"Wanton" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it. Vengeance be God's awn, an' mercy be God's awn. 'Tedn' for no man to meddle wi' them. Us caan't be aught but just. She'll have justice from me—no more'n that. 'Tis all wan now. Wanton or no wanton, she've flummoxed me this day. The giglot lied an' said the thing that was not. She'm not o' the Kingdom—the fust ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... sorrowful farces, in Virginia, which we call a jury trial. A noted desperado killed Mr. B., a good citizen, in the most wanton and cold-blooded way. Of course the papers were full of it, and all men capable of reading, read about it. And of course all men not deaf and dumb and idiotic, talked about it. A jury-list was made out, and Mr. B. L., a prominent banker and a valued citizen, was questioned precisely ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... solemn clerk partakes the shame Of this ungodly shine of human pride, And sadly blends his reverence and blame In one grave bow, and passes with a stride Impatient:—many a red-hooded dame Turns her pain'd head, but not her glance, aside From wanton dress, and marvels o'er again, That heaven hath no wet judgments ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... she was too high in the seneschal's chair. This foot was of narrow proportions, delicately curved, as broad as two fingers, and as long as a sparrow, tail included, small at the top—a true foot of delight, a virginal foot that merited a kiss as a robber does the gallows; a roguish foot; a foot wanton enough to damn an archangel; an ominous foot; a devilishly enticing foot, which gave one a desire to make two new ones just like it to perpetuate in this lower world the glorious works of God. ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... to explain the conditions on which rewards were offered for capture, which had been abused, by the violent detention of inoffensive natives: those who, in attempting to arrest them, were guilty of wanton mischief, were threatened with the penalties of the law. These orders were followed by outrages, which threw doubt on the propriety of distinctions: the ally of to-day, was the robber of yesterday, and the assassin of ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... accession to the throne of England the financial condition of James had been going from bad to worse. Besides resorting to antiquated feudal exactions,(166) he took to levying impositions on articles of commerce. But even these failed to make up the deficiency created in his exchequer by his wanton extravagance, and in 1610 he was obliged to apply to parliament. An attempt to make a composition with the king for feudal dues and to restrict his claim to levy impositions failed, ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... church, From some strange ship-of-war, far out at sea, There came a sudden tiny puff of smoke— And then a dull strange throb, a whistling hiss, And scarce a score of yards away a shot Ploughed up the turf. None knew, none ever knew From whence it came, whether a perilous jest Of English seamen, or a wanton deed Of Spaniards, or mere accident; but all Her maids in flight were scattered. Bess awoke As from a dream, crying aloud—"'Tis he, 'Tis he that sends this message. He is not dead. I will not pass the porch. Come home ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... with her. They wandered in the cloudless evening. They sauntered past the picture gallery, and the fact that she was walking with this strange and somewhat ambiguous young man provoked her to think of herself and him as a couple from that politely wanton assembly which had collected at eventide to watch a pavane danced beneath the beauty of a Renaissance colonnade, and to accentuate the resemblance Evelyn fluttered her parasol and said, pointing across the ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... cruelties and treacheries which have disgraced our foes during the last two years. The best elements in us rise in irrepressible repugnance before such pageants of wickedness as have clothed the famous name of Wittenberg with infamy and made the story of naval warfare a continuing record of wanton crime. No man can think, without shame, of the so-called civilisation and culture which could palliate such perversions of justice as those recalled by the fate of Nurse Cavell ...
— No. 4, Intersession: A Sermon Preached by the Rev. B. N. Michelson, - B.A. • B. N. Michelson
... said, Follow the Hsia seasons, drive in the chariot of Yin, wear the head-dress of Chou, take for music the Shao and its dance. Banish the strains of Cheng and flee men that are glib; for the strains of Cheng are wanton ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius
... one of the daisies we are treading on," answered Buttar. "Do you know, Bracebridge, I never like treading on wild flowers; it seems such wanton destruction of some of the most beautiful works of nature. I feel all the time as a donkey who has got into a flower-bed ought to feel,—that I am a very mischievous animal. I would always rather go out of my way than injure them, especially such graceful gems as the wood anemone, ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... again," said Grace, dryly, as with eyes askance she bent a sapling down. "But I am not incensed against you as you are against me," she added, abandoning the tree to its natural perpendicular. "Before I came I had been despising you for wanton cruelty; now I only pity you for misplaced affection. When Edgar has gone out of the house in hope of seeing you, at seasonable hours and unseasonable; when I have found him riding miles and miles across the country at midnight, ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... justification, nor from any fear that your Lordships will not do us the justice to believe that we have good authority for the facts which we state, and do not (as persons with their licentious tongues dare to say) wanton in fabulous antiquity. I quote the works of this author, because his observations and opinions could not be unknown to Mr. Hastings, whose associate he was in some acts, and whose adviser he appears to have ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... power of the grand jury extends in this manner to the cutting new roads where none ever were before, as well as to the repairing and widening old ones, exclusive, however, of parks, gardens, etc., it was necessary to put a restriction against the wanton expense of it. Any presentment may be traversed that is opposed, by denying the allegations of the certificate; this is sure of delaying it until another assizes, and in the meantime persons are appointed ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... darker, each hurried to complete his or her work, and none essayed more eagerly to do this than young Franz, the goatherd; but try as he would, the heedless, wanton little flock were constantly escaping from him, and if it had not been for Jan, the great mastiff of the famous St. Bernard breed, he would have been still more troubled. As it was, he found one goat missing when he went to house them, and again he had to take his alpenstock and ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... God will Bless, But he hateth Idleness. My King, and all my Governors, My Parents and Superiors, These I must Honour and Obey, To these I must my Duty pay. I must not be Rude nor Wild, I must not be a Wanton Child: I must sing no wanton Songs, I must forgive my Neighbours wrongs: I must speak of no Man ill, But to all must bear good will: I had better die Than tell a Lie. I must not sin, A World to win. ...
