whiffling quotes

Paris is a beast of a city to be into those who cannot getoutof it.Rousseausaidwell, that allthetimehewasin it, he was only trying how he should leave it† The continual panic inwhichthe passenger iskept, thealarm and the escape from it, the anger and the laughter at it, must haveaneffectonthe Parisian character, and tend to make it the whiffling, skittish, snappish, volatile, inconsequential, unmeaning thing it is.

-William Hazlitt
  Notes on a Journey through France and Italy (published 1856).