"Wanton" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... belonging to the above tribe of the Arcadians, had for many years before occupied these districts, is said to have appointed the observance of a solemn festival, introduced from Arcadia, in which naked youths ran about doing honour in wanton sport to Pan Lycaeus, who was afterward called Inuus by the Romans. When they were engaged in this festival, as its periodical solemnization was well known, a band of robbers, enraged at the loss of some booty, lay in wait for them, ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... Inns of Court, the most magnificent and costly was the famous Anti-Prynne demonstration, by which the lawyers endeavored to show their contemptuous disapproval of a work that inveighed against the licentiousness of the stage, and preferred a charge of wanton levity against those who ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... feathers, fans, underwear like mist. While he was staring about him in bewilderment, Mrs. Croix came running in from her bedroom. Her hair was down and tangled, her dressing sacque half off, her face flushed, her eyes sparkling. She looked half wanton, half like a giddy girl darting about ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... savings—fortunately, with her kind eye on the gentlewomen, zealous and long continued—that she might dispose by will; and it was but a troubled comfort that, should he be living at the time of her death, the susceptible Henry would profit no less than the wanton Albert. Henry was at any cost to be kept in life that he might profit; the woeful question, the question of delicacy, for a woman devoutly conscientious, was how could anyone else, how, above all, could fifteen other persons, ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... before stated, you have seen, gentlemen, the flimsy evidence upon which is attempted to predicate a conviction for grand larceny. I am confident that in spite of all the attempts that have been made by a shameless wanton and her pretended husband, to crush this man, despite the meretricious trickery and villainous conspiracy which instigated, concocted and carried out this persecution, relying as I do, on your sense of justice, your strict integrity, and the independence ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... of our masters, who live in idleness and luxury on the fruit of our toil? They only give us a bare subsistence wage, and they live on the fat of the land. We labour all our lives to keep them in wanton luxury. Let us ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... desired to rid herself of her sex-privilege, upon the wedded wanton who sought to make of her body, designed by her Maker to be the cradle of an unborn generation, its sepulchre, Saxham's glance fell like a sharp curved sword. He wasted few words upon her, but each sentence, as it fell from his grim mouth, shrivelled ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... "This wanton sacrifice of horrors speaks eloquently of a forlorn hope! Sweep the walls with light, Kennedy; all those filthy things are nocturnal and they will retreat before us ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... which we have in hand, worthy Colonel," said the Presbyterian divine. "Believe me, the young man, thy servant, was more likely to see visions than to dream merely idle dreams in that apartment; for I have always heard, that, next to Rosamond's Tower, in which, as I said, she played the wanton, and was afterwards poisoned by Queen Eleanor, Victor Lee's chamber was the place in the Lodge of Woodstock more peculiarly the haunt of evil spirits.—I pray you, young man, tell me this dream ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... art to be honoured above all, and glorious for evermore. The cruelty of the great would fain be feared; but who is to be feared but God alone, out of whose power what can be wrested or withdrawn? when, or where, or whither, or by whom? The tendernesses of the wanton would fain be counted love: yet is nothing more tender than Thy charity; nor is aught loved more healthfully than that Thy truth, bright and beautiful above all. Curiosity makes semblance of a desire of knowledge; whereas Thou supremely knowest all. ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... as 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 ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... met no Indians on the way, but we did meet myriads of buffaloes, scattered in vast herds to the north and south of us as far as the eye could reach. It is sad to reflect that all these animals have been exterminated, mainly in wanton sport by hunters who did not need their flesh for food or their hides for leather or robes. This destruction of buffaloes opened the way for herds of domestic cattle, which perhaps in equal numbers now feed upon the native grass ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... had sung before us and our path was strewn with flowers. And now! Now we came two fugitives from the vengeance of the Teules, I borne in a litter by four tired soldiers, while Otomie, the princess of this people, still clad in her wanton's robe, at which the women mocked, for she had been able to come by no other, tramped at my side, since there were none to carry her, and the inhabitants of the place cursed us as the authors of their woes. Nor did we know if ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... single Popish soldier within a week's march. There were places, indeed, where some straggling bands of Irish made their appearance and demanded food: but it can scarcely be imputed to them as a crime that they did not choose to die of hunger; and there is no evidence that they committed any wanton outrage. In truth they were much less numerous than was commonly supposed; and their spirit was cowed by finding themselves left on a sudden without leaders or provisions, in the midst of a mighty population which felt towards them as men ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... masters, being probably 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
... a wanton wastrel, and he well deserves the pillory. But, Rebecca, I've a mind to see what observance these people will give the varlet. Last time I saw one pilloried, alas! they slew him with shards and paving-stones. This fellow is liker to be pelted with ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... knight to refuse this request, and even made a pretty and right royal speech, intimating his desire to lose the wager. Then, after vespers, the guard passed fresh and warm into the king's chamber, a lady most dazzlingly white—most delicately wanton, with long tresses and velvet hands, filling out her dress at the least movement, for she was gracefully plump, with a laughing mouth, and eyes moist in advance, a woman to beautify hell, and whose first word had such cordial power that the king's garment was cracked ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... young, and that none of them might be called ungoodly, and some were full fair. They were bright and fine of array. Most bore gold and gems on fingers and neck and arms; they were clad in light, or it may be said wanton raiment of diverse colours, which had only this of their fashion in common, that they none of them hid over-much of their bare bodies; for either the silk slipped from the shoulder of her, or danced away from her flank; and she ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... it universally known, that a fresh rebellion had been in agitation so late as 1752. LOCKHART. He was executed on June 7, 1753. Gent. Mag. xxiii. 