Quotes & Sayings About Inconstancy

We say
This changes and that changes. Thus the constant
Violets, doves, girls, bees and hyacinths
Are inconstant objects of inconstant cause
In a universe of inconstancy. — Wallace Stevens

The signature of mediocrity is chronic inconstancy. The signature of greatness is a disciplined and consistent focus on the right things. — James C. Collins

There is nothing in England more constant than the inconstancy of dress. — Peter Ackroyd

The many-headed multitude, whom inconstancy only doth by accident guide to well-doing! Who can set confidence there, where company takes away shame, and each may lay the fault upon his fellow? — Philip Sidney

All things are inconstant except the faith in the soul, which changes all things and fills their inconstancy with light. — James Joyce

After all that has been said of the levity and inconstancy of human nature, it appears evidently from experience, that man is, of all sorts of luggage, the most difficult to be transported. — Adam Smith

I loved a lass, a fair one,As fair as e'er was seen;She was indeed a rare one,Another Sheba queen:But, fool as then I was,I thought she loved me too:But now, alas! she's left me,Falero, lero, loo! — George Wither

Inconstancy no sin will prove If we consider that we love But the same beauty in another face, Like the same body in another place. — Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert Of Cherbury

Oh Lord, purify my soul from all its stains. Warm my heart with the love of thee, animate my sluggish nature and fix my inconstancy, and volatility, that I may not be weary in well doing, — William Wilberforce

Then talk not of inconstancy,
False hearts, and broken vows;
If I, by miracle, can be
This live-long minute true to thee,
'Tis all that Heav'n allows. — John Wilmot

We love a saint, though he has many personal failings. There is no perfection here. In some, rash anger prevails; in some, inconstancy; in some, too much love of the world. A saint in this life is like gold in the ore, much dross of infirmity cleaves to him, yet we love him for the grace that is in him. A saint is like a fair face with a scar: we love the beautiful face of holiness, though there be a scar in it. The best emerald has its blemishes, the brightest stars their twinklings, and the best of the saints have their failings. You that cannot love another because of his infirmities, how would you have God love you? — Thomas Watson

There are hardly any truths upon which we always remain agreed, and still fewer objects of pleasure which we do not change every hour, I do not know whether there is a means of giving fixed
rules for adapting discourse to the inconstancy of our caprices. — Blaise Pascal

Trust in God alone, and lean not on the needs of human help. Be not surprised when friends fail you; it is a failing world. Never reckon upon immutability in man: inconstancy you may reckon upon without fear of disappointment. — Charles Spurgeon

With wavering steps does fickle fortune stray,
Nowhere she finds a firm and fixed abode;
But now all smiles, and now again all frowns,
She's constant only in inconstancy. — Ovid

Considering how little the beginning or the ceasing to love is in our own power, it is foolish and unreasonable for the lover or his mistress to complain of one another's inconstancy. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The state of man is inconstancy, ennui, anxiety. — Blaise Pascal

Nothing is more certain than uncertainties: / Fortune is full of fresh variety; / Constant in nothing but inconstancy. — Richard Barnfield

The consciousness of the falsity of present pleasures, and the ignorance of the vanity of absent pleasures, cause inconstancy. — Blaise Pascal

[O]ur needs were quite different; what grips me need hardly touch you at all, and vice versa; what is innocence in you may be guilt in me, and vice versa; what has no consequences for you may be the last nail in my coffin. — Franz Kafka

Inconstancy is the child of satiety. — Ninon De L'Enclos

Earth is constant only in her inconstancy, but in the heavenly state all mournful change shall be unknown, and with it all fear of storm to wreck our hopes and drown our joys. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

There is nothing so subject to the inconstancy of fortune as war. — Miguel De Cervantes

they greet those who are cast down, and those in heart, those troubled adn those filled with desire, those who are overjoyed and those disconsolate, all lovers. may all herein find strength against inconstancy, against unfairness and despite and loss and pain and all the bitterness of loving. — Joseph Bedier

I've always been very keen on Pascal, and what I'm most keen on in Pascal is his emphasis upon human wretchedness. He has a phrase which goes something like 'Anxiety, boredom and inconstancy, that is the human condition' and I've always been very partial to that. — Simon Critchley

Do you think," said Candide, "that mankind always massacred one another as they do now? Were they always guilty of lies, fraud, treachery, ingratitude, inconstancy, envy, ambition, and cruelty? Were they always thieves, fools, cowards, gluttons, drunkards, misers, calumniators, debauchees, fanatics, and hypocrites?" "Do you believe," said Martin, "that hawks have always been accustomed to eat pigeons when they came in their way?" "Doubtless," said Candide. "Well then," replied Martin, "if hawks have always had the same nature, why should you pretend that mankind change theirs? — Voltaire

The only constant in the soul of man is inconstancy; anything and everything else can pass out of fashion
even something as utilitarian as a hill stuffed full of corpses. — Scott Lynch

Constancy in love ... is only inconstancy confined to one object. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

216This comprehension of our own personal misery makes us equally understanding of the misery of others. How can one who is really convinced of his own frailty, weakness, and inconstancy, dare to condemn others? — Father Gabriel

Our reason is always disappointed by the inconstancy of appearances. — Blaise Pascal

All psychologists who have studied the intelligence of women, as well as poets and novelists, recognize today that they represent the most inferior forms of human evolution and that they are closer to children and savages than to an adult, civilized man. They excel in fickleness, inconstancy, absence of thought and logic, and incapacity to reason. — Gustave Le Bon

There is nothing in this world constant, but inconstancy. — Jonathan Swift

For the honest people, relations increase with the years. For the vicious, inconveniences increase. Inconstancy is the defect of vice; the influence of habit is one of the qualities of virtue. — Suzanne Curchod