— A Little Catechism, 1692 • John Mason
... government; at least, we received some marks of respect from the administration, and some of regret at the wrongs we were suffering from their country. So, also, during the short interval of Mr. Fox's power. But every other administration since our Revolution has been equally wanton in their injuries and insults, and has manifested equal hatred and aversion. Instead, too, of cultivating the government itself, whose principles are those of the great mass of the nation, they have adopted ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... forcible, leaving the well-known scenes embalmed in Elia's praise, one might take the three or four single words in which Vindici (The Revenger's Tragedy), on as many several occasions, refers to the caresses of Spurio and the wanton Duchess. Each is of such amazing propriety, is so keenly discriminated, is so obviously the product of an imagination burning with rage and hate, that it strikes you like an affront: each is an incest taken in the fact and branded there and then. And this quality ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... at the court of Palermo when prince Alfonso came among them once more. He forgave the queen for her wickedness, and rebuked his father for having stirred up such a wanton and bloody war. ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... the statesmen whom she outwitted held Elizabeth to be little more than a frivolous woman, or that Philip of Spain wondered how "a wanton" could hold in check the policy of the Escurial. But the Elizabeth whom they saw was far from being all of Elizabeth. Wilfulness and triviality played over the surface of a nature hard as steel, a temper purely intellectual, the very type ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... true, by imagery acquired in its passage through the medium of the poet's mind, but in other respects essentially the language of the historical personages who are made to speak. The diction belongs in each case to the period of the ballad in which it is employed, and yet there is no wanton use of archaisms, or any disposition manifested to resort to meretricious artifices by which to impart an appearance of probability to the story other than that which comes legitimately of sheer narrative excellence. The characterisation is that of history with the features softened ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... civilization does discourage much of the innate bestiality of man; that it helps people to a measure of continence, cleanliness and mutual toleration; that it does much to suppress brute violence, the spirit of lawlessness, cruelty and wanton destruction. But on the other hand it does also check and cripple generosity and frank truthfulness, any disinterested creative passion, the love of beauty, the passion for truth and research, and it stimulates avarice, parsimony, overreaching, usury, falsehood and ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... of the European governments in Borneo, punitive expeditions have been necessary from time to time in order to put a stop to wanton raiding and killing. In this respect the Ibans and some of the Klemantans have been the chief offenders; while the Kayans and Kenyahs have seldom given trouble, after once placing themselves under the ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... gay licentious proud, Whom pleasure, power, and affluence surround; They, who their thoughtless hours in giddy mirth, And wanton, often cruel, riot waste; Ah! little think they, while they dance along, How many feel, this very moment, death And all the sad variety of pain. How many sink in the devouring flood, Or more devouring flame; how many bleed, By shameful ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... being a social animal; especially when it appears (as is sufficiently and admirably proved by my friend the author of An Enquiry into Happiness) that these men live in a constant opposition to their own nature, and are no less monsters than the most wanton abortions or ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... draws nigh, and by God's will Old age's bound is reached: how have I spent And with what fruit so wide a tract of days? I wept in boyhood 'neath the sounding rod: Youth's toga donned, the rhetorician's arts I plied and with deceitful pleadings sinned: Anon a wanton life and dalliance gross (Alas! the recollection stings to shame!) Fouled and polluted manhood's opening bloom: And then the forum's strife my restless wits Enthralled, and the keen lust of victory Drove me to many a bitterness ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... meat-safe? To rifle and defile the half roseate, half lily-white charms of a virgin ham? To touch with unhallowed proboscis the immaculate lip of beauty, the unprotected scalp of old age, the savoury glories of the kitchen? To invade with the most reckless indifference, and the most wanton malice, the siesta of the alderman or the philosopher? To this we answer in the eloquent and emphatic language of the late Mr. Canning—No! Unamiable and unconciliating monsters! The wildest and most ferocious inhabitants of the desert may be reclaimed from their savage nature, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 346, December 13, 1828 • Various
... Aegilus, for thou vanquishest the cicala in song! Lo here is thy cup, see, my friend, of how pleasant a savour! Thou wilt think it has been dipped in the well-spring of the Hours. Hither, hither, Cissaetha: do thou milk her, Thyrsis. And you young she-goats, wanton not so wildly lest you bring ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... into two large basins, at least as secure as any of the docks on the banks of the Thames, and capable of containing (I think) the whole British navy. We found the wreck of the Boyd in shoal water, at the top of the harbour, a most melancholy picture of wanton mischief. The natives had cut her cables, and towed her up the harbour till she had grounded, and then set her on fire, and burnt her to the water's edge. In her hold were seen the remains of her cargo—coals, salted seal skins, ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... wanton hand had pulled out the nails; and this person was none other then Juan's second brother. "I am a lost ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... see,' said Mr Haredale, 'those walls. You see those tottering gables. You see on every side where fire and smoke have raged. You see the destruction that has been wanton here. Do you not?' ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... discoverable in all fools. And, therefore, when we are affected so as to be placed in any good condition, we are moved in two ways; for when the mind is moved in a placid and calm motion, consistent with reason, that is called joy; but when it exults with a vain, wanton exultation, or immoderate joy, then that feeling may be called immoderate ecstasy or transport, which they define to be an elation of the mind without reason. And as we naturally desire good things, so in like manner we naturally seek to avoid what is evil; and this avoidance of which, if ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... had never before come into Bailey's life. He had read of somewhat similar cases in the papers, and had passed harsh judgment on the man and woman. He had called the woman wanton and the man a villain, but here the verdict was less easy to render. He liked Mrs. Burke, and he loved his friend. He had looked into their faces many times during the last six months without detecting any signs of ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... sweetly innocent a face I should never have suspected her of being an immodest wanton, were it not for the evidence of my own eyes. 'T is a strange world, senor. Yet I have often heard this is the way with these grandes ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... duke laughed. For, as Fox told it, the story was irresistible. But it came as near to being a wanton insult as a reference to his Grace's own episode might. The red came slowly back into his eye. Fox stared vacantly, as was his habit when he had done or said something especially daring. And Comyn and I waited, straining ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... obliged to obey orders under penalty of death, defending (as they believe) their homes from wanton attack, are surely, in the mass, but little to blame. The blame rests elsewhere. A body of Russian prisoners was brought into a village in East Prussia. The sufferings of the inhabitants during the invasion had made them bitter, and from the crowd of onlookers there ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... to be done (remembering all that she had to dread from the wanton exercise of Jack's tongue) was to soothe his ruffled vanity without further delay. There would be no difficulty in discovering him, if he had not gone out. Wherever his Mistress might be at the moment, there he was sure ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... which the beneficiary was accustomed to smoke and covered it with tobacco, so that when he lighted it the powder exploded and injured his eyes. The report of the Senate committee states that it does not appear that "any notice was taken of this wanton act of his ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... safer distance, they halt as before, elevating their nostrils, and throwing back their heads to take a defiant survey of the intruders. The true sportsman rarely molests them, so huge a creature affording no worthy mark for his skill, and their wanton slaughter adds nothing to the supply of food ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... there were no jars and no derangements. Madame, however, pained Zoe extremely with her imprudent acts, her sudden fits of unwisdom, her mad bravado. Still the lady's maid grew gradually lenient, for she had noticed that she made increased profits in seasons of wanton waste when Madame had committed a folly which must be made up for. It was then that the presents began raining on her, and she fished up many a louis out of ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... on earth could he have put perfect confidence. He regarded them as born to perpetual pupilage. Not that their inclinations were necessarily wanton; they were simply incapable of attaining maturity, remained throughout their life imperfect beings, at the mercy of craft, ever liable to be misled by childish misconceptions. Of course he was right; he himself represented the guardian male, the wife-proprietor, ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... as saints and patriarchs used. Here Love his golden shafts employs, here lights His constant lamp, and waves his purple wings, Reigns here and revels; not in the bought smile Of harlots, loveless, joyless, unendeared, Casual fruition; nor in court-amours, Mixed dance, or wanton mask, or midnight ball, Or serenate, which the starved lover sings To his proud fair, best quitted with disdain. These, lulled by nightingales, embracing slept, And on their naked limbs the flowery roof Showered ...
