Capricious Quotes

I wondered over again for the hundredth time what could be the principle which, in the wildest, most lawless, fantastically chaotic, apparently capricious work of Nature, always kept it beautiful. ~ George MacDonald

She didn't give George any too easy a time when she was alive. She was one of those semi-invalids. I believe she had really something wrong with her. But whatever it was she played it for all it was worth. She was capricious, exacting and unreasonable. She complained from morning to night. George was expected to wait on her, hand and foot and everything he did was always wrong and he got cursed for it. Most men, I'm fully convinced, would have hit her with a hatchet long ago. ~ Agatha Christie

A consistent soul believes in destiny, a capricious one in chance. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

Throughout his last half-dozen books, for example, Arthur Koestler has been conducting a campaign against his own misunderstanding of Darwinism. He hopes to find some ordering force, constraining evolution to certain directions and overriding the influence of natural selection. [ ... ] Darwinism is not the theory of capricious change that Koestler imagines. Random variation may be the raw material of change, but natural selection builds good design by rejecting most variants while accepting and accumulating the few that improve adaptation to local environments. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

Luck is what a capricious man believes in. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

Photography is without mercy
though it's nonsense to say it does not lie. Rather, it lies in a particular, capricious way which makes beggars of ministers and gods of cat's meat men. ~ Nick Harkaway

Imposition of the death penalty is arbitrary and capricious. Decision of who will live and who will die for his crime turns less on the nature of the offense and the incorrigibility of the offender and more on inappropriate and indefensible considerations: the political and personal inclinations of prosecutors; the defendant's wealth, race and intellect; the race and economic status of the victim; the quality of the defendant's counsel; and the resources allocated to defense lawyers. ~ Gerald Heaney

Intuition was often a way of cutting corners, a nifty technique of replacing hard evidence and facts with something far more elusive and capricious. The worst investigators Carlson knew relied on so-called intuition. ~ Harlan Coben

A love I was in no position to receive despite desperately needing it. No. Not I with my castaway, homeless body. Where would I store it? It would fall right through me, sink into the depths of my void. I would have needed so much love, more than any one person is capable of giving, to fill that gaping hole at the center of my life. And, besides his love had been capricious, inconsistent, flighty. ~ Azareen Van Der Vliet Oloomi

By their very nature, human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory, that they deserve not only our consideration, but our reconsideration - and our unwavering determination to withhold our opinion until we have engaged with them ~ Amor Towles

And how can we lose this maddening self, lose it entirely? Love? Yes, but as old Cephalus once heard Sophocles say, the least of us know that love is a cruel and terrible master. One loses oneself for the sake of the other, but in doing so becomes enslaved and miserable to the most capricious of all the gods. ~ Donna Tartt

For nurturing the mind, there's nothing like paring your desires away to a very few. If you have few desires, there may still be some capricious whims in your mind, but they'll be few. If you have many desires, there may be some enduring principles in your mind, but they'll be few indeed. ~ Mencius

Social science virtually abhors the event. Not without reason; the short-term is the most capricious and deceptive form of time. ~ Fernand Braudel

Great hearts, my dear master, should be patient in misfortune as well as joyful in prosperity. And this I judge from myself. For if I was merry when I was Governor now that I'm a squire on foot I'm not sad, for I've heard tell that Fortune, as they call her, is a drunken and capricious woman and, worse still, blind; and so she doesn't see what she's doing, and doesn't know whom she is casting down or raising up. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Society is capricious and rewards the bad as often as the good. But it never rewards the quiet. ~ Julia Quinn

None of them, not even he, seemed to realize they weren't just physical beings, that God had left a mark upon them by the simple fact of his creation. They preferred their idols, tangible, possessing, capricious characteristics like themselves, easily understood. They wanted something they could manipulate. God was inconceivable, intangible, incomprehensible, unexploitable. ~ Francine Rivers

O Logic: born gatekeeper to the Temple of Science, victim of capricious destiny: doomed hitherto to be the drudge of pedants: come to the aid of thy master, Legislation ~ Jeremy Bentham

