she did not live in St. Ogg's, and was neither sharp-eyed nor sharp-tempered, it would surely have been quite whimsical of them to fix rather than on aunt Glegg.†   (source)
  • You don't believe it's right any more than I do; and you wouldn't do it any sooner than I." At this critical juncture, old Cudjoe, the black man-of-all-work, put his head in at the door, and wished "Missis would come into the kitchen;" and our senator, tolerably relieved, looked after his little wife with a whimsical mixture of amusement and vexation, and, seating himself in the arm-chair, began to read the papers.†   (source)
  • By one of those whimsical coincidences in which Nature, like a busy mother, seems to spare a moment from her unremitting labours to turn and make her children smile, the girl now dropped the cloak, and forth tumbled ropes of black hair over a red jacket.†   (source)
  • The emperors possessed, it is true, an immense and unchecked power, which allowed them to gratify all their whimsical tastes, and to employ for that purpose the whole strength of the State.†   (source)
  • A quavering voice, a whimsical mind.†   (source)
  • —Coriolanus The captive Abbot's features and manners exhibited a whimsical mixture of offended pride, and deranged foppery and bodily terror.†   (source)
  • Right off, I observed a cluster of mountains about 2,000 feet high, whose shapes were very whimsically sculpted.†   (source)
  • But he could not take root in any of these; with chagrin, he found his masters invariably whimsical and irregular, constantly running about the country, or on the look-out for adventure.†   (source)
  • It occurred to one young gentleman to make the whimsical inquiry whether any one could possibly look upon such an animal as a woman, and so forth….†   (source)
  • …who was the hero of a richer accumulation of anecdote; from Henrietta, who, she was sure, would come out, too late, on purpose to remonstrate; from Lord Warburton, who would certainly console himself, and from Caspar Goodwood, who perhaps would not; from her aunt, who had cold, shallow ideas about marriage, for which she was not sorry to display her contempt; and from Ralph, whose talk about having great views for her was surely but a whimsical cover for a personal disappointment.†   (source)
  • My guardian stopped and looked at him with a whimsical mixture of amusement and indignation in his face.†   (source)
  • To whom do you owe it that you breathe that air, behold that sky, and can still amuse your lark's mind with your whimsical nonsense and madness?†   (source)
  • My father's was a sombre, brooding brain, Which through the holy spheres of Nature groped and wandered, And honestly, in his own fashion, pondered With labor whimsical, and pain: Who, in his dusky work-shop bending, With proved adepts in company, Made, from his recipes unending, Opposing substances agree.†   (source)
  • So a whimsical fate ordered that her hat should be taken off—veil and all attached—and placed upon his head, Troy tossing his own into a gooseberry bush.†   (source)
  • In the meantime, the Black Champion and his guide were pacing at their leisure through the recesses of the forest; the good Knight whiles humming to himself the lay of some enamoured troubadour, sometimes encouraging by questions the prating disposition of his attendant, so that their dialogue formed a whimsical mixture of song and jest, of which we would fain give our readers some idea.†   (source)
  • When a woman in such a situation, neither old, deaf, crazed, nor whimsical, takes upon herself to sob and soliloquize aloud there is something grievous the matter.†   (source)
  • Here was Fanny, proud, fitful, whimsical, further advanced in that disqualified state for going into society which had so much fretted her on the evening of the tortoise-shell knife, resolved always to want comfort, resolved not to be comforted, resolved to be deeply wronged, and resolved that nobody should have the audacity to think her so.†   (source)
  • These inclinations are not whimsical usually, but their form, size, and direction are determined by the promontories of the shore, the ancient axes of elevation.†   (source)
  • There is nothing whimsical and fantastic in his production, but sweet and sad earnest, freighted with the weightiest convictions, and pointed with the most determined aim which any man or class knows of in his times.†   (source)
  • Yet this demure affectation of extreme penitence was whimsically belied by a ludicrous meaning which lurked in his huge features, and seemed to pronounce his fear and repentance alike hypocritical.†   (source)
  • This was off the coast of Tihama, and there such zoophyte displays not only flourished below sea level but they also fashioned picturesque networks that unreeled as high as ten fathoms above it; the latter were more whimsical but less colorful than the former, which kept their bloom thanks to the moist vitality of the waters.†   (source)
  • He thought about it for a little while with a highly agreeable and whimsical expression of face, then quite gave it up and said in his most engaging manner, "You know what a child I am.†   (source)
  • It struck all as so whimsical, and so ridiculous, that the wild laughter even attacked the sergeants of the Parloiaux-Bourgeois, a sort of pikemen, whose stupidity was part of their uniform.†   (source)
  • …same zig-zag course and frequent pauses, scratching along with it as if it were too heavy for him and falling all the while, making its fall a diagonal between a perpendicular and horizontal, being determined to put it through at any rate;—a singularly frivolous and whimsical fellow;—and so he would get off with it to where he lived, perhaps carry it to the top of a pine tree forty or fifty rods distant, and I would afterwards find the cobs strewn about the woods in various directions.†   (source)
  • After all the pentagonal, hexagonal, and whimsical faces, which had succeeded each other at that hole without realizing the ideal of the grotesque which their imaginations, excited by the orgy, had constructed, nothing less was needed to win their suffrages than the sublime grimace which had just dazzled the assembly.†   (source)
  • Words cannot describe the effects produced by our galvanic rays on these huge, whimsically sculpted blocks, whose every angle, ridge, and facet gave off a different glow depending on the nature of the veins running inside the ice.†   (source)
