velleity
Example Sentences
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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
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
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
I would, if I could: liberet si liceret; and in the case of a velleity, we do not will, properly speaking, to will, but to be able.
From Theodicy Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil by E.M. Huggard
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
There will be in this sequence the consciousness of ideas, that of affirmations, that of irresolutions, that of velleities and that of volitions.
From Theodicy Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil by E.M. Huggard
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
But acting thus, I would be indulging in what I have called velleities.
From The Reform of Education by Giovanni Gentile
If I did so, I should be indulging in vain velleities, in which my personality, far from realising itself, would on the contrary be disintegrated and scattered.
From The Reform of Education by Giovanni Gentile