292. Lord Campbell (Lives of the Chancellors, v. 109) says:—'I regard his execution as a wanton atrocity.' Horace Walpole, however, inclined to the belief that Cameron was engaged in a new scheme of rebellion. Walpole's Memoirs ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... Socorro, in New Mexico, has been the scene of a fearful tragedy. A band of desperadoes had gradually collected there, who indulged in the most wanton acts of outrage and barbarity, upon the Mexican residents, finally ending in more than one deliberate murder. A few members of the Boundary Commission who had been left there, headed an organization which ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... for some 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 ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... followed this wanton waste were terrible. Five of the boys died, and after several days, when Burnham found water in abundance, the tongues of the others were so swollen that their jaws could ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... wanton kiss is irresistible. I was drunk and, alas! I was convinced. When I think of that time, Samson is my only comfort—Samson and a few hundred million other fools, who like Samson and me have been wheedled, kissed, and duped ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... soda-water bottles, while perhaps his chiefest regret is that the granite whereof the ancient monster is hewn is too hard for him to inscribe his distinguished name thereon. It is true that there is a punishment inflicted on any person or persons attempting such wanton work—a fine or the bastinado; yet neither fine nor bastinado would affect the "tripper" if he could only succeed in carving "'Arry" on the Sphinx's jaw. But he cannot, and herein is his own misery. Otherwise he comports himself ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... thought. My friends were not your friends; you goaded me By foolish and ignoble jealousy, Till, through suggestion's laws I gave you cause. The beauteous ideal Love had hung In my soul's shrine, And worshipped as a something all divine, With wanton hand you flung Into the dust. And then you wondered why My love should die. My sins and derelictions cry aloud To all the world: my head is bowed Under its merited reproaches. Yours Is lifted to receive The sympathy the court's decree ...
— Poems of Optimism • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... jump over, and throw around; everybody in the camp seems to be chewing these peaches and throwing them about in sheer wantonness because they are plentiful; every sack contains finger-holes from which one and all help themselves ad libitum in wanton disregard ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... fallen leaves. The lake shone blue and smooth as a mirror, reflecting in its shining surface the white landing-stage and its boat, the swans and the statues. The fruit was already plucked in the garden and the leaves were falling. What a foolish wanton waste this stripping of the trees after ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... distance one hundred thousand men were stretched upon the ground fast asleep, while near a third of that number were sleeping their last sleep or suffering from the effects of fearful wounds. The ghouls of the battlefield are now at their wanton work. Stealthily and cautiously they creep and grope about in the dark to hunt the body of an enemy, or even a comrade, and strip or rob him of his little all. Prayers, groans, and curses mingle, but the robber ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... for the last days! Behold! The hire of the laborers who have reaped down thy fields, which you kept back by fraud, crieth, and the cries of them which have reaped have entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth! Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth and been wanton! Ye have nourished thy hearts as in a day of slaughter! Ye have condemned and killed the just!" Then addressing his words more closely to those about the table he said, "Be patient, therefore, brethern, unto the coming of the Lord. Be patient, for ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... tigers, so that travellers are often forced to pass the nights on the tops of high trees, as the tigers can easily take them off from such as are low by leaping. The men of Malacca are courageous, and the women very wanton. At this time the city of Malacca was rich and populous, being the centre of trade between the eastern and western parts of India, Mahomet was then king of Malacca, against whom the king of Siam had sent an army of 40,000 ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... impressions of travel in these remoter parts of Japan, yet unvisited by tourists with shotguns. The early European and American hunters in Japan seem to have found no difficulty and felt no compunction in exterminating what they considered 'game' over whole districts, destroying life merely for the wanton pleasure of destruction. Their example is being imitated now by 'Young Japan,' and the destruction of bird life is only imperfectly checked by game laws. Happily, the Government does interfere sometimes to check particular forms of the hunting vice. Some brutes who had observed the habits ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... grew apace, rocked by the anxious beating. . . Of this poor heart, which the cruel wanton boy. . ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... unpleasant to me as the discussion of such a subject may well be—your indifference is no apology for your cruel neglect of her. Do not think yourself excused by any weakness, any natural defect of understanding on her side, in the wanton cruelty so evident on yours. You must have known, that while you were enjoying yourself in Devonshire pursuing fresh schemes, always gay, always happy, she was ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... 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
... say I'm not to blame, For cleanly dress and spruce attire Preserve alive love's wanton flame And gently fan the ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... board would provide him with a warrant. It seemed simple enough, at first, to draw a warrant for old Zack's arrest, but legal difficulties arose. He could not well be taken for assault, for it was the lawyer that had attacked him; or for wanton mischief, for his intent in going to school was not mischievous; or yet for trespass, for he had offered ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... thee when the wanton wind is busy, And dust-clouds rise; In the deep night, when o'er the bridge so dizzy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... fable to the gods of antiquity. His adversaries answer him with commonplaces that signify nothing. The partisans of Bayle and his enemies have almost always fought without making contact. They all agree that Jupiter was an adulterer, Venus a wanton, Mercury a rogue. But, as I see it, that is not what needs consideration. One must distinguish between Ovid's Metamorphoses and the religion of the ancient Romans. It is quite certain that never among the Romans or even among the Greeks, was there ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... circle had no hand in these promiscuous destructions of life. Their own attempts were invariably well organised and directed towards some definite end. They did not destroy life for mere wanton cruelty, and their victims were marked out and hunted down ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... on beds of roses here, Or in a wanton bath stretched at my ease? Die, slave, and with thee die such thoughts as these. [High Priest ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... made at that time. Undoubtedly practically the entire literary output of the classic civilization was contained in these collections. Unfortunately no traces of them remain. Accident and conquest caused their entire destruction. The earlier historians told a pitiful tale of the wanton destruction of the library by the Mohammedan conquerors who in their fanaticism destroyed as useless or harmful all works not devoted to the dissemination of their own doctrines. While it is probably true that the Mohammedans were responsible for a ...