— Love—Marriage—Birth Control - Being a Speech delivered at the Church Congress at - Birmingham, October, 1921 • Bertrand Dawson
... been forbidden to swear or take oaths except in solemn covenant before the Lord; but in the gospel dispensation the Lord forbade that men swear at all; and the heinousness of wanton oaths was expounded. Grievously sinful indeed it was and is to swear by heaven, which is the abode of God; or by earth, which is His creation and by Him called His footstool; or by Jerusalem, which was regarded by those who swore as the city of the great King; or by one's own head, ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... tossed by the wanton billows, we weighed anchor and returned to Alpena, the only safe ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... those tempting eyes, that faultless form, Those looks with feeling and with nature warm; The neck, the softly-swelling bosom hide, Nor, wanton gales, blow the light vest aside; For who, when beauties more than life excite Silent applause, can gaze without delight! But innocence, enchanting maid, is thine; Thine eyes in liquid light unconscious shine; And may thy breast ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... unstained by any useless flow of blood. He has done more than conquer others—he has conquered himself: and in the midst of the blaze and flush of victory, surrounded by the homage of nations, he has not been betrayed into the commission of any act of cruelty or wanton offence. He was as cool and self-possessed under the blaze and dazzle of fame as a common man would be under the shade of his garden-tree, or by the hearth of his home. But the tyrant who kept Europe in awe ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... discredit Esther's statement, to blacken her character; he would impute false motives to her or make a convincing case against her sanity, perhaps both. The very notion made him boil with rage. The cold-blooded infamy of the plot to do away with his father was as nothing compared with the wanton brutality of the attempt on Esther's life. To think of this fresh and lovely body, so near to him now that he could feel the throbbing of her heart, dismembered, defiled in the work of annihilation, filled him with unspeakable horror. He had to take a firm grip on himself ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... sails are impatiently flapping. Each wave jerks the mast and canvas with a smart loud crack like that of a whip. The sound is unspeakably irritating, it seems so useless and wanton, and so perfectly de trop while the wind is absolutely calm. At other times, in such a case, you can stop this provoking clatter by hauling up the boom and lowering the jib; but here, in mid ocean, we must not hamper the sails but be ready ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... of blood? Alas! and in my parents' heart, the old, the blind, and hardly fed, In the wild wood, hath pierced the dart, that here hath struck their offspring dead. Ah, deed most profitless as worst, a deed of wanton useless guilt: As though a pupil's hand accurs'd his holy master's blood had spilt. But not mine own untimely fate,—it is not that which I deplore. My blind, my aged parents' state—'tis their distress afflicts ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... Propped by the corner of the nearest street, With aching eyes and tottering knees intent, Loose leathery neck and worm-like lip outstretched, Fix long the ken upon one form, so swift Through the gay vestures fluttering on the bank, And through the bright-eyed waters dancing round, Wove they their wanton wiles and disappeared. Meantime, with pomp august and solemn, borne On four white camels tinkling plates of gold, Heralds before and Ethiop slaves behind, Each with the signs of office in his hand, Each on his brow the sacred ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... how much your witness is worth," said her father, beginning low, that his pent-up wrath might have room to swell out. "It only convinces me more and more how deep is the corruption this wanton has spread in my family. She has come amongst us with her innocent seeming, and spread her nets well and skilfully. She has turned right into wrong, and wrong into right, and taught you all to be uncertain whether there be any such thing as Vice in the world, or whether ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... of the most authoritative testimonials have a suspicious element. Praise has been lavished upon the most questionable characteristics of the old drama. Apologists have been found, not merely for its daring portrayal of human passion, but for its wanton delight in the grotesque and the horrible for its own sake; and some critics have revenged themselves for the straitlaced censures of Puritan morality by praising work in which the author strives to ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... possible, is preferable to revolution, whether in things secular or in things religious. It is always easier to tear down than it is to build up. Nor does anyone, save the anarchist, tear down through wanton love of destruction. Even he is apt to feel called upon to give some sort of a vague excuse for ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... at once, and reminded me of the practical distinction betwixt catching the animals as an object of cruel and wanton sport, and eating them as lawful and gratifying articles of food, after they were killed. On the latter point he had no scruples; but, on the contrary, assured me that this brook contained the real red ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... capricious. But it may be reasonably imagined, that what is so much in the power of men as language, will very often be capriciously conducted. Nor are these disquisitions and conjectures to be considered altogether as wanton sports of wit, or vain shows of learning; our language is well known not to be primitive or self-originated, but to have adopted words of every generation, and, either for the supply of its necessities, or the increase of its copiousness, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... disposed, were thrown into great trouble by the arrival of the princess, Rana Bahadur’s wife. The unprincipled chief had connected himself with one of these frail but pure beauties, (Gandharbin,) with which the holy city abounds, had stript his wife of her jewels to bestow them on this wanton companion, and finally had turned his wife out of doors. As the slave regent had the meanness to seize on the income of the town, assigned for the princess’s dowry, the poor lady was reduced to the utmost distress, and conceived that we were her enemies, being on an embassy to the ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... forgotten. I will not close this narrative without mentioning an act of bravery performed by a lone woman which stopped the vulgar and inhuman searching of women in our section of the city. The most atrocious and unpardonable act of the mob was the wanton disregard for womanhood. Lizzie Smith was the first woman to make a firm and stubborn stand against the proceeding in the southern section. It was near the noon hour when Lizzie, homeward bound, reached ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... extravagant. Forests, mines and soil fertility are wasted with wanton prodigality. We speak of our coal deposits and oil and gas wells as inexhaustible. We simply mean that it will be impossible for this and probably for the next generation to exhaust them. But coal mines are not inexhaustible. Oil and gas wells are problematical ...