Indeed the worthy housewife was of such a capricious nature, that she not only attained a higher pitch of genius than Macbeth, in respect of her ability to be wise, amazed, temperate and furious, loyal and neutral in an instant, but would sometimes ring the changes backwards and forwards on all possible moods and flights in one short quarter of an hour; performing, as it were, a kind of triple bob major on the peal of instruments in the female belfry, with a skilfulness and rapidity of execution that astonished all who heard her. ~ Charles Dickens

Good-bye, my fair friend; beware of the amusing or capricious ideas which always seduce you too easily. Remember that in the career you are following, intelligence is not enough and that a single imprudence may become an irreparable misfortune. And finally sometime allow prudent friendship to guide your pleasures.
Good-bye, I still love you as much as if you were reasonable. ~ Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos De Laclos

The moon: in that luminous face one can behold those tired phases that bring only disappointment and no satisfaction; the impulses governing its expression remain patternistic, its cycles of transition easily predictable. With moderated temperament it commands the capricious sea: its diametric opponent, in whose helpless defiance, arises an empty, albeit elegant promise, an ever-changing flicker of reflected light, a simultaneous opening and closing of paths to be traversed, a vacillating hope and disillusionment in whose unsettling direction emerges something one might wish to call, even under the hardened visage of sky, a marginal sense of freedom. To walk upon the decks of ramshackle vessels rising and descending in patterns indeterminate, to lean in ecstasy over their shaky rails to witness the splendor of that which transforms immediately upon being witnessed and which transforms thereby the witness in question: it was these flights of reverie that appealed better to one's imagination than the lean pragmatism of predictable transition. ~ Ashim Shanker

I'm tempted to do something back, but using magic against fairies is a tricky thing. It tends to be either Oh yay, it worked or Oh shit, I'm a llama. Their own magic throws everything off kilter, like a capricious breeze. ~ Heather R. Blair

Right," Thatcher said, "let's have a look at her."
Katherine hesitated. The kitten was fast asleep in her arms and she was afraid to wake her.
"Something amiss?" Thatcher asked.
Katherine giggled at her capricious emotions and shoved the kitten into the surgeon's arms. The animal woke up as Thatcher examined it. He set the kitten on the deck and watched as she wobbled around on clumsy paws. "Yes," Thatcher nodded conclusively. "This is indeed a cat. ~ Matt Tomerlin

They say fortune is a woman and capricious. But sometimes she is a good woman, and gives to those who merit. ~ George Eliot

The loss of transcendence has left in its wake the flotsam of distrustful, cynical Christians, angry at a capricious God, and the jetsam of smug bibilolatrists who claim to know precisely what God is thinking and exactly what he plans to do. ~ Brennan Manning

Though I obviously have no proof of this, the one aspect of life that seems clear to me is that good people do whatever they believe is the right thing to do. Being virtuous is hard, not easy. The idea of doing good things simply because you're good seems like a zero-sum game; I'm not even sure those actions would still qualify as 'good,' since they'd merely be a function of normal behavior. Regardless of what kind of god you believe in--a loving god, a vengeful god, a capricious god, a snooty beret-wearing French god, or whatever--one has to assume that you can't be penalized for doing the things you believe to be truly righteous and just. Certainly, this creates some pretty glaring problems: Hitler may have thought he was serving God. Stalin may have thought he was serving God (or something vaguely similar). I'm certain Osama bin Laden was positive he was serving God. It's not hard to fathom that all of those maniacs were certain that what they were doing was right. Meanwhile, I constantly do things that I know are wrong; they're not on the same scale as incinerating Jews or blowing up skyscrapers, but my motivations might be worse. I have looked directly into the eyes of a woman I loved and told her lies for no reason, except that those lies would allow me to continue having sex with another woman I cared about less. This act did not kill 20 million Russian peasants, but it might be more 'diabolical' in a literal sense. If I died and found out I was going to hell and Stali ~ Chuck Klosterman

I view the major features of my own odyssey as a set of mostly fortunate contingencies. I was not destined by inherited mentality or family tradition to become a paleontologist. I can locate no tradition for scientific or intellectual careers anywhere on either side of my eastern European Jewish background. [ ... ] I view my serious and lifelong commitment to baseball in entirely the same manner: purely as a contingent circumstance of numerous, albeit not entirely capricious, accidents. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

