Literary notes about fickle (AI summary)
Authors use "fickle" to capture the inherent instability and capricious nature of fate, character, and emotion. It appears in literary texts both as a descriptor of mutable fortune—as in references to fortune’s wildly shifting influence—and as a label for human temperaments that are inconsistent and unreliable. For instance, the term colors the depiction of both love and fate, suggesting that these forces can change in an instant [1, 2], while also characterizing individuals as vacillating or treacherous in nature [3, 4, 5]. In poetic and dramatic contexts alike, "fickle" becomes a powerful metaphor that emphasizes how nothing, not even constancy in human affairs, can be taken for granted [6, 7, 8].
- Chance is a curious and fickle element, but it often has the greatest influence on our lives.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova - Be fickle, Fortune; For then, I hope thou wilt not keep him long But send him back.
— from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare - “I admire your fasting and severities, but you speak lightly like some frivolous youth, fickle and childish.
— from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Loki is handsome and well made, but of a very fickle mood, and most evil disposition.
— from The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson by Sæmundur fróði - Many girls might have been taken in, for never were such attentions; but I knew the fickle sex too well.
— from Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen - Nothing is easier than to influence a sick man, especially if he be in search of fortune, and knows not where to look for the fickle goddess.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova - My mastery the Fickle Goddess owned, And even Chance, submitting to control, Grasped by the forelock, yielded to my will.
— from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra - Him to unthrone we then May hope, when everlasting Fate shall yield To fickle Chance, and Chaos judge the strife.
— from Paradise Lost by John Milton