— A Broader Mission for Liberal Education • John Henry Worst
... hand was at his hip, the long barrel horizontal, the big muzzle gaping forebodingly into Maison's face. There was a cold, mirthless grin on Sanderson's face, but it seemed to Maison that the grin was the wanton expression of ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... to the front with taunts; or, if he were too panic-stricken to get up, she had no compunction in thrashing him with a stick until he did so. The little savage was beside herself as she danced and sang like a wanton child in the rain—a rain of Martini and Lee-Remington balls stinging the air all ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... muttered the Irishman, crossing himself piously. And with that he dismissed the subject of the great wrong that through folly he had wrought—the wanton destruction of a man's life, and the poisoning of a woman's with a remorse that might ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... This girl had told it to him freely, of her own volition. It was not in the nature of her to keep her secret. She had told it to him, a stranger; she would tell it to other strangers—or else somebody would betray her. And surely this sickly, slack-twisted little wanton would be better off inside the strong arm of the law than outside it? No jury of Southern men would convict her of murder—the thought was incredible. She would be kindly dealt with. In one illuminating flash the major divined ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... as heav'n, love ocean-wide, thy lovely form will don; What time love will encounter love, license must rise wanton; Why hold that all impiety in Jung doth find its spring, The source of trouble, verily, is ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... associates as idle and thoughtless, and as good-natured, as himself, to make a jest of domestic life and domestic virtues. And, by-and-by, there is a stronger stimulus wanted, and the jest becomes more wanton over the roulette table or the keenly contested rubber; and the wine circulates more freely as the fire of youth goes out and leaves the ashes of mental and moral desolation. Ah no! the club-house ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... repulsion shrank into her corner of the coach. "Oh, how dare you touch me!" she cried. "How dare you look at me, you serpent that have stung me so!" Able to endure no longer, she suddenly gave way to angry laughter. "Do you think I did it for you,—put such humiliation upon myself for you? Why, you wanton, I care not if you stand in white at every church door in Virginia! It was for him, for Mr. Marmaduke Haward of Fair View, for whose name and fame, if he cares not for them himself, his friends have yet some care!" The coach stopped, ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... her a greater actress than a singer; and she had been advised to dispense with her voice and challenge a verdict on her speaking voice in one of Shakespeare's plays. Owen would have liked her to risk the adventure, but she dared not. It would seem a wanton insult to her voice. She had imagined that it might leave her as an offended spirit might leave its local habitation. Her Margaret had been accepted in Italy, so she must sing it as well as she acted it. But when she had asked the Marquis d'Albazzi if she sang it as well ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... two degrees nearer ruin than his room. Great green stains were on the walls; plaster was lying here and there in a heap; the floors, rotted everywhere with damp, were sinking in all directions. Yet there had been no wanton destruction, for the glass in the windows was little broken. Merest neglect is all that is required to make of both man and his works a heap; for will is at the root of well-being, and nature speedily resumes what the will of man ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... pass briefly over the succeeding events of the story of Florinda, about which so much has been said and sung by chronicler and bard: for the sober page of history should be carefully chastened from all scenes that might inflame a wanton imagination; leaving them to poems and romances, and such-like highly seasoned works of ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... word I think it's right to treat you as if you also were. You'll have to, at any rate—to know better—if that's the line you're proposing to take." Mrs. Wix had never been so harsh; but on the other hand Maisie could guess that she herself had never appeared so wanton. What was underlying, however, rather overawed than angered her; she felt she could still insist—not for contradiction, but for ultimate calm. Her wantonness meanwhile continued to work upon her ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... and the stores contained in it, were consumed by fire. To escape the odium which invariably attends the wanton destruction of private property, this fire was attributed to accident; but all the American accounts unite in declaring it to ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... but prove to me so that I could believe—! Prove that you are mine—and not that infidel's. Prove that you bring me a wife's devotion—not a wanton's indifference." He caught her cold hands, trying to draw her forward to him. "Prove that you only pity him," he whispered, "but that your ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... discovered to be an absolute wanton, men from any of the clans make a ring round her, she being bound, and tossed from one to the other, and when exhausted is unbound and left by her relations to the men to do as they please to her—the almost inevitable result is death. ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... friendly Aberginians, had been able to take a bloody revenge for the attempt on his life. But no satisfactory reason occurred to him why the body of Pieskaret should have been fastened to the raft. It seemed a wanton act of bravado, which he could not reconcile with the known qualities of Sassacus. Concealment and not exposure, he thought, should have been the policy, but on the contrary, the very course had been adopted most likely to lead to discovery. Why again, he thought, is the chief of a distant tribe ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... naked hills lie wanton to the breeze, "The fields are nude, the groves unfrocked, "Bare are the shivering limbs of shameless trees, "What wonder is it that ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... some consistency of action are lacking here, and the morals of the natives run along other lines than ours. Faith and truth are no virtues, constancy and perseverance do not exist. The same man who can torture his wife to death from wanton cruelty, holding her limbs over the fire till they are charred, etc., will be inconsolable over the death of a son for a long time, and will wear a curl, a tooth or a finger-joint of the dead as a valuable relic round his neck; and the same man who is capable of preparing a murder in cold blood ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... I shall ghaist them—if they had their heads as muckle on their wark as on their daffing they wad play na sic pliskies—it's the wanton steed that scaurs at the windlestrae. Ghaists! wha e'er heard of ghaists in an ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... from that bed Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red, Great Villiers lies—alas! how changed from him, That life of pleasure, and that soul of whim! Gallant and gay, in Cliveden's proud alcove, The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love; Or just as gay at council, in a ring Of mimic statesmen and their merry King. No wit to flatter left of all his store! No fool to laugh at, which he valued more. There, victor of his health, of fortune, friends, And fame, this ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... For what Caecilius means by "old dotards of the comic stage" are the credulous, the forgetful, and the slipshod. These are faults that do not attach to old age as such, but to a sluggish, spiritless, and sleepy old age. Young men are more frequently wanton and dissolute than old men; but yet, as it is not all young men that are so, but the bad set among them, even so senile folly—usually called imbecility—applies to old men of unsound character, not to all. Appius governed four sturdy sons, five daughters, ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... while the veins of nature swell, Eternal recompense to human toil. And when the sunset's final shades depart The aspiration to completed birth Is sweet and silent; as the soft tears start, We know how wanton and how little worth Are all the passions of our bleeding heart That vex the awful ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... June 8th, William Aspland of Essex and Th. Collen. June 12th, lent Chronica Hollandi Magna to Mr. Beale on Saterday manuscript, which Mr. Webb lent me. June 14th, Jane Hikman to goodwife Tyndall's to lern. June 27th, Arthur wownded on his hed by his own wanton throwing of a brik-bat upright, and not well avoyding the fall of it agayn, at Mr. Harberts abowt sonn-setting. The half-brik weighed 2 lb. June 30, Madinia was taken ...
