Caprice Quotes

• Woman is a miracle of divine contradictions.

  Jules Michelet

  Women, Miracle, Cute Girl

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• Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the fates.

  J. K. Rowling

  Fate, Talent, Stripping Away

  J.K. Rowling (2015). “Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination”, p.29, Hachette UK

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• Travel is a caprice in childhood, a passion in youth, a necessity in manhood, and an elegy in old age.

  Jose Rizal

  Passion, Childhood, Age

  "'Los Viajes' ('Travels')". Essay by José Rizal, La Solidaridad, May 15, 1889.

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• Caprice in woman is the antidote to beauty.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Antidote

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• The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.

  Oscar Wilde

  Passion, Differences, Littles

  The Picture of Dorian Gray ch. 2 (1891)

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• We are the creatures of imagination, passion, and self-will, more than of reason or even of self-interest. Even in the common transactions and daily intercourse of life, we are governed by whim, caprice, prejudice, or accident. The falling of a teacup puts us out of temper for the day; and a quarrel that commenced about the pattern of a gown may end only with our lives.

  William Hazlitt

  Life, Fall, Passion

  William Hazlitt (1904). “The Collected Works of William Hazlitt: Fugitive writings”

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• She had caprices of a marvellous unexpectedness, and how is any one to imitate a caprice?

  Stendhal

  Unexpectedness, Marvellous

  Stendhal (2015). “Amarance”, p.73, Stendhal

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• The sovereign is called a tyrant who knows no laws but his caprice.

  Voltaire

  Law, Tyrants, Sovereign

  Voltaire (2016). “Voltaire – The Philosophical Works: Treatise On Tolerance, Philosophical Dictionary, Candide, Letters on England, Plato’s Dream, Dialogues, The Study of Nature, Ancient Faith and Fable, Zadig…: From the French writer, historian and philosopher, famous for his wit, his attacks on the established Catholic Church, and his advocacy of freedom of religion and freedom of expression”, p.2014, e-artnow

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• Classic art was the art of necessity: modern romantic art bears the stamp of caprice and chance.

  Max Eastman

  Art, Romance, Bears

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• The constant flux and caprice of mental events do not admit of the establishment of stable experimental conditions.

  Hermann Ebbinghaus

  Events, Flux, Establishment

  Hermann Ebbinghaus “Memory”, Рипол Классик

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• Love has a way of cheating itself consciously, like a child who plays at solitary hide-and-seek; it is pleased with assurances that it all the while disbelieves.

  George Eliot

  Cheating, Children, Play

  George Eliot (2005). “Four Novels of George Eliot”, p.90, Wordsworth Editions

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• Here life itself, life at its best and healthiest, awaits the caprice of the bullet. Let us see the development of the day. All else may stand over, perhaps for ever. Existence is never so sweet as when it is at hazard.

  Winston Churchill

  Sweet, Adversity, Hazards

  Winston Churchill (2013). “London to Ladysmith & Ian Hamilton's March”, p.152, Courier Corporation

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• Never lose sight of the fact that all human felicity lies in man's imagination, and that he cannot think to attain it unless he heeds all his caprices. The most fortunate of persons is he who has the most means to satisfy his vagaries.

  Marquis de Sade

  Lying, Mean, Men

  marquis de Sade (1988). “Juliette”, Grove Press

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• Caprice, independence and rebellion, which are opposed to the social order, are essential to the good health of an ethnic group. We shall measure the good health of this group by the number of its delinquents. Nothing is more immobilizing than the spirit of deference.

  Jean Dubuffet

  Order, Numbers, Independence

  "Asphyxiating Culture". Book by Jean Dubuffet, 1968.

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• There is a proverb in the South that a woman laughs when she can, and weeps when she pleases.

  Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

  Laughing, Please, South

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• Any church which forsakes the regular and uniform for the periodical and spasmodic service of God, is doomed to decay; any church which relies for its spiritual strength and growth entirely upon seasons of "revival," will very soon have no genuine revivals to rely on. Our holy God will not conform His blessings to man's moods and moral caprice. If a church is declining, it may require a "revival" to restore it; but what need was there of its declining?

  Theodore L. Cuyler

  Spiritual, Blessing, Men

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers". Book by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 149, 1895.

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• The Ideal Man should talk to us as if we were goddesses, and treat us as if we were children. He should refuse all our serious requests, and gratify every one of our whims. He should encourage us to have caprices, and forbid us to have missions. He should always say much more than he means, and always mean much more than he says.

  Oscar Wilde

  Children, Mean, Men

  Oscar Wilde (1988). “The complete plays”, Methuen Drama

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• How wayward is this foolish love that, like a testy babe, will scratch the nurse and presently, all humble, kiss the rod.

  William Shakespeare

  Humble, Kissing, Nurse

  'The Two Gentlemen Of Verona' (1592-3) act 1, sc. 2, l. 55

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• I had learned to have a perfect nausea for the theatre: the continual repetition of the same words and the same gestures, night after night, and the caprices, the way of looking at life, and the entire rigmarole disgusted me.

  Isadora Duncan

  Night, Perfect, Theatre

  Isadora Duncan (2013). “My Life (Revised and Updated)”, p.31, W. W. Norton & Company

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• The convention missionaries call "modesty" has no standard, and cannot have one, because it is opposed to nature and reason and is therefore an artificiality and subject to anybody's whim - anybody's diseased caprice.

  Mark Twain

  Modesty, Reason, Conventions

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• One might almost fear," writes a thoughtful woman, "seeing how the women of to-day are lightly stirred up to run after some new fashion or faith, that heaven is not so near to them as it was to their mothers and grandmothers.

  Samuel Smiles

  Running, Mother, Fashion

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• Shakespeare possesses the power of subordinating nature for the purposes of expression, beyond all poets. His imperial muse tosses the creation like a bauble from hand to hand, and uses it to embody any caprice of thought that is uppermost in his mind. The remotest spaces of nature are visited, and the farthest sundered things are brought together, by subtle spiritual connection. We are made aware that magnitude of material things is relative, and all objects shrink and expand to serve the passion of the poet.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Mother, Spiritual, Nature

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2011). “Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.238, Penguin

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• One's own free and unfettered volition, one's own caprice, however wild, one's own fancy, inflamed sometimes to the point of madness - that is the one best and greatest good, which is never taken into consideration because it cannot fit into any classification and the omission of which sends all systems and theories to the devil.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Taken, Omission, Devil

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• Religion is the dream of the human mind. But even in dreams we do not find ourselves in emptiness or in heaven, but on earth, in the realm of reality; we only see real things in the entrancing splendor of imagination and caprice, instead of in the simple daylight of reality and necessity.

  Ludwig Feuerbach

  Dream, Real, Simple

  Ludwig Feuerbach (2012). “The Essence of Christianity”, p.12, Courier Corporation

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• Let nothing be called natural In an age of bloody confusion, Ordered disorder, planned caprice, And dehumanized humanity, lest all things Be held unalterable!

  Bertolt Brecht

  Nature, Confusion, Humanity

  Bertolt Brecht (1965). “The Jewish Wife and Other Short Plays”, p.111, Grove Press

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