  • He had taken two or three undecided turns up and down while uttering these broken sentences, retaining the poker in one hand and rubbing his hair with the other, with a good-natured vexation at once so whimsical and so lovable that I am sure we were more delighted with him than we could possibly have expressed in any words.†   (source)
  • "It is pleasant," said Mr. Skimpole, turning his sprightly eyes from one to the other of us, "and it is whimsically interesting to trace peculiarities in families.†   (source)
  • Henry's words, his description of the ebony cabinet which was to escape her observation at first, immediately rushed across her; and though there could be nothing really in it, there was something whimsical, it was certainly a very remarkable coincidence!†   (source)
  • It seems they were either deceiv'd in themselves, or deceiv'd the Parliament; but common sense, aided by present danger, will sometimes be too strong for whimsical opinions.†   (source)
  • She had gone to the women at afternoon-coffees, to the merchants in their stores, with so many outpouring comments and whimsies that she hadn't given them a chance to betray their opinions of her.†   (source)
  • Whimsies.†   (source)
  • But along with new emerald-green grass, what a wealth of organic life had now emerged from the soil on the slopes and wide meadows—stars, chalices, bells, and whimsies that filled the sun-drenched air with subtle fragrances: great masses of Alpine campion and wild pansies, daisies, marguerites, cowslips in red and yellow—much larger and more beautiful than any Hans Castorp remembered seeing in the flatlands, that is, to the extent that he had ever paid attention to them—plus nodding…†   (source)
  • You should study less, good sir, and take a little pastime, or these night whimsies will grow upon you.†   (source)
  • But poorly could I withstand them, much as in other moods I was almost ready to smile at the solemn whimsicalities of that outlandish prophet of the wharves.†   (source)
  • This obscure, whimsical, and disagreeable poem was despised   (source)
    whimsical = playfully written based on impulse rather than by necessity or reason
  • Valuing himself not a little upon his elegance, being indeed a proper man of person, this talkative now applied himself to his dress with animadversions of some heat upon the sudden whimsy of the atmospherics while the company lavished their encomiums upon the project he had advanced.†   (source)
  • A whimsical adventure which befel the squire, with the distressed situation of Sophia.†   (source)
  • One of my projects was to brew me some beer; a very whimsical one indeed, when it is considered that I had neither casks sufficient; nor could I make any to preserve it in; neither had I hops to make it keep, yest to make it work, nor a copper or kettle to make it boil.†   (source)
  • Men who pay for what they eat will insist on gratifying their palates, however nice and whimsical these may prove; and if everything is not agreeable to their taste, will challenge a right to censure, to abuse, and to d—n their dinner without controul.†   (source)
  • But I could not counteract Nature's law that everything shall beget its like; and what, then, could this sterile, illtilled wit of mine beget but the story of a dry, shrivelled, whimsical offspring, full of thoughts of all sorts and such as never came into any other imagination—just what might be begotten in a prison, where every misery is lodged and every doleful sound makes its dwelling?†   (source)
  • MOS: I fear, I shall begin to grow in love With my dear self, and my most prosperous parts, They do so spring and burgeon; I can feel A whimsy in my blood: I know not how, Success hath made me wanton.†   (source)
  • "Senor," said Sancho on hearing this, "it is the part of brave hearts to be patient in adversity just as much as to be glad in prosperity; I judge by myself, for, if when I was a governor I was glad, now that I am a squire and on foot I am not sad; and I have heard say that she whom commonly they call Fortune is a drunken whimsical jade, and, what is more, blind, and therefore neither sees what she does, nor knows whom she casts down or whom she sets up."†   (source)
  • …people coming, and my brother said to me, 'Sister, this must be the round, stir your feet and put wings to them, and follow me as fast as you can, lest they recognise us, for that would be a bad business for us;' and so saying he turned about and began, I cannot say to run but to fly; in less than six paces I fell from fright, and then the officer of justice came up and carried me before your worships, where I find myself put to shame before all these people as whimsical and vicious."†   (source)
  • To say the truth, so whimsical are the desires of ambition, the very moment this youth had attained the above-mentioned honour, he would have been well contented to have retired to some corner of the world, where the fame of it should never have reached his ears.†   (source)
  • The reader will, I fancy, allow that Fortune could not have culled out a more improper person for Mr Jones to attack with any probability of success; nor could the whimsical lady have directed this attack at a more unseasonable time.†   (source)
  • I could with less pain endure the raging in my own natural unsatisfied appetites, even hunger or thirst, than I could submit to leave ungratified the most whimsical desires of a woman on whom I so extravagantly doated, that, though I knew she had been the mistress of half my acquaintance, I firmly intended to marry her.†   (source)
  • These hopes had surely very little foundation; but as the conduct of Mrs Fitzpatrick, in not seeing him according to her promise, and in quitting her lodgings, had been very odd and unaccountable, he conceived some faint hopes, that she (of whom he had formerly heard a very whimsical character) might possibly intend to do him that service in a strange manner, which she declined doing by more ordinary methods.†   (source)
  • This loss, however great, he bore like a man of sense and constancy, though it must be confest he would often talk a little whimsically on this head; for he sometimes said he looked on himself as still married, and considered his wife as only gone a little before him, a journey which he should most certainly, sooner or later, take after her; and that he had not the least doubt of meeting her again in a place where he should never part with her more—sentiments for which his sense was…†   (source)
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