— The Private Diary of Dr. John Dee - And the Catalog of His Library of Manuscripts • John Dee
... birds; the earliest travelers note their presence in great flocks, and to-day there are few vistas open to us, without from one to dozens of them wheeling about in mid-air, seeking what they may devour. Public opinion in the valley is opposed to the wanton killing of these scavengers, so useful in a climate ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... detested sophistries and abstract theories and violent reforms; a man who while he loved liberty more than any political leader of his day, loathed the crimes committed in its name, and who was sceptical of any reforms which could not be carried on without a wanton destruction of the foundations of society itself. He was also a Christian who planted himself on the certitudes of religious faith, and was shocked by the flippant and shallow infidelity which passed current for progress ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... natural for Twirling-stick Mike to repent him suddenly of his wanton cruelty. The scoffing words of the dwarf rang in his ears, and he felt by no means easy. To make what amends he might to the deceased, he had him sumptuously buried at his own expense, with funeral oration, psalms, prayer, and benediction; and what is more, put up a very pretty ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... stratagem. And the cropt prentice that sweeps his master's shop in the morning, may, ten to one, dirty his sheets before night. But there are two things, that you will see very strange; which are, wanton wives with their legs at liberty, and tame cuckolds with chains about their necks. But hold, I must examine you before I go further; you look suspiciously. Are you ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to returning to our ships. It was with much regret that I heard it proposed to burn Mackey's Mills, and to ravage the country round, in consequence of the attack which had been made on our boats. I opposed the suggestion with all my might. I said that I thought it a wanton destruction of property, that would in no way advance our cause, and would certainly exasperate the sufferers against us. Not only were my counsels disregarded, but several remarks were made hinting pretty broadly that I was too friendly disposed towards the ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... soon after I got on board the Niagara, the flag of the Lawrence come down, although I was perfectly sensible that she had been defended to the last, and that to have continued to make a show of resistance would have been a wanton sacrifice of the remains of her brave crew. But the enemy was not able to take possession of her, and circumstances soon permitted her flag again to be hoisted. At 45 minutes past 2 the signal was made for "close action." The Niagara being very little injured, I determined ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... established order was in danger, not from the average citizens, but from men, like Miltiades, of exceptional renown. The people of Athens venerated their constitution as a gift of the gods, the source and title of their power, a thing too sacred for wanton change. They had demanded a code, that the unwritten law might no longer be interpreted at will by Archons and Areopagites; and a well-defined and authoritative legislation was a ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... the most wholesome, when nature has perfected her work, and prepared it for human sustenance. To anticipate her seasons, or to prolong them, is a misapplication of labour, and a perversion of the bounties of providence into secret poisons, to indulge the wanton cravings of a depraved appetite. The properties of animal food in general seem not to restrict the use of it to any particular season, but rather to admit its common use at all times. The only period in which it is less seasonable than at any other, appears to ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... talk for me," Jim approved, but deep down in the meagre soul of him,—and in spite of him,—wanton and lawless thoughts were stirring like ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... ferocity and terrorism characteristic of luddism in the manufacturing districts. They spread from Kent, Sussex, and Surrey into Hampshire, Wiltshire, Berkshire, and Buckinghamshire. In these four counties there was a wanton and wholesale destruction of agricultural machinery, of farm-buildings, and especially of ricks, as if the misery of labourers could possibly be cured by impoverishing their only employers. The rioters moved about in large organised bodies, and their anarchical passions were ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... insult—they are the result of deep and calm reflection. We have arrived to that grade, that, although we have the power to inflict, we are too high to receive insult, but we have not forgotten how our young blood has boiled when wanton, reckless, and cruel torture has been heaped upon our feelings, merely because, as a junior officer, we were not in a position to retaliate, or even to reply. And another evil is, that this great error is disseminated. In observing on it, in one of our works, called Peter Simple, we ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... We pollute them all—conscience, imagination, memory, will, intellect. How many a man listening to me now has his nature like the facade of some of our cathedrals, with the empty niches and broken statues proclaiming that wanton desecration and destruction have been ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... young people should have their meetings, to the corrupting of themselves and one another. As for Sarah Tuttle, her miscarriages are very great, that she should utter so corrupt a speeche as she did, concerning the persons to be married; and that she should carry it in such a wanton, uncivil, immodest, and lacivious manner as hath been proved. And for Jacob, his carriage hath been very corrupt and sinful, such as brings reproach upon the ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... things are entirely unnecessary. I'm going to have old Mother Nature indicted by the Grand jury for willful, wasteful, wanton ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... Cockneydom invasion threat? Then let the louns beware, Sir! Scotland, they'll find, is Scotland yet, And for hersel' can fare, Sir. The Thames shall run to join the Tweed, Criffel adorn Thames valley, 'Ere wanton wrath and vulgar greed On Scottish ground shall ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various
