whim

It was not strange that he should so heartlessly have betrayed his friends' confidence, nor that he hesitated not at all to gratify a whim at the cost of another's misery.

I feel myself at the mercy of the first whim in the Vanstone direction which may come into her head -- I, the architect of her fortunes.

Her orders were indeed so liberal, that, had it been a child of her own, she could not have exceeded them; but, lest the virtuous reader may condemn her for showing too great regard to a base-born infant, to which all charity is condemned by law as irreligious, we think proper to observe that she concluded the whole with saying, "Since it was her brother's whim to adopt the little brat, she supposed little master must be treated with great tenderness.

'An idle whim, I fear, sir,' was my answer; 'or else an idle whim is going to spirit me away.

"You are a sort of monster," I added audaciously, "a Caliban who has pondered Setebos, and who acts as you act, in idle moments, by whim and fancy."

It is a whim. I have whims, and I choose to pay for them.

"Supposing," she answered, still looking at him steadily, "supposing I were to say that I had no object in coming here at all - that it was merely a whim? What should you say then?"

'Why, ma'am,' he returned, 'I am thinking about Tom Gradgrind's whim;' Tom Gradgrind, for a bluff independent manner of speaking - as if somebody were always endeavouring to bribe him with immense sums to say Thomas, and he wouldn't; 'Tom Gradgrind's whim, ma'am, of bringing up the tumbling-girl.'

Whether there was anything in the peculiar slyness of her action which fascinated Mr Quilp, or anything in the expression of her features at the moment which attracted his attention for some other reason; or whether it merely occurred to him as a pleasant whim to stare the small servant out of countenance; certain it is, that he planted his elbows square and firmly on the desk, and squeezing up his cheeks with his hands, looked at her fixedly.

It was getting to be more than a passing whim with Arobin to see her and be with her.

I left off opposing her favourite whim on that account, because some of the sympathy was sure, in course of time, to fall to my share.

Is she some little danseuse with the whim to be romantically rustic for a week?