When he had ended, the holy hermit was a moment silent, then said: My son, I have attended to thy story and I know the maiden. I have myself seen her, as have many. Know, then, that she is capricious for she imposeth conditions that man cannot fulfill, and delinquency is punished by desertion. She cometh only when unsought, and will not be questioned. One manifestation of curiosity, one sign of doubt, one expression of misgiving, and she is away! ~ Ambrose Bierce

It's such a capricious, strange existence, basing your life on the whims of others, and basing your ebbs and flows of confidence and lack of confidence on the fact that people either choose you or don't. ~ Jon Hamm

It is when we try to grapple with another man's intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun. It is as if loneliness were a hard and absolute condition of existence; the envelope of flesh and blood on which our eyes are fixed melts before the outstretched hand, and there remains only the capricious, unconsolable and elusive spirit that no eye can follow, no hand can grasp. ~ Joseph Conrad

One of the most striking and fundamental things about probability theory is that it leads to an understanding of the otherwise strange fact that events which are individually capricious and unpredictable can, when treated en masse, lead to very stable average performances. ~ Warren Weaver

How dare you? How dare you create a world in which there is such misery that's not our fault? It's not right. It's utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid god who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain? ~ Stephen Fry

Washington politicians basically view the People as a capricious and dangerous enemy, a dumb mob whose only interesting quality happens to be their power to take away politicians' jobs ... When the government sees its people as the enemy, sooner or later that feeling gets to be mutual. And that's when the real weirdness begins. ~ Matt Taibbi

Your father doesn't give his devotion lightly or carelessly. When you are given a piece of someone like that, someone who doesn't naturally trust others, it's more special than when it comes from those who are capricious with their love. As with all things, the rarity make it all the more precious ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

The gods of hunter-gatherers are often capricious and malevolent. They sometimes punish bad behavior, but they bring suffering to the virtuous as well. As groups take up agriculture and grow larger, however, their gods become far more moralistic. ~ Jonathan Haidt

Though Yonahlossee was an odd place to me, it was quickly turning familiar. Not missing home had at first seemed inconceivable, but I understood how the human heart operated, that it was fickle, capricious ~ Anton DiSclafani

There are strange friendships," Dostoevsky writes, with reference to Stepan Trofimovich and Varvara Petrovna in Demons. "Two friends are almost ready to eat each other, they live like that all their lives, and yet they cannot part. Parting is even impossible: the friend who waxes capricious and breaks it off will be the first to fall sick and die." A marvelous passage, communicating so economically the diabolical undercurrent of certain friendships, their weird fatalism. ~ Elif Batuman

That's my problem with new-age stuff. In common with many irrational views it harks back to a sense of something ancient while rejecting anything provably historical. It's like the miserable concept of Original Sin. There seems to be an obsession with the idea that there were ancient humans, uncorrupted by their capricious intellects, who lived in the 'right way'.
They didn't eat too much dairy or any wheat. They didn't sit down too long for their spines or walk around in posture-ruining shoes. They didn't consume too many sugars or fats for their unblemished guts to digest, or pop painkilling and antibiotic tablets to deal with the short-term symptoms of long-term problems that should be dealt with by wholesale lifestyle change. They didn't drink or smoke. They were perfect and we should sling out all our stuff and emulate them. Except they had an average life expectancy of about 18 and the planet could only support a few hundred thousand of them. Apart from that, good plan. ~ David Mitchell

Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness.
It was deeper and more intimate that the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw.
Okonkwo's fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself. ~ Chinua Achebe

The mind is the most capricious of insects - flitting, fluttering. ~ Virginia Woolf

You will never find a faery at a science fair. Why? Because science is all about proving theories and understanding the universe. Science folds everything into neat logical, well-explained packages. The fey are magical, capricious, illogical and unexplainable. Science cannot prove the existence of faeries, so naturally we do not exist. That type of non-belief is fatal to faeries. ~ Julie Kagawa

I can only say that friendship should rise above man-made laws, which tend to be capricious by their very nature. ~ Tendai Huchu

Because the Illinois death penalty system is arbitrary and capricious - and therefore immoral - I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death. ~ George Ryan

The historical order is very interesting, but accidental and capricious; if we would to understand the growth of knowledge, we cannot be satisfied with accidents, we must explain how knowledge was gradually built up. ~ George Sarton

I suppose memory has at least two faces, and capricious ones at that. ~ Darin Strauss

The momentum of the mind can be vexingly, involuntarily capricious. ~ Gregory Maguire

The turnip is a capricious vegetable, which seems reluctant to show itself at its best. ~ Waverley Root

Like many air travelers, I am aware that airplanes fly aided by capricious fairies and invisible strings. ~ J. Maarten Troost

And who ever said the world was fair, little lady? Maybe death is fair, but certainly not life. We must accept the unfairness as proof of the sublime flux of existence, the capricious music of the universe- and go on about our tasks ~ Tom Robbins

My sister's bringing up had made me sensitive. In the little world in which children have their existence whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice. It may be only small injustice that the child can be exposed to; but the child is small, and its world is small, and its rocking-horse stands as many hands high, according to scale, as a big-boned Irish hunter. Within myself, I had sustained, from my babyhood, a perpetual conflict with injustice. I had known, from the time when I could speak, that my sister, in her capricious and violent coercion, was unjust to me. I had cherished a profound conviction that her bringing me up by hand, gave her no right to bring me up by jerks. Through all my punishments, disgraces, fasts and vigils, and other penitential performances, I had nursed this assurance; and to my communing so much with it, in a solitary and unprotected way, I in great part refer the fact that I was morally timid and very sensitive. ~ Charles Dickens

Nothing is more unjust or capricious than public opinion. ~ William Hazlitt

Suppress prostitution, and capricious lusts will overthrow society. ~ Saint Augustine

Love is the most melodious of all harmonies and the sentiment of love is innate. Woman is a delightful instrument of pleasure, but it is necessary to know its trembling strings, to study the position of them, the timid keyboard, the fingering so changeful and capricious which befits it. ~ Honore De Balzac

While wealth will be a capricious shadow to our lives, true riches lie in strength of character; that is infinitely harder to accumulate. It is the only gold that enhances our potential in terms of what we can offer the world. ~ Salma Farook

If we could believe that he [Jesus] really countenanced the follies, the falsehoods, and the charlatanism which his biographers [Gospels] father on him, and admit the misconstructions, interpolations, and theorizations of the fathers of the early, and the fanatics of the latter ages, the conclusion would be irresistible by every sound mind that he was an impostor... We find in the writings of his biographers matter of two distinct descriptions. First, a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstitions, fanaticisms and fabrications... That sect [Jews] had presented for the object of their worship, a being of terrific character, cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust... Jesus had to walk on the perilous confines of reason and religion: and a step to right or left might place him within the gripe of the priests of the superstition, a blood thirsty race, as cruel and remorseless as the being whom they represented as the family God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, and the local God of Israel. They were constantly laying snares, too, to entangle him in the web of the law... That Jesus did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the son of God, physically speaking, I have been convinced by the writings of men more learned than myself in that lore.

[Letter to William Short, 4 August, 1820] ~ Thomas Jefferson

In the face of God's obvious inadequacies, the pious have generally held that one cannot apply earthly norms to the Creator of the universe. This argument loses its force the moment we notice that the Creator who purports to be beyond human judgment is consistently ruled by human passions - jealousy, wrath, suspicion, and the lust to dominate. A close study of our holy books reveals that the God of Abraham is a ridiculous fellow - capricious, petulant, and cruel - and one with whom a covenant is little guarantee of health or happiness. If these are the characteristics of God, then the worst among us have been created far more in his image than we ever could have hoped. ~ Sam Harris

History is a capricious creature. It depends on who writes it. ~ Mikhail Gorbachev

He imagined fate as a goddess, capricious and fickle, or as a river, which could flood at any moment ~ Takashi Hiraide

Our law very often reminds one of those outskirts of cities where you cannot for a long time tell how the streets come to wind about in so capricious and serpent-like a manner. At last it strikes you that they grew up, house by house, on the devious tracks of the old green lanes; and if you follow on to the existing fields, you may often find the change half complete. ~ Walter Bagehot

The most capricious modern entitlement is not just Social Security but to self-esteem. ~ George F. Will

This is death during wartime and it is capricious as shit. ~ Matt Fraction

You know someone is special to you when you're literally captivated by them in even the little moments. The slightest thing they say or do, is like watching the universe unfold. And nothing else matters in those moments.