— Books Before Typography - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #49 • Frederick W. Hamilton
... and may pretend to find them, or may simulate them by imposture. The white sheet and clanking chains are forsaken for a more realistic rendering of the ghostly part. The desire of social notoriety may beget wanton fabrications. In short, all studies have their perils, and these are among the dangers which beset the path of the inquirer into things ghostly. He must adopt the stoical maxim: "Be sober and do ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... and eighteen wounded. She had been shamefully unprepared for action, and was hence forced to strike, but Humphreys, the Leopard's commander, contemptuously declined to take her a prize. There was no excuse whatever for this wanton and criminal insult to our flag, yet the only reparation ever made ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... themselves in possession of an enemy's abode; and though there was but little temptation to plunder, I knew that I must here begin to draw the line. I had long since resolved to prohibit absolutely all indiscriminate pilfering and wanton outrage, and to allow nothing to be taken or destroyed but by proper authority. The men, to my great satisfaction, entered into this view at once, and so did (perhaps a shade less readily, in some cases) the officers. The greatest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • 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 I lift ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... least as their money or money's worth holds out. There is no license or aptitude on their guardians' part to club them for relaxation's sake, or to kick them into underground dungeons for "observation" (you will understand that term by and by), or in any manner to hold a carnival of wanton brutality with them. The general idea is merely to keep them somewhere inside the building for the appointed or convenient time; beyond that, a liberal view is adopted of the conditions of their sojourn. They can buy eats to suit themselves, and have them served to them ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... further to their work, and the stones would have to be drawn further. The priest held that the extra labour was of secondary importance. He said that to make two roads running parallel with each other would be a wanton humiliation to the people. ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... his paddle steadily, throwing into the strokes a wanton exuberance that showed how high his spirits ran. After a time, when they were well out from the shore, he took a deep ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... our country down here is worth singing about like that!" continued the glazier, as the Scotchman again melodized with a dying fall, "My ain countree!" "When you take away from among us the fools and the rogues, and the lammigers, and the wanton hussies, and the slatterns, and such like, there's cust few left to ornament a song with in Casterbridge, or ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... paradises of the great trout, who frequent the old brickwork and timber foundations. The water in its rush through the arches, had of course worked for itself a deep hole, and then, some twenty yards below, spread itself out in wanton joyous ripples and eddies over a broad surface some fifty yards across, and dashed away towards a little island some two hundred yards below, or rolled itself slowly back towards the bridge again, up the backwater by the side of the bank, as if longing for another merry rush through one of ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... Nicholas, of Rhode Island, cheering letter written to Washington by, i. 597; supply of powder sent by, to the camp at Cambridge, i. 628; acting governor of Rhode Island in place of Governor Wanton ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... house of the son grew from that of the father, as naturally as new joints on a bough. And the cathedral crowned the whole as naturally as the leafy summit the tree. This cannot be here. The march of peaceful is scarce less wanton than that of warlike invasion. The old landmarks are broken down, and the land, for a season, bears none, except of the rudeness of conquest and the needs of the day, whose bivouac fires blacken the sweetest forest glades. I have come prepared to see all this, to dislike it, but not ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... an infinite variety of moods and touch, reserves a special category of scorn for Von Tirpitz. Savage cruelty in war, the wanton destruction of life and property, the whole gospel of frightfulness—these things have been abandoned (so the historians tell us), not because savagery was bad morals but because it was the worst way of making ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... know the tawdry arts she tries, The tint of cheek, the gold of hair, To mimic nature for the eyes Of those who scorn her paltry care, And spurn those charms—if aught abide Within her beauty's narrowed scope— Now touched with less a wanton's pride ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... little boy that I was to have that some day. But now I get a hat for ten shillings, or less, two or three times a year. In the old days buying clothes was well-nigh as irrevocable as marriage. Our flat is furnished with glittering things—wanton arm-chairs just strong enough not to collapse under you, books in gay covers, carpets you are free to drop lighted fusees upon; you may scratch what you like, upset your coffee, cast your cigar ash to the four quarters of heaven. Our guests, at anyrate, are not snubbed by our furniture. ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... last thou art! Ere bud to rounded blossom change; Thou wilt for wanton lips and heart Most false, thy ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... for; that much was obvious to the veriest land-lubber. And the second torpedo could have but one purpose—the wanton destruction of so many more helpless women. Besides, it revolted his sense of sport; it was like blowing a sitting bird to pieces with a shot gun. ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... 1783 Great Britain agreed to give us the whole West below a certain line, but when the time came for the surrender, she refused to yield the forts south of this line. With the bad faith of wanton power she kept her posts at Oswego, Niagara, Detroit, and Mackinaw, because we were weak and she was strong; and from these points her agents abetted the savages in their war upon the American frontiers. Just before the battle of Fallen Timbers, where Wayne won his victory, ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... humiliated, Gabriel slunk away, and not until the sound of the closing door gave warning of his departure did the count turn around. His gaze was fixed upon the Venus, who in her wanton beauty met his looks with dark, ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... expression of friendly interest in his welfare. When he says, in addition, that there was no shred, no spice of malice in these assaults, he takes away the sole ground on which a plea of palliation can be brought. If not due to that they had not even the poor excuse of weak human nature. They were the wanton acts of a man who attacks another, not from (p. 197) indignation or wrath, but from the mere desire of inflicting annoyance ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... one direction, news would be brought of his having committed some daring and bloody deed far off in some other quarter. His latest acts had been to kill and rob a post-runner, who happened to be a great favourite in his locality, and to attack and murder, in mere wanton cruelty, a family of friendly Indians, belonging to a tribe which had never given the whites any trouble. The fury of the people, therefore, was somewhat commensurate with the wickedness of the man. They resolved to capture him, and, as there was a number of resolute cow-boys ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... the calm is o'er; The wanton water leaps in sport, And rattles down the pebbly shore; The dolphin wheels, the sea-cows snort, And unseen Mermaids' pearly song Comes bubbling up, the weeds among. Fling broad the sail, dip deep the oar: To sea, to ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... sudden silence. Sadler went on to tell the old story.... I saw it all as he spoke; only gaunt, shiny-faced, yellow Nichols was chewing and hitching his trousers in place of my Tomas, with his sanguine oaths and jerked gestures. And there was Nichol's wanton, ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... evils of the feudal system, they were patent to the eyes of Alain Chartier. His Livre de l'Esperance, where the oratorical prose is interspersed with lyric verse, spares neither the clergy nor the frivolous and dissolute gentry, who forget their duty to their country in wanton self-indulgence; yet his last word, written at the moment when Joan of Arc was leaving the pastures for battle, is one of hope. His Curial (The Courtier) is a satire on the vices of the court by one who had acquaintance with its corruption. The ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... reports from Cuba. And yet every thinking man among us, young and old, turned cold with apprehension when we were threatened with a European interference which would have dishonoured us. That Spain is behaving with wanton brutality would not be to the point, even if the reports were not exaggerated, which they are,—for the matter of that, the Cubans are equally brutal when they find the opportunity. The point is that it is none of our business. The Cubans have rebelled. They must take the consequences, sustained ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... actual pledge of secrecy. 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 ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... made to break stones or wheel barrows on the streets or highways like galley slaves. Persons of rank were frequently taken from their homes, immured in prison, and dismissed after several weeks' incarceration without knowing what alleged offence had provoked such a wanton exercise of power contrary to the charter and the privileges of Poland; state offenders were carried out of the country to Russian prisons and attempts were made to give them a journey to Siberia, which were only prevented by the threat of suicide on the part of the victims. The resources ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... paralyzed the hay harvest on Sir Gerald Malloring's Worcestershire estate and led to the introduction of strike-breakers, shows no sign of abatement. A very wanton spirit of mischief seems to be abroad in this neighborhood. No reason can be ascertained for the arson committed a short time back, nor for this further outbreak of discontent. The economic condition of the laborers on this estate is admittedly rather above ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Comedy call'd the Devil's an Ass [Footnote: Vid. Devil's an Ass, p. 9.], makes his first Scene a Solemn Hell, where Lucifer sits in State with all his Privy-Council about him: and when he makes an under Pug there beaten and fool'd by a Clod-pated Squire and his wanton Wife, the Audience took the Representation morally, and never keck'd at the matter. Nay, Milton, tho' upon his secred Subject, comes very near the same thing too; but we must not laugh at silly Sancho, nor put on a Devils face to fright him, but we must be disciplin'd; nay, more, Presented for ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... is an average interval of fifteen years allowed between one revolution and another, yet a good forest tree requires a much longer time to reach full growth. At least the incalculable loss suffered by our forest property in the year 1848, through lavish waste, plundering, and wanton ruination, has certainly, up to the present time, not been ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... seem that temperance is not only about desires and pleasures. For Tully says (De Invent. Rhet. ii, 54) that "temperance is reason's firm and moderate mastery of lust and other wanton emotions of the mind." Now all the passions of the soul are called emotions of the mind. Therefore it seems that temperance is not only ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... isle! and happier Walham Green! Where all that's fair and beautiful are seen! Where wanton zephyrs court the ambient air, And sweets ambrosial banish every care; Where thought nor trouble social joy molest, Nor vain solicitude can banish rest. Peaceful and happy here I reign serene, Perplexity defy, and smile at spleen; Belles, ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... to traverse, the larger animals exist in great numbers, and, being comparatively tame, may be easily shot. I would earnestly press on every member of the expedition a sacred regard to life, and never to destroy it unless some good end is to be answered by its extinction; the wanton waste of animal life which I have witnessed from night-hunting, and from the ferocious, but childlike, abuse of the instruments of destruction in the hands of Europeans, makes me anxious that this expedition should not ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... assassin, for no other