... "and make a splendid set of cases of birds and insects; but let's have no wanton destruction. I hate to see birds shot ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... thought himself the happiest man in the world, and had a great mind to toy also with the charming lady, but durst not take that liberty before so many slaves, who had their eyes upon him, and laughed at their lady's wanton tricks. The young lady continued to tip him with her fingers, but at last gave him such a sound box on the ear, that he grew angry at it; the colour came in his face, and he rose up to sit at a greater distance from such ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... congratulation that Congress and the country had the virtue and firmness to bear the infliction, that the energies of our people soon found relief from this wanton tyranny in vast importations of the precious metals from almost every part of the world, and that at the close of this tremendous effort to control our Government the bank found itself powerless and no longer able to loan out its surplus means. The community had learned to manage its affairs ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... reason unknown the thief had transferred its contents to some other bag—perhaps his own—and then had discarded the original one, in wanton humor filling it ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... the waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out into the street in their apoplectic opulence. There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish onions, shining in the fatness of their growth like Spanish friars, and winking, from their shelves, in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were pears and apples, clustering high in blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes, made, in the shop-keeper's benevolence, to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... show an arrogant contempt of the simple family life which had reigned there had been done. There was a kind of childish spitefulness in the sword thrusts through the few pictures which hung on the walls. The German genius for destruction and wanton vandalism was evident in broken knick-knacks and mottoes of hate and bloody vengeance scrawled upon floor ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Leofric's wrath upon his son in a terrible fashion were not matters of wanton wickedness, but of lawless personal violence. Called to attend his father to the Confessor's court, the youth, who had little respect for one so unwarlike as "the miracle-monger," uttered his contempt for saintly king, Norman prelate, and studious monks too loudly, and thereby ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... 'Susanna,' Act III, Sc. 4: Having been menaced with death by the wanton judges, Susanna tells her father, mother, and sister of ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... a license to follow his own caprice at the expense of her feelings, even in the lightest matters, he always wrote and spoke of her as his wiser self, his generous benefactress, of whose protecting care he was scarcely worthy. How his pen almost grew wanton in her praise, even when she was a prisoner in the Asylum after the fatal attack of lunacy, his letters of the time to Coleridge show; but that might have been a mere temporary exaltation—the attendant fervor of a great exigency and a great ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... Hazlitt was consciously the aggressor, but his attacks were never wanton. He denounced Wordsworth and Coleridge and Southey because they were renegades from the cause which lay nearest to his heart. Their apostasy was an unforgivable offence in his eyes, and his wrath was proportioned to ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... monetary system resting on an unsubstantial tradition of the worthiness of gold, seems a thing almost fantastically unstable. And they lived in planless cities, for the most part dangerously congested; their rails and roads and population were distributed over the earth in the wanton confusion ten thousand irrevelant ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... malignant journal into the fire at a public reading-room. So far was well; but, on the other hand, in Kendal, a town nearly twenty miles distant, of necessity I was but imperfectly known; and though there was a pretty general expression of disgust at the character of the publication, and the wanton malignity which it bore upon its front, since, true or not true, no shadow of a reason was pleaded for thus bringing forward statements expressly to injure me, or to make me unhappy; yet there must have been many, in so large a place, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... of degenerate peoples, the antagonistic, furious, implacable God—that was a ridiculous conception. A cheap, a vain one. "As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods." Wasn't that how Shakspere's blind king had uttered it? "They kill us for their sport." How strangely flattering—to believe that the Immensity that had conceived and wrought the unbelievable universe should deign to consider ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... for the third. Laertes, you but dally, I pray you passe with your best violence, I am affear'd you make a wanton of me ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... their secret mews The flowers the wanton Zephyrs choose; Proud be the Rose, with rains and dews Her head impearling; Thou liv'st with less ambitious aim, Yet hast not gone without thy fame; Thou art indeed by many ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... the descendants of the old inhabitants, who had offered the most obstinate resistance to the Dorians, and had therefore been reduced to slavery. As their numbers increased, they became objects of suspicion to their masters, and were subjected to the most wanton ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... people are attracted to Prato chiefly by Donatello and Michelozzo's outdoor pulpit, the frieze of which is a kind of prentice work for the famous cantoria in the museum of the cathedral at Florence, with just such wanton boys dancing ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... approacheth, speaks a different language —If it testifies to a departing soul—"You have neglected, the great salvation—lived in pleasure and been wanton, minding only earthly things," it fills the soul with anguish unutterable, causing it to anticipate ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... soaring into space, The transepts, columns, windows gray and gold, The organ, in whose tones the ocean rolled, The crypts, of mighty shades the dwelling places, The Virgin's gentle hands, the Saints' pure faces, All, even the pardoning hands of Christ the Lord Were struck and broken by the wanton sword Of sacrilegious lust. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... marry, nor have children, What takes that from him? Only the bare name Of being a father, or the weak delight To see the little wanton ride a-cock-horse Upon a painted stick, or hear him chatter Like ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... of Regard, diuided into foure parts. The first, the Castle of delight: Wherin is reported, the wretched end of wanton and dissolute liuing. The second, the Garden of Vnthriftinesse: Wherein are many sweete flowers, (or rather fancies) of honest loue. The thirde, the Arbour of Vertue: Wherein slaunder is highly punished, ...
— Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg
... these diversions, for the ignorant and unwary. A fourth class attend horse-races, being skilled in those mysterious practices by which the knowing ones are taken in. Nor is this community unfurnished with those who lay wanton wives and old rich widows under contribution, and extort money, by prostituting themselves to the embraces of their own sex, and then threatening their admirers with prosecution. But their most important returns are made by that ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... continued disrespect to his daughter's memory, his refusal to join even in the simplest ceremony of devotion, kept both him and old Mata chilled and distant. The one possible explanation,—aside from that of wanton cruelty,—was a thing so marvellous, so terrible in implied suggestion, that the boy's faint soul could make for it no present home; let it drift, a great luminous nebula of hope, a little longer on the rim ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... wild, While the Heaven-born child, All meanly wrapt, in the rude manger lies; Nature, in awe to him, Had doff'd her gaudy trim, With her great Master so to sympathize: It was no season then for her To wanton with the Sun, her ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... from thy wanton wing, Young God of dimples! in thy roguish flight; And let thy Poet catch it, now, to sing The beauty of the Dame ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... the stories of wanton destruction that reached us. I would rather not believe that the Federal Government could be so disgraced by its own soldiers. Dr. Day says they left nothing at all in his house, and carried everything off from Dr. Enders's. He does not believe we have a single article left in ours. ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... existence, they pursue and slay them with improvident recklessness, sometimes killing hundreds of them merely for the sake of the sport, the tongues, and the marrow bones. In the bloody hunt described in the last chapter, however, the slaughter of so many was not wanton, because the village that had to be supplied with food was large, and, just previous to the hunt, they had been living on somewhat reduced allowance. Even the blackbirds shot by the brown-bodied urchins before mentioned had been thankfully ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... of the mountains, for they are so numerous that when you have reached the summit of one of them, you may see thousands of every shape that the imagination can suggest, seeming to vie with each other which should raise his lofty head to touch the clouds.... It seems to me that nature has been wanton in bestowing her ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... it be right, This window open to the night? The wanton airs, from the tree-top, 20 Laughingly through the lattice drop; The bodiless airs, a wizard rout, Flit through thy chamber in and out, And wave the curtain canopy So fitfully, so fearfully, 25 Above the closed ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... no jest to hear young girls talk bawdry. But plots and parties give new matters birth, And state distractions serve you here for mirth. At England's cost poets now purchase fame; While factious heats destroy us, without shame, These wanton Neroes fiddle to the flame; The stage, like old rump-pulpits, is become The scene of news, a furious party's drum: Here poets beat their brains for volunteers, And take fast hold of asses by their ears; Their jingling rhimes for reason here you swallow, Like Orpheus' music, it makes ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... effects of a painstaking preparation. He abandoned the aid of the manuscript in the pulpit, on account of the untoward occurrence of his notes being scattered by a startled fowl, in the early part of his ministry, while he was addressing his people from the door of his house, after the wanton destruction ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the Queen, speaking low, for the weight of the haunted place sank into my heart, 'see how she who scarce an hour ago was but a lovely wanton hath by thine act been clad in majesty greater than all the glory of the earth. Bethink thee, wilt thou dare indeed to summon back the spirit to the body whence thou hast set it free? Not easily, O Queen, may it be done for all thy magic, and if perchance she answereth thee, it may well be that ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... stranger wore a white veil of rich material, which was fastened above her brow by a single diamond of unusual size and brilliant luster. When the veil was drawn aside, shining auburn tresses were seen depending in wanton luxuriance over shoulders of alabaster whiteness: a beautiful but deadly pale countenance was revealed; and a splendid purple velvet dress delineated the soft and flowing outlines of a form modeled ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... think that Bob Bangs was influenced by sheer spite and cruelty of heart, or by a wanton delight in witnessing and contributing to the suffering of others; yet so one was often forced to believe. It is bad enough when one fellow stands by and, without lifting a finger to help, lets another suffer; but when, instead of that, he actually makes ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... swimming in the sea, and there came some wanton women and girls who told the young men to come out and kiss them. But the youths would not come out, so the ladies stripped themselves and ran into the water after them. And the gentles who were driven away swam further into the water, and ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... said Harry. "You get us into a precious hobble through sheer wanton foolery, and then you expect me ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... life saw all the pleasant comfort of his relations with Mrs. Harrowdean disappearing in a perplexing irrational quarrel. He did not want to lose Mrs. Harrowdean; he contemplated their breach with a profound and profoundly selfish dismay. It seemed the wanton termination of an arrangement of which he was only beginning to perceive the extreme ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... a man learneth, so much the better doth he become, and so much the more love doth he win for the arts and for things exalted. Wherefore a man ought not to play the wanton, but should learn ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... lament his fate, In amorous ditties, all a summer day, While smooth Adonis, from his native rock Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood Of Thammuz, yearly wounded: the love tale Infected Zion's daughters with like heat; Whose wanton passions in the sacred porch Ezekiel saw, when, by the vision led, His eye surveyed the dark idolatries Of alienated Judah.”—Par. Lost, ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... upon our planet, one is apt to think that the scheme of Providence must have been framed with a provision for the complete exclusion of such accidents. To allow of the sudden undoing of all this fair scene, which it has taken thousands of years to bring out in its full proportions, seems like a wanton destruction of valuable property, and we are not disposed to believe that such a thing could be permitted. But we must at the same time remember, that our sense of what is important and consequential has a regard to the earth alone, which is but a trifling atom in the universe. Who can tell ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various
... of womanhood to the brink of the grave. And with you, mother, has it been the feeling of a moment? Ah! you ever loved him, when his name was never breathed by those lips. You loved him when you deemed he had forgotten you; when you pictured him to yourself in all the pride of health and genius, wanton and daring; and now, now that he comes to you penitent, perhaps dying, more like a remorseful spirit than a breathing being, and humbles himself before you, and appeals only to your mercy, ah! my mother, you cannot reject, you could not reject him, ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... spectators showed signs of compunction at their sufferings. The poor beasts were quiet and harmless. When wounded with the lances, they turned away, threw up their trunks, and trotted round the circus, crying, as if in protest against wanton cruelty. The story went that they were half human; that they had been seduced on board the African transports by a promise that they should not be ill-used, and they were supposed to be appealing to the gods.[23]Cicero alludes ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... love, for it is far more perilous than pleasant, and yet, I tell you, it allureth as ill as the Sirens. O my sons, fancy is a fickle thing, and beauty's paintings are tricked up with time's colors, which, being set to dry in the sun, perish with the same. Venus is a wanton, and though her laws pretend liberty, yet there is nothing but loss and glistering misery. Cupid's wings are plumed with the feathers of vanity, and his arrows, where they pierce, enforce nothing but deadly desires: a woman's eye, ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... the next morning that, when I came into his room to ask his blessing as was my wont, he received me with fierce and angry words. 