Where you go about your day, & the most capricious of things send you into a whirlwind of thoughts connected to them. And a plethora of thoughts flood into your mind, for no apparent reason other than its them.

Or perhaps, you randomly see a picture of them in your news feed & you just pause & look, & the world melts away & all time seems to stop, & there's a radiance that illuminates your life. And you focus on the little details, & wish you could just capture every single detail vividly.

And you see their eyes, & though they're merely a moment in time, their eyes are so beautiful, that they transcend the medium & are as if they're there looking back. And all you can do it look into them. Knowing those eyes are what you could look into endlessly.
And you know that it's all you could ever want, if for just a single moment in time.

Or they share their thoughts, & you rack your brain around how they think. An you just want to understand & know more of their thoughts, simply because they're theirs.

They, to you, are a more elegant work of art than even the finest painting, songs or poems of the great artists. And you know that even the most renowned artist c ~ Trevor Driggers

Life is capricious and cruel and totally fucking random and there is no hope of finding meaning in a nightmare. ~ Hugh Howey

These women with their talk of capricious personal gods, devils and spirits, yet here he was, the greatest devil any of them could imagine, flying easily under their radar. ~ Arlene Hunt

" ... arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, and as a matter of law, unsupportable." ~ Luther L. Bohanon

We are being governed by the dregs of the nation - and their brutality is so capricious that no one can feel certain that he will be safe tomorrow. ~ Iris Origo

I believe that an orderly universe, one indifferent to human preoccupations, in which everything has an expla nation even if we still have a long way to go before we find it, is a more beautiful, more wonderful place than a universe tricked out with capricious, ad hoc magic. ~ Richard Dawkins

All-good, like the vain, capricious, cruel God of Job? With all of eternity at His disposal, what fiendish new tortures might He not devise? A limited ~ William Peter Blatty

Believe me, there is none fraught with such deep, such vital interest. If you talk, indeed, of the capricious inclination awakened by the mere charm of perishable beauty, I grant it to be idle in the extreme; but that love which springs from the concordant sympathies of virtuous hearts; that love which is awakened by the perception of moral excellence, and fed by meditation on intellectual as well as personal beauty; that is a passion which refines and ennobles the human heart. Oh, where is there a sight more nearly approaching to the intercourse of angels, than that of two young beings, free from the sins and follies of the world, mingling pure thoughts, and looks, and feelings, and becoming as it were soul of one soul and heart of one heart! How exquisite the silent converse that they hold; the soft devotion of the eye, that needs no words to make it eloquent! Yes, my friend, if there be anything in this weary world worthy of heaven, it is the pure bliss of such a mutual affection! ~ Washington Irving

There's nothing capricious in nature, and the implanting of a desire indicates that its gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feels it. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I've often been devastated when he tells me no, but as I submit to his will in those situations - even with disappointment and tears - he assures me he's working for my good. I see only part of the picture. He has a purpose in his denials. The Father said no to the Son [in Gethsemane]. And that no brought about the greatest good in all of history. God is not capricious. If he says no to our requests, he has a reason - perhaps ten thousand. We may never know the reasons in this life, but one day we'll see them all. For now, we must trust that his refusals are always his mercies to us. ~ Vaneetha Rendall Risner

Theodore Finch leans against an SUV, hands in pockets, like he has all the time in the world and he expects me. I think of the Virginia Woolf lines, the ones from The Waves: Pale, with dark hair, the one who is coming is melancholy, romantic. And I am arch and fluent and capricious; for he is melancholy, he is romantic. He is here. ~ Jennifer Niven

You can plan for things, work towards them for years, and yet they never materialize. Or you can just happen to be in the right place at the right moment, and everything falls into place. If you want to believe in something like Fate, she's a capricious character. Sometimes she stand there blocking the doorway you were born to pass through, and sometimes she takes you by the hand and leads you through the minute you poke your nose out. And the stars gaze down and keep their counsel. ~ John Ajvide Lindqvist