reason than because he endeavoured to have justice done his employers; and the following extract from the report of the Irish Mining Company of Ireland, contains the particulars of as wanton an outrage ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... strong representations to Fort William; but the Governor had made no conditions as to the mode in which the war was to be carried on. He had troubled himself about nothing but his forty lacs; and, though he might disapprove of Sujah Dowlah's wanton barbarity, he did not think himself entitled to interfere, except by offering advice. This delicacy excites the admiration of the biographer. "Mr. Hastings," he says, "could not himself dictate to the Nabob, nor permit the commander of the Company's troops to dictate how the war was to be carried ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... up and go out of the room; his steps sounded going upstairs, in the direction of his study. She went and drew the chair up to the hearthrug, and sat down, resting her elbows on the arms and holding her head between her hands. It was very wanton that a chance allusion of his should have brought about this scene between them. Perhaps she could have put him off with excuses, but that had not occurred to her. The scene had told her nothing new, but it had torn away the last of ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... 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 ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... will obey my orders, nor wait upon me," replied Newton. "All I request is, that you will lay aside your wanton animosity, and exert yourself to save your life. For what you have already attempted against me, may God forgive you, as I do! For what you may hereafter attempt, you will find me prepared. Now follow me into ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... virtuously and hide their pride. Because they commit no sins of the flesh which can be noticed, they are full of piety in their outward ceremonies, but within full of arrogance. These are the members of the devil, for the devil neither eats, drinks, nor sleeps, he is neither a miser nor a wanton, but is within full of pride as are these. By the ass we are to understand the simple people. They are led in the way of sin by the ceremonies of the lazy, since they are not thought fit for the worship of the heart, and must be led by masses, penance, and indulgences, and they throw ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... in graceful ringlets play'd, All eyes are charm'd that view them, And o'er his comely shoulders stray'd, Where wanton zephyrs blew them. ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... their slaves behind them, but without any distinction of rank in their dress, all being in a state of Nature; that is, in plain English, stark naked, without any beauty or defect concealed. Yet there was not the least wanton smile or immodest gesture among them. They walked and moved with the same majestic grace which Milton describes of our general mother. I am here convinced of the truth of a reflection I had often made, that if it was the fashion to go naked, the face would be hardly observed." (Letters and ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of treating them with the utmost kindness. He had endeavoured at the same time to gain their confidence, if possible, and secure their friendship. If these humane endeavours were afterwards rendered fruitless by the wanton profligacy of some depraved individuals, however he might regret it, he could have ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... water on which his vessel was rolling, to the sails; and from his silent and profoundly expectant crew, to the dim lines of spars that were waving above his head, like so many pencils tracing their curvilinear and wanton images over the murky volumes ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... discussion of a plan for reforming the king's household, and for reducing its wanton waste and extravagance—in exhibiting the detail of a plan for relieving the embarrassments of the palace just then, which, with the aid of the favourite and his friends, and their measures for relief, were fast urging on the revolution—it was ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... danger warms: 380 But when contending chiefs blockade the throne, Contracting regal power to stretch their own; When I behold a factious band agree To call it freedom when themselves are free; Each wanton judge new penal statutes draw, 385 Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law; The wealth of climes, where savage nations roam, Pillag'd from slaves to purchase slaves at home; Fear, pity, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... small tissue paper parcel. This she opened carefully, and disclosed a tiny shoe, homely but neat, a little child's chemise, and an old, faded, pink print sun-bonnet, minus a string. In the upper leather of the shoe were several cuts, the work of some wanton hand. Sitting back upon her heels, she let the open parcel ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... groom should in a trice convey her To Sarum Plain, and set her down at Stonehenge, To pick her path through those antiques at leisure; She should take sample of our Wiltshire flints. O, be not lightly jealous! nor surmise, That to a wanton bold-faced thing like this Your modest shrinking Katherine could impart Secrets of any worth, especially Secrets that touch'd your peace. If there be aught, My life upon't, 'tis but some girlish story Of a First Love; which even the boldest wife Might modestly ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... delightful rear-view of the queer architectural odds and ends that may in Rome compose a florid ecclesiastical facade. There are more of these, a stranger jumble of chance detail, of lurking recesses and wanton projections and inexplicable windows, than I have memory or phrase for; but the gem of the collection is the oddly perched peaked turret, with its yellow travertine welded upon the rusty brickwork, which was ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... was, she stole Edith's former recklessness, and added to it something of her own dash and verve. Lethway, standing in the wings, knew she was not and never would be Edith. She was not fine enough. Edith at her best had frolicked. Mabel romped, was almost wanton. He cut out the string music at the final rehearsal. It did ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of Spain of 1808 and of 1823 differed equally in object and in results: the first was a cunning and wanton attack, which threatened the existence of the Spanish nation, and was fatal to its author; the