'Why had I,' so he asked, 'been delighting myself in such wanton mischief—dancing over the tender plants in the flower-beds, all set with the famous Dutch bulbs he had brought from Holland?' I had never been out of doors that morning, sir, and I could not conceive what he meant, and so I said; and then he swore ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... of Jerome applies where there are excessive riches, possessed in private as it were, or by the abuse of which even the individual members of a community wax proud and wanton. But they do not apply to moderate wealth, set by for the common use, merely as a means of livelihood of which each one stands in need. For it amounts to the same that each one makes use of things pertaining to the necessaries of life, and that these things ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... them. Yea, even as Dorothea came down the altar steps to take her place in the choir, my hag laughed loud again like Satan, and cried, "Ah! the chaste virgin! who meetest the priest behind the altar! Thou shameless wanton, the prioress shall ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... express the melancholy interest with which the Company's employees, when they re-entered Madras, took note of the changes that the enemy had made in the familiar settlement. The Councillors apparently conceived that it was in a wanton spirit of destruction that the greater part of Black Town had been wiped out; for they formally decided that the streets that had been destroyed should be rebuilt. It may be supposed however, that their military advisers counselled them otherwise; ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow
... toys of Death That in his sad aphelions of desire They still regret the joy that perisheth, And Spring's great reveries that exceed and tire,— Faintly accusing Love's unmercied yokes With almost wanton grace, the craft and art Of precious frailty that with subtle strokes Of sweetness finds the core of Passion's heart? They carry fans and mirrors, or make fast The mournful flute-like cadence of a veil. Slight fans that winnowed ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... by uninstructed students. Against this notion we were first to protest, as being at once cruel and worse than useless; for an experiment performed by bungling fingers is no experiment at all, but wanton cruelty." ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... other country—more, even, than republican France—represents the ideals of a pacific and industrial democracy, may never be called upon to assert her supremacy in armed conflict, and to safeguard those ideals against a wanton attack on the part of the most formidable and most systematic military power the world has ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... quaint little Noah's ark cypresses, to the full height of Portofino Kulm, where the whole enchanted coast-line of the Riviera from Genoa to Sestri Levante lay spread out as a jewelled fringe of ocean. Elaine stood hatless while the wanton breeze caressed her glorious hair and caught at her skirts with ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... now; when I meet a man I like, and who, after all, has a touch of humanity and truth about him, to such a man, I say, I myself am all truth, at whatever cost; but to every other—to your knave, your hypocrite, or your trimmer, for instance, all falsehood—deep, downright, wanton falsehood. In fact, I would scorn to ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... promise of Racy vintage rare as love)— With his merry, wanton air, Mirth and vanity and folly Why should he be made to bear Burden of some melancholy Song that swoons and sinks with care? Cease to call him sad or sober,— He's a ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... burned in him. Why had he done this wanton and lawless thing? The boy he had known three years ago would never have shot down from cover a man like Webb. That he could have done it now marked the progress of the deterioration of his moral fiber. What right had he to ask those who remained loyal to him to sacrifice so often their sense ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... The annals of those days, which seem to be credible, state that he floated down the Dnieper with ten thousand barges, and spread his sails upon the waves of the Euxine. Entering the Bosporus, he landed on both shores of that beautiful strait, and, with the most wanton barbarity, ravaged the country far and near, massacring the inhabitants, pillaging the towns and committing all the ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... the practice be discontinued. If persisted in it would in such circumstances constitute an unpardonable offence against the Sovereignty of the neutral nation affected ... the Government of the United States cannot believe that the Imperial Government will longer refrain from disavowing the wanton act of its naval commander in sinking the Lusitania or offering reparation for the American lives lost, so far as reparation can be made for the needless destruction of human ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... irresistible longing to worship which characterizes a first love, even with the grossest of beings, I fell down before her and pressed her knees to my breast; and yet, on my own supposition, it was to a shameless wanton that this homage was paid. I was none the less nigh ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... be maintained by two such disparate characters? The woman's strength and determination contrasted with the man's weakness and vacillation; her reasoning imperturbation, prudent foresight, and love of order and activity, with his excessive irritability and sensitiveness, wanton carelessness, and unconquerable propensity to idleness and every kind of irregularity. While George Sand sat at her writing-table engaged on some work which was to bring her money and fame, Musset trifled away his time among the female singers and dancers ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... of anger is not so bad as in respect of desire. It is often constitutional, it is in itself painful, and it is not wanton, being in all three points unlike the other. What we spoke of as bestiality is more horrible than vice or incontinence, as being inhuman; but it does less harm. Incontinence means transgressing the ordinary standards in respect of pleasure and pain. ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... be, a snare to the souls of men; and especially do I condemn those ravages which have been made by the heady fury of the people, stung into zeal against will-worship by bloody persecution. Against such wanton devastations ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... soon learned, too, that he meant what he said, and would permit no dishonorable performances. A helpless Indian took refuge in the camp one day; and the men, who were inspired by what Governor Reynolds calls Indian ill-will—that wanton mixture of selfishness, unreason, and cruelty which seems to seize a frontiersman as soon as he scents a red man—were determined to kill the refugee. He had a safe conduct from General Cass; but the men, having come out to kill Indians and not having succeeded, threatened to take revenge on the ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... Now the steeps were heathy all around. Just as we began to climb the hill we saw three boys who came down the cleft of a brow on our left; one carried a fishing-rod, and the hats of all were braided with honeysuckles; they ran after one another as wanton as the wind. I cannot express what a character of beauty those few honeysuckles in the hats of the three boys gave to the place: what bower could they have come from? We walked up the hill, met two well-dressed travellers, the ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... by you,' said Nicholas; 'by you—who, under pretence of deserving the thanks she poured upon you, heaped every insult, wrong, and indignity upon my head. You, who sent me to a den where sordid cruelty, worthy of yourself, runs wanton, and youthful misery stalks precocious; where the lightness of childhood shrinks into the heaviness of age, and its every promise blights, and withers as it grows. I call Heaven to witness,' said Nicholas, looking eagerly round, 'that I have seen all this, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... neyghbour. The tonge breaketh peace, and stereth vp cruell warre, of all thynges to mankynde moste mischefull; the tonge is a broker of baudrye; the tonge setteth frendes at debate; the tonge with flatterynge, detraction and wanton tales enfecteth pure and clene myndes; the tonge without sworde or venome strangleth thy brother and frende; and brefely to speake, the tonge teacheth cursed heresyes, and of good Christiens ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... War, in Peace, On the defenceless: on the hapless man Who holds his breath but by another's will: Whose Life is only one long cruel Death! ... Hardly he fares, and hopelessly he toils; And when his driver's anger, or caprice, Or wanton cruelty, inflicts a blow, Not daring to look angry at the whip, Oh! see him meekly clasp his hands and bow To every stroke: no lurid deathful scene In Battle's rage, so racks the feeling heart; ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield |
