They were capricious and beyond her control.
Stephen King
The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower, Book 1)
“Dragons and young girls are both capricious, and it may be that you will need to adjust your plans.
George R. R. Martin
A Dance with Dragons: A Song of Ice and Fire: Book Five
If she had been around to hear Stu Redman and Glen Bateman discussing the capricious -it had seemed capricious to them, anyhow-way the superflu had taken some animals while leaving others alone, she would have laughed.
King, Stephen
The Stand
Every town-gate and village taxing-house had its band of citizen-patriots, with their national muskets in a most explosive state of readiness, who stopped all comers and goers, cross-questioned them, inspected their papers, looked for their names in lists of their own, turned them back, or sent them on, or stopped them and laid them in hold, as their capricious judgment or fancy deemed best for the dawning Republic One and Indivisible, of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death.
Charles Dickens
A Tale of Two Cities
For however eagerly and impetuously the savage crew had hailed the announcement of his quest; yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable—they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness—and when retained for any object remote and blank in the pursuit, however promissory of life and passion in the end, it is above all things requisite that temporary interests and employments should intervene and hold them healthily suspended for the final dash.
Herman Melville
Moby Dick
There fermented in that sublimated brain plans so vast, projects so tumultuous, that there remained no room for any capricious or material love—that sentiment which is fed by leisure and grows with corruption.
Alexandre Dumas
The Three Musketeers
John quietly set apart a little sum, that he might enjoy the pleasure of keeping the invalid supplied with the fruit she loved and longed for; old Hannah never wearied of concocting dainty dishes to tempt a capricious appetite, dropping tears as she worked; and from across the sea came little gifts and cheerful letters, seeming to bring breaths of warmth and fragrance from lands that know no winter.
Louisa May Alcott
Little Women
It is true that her nature sometimes rebelled against these dictates of reason, and that she grew yearly more capricious and impatient; but having a respectful and well-disciplined husband under her thumb at all times, she found it possible, as a rule, to empty any little accumulations of spleen upon his head, and therefore the harmony of the family was kept duly balanced, and things went as smoothly as family matters can.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Idiot
It is thus, in fact, that the harsh and capricious jealousy of the flesh awakens in the human heart, and takes possession of it, even without any right.
Victor Hugo
Les Misérables
Come I am determin’d to unbare this broad breast of mine, I have long enough stifled and choked; Emblematic and capricious blades I leave you, now you serve me not, I will say what I have to say by itself, I will sound myself and comrades only, I will never again utter a call only their call, I will raise with it immortal reverberations through the States, I will give an example to lovers to take permanent shape and will through the States, Through me shall the words be said to make death exhilarating, Give me your tone therefore O death, that I may accord with it, Give me yourself, for I see that you belong to me now above all, and are folded inseparably together, you love and death are, Nor will I allow you to balk me any more with what I was calling life, For now it is convey’d to me that you are the purports essential, That you hide in these shifting forms of life, for reasons, and that they are mainly for you, That you beyond them come forth to remain, the real reality, That behind the mask of materials you patiently wait, no matter how long, That you will one day perhaps take control of all, That you will perhaps dissipate this entire show of appearance, That may-be you are what it is all for, but it does not last so very long, But you will last very long.
Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass
The shift in shade is no doubt an attempt to stay abreast of the capricious fashion trends of the Capitol.
Suzanne Collins
Catching Fire
“Dragons and young girls are both capricious, and it may be that you will need to adjust your plans.
Martin, George, R. R.
A Dance With Dragons
Emma was growing difficult, capricious.
Gustave Flaubert
Madame Bovary
Here one curses her and calls her capricious, fickle, and immodest, there another condemns her as frail and frivolous; this pardons and absolves her, that spurns and reviles her; one extols her beauty, another assails her character, and in short all abuse her, and all adore her, and to such a pitch has this general infatuation gone that there are some who complain of her scorn without ever having exchanged a word with her, and even some that bewail and mourn the raging fever of jealousy, for which she never gave anyone cause, for, as I have already said, her misconduct was known before her passion.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Don Quixote
‘Chaplain,’ he announced with magisterial rigidity, ‘we charge you formally with being Washington Irving and taking capricious and unlicensed liberties in censoring the letters of officers and enlisted men.
Heller, Joseph
Catch-22
The capricious ambition of kings and ministers has not, during the present and the preceding century, been more fatal to the repose of Europe, than the impertinent jealousy of merchants and manufacturers.
Adam Smith
The Wealth of Nations