Many a sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer is God than that God is a cruel and capricious tyrant. ~ Edward Gibbon

But hidden by those large blooms was Emilienne's real garden: white chrysanthemums for protection, dandelion root for a good night's sleep, eucalyptus and marjoram for healing. There was foxglove, ginger, heather, and mint. The poisonous belladonna. The capricious peony. And lavender. One could never have enough lavender. ~ Leslye Walton

Capricious, wanton, bold, and brutal Lust Is meanly selfish; when resisted, cruel; And, like the blast of Pestilential Winds, Taints the sweet bloom of Nature's fairest forms. ~ John Milton

The mind was a capricious and undisciplined creature. You couldn't always keep it on a lead, and it was for ever dashing off into the undergrowth of the past, digging up some decayed bone of memory, and bringing it back, with tail wagging, to lay it at your feet. ~ David Lodge

God gave laws to His people to bless them, not to burden them. Every rule either elevates the quality of human life or restores one's relationship with God after a breach. He makes no extraneous demands and He is never capricious. ~ Charles R. Swindoll

For his life seemed a curving line, capricious, moment by moment inviting grace. ~ Leif Enger

Some may object that to speak of election or predestination is to limit the kingdom of God to a few. Does it make God a capricious tyrant? We must answer that such objections usually stem from a refusal to accept that we are faced here with a mystery that is not given to us to solve. There is also a radical misunderstanding which maintains that God's sovereignty in election removes man's responsibility. Such is not true. How divine sovereignty and human responsibility work together we cannot know. The Bible makes it clear that they do. // Let us remember that Jesus discriminated and limited the numbers of the saved: 'Small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it' (Matthew 7:13-14). This is in line with the Old Testament teaching that only a faithful remnant of Israel would be saved. ~ Graeme Goldsworthy

I shall never find a better document for a phenomenology of a being which is at once established in its roundness and developing in it. Rilke's tree propagates in green spheres a roundness that is a victory over accidents of form and the capricious events of mobility. Here becoming has countless forms, countless leaves, but being is subject to no dispersion: If I could ever succeed in grouping together all the images of being, all the multiple, changing images that, in spite of everything, illustrate permanence of being, Rilke's tree would open an important chapter in my album of concrete metaphysics. ~ Gaston Bachelard

Sometimes the word 'Desire' may leave you in a tizzy. Many of us are banking on this word to drive our life forward. These 'Desires' may be the single factor that guide and enrich your life. But, there's a trap.
Surgeon Atul Gawande puts it like this in his book 'Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, "When we have only our desires to guide us, and they are fleeting, capricious, and insatiable, they provide, ultimately, only torment."
So beware of 'Desires'. You need to redefine it in a way that makes your life to be endurable. ~ Dipin Damodharan

When Akira had recited the haiku to me the first time, I had been confused, thinking it compared love to storm clouds because they were capricious and fleeting. Perhaps love was capricious and fleeting, but that was not the true meaning of the poem. The true meaning was this: that love, when it came, was powerful enough to transform everything. Anything. Even the unchanging, ever-changing face of the Moon herself. ~ Zoe Marriott

Water was a wild, capricious substance: nothing solid, nothing permanent, nothing as it appeared. ~ Anthony Doerr

I'm on a man-fast. Why bother with them? the good ones are always taken. Or they're weirdly uminterested in a capricious wild child with continuous legal problems~ Carrow the Incarcerated ~ Kresley Cole

Life does not require us to be consistent, cruel, patient, helpful, angry, rational, thoughtless, loving, rash, open-minded, neurotic, careful, rigid, tolerant, wasteful, rich, downtrodden, gentle, sick, considerate, funny, stupid, healthy, greedy, beautiful, lazy, responsive, foolish, sharing, pressured, intimate, hedonistic, industrious, manipulative, insightful, capricious, wise, selfish, kind or sacrificed. Life does, however, require us to live with the consequences of our choices. ~ Richard Bach