second, while combating dangerous principles, fostered the general interests of the country, and was the more readily brought to a successful termination because ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... away from wanton waists; ribaldry hesitated; hot faces drew apart; and all at once a girl with a crackling laugh threw a tin cup of liquor into the fire. Even as she did it, a wretched dwarf sprang into the circle without a word, and, snatching the cup out of the flames, jumped back again into the darkness, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... unwilling to tell me, but it came out at last that Dermot and Harold—being, he feared, in an improperly excited condition—had insisted on going to the den with the keeper, and had irritated the animal by wanton mischief, and he was convinced that this could not have ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... tuneless song, Lavish of a heedless tongue. Simple maiden, void of art, Babbling out the very heart, Yet abandoned to thy will, Yet imagining no ill, Yet too innocent to blush; Like the linnet in the bush, To the mother-linnet's note Moduling her slender throat, Chirping forth thy pretty joys; Wanton in the change of toys, Like the linnet green, in May, Flitting to ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... was soon to be overcast. England and France had long been at war; and, at the period of which we are treating, France had become the ruthless bandit of the land, and England the wanton pirate of the sea. Each desired the cooperation of the United States in the war—and each determined, in the event of our refusal to take part in the controversy in its favor, to cripple our commerce by all means ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... companions, and what he had himself believed until he came to Gethin, of the wiles and inconstancy of woman, flashed upon his mind. Had he, bred in the town, and familiar with all the ways of vice, been flattered and hoodwinked by a country wanton? Impossible. For, though there were no virtue in the world, he felt assured that Harry loved him, and him alone. She must be walking in her sleep. Softly, but very swiftly, he left the parlor, and hurried to the front-door. It was closed, but unfastened. He opened it, and ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... was a heathen, the only unbeliever on the island, a gross materialist, who believed that when he died he was dead. He believed merely in fair play and square dealing. Petty meanness, in his code, was almost as serious as wanton homicide; and I do believe that he respected a murderer more than a man given to ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... children mounted on their hobby-horse Thinke they are riding, when with wanton toile They beare what should beare them. A man may well 175 Compare them to those foolish great-spleen'd cammels, That to their high heads beg'd of Jove hornes higher; Whose most uncomely and ridiculous pride When hee had ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... for the act and it served no purpose; it was merely the instinctive act of the bully who strikes in wanton cruelty at something or somebody he knows cannot retaliate. His Honor found a satisfaction now in watching the blood rise flaming to the roots of Kate's hair and it gave him a feeling of power knowing that she must accept ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... Seine. To me, at least, in Mme. Calv's impersonation, it seemed that I was enjoying my first revelation of some of the elements of the character of the gypsy as it had existed in the imagination of Prosper Mrime when he wrote his novel. To me she presented a woman thoroughly wanton and diabolically equipped with the wicked witcheries which explained, if they did not palliate, the conduct of Don Jos. Here we had a woman without conscience, but also without the capacity for even a wicked affection; a woman who might have been the ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... sir, of those two medieval institutions which we have now lost—I suppose irrevocably—the whipping boy and the court jester. What a pity that they cannot be revived! The whipping boy, a device to put princes on their honor to be neither negligent nor wanton in the fulfilment of their duties; and the jester to break us of our too self-conscious airs and exhibit to us our follies. See what we have done instead! When our growing sense of priggish decorum and our dishonest ceremoniousness ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... by the Indians, Thomas Bosomworth at last repented of his folly. He wrote to the president and council, apologizing for his wanton conduct. He acknowledged the title of his wife to be groundless, and relinquished all claim to the lands of the Province. Though his offense had been serious, the colonists pardoned him, and thus ended the career of Coosaponakesee as ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... could think Du Sang was shooting him down. It was wanton. Du Sang stood in no need of the butchery; the escape could have been made without it. His victim had pulled an engine throttle too long to show the white feather, but he was dying by the time he had dragged a revolver ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... deep love—on the men whether the relation into which marriage betrays them be decent or indecent. What I should like to be able to discover is—what provision does either man or civilization propose to make for the woman whom Fate, in wanton irony, reduces, even in marriage, to the self-considered level of the ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... traps"—"give up the keys, and begone." The woman on her side need only give similar notice and "take her departure." The only check lay in family considerations, in public opinion, which was extremely lenient, in financial convenience, or in the possibility of particularly wanton conduct being so disapproved in high quarters that a senator or a knight might perhaps find his name missing from the list of his order ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... take the measure of a thing as soon as I see it; it 's a blessing to feel what we think, without balancing and comparing. It's a great rest, too, and a great luxury. That, as I say, was the case with the feeling excited in me by this happy idea of Ambrose Tester's. Cruel and wanton I thought it then, cruel and wanton I thought it later, when it was pressed upon me. I knew there were many other people that did n't agree with me, and I can only hope for them that their conviction was as quick and positive as mine; it all depends upon the way a thing strikes one. But I will ...