Boxer, feeling that his attentions were due to the family in general, and must be impartially distributed, dashed in and out with bewildering inconstancy; now, describing a circle of short barks round the horse, where he was being rubbed down at the stable-door; now feigning to make savage rushes at his mistress, and facetiously bringing himself to sudden stops; now, eliciting a shriek from Tilly Slowboy, in the low nursing-chair near the fire, by the unexpected application of his moist nose to her countenance; now, exhibiting an obtrusive interest in the baby; now, going round and round upon the hearth, and lying down as if he had established himself for the night; now, getting up again, and taking that nothing of a fag-end of a tail of his, out into the weather, as if he had just remembered an appointment, and was off, at a round trot, to keep it. — Charles Dickens

In spite of their love, they had made each other's life a hell. The fact that they loved each other was merely proof that the fault lay not in themselves, in their behavior or inconstancy of feeling, but rather in their incompatibility: he was strong and she was weak. — Milan Kundera

You have been told that, even like a chain, you are as weak as your weakest link.
This is but half the truth.
You are also as strong as your strongest link.
To measure you by your smallest deed is to reckon the power of the ocean
by the frailty of its foam.
To judge you by your failures is to cast blame upon the seasons for their inconstancy. — Kahlil Gibran

It's my belief that history is a wheel. 'Inconstancy is my very essence,' says the wheel. Rise up on my spokes if you like but don't complain when you're cast back down into the depths. Good time pass away, but then so do the bad. Mutability is our tragedy, but it's also our hope. The worst of time, like the best, are always passing away. — Tony Wilson

The city of Jahilia is built entirely of sand, its structures formed of the desert whence it rises. It is a sight to wonder at: walled, four-gated, the whole of it a miracle worked by its citizens, who have learned the trick of transforming the fine white dune-sand of those forsaken parts, - the very stuff of inconstancy, - the quintessence of unsettlement, shifting, treachery, lack-of-form, - and have turned it, by alchemy, into the fabric of their newly invented permanence. — Salman Rushdie

It's precarious to hang onto the veracity of memory because its edges are smoothed by the river of time. — Khang Kijarro Nguyen

Irresolution on the schemes of life which offer themselves to our choice, and inconstancy in pursuing them, are the greatest causes of all our unhappiness. — Joseph Addison

How contemptible! Of all things in the world inconstancy is my aversion. Let — Jane Austen

No well-informed person has declared a change of opinion to be inconstancy. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

If there is one thing I have learned during my years as a professional, it is that the only thing constant about golf is its inconstancy. — Jack Nicklaus

We are all lumps, and of so various and inform a contexture, that every piece plays, every moment, its own game, and there is as much difference betwixt us and ourselves as betwixt us and others. — Michel De Montaigne

We have so much ill fortune as inconstancy, or so much bad purpose as folly, we are not so full of evil as we are of inanity; we are not so wretched as we are base — Michel De Montaigne

The world's a scene of changes, and to be constant, in nature were inconstancy. — Abraham Cowley

I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman's fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men."
"Perhaps I shall. Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything. — Jane Austen

Constancy in love is a perpetual inconstancy which fixes our hearts successively to all the qualities of the person loved
sometimes admiring one and sometimes another above all the rest
so that this constancy roves as far as it can, and is no better than inconstancy, confined within the compass of one person. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Love, built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies. — John Donne

Every patient reacts a little differently, both biologically and psychologically. The only constant in cancer is inconstancy; the only certainty is a future of uncertainty, a truism for all of modern life but one made vivid by life-threatening illness. — Jonathan Alter

It may be said that the power of preventing bad laws includes that of preventing good ones; and may be used to the one purpose as well as to the other. But this objection will have little weight with those who can properly estimate the mischiefs of that inconstancy and mutability in the laws, which form the greatest blemish in the character and genius of our governments. — Alexander Hamilton

Inconstancy. - Things have different qualities, and the soul different inclinations; for nothing is simple which is presented to the soul, and the soul never presents itself simply to any object. Hence it comes that we weep and laugh at the same thing. — Blaise Pascal

things: and the vanity of praise, and the inconstancy — Marcus Aurelius

I know a love may be revived which absence, inconstancy, or even infidelity has extinguished, but there is no returning from a dTgovt given by satiety. — Mary Wortley Montagu

It is a fair adornment of a man and a great convenience both to himself and to all those with whom he converses and deals, to act uprightly, uniformly, and consistently. The practice of piety frees a man from interior distraction and from irresolution in his mind, from duplicity or inconstancy in his character, and from confusion in his proceedings, and consequently securing for others freedom from deception and disappointment in their transactions with him. — Isaac Barrow

Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind," he said, "That from the nunnery, Of they chaste breast and quiet mind."
I looked up at him, and said the next line, "To war and arms I fly."
"True, a new mistress now I chase," he said.
"The first foe in the field," I said, and let him draw me closer.
"And with a stronger faith embrace," he said.
"A sword, a horse, a shield." And the last word was whispered against his chest, still looking up into those eyes, searching his face.
"Yet this inconstancy is such, As thou too shalt adore," he whispered against my hair.
I finished the poem with my face pressed against his chest, listening to the beat of his heart, that truly beat with my blood. "I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honor more. — Laurell K. Hamilton

Stray cats are like two-timing men. He got tired of you and took off. He doesn't find anyone new? He'll come slinking back. By then, if you're smart, you'll have decided you're better without him. — Kelley Armstrong

Talking with this girl is like trying to catch fleas, you never know which way she was going to jump. — Ruth Downie