velleity
Example Sentences
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Skill, endurance, and perseverance may almost be called muscular virtues; and fatigue, velleity, caprice, ennui, restlessness, lack of control and poise, muscular faults.
From Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene by G. Stanley Hall
A velleity we might say is the will directed to an end which is either relatively or absolutely impossible; will is that which becomes effective.
From The Reform of Education by Giovanni Gentile
This theory and the subtleties derived from it, far from characterizing art, represent its contrary: the impotent velleity for art, which cannot slay abstractions and come in contact with life.
From Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic by Benedetto Croce
And the warrior king, who, like single-minded fathers in general, was ever in the idea that his son had a velleity for deriding and otherwise vexing him, began a severe course of reproof.
From Vikram and the Vampire; Classic Hindu Tales of Adventure, Magic, and Romance by Lady Isabel Burton
Will is devoid of intellect, as intellect is deprived of velleity.
From The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur by Emile Joseph Dillon
Educators who opposed the velleities of the President's report were slow to speak up; they were afraid they might be misunderstood.
From Time Magazine Archive
His being in the Palmerston cabinet which had been proposed, was, he said, out of the question; but his velleities seemed to lean rather to our joining, which surprised me.
From The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) 1809-1859 by John Morley
This is so true that one may safely affirm that if Russian patriotism has been sustained by our velleities of action, Russian destructiveness has been encouraged by our velleities of desertion.
From The Inside Story of the Peace Conference by Emile Joseph Dillon
But in this particular, it was impossible for her to go beyond velleities.
From The Bastonnais Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 by John Lespérance
And our being results not from velleities but from the real will.
From The Reform of Education by Giovanni Gentile
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