Fickleness Quotes

“Sometimes your dearest friend whom you reveal most of your secrets to becomes so deadly and unfriendly without knowing that they were not really your friend.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“Yet if women are so flighty, fickle, changeable, susceptible, and inconstant (as some clerks would have us believe), why is it that their suitors have to resort to such trickery to have their way with them? And why don't women quickly succumb to them, without the need for all this skill and ingenuity in conquering them? For there is no need to go to war for a castle that is already captured. (...)

Therefore, since it is necessary to call on such skill, ingenuity, and effort in order to seduce a woman, whether of high or humble birth, the logical conclusion to draw is that women are by no means as fickle as some men claim, or as easily influenced in their behaviour. And if anyone tells me that books are full of women like these, it is this very reply, frequently given, which causes me to complain. My response is that women did not write these books nor include the material which attacks them and their morals. Those who plead their cause in the absence of an opponent can invent to their heart's content, can pontificate without taking into account the opposite point of view and keep the best arguments for themselves, for aggressors are always quick to attack those who have no means of defence. But if women had written these books, I know full well the subject would have been handled differently. They know that they stand wrongfully accused, and that the cake has not been divided up equally, for the strongest take the lion's share, and the one who does the sharing out keeps the biggest portion for himself.”
― Christine de Pizan, Der Sendbrief vom Liebesgott / The Letter of the God of Love

“Beauty can be wearing out easily, like glitzy pants, slowly waning through the tiredness of age, the fickleness of neglect, the boredom of habit, or the revenge of poor treatment. ("Absence of beauty was like hell")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Young men's love then lies not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes.”
― William Shakespeare

“Your husband this morning! Mine tonight! What do you take him for?'
'A man' smiled Cynthia. 'And therefore, if you won't let me call him changeable, I'll coin a word and call him consolable.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, Wives and Daughters

“Women are never tired of bewailing man’s fickleness in love, but they only seem to snub his constancy.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“The Wheel

Through winter-time we call on spring,
And through the spring on summer call,
And when abounding hedges ring
Declare that winter's best of all;
And after that there's nothing good
Because the spring-time has not come --
Nor know what disturbs our blood
Is but its longing for the tomb.”
― W.B. Yeats, The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

“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, Visions

“As usual, the fickle, unreasoning world took Muff Potter to its bosom and fondled him as lavishly as it had abused him before. But that sort of conduct is to the world's credit; therefore it is not well to find fault with it.”
― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“We are stratified creatures, full of abysses, with souls of quicksilver, with minds whose colour and shape change as in a kaleidoscope that is constantly shaken.”
― Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon

“The swallow follows not summer more willing
than we your lordship.
TIMON (aside)
Nor more willingly leaves winter. Such
summer birds are men.”
― William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens

“The familiar shape of the cross still gleamed above the distant forest, but now that I had found companions it no longer made any impression on me.”
― Shōhei Ōoka, Fires on the Plain

“Those who seek fame eventually find disappointment.”
― Wayne Gerard Trotman

“The combination of surprise and confidence on her face is a challenge, a mixture of innocence and delight, guile and misapprehension, a sense of yearning and yet a hint of indifference, even disdain on her pretty features. This lady is indeed as fickle as they come.”
― Lisa Medved, The Engraver's Secret