The Christian god can easily be pictured as virtually the same god as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three headed monster cruel vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging three headed beast like god one only needs to look at the caliber of people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes fools and hypocrites. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Spring had come once more to Green Gables-the beautiful, capricious Canadian spring, lingering along through April and may in a succession of sweet, fresh, chilly days, with pink sunsets and miracles of resurrection and growth. The maples in Lover's Lane were red-budded and little curly ferns pushed up around the Dryad's Bubble. Away in the barrens, behind Mr. Silas Sloane's place, the mayflowers blossomed out, pink and white stars of sweetness under their brown leaves. All the school girls and boys had one golden afternoon gathering them, coming home in the clear, echoing twilight with arms and baskets full of flowery spoil. ~ L.M. Montgomery

The life of a savage is beset by glowering terrors: from birth to death he lives in an animated world; where the sun and the stars, sticks, stones, and rivers are obsessed with his fate. He is busy all the time in a ritual designed to propitiate the abounding jealousies of nature. For his world is magical and capricious, the simplest thing is occult. ~ Walter Lippmann

The Weaver is a really godlike power. It's not even a blind idiot god, a sort of Lovecraft thing, it's just a purely capricious god. It's an intelligence you can't understand, so you can't trust it."

-Amazon.com interview ~ China Mieville

A journalist marries the news, Seymour. She's capricious, cruel, and jealous. She demands you follow her to wherever on Earth life is cheapest, where she'll stay a day or two, then jet off. You, your safety, your family are nothing, ~ David Mitchell

How truly does this journal contain my real and undisguised thoughts
I always write it according to the humour I am in, and if astranger was to think it worth reading, how capricious
insolent & whimsical I must appear!
one moment flighty and half mad,
the next sad and melancholy. No matter! Its truth and simplicity are its sole recommendations. ~ Fanny Burney

The house of fame, he thought, is built on melting ice, not steel, and rumbles ever with a sound of rumors, while the goddess of fame is as false and capricious as her sister - Fortune. ~ Anya Seton

So too did any doubts about the involvement of Loki, god of mischief. That capricious deity was clearly up to his old tricks. How else to explain how a man who adored women-and who was adored by them-found himself with a bride who faced the marriage bed with less enthusiasm than she would a viper-infested den? ~ Josie Litton

We cannot by a little verbal sophistry confound the qualities of different minds, nor force opposite excellences into a union by all the intolerance in the world ... If we have a taste for some one precise style or manner, we may keep it to ourselves and let others have theirs. If we are more catholic in our notions, and want variety of excellence and beauty, it is spread abroad for us to profusion in the variety of books and in the several growth of men's minds, fettered by no capricious or arbitrary rules. ~ William Hazlitt

He makes a vast contrast between nature, which is this elemental, capricious, perhaps causal, perhaps chance-directed entity, and man, who has morality, who distinguishes between desire and will, duty and interest, the right and the wrong, and acts accordingly, if need be against nature. ~ Isaiah Berlin

The unregenerate human heart is, perhaps,the most inconsistent thing in all nature; and in nothing is it more capricious than in the manifestations of its passions; and in no passion is it so fantastic as in that which it miscalls love, but which is really often only appetite. ~ E.D.E.N. Southworth

An array of behavioral decision options establishes opportunities for personal growth. The knowledgeable choices that a person makes in a constantly varying physical setting and capricious social milieu reflect their character, and their evolving personality continues to affect their social and intellectual growth. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Perfect health, long life and eternal youth are not the random genetic blessings of a chaotic or capricious universe, but natural birthrights that can be accessed through the mindful acceptance of simple truths, activated by the committed practice of proven activities, and sustained by advancement along a single known path. This is that path.
The Ageless Adept ~ Walt F.J. Goodridge

Happiness, do not leave me.
I know you, a capricious monarch
perching on the fortunate flowers you see.
Hear me:
I am too attached to this royalty now.
Can I make you rest here somehow?
I will offer you the nectar of every flower in blossom,
the honey of every fruit in harvest.
I will make the Earth a garden,
the entire universe a forest.
I beg of you not to flutter by.
I beg of you not to leave me, butter-coloured fly.
Nest here
and for you,
I will create a home. ~ Kamand Kojouri

Opportunity can benefit no man who has not fitted himself to seize it and use it. Opportunity woos the worthy, shuns the unworthy. Prepare yourself to grasp opportunity, and opportunity is likely to come your way. It is not so fickle, capricious and unreasoning as some complain. ~ B.C. Forbes