— The Path Of Duty • Henry James
... Congress at Albany in 1775, had brought utter ruin to thousands of families, and had wantonly desolated "our villages and settlements, and destroyed our citizens;" that they should make atonement for the enormities they had perpetrated, and due compensation to the republic for their wanton barbarity, and that they had nothing wherewith to satisfy these demands except by consenting to the fixing of boundaries. Wherefore, it was resolved that a convention be held with the tribes; that they be received into the favor and protection of ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... palpable miss, much to his disgust. His failure, however, taught him a valuable lesson, and he succeeded in killing two whales before either of the others had been able to secure another shot. In ten minutes eight whales had been killed, and the professor, who was very rigid in his objection to the wanton sacrifice of life, then suggested that probably as many had been killed as the whaler could successfully deal with at one time, especially as the boats now had signals flying which showed that each had killed her fish. The Flying Fish ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... too; she bolted from the very thought of my being her affianced lover and so forth, from the faintest memory of kissing; she was indeed altogether disgraceful and human in her betrayal. She and her half-brother lied in perfect concord, and I was presented as a wanton assailant of my social betters. They were waiting about in the Warren, when I came up and spoke to ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... at jeists. And wanton when he came to feists, He scorn'd the converse of great beasts, O'er a sheep's head; He laugh'd at stones ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... said he, "I am only too familiar with them. In childhood I learned the words of the prophet: 'Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet; therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the Lord will discover their ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... not spent upon some one or a few, doth naturally spread itself towards many, and maketh men become humane and charitable; as it is seen sometime in friars. Nuptial love maketh mankind; friendly love perfecteth it; but wanton love corrupteth, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... she said, breathing quick. "He made a fule o' me wi' that wanton Lizzie Short, and he near killt me the last morning afore he went. And I'd been a good wife to him for fifteen year, and never a word between us till that huzzy came along. And she's got a child by him, and he must go and throw ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... only been a cause of great loss to the country owing to the reckless waste of the sources of valuable supplies of food, but has severely injured the farmers in jungly tracts in a way that seems hitherto to have escaped notice. I allude to the fact that, in consequence of the wanton destruction of game in the western forests, tigers are compelled to inflict much greater losses on the herds of the natives. This is a fact to which I can personally testify, and which has since the middle of 1892 become steadily more apparent; for, when game ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... which threaten it with death by thirst. How long intelligence has existed upon Mars, if intelligence there be, no one can say; nor yet what its future will be. It would seem probable that our own fate must be similar, but it is far removed. And though the Whole may seem wanton, purposeless, stupid, we are very little folk; we see very dimly; we see only what we have the capacity to see; and there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in the philosophy of the ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... women break their marriage vow, it is seldom for any merely frivolous or sordid reason (of course excepting the essentially wanton type, whom no man should be fool enough to marry), but nearly always either because they are under the spell of infatuation for the other man, or because they are utterly miserable in their marriage ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... soon solicited to violate the treaty, and to join his arms with the Venetians, the perpetual enemies of Genoa and her colonies. While he compared the reasons of peace and war, his moderation was provoked by a wanton insult of the inhabitants of Pera, who discharged from their rampart a large stone that fell in the midst of Constantinople. On his just complaint, they coldly blamed the imprudence of their engineer; but the next day the insult was repeated; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... when they invaded Maryland, or, who perhaps, living unfortunately in the very track of the conflicting armies, found themselves driven from their burning homesteads, and devastated fields, victims of a wanton soldiery. Destitute, ragged and shelterless, their condition appealed with peculiar force to the friends of the Union. State aid was by no means sufficient, and unorganized charity ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... this great Saint's Life, should, among many others, serve as lessons of Charity, Consideration, and Humility, to the Rich, the Great, the Proud, and the Wanton; who may recollect that, altho' he was well born, he was nevertheless, in the most vigorous Season of Life, a Slave and a Swine-Herd: Happy, though wretched Servitude! In which, his leisure Hours, mostly employed in Christian Confidence and Prayer, ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... when the earth began afresh its life in May, And fruit-trees bloomed, and waves would wanton, and the bay Ruffle its wealth of weed, and stranger-birds arrive, And beasts take each a ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... commanding general considers that no greater disgrace could befall the army, and through it, our whole people, than the perpetration of the barbarous outrages upon the innocent and defenseless, and the wanton destruction of private property, that have marked the course of the enemy in our own country. Such proceedings not only disgrace the perpetrators and all connected with them, but are subversive of the discipline and efficiency ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... moment, young ladies," said the head-mistress in that slightly vibrating and authoritative voice of hers. "I have a word or two to say to you all. Miss Good has just brought me a painful story of wanton and cruel mischief. There are fifty girls in this school, who, until lately, lived happily together. There is now one girl among the fifty whose object it is to sow seeds of discord and misery among her companions. Miss Good has told me of three different occasions on which mischief ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... the late abundant fall of rain, and the vegetation everywhere looked quite green. No signs of natives were seen—their visits to the immediate vicinity of the Cape appear to be made only at rare intervals; and the just chastisement bestowed upon them some years ago, in consequence of a wanton attack made upon a seining party will, probably, for some time to come, render them cautious of coming in contact with white men. While wading about among the tall grass, the long sharp awns of the prevailing kind, an Anthistiria, were more annoying than can be described, ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... nodded Brandes in his low, deliberate voice. His heavy, round face was deeply flushed; Fortune, the noisy wanton, had flung both arms around his neck. But his slow eyes were continually turned on the slim young girl whom he was teaching to walk beside him without ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... point to thee. The colde is rare, the people rude, the prince so full of pride, The Realme so stored with Monks and nunnes, and priests on euery side: The maners are so Turkie like, the men so full of guile, The women wanton, Temples stuft with idols that defile The Seats that sacred ought to be, the customes are so quaint, As if I would describe the whole, I feare my pen would faint. In summe, I say I neuer saw a prince that so did raigne, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt
... world of poetry at once so grand, so pathetic, and so beautiful as his. Well, but Lear owes the whole of this to those sufferings which made us doubt whether life were not simply evil, and men like the flies which wanton boys torture for their sport. Should we not be at least as near the truth if we called this poem The Redemption of King Lear, and declared that the business of 'the gods' with him was neither to torment him, nor to teach him a 'noble anger,' but to lead him to attain through ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... a marten in this trap, but nothing remained of him except a few hairs that clung to the bark of the fall-log. The bait was gone, the bait house was broken apart, and the pieces strewn about in the most savage and wanton manner. The tracks were only a few hours old, and Connie was for following them and killing the marauder with the rifle. But 'Merican Joe shook his head: "No, we ain' kin fin' him. He climb de tree and den git in nodder tree an' keep on goin' an' we lose time ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... dancing and courtship still remained traceable. Cook found "a dance called Timorodee, which is performed by young girls, whenever eight or ten of them can be collected together, consisting of motions and gestures beyond imagination wanton, in the practice of which they are brought up from their earliest childhood, accompanied by words which, if it were possible, would more explicitly convey the same ideas. But the practice which is allowed to the virgin ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the Church, who guides you; let this suffice you for your salvation. If evil covetousness cry aught else to you, be ye men, and not silly sheep, so that the Jew among you may not laugh at you. Act not like the lamb, that leaves the milk of his mother, and, simple and wanton, at its own ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... and cramped his soul beyond endurance. When he came of an age to play marbles, he was forbidden to play, because it was, to Miss Hester's mind, a species of gambling. Swimming was too dangerous to be for a moment considered. Fishing, without necessity, was wanton cruelty. Flying kites was foolishness and a waste ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... "by your continued and wanton interference with M. Rokoff and his plans you have at last brought yourself and your family to this unfortunate extremity. You have only yourself to thank. As you may imagine, it has cost M. Rokoff a large amount of money ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... consequences, the Greek shut up the windows of his house, determined to deprive his oppressors of their expected perquisite; and so the dead Jew remained exposed his full time. Few excepting those of the true faith ventured to approach the spot, fearful that the Mohamedan authorities would, in their wanton propensities to heap insults upon the Giaours, oblige some one of them to carry the carcass to the place of burial; and thus the horrid and disgusting object was left abandoned to itself, and this had given an opportunity to the kabobchi, Yanaki, to dispose of the ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... beset with briars, so that it was impossible to pass through it without the utmost danger and difficulty; the other, the most delightful imaginable, leading through the most verdant meadows, painted and perfumed with all kinds of beautiful flowers; in short, the most wanton imagination could imagine nothing more lovely. Notwithstanding which, we were surprised to see great numbers crowding into the former, and only one or two solitary spirits ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... in a sense a tragic room, but it had never seemed that to Becky. She came of a race of men who had hunted from instinct but with a sense of honor. The Judge and those of his kind hated wanton killing. Their guns would never have swept away the feathered tribes of tree and sky. It was the trappers and the pot-hunters who had done that. There had motored once to the Judge's mansion a man and his wife who had raged at the brutes who hunted for sport. They had ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... compassed every point proposed by continuing its resistance to Britain on the same footing it had begun. This measure occasioned an alienation from its interests in the minds of many of its former adherents. It was looked upon as a wanton abuse of the success with which it had opposed the efforts of the British Ministry to bring them to submission, and as an ungrateful return for the warmth with which their cause had been espoused in Parliament, and by such ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... know what you do? Do you know what you risk? [Is there nothing - nothing! - will make you spare me this idiotic, wanton prosecution?] ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... Let it flye as unconfin'd As it's calme ravisher, the winde, Who hath left his darling, th' East, To wanton o're that spicie neast. ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... deem'st me but a wanton maiden, The plaything of thy idle hours; But laughing streams with gold are laden, And sweets ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... not unkindly that a traveller (though less wide a wanderer than thou) dissuadeth thee from a new-found novelty—the wanton misuse, or rather the misuseful wantonness, of the Indian herb. It is a blind goose that knoweth not a fox from a fern-bush, and a strange temerity that mistaketh smoke for provender. The sow, when she is sick, eateth the sea-crab and is immediately recovered: why, then, should ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... swept the sea; A shadow was on his manly brow as he marked the fading shore, And the faint line of the far green hills where dwelt his loved Lenore. Merrily sailed the bonny barque toward her destined port, And the white waves curled around her prow as if in wanton sport. Merrily sailed the bonny barque till seven days came and past, When her snowy canvas shivered and rent before the northern blast, And out of her course, and away, away, careered she wild and fast. Black lowered the heavens, loud howled ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... or the doctrine I seek to inculcate, I shall ever submit without murmur or reproach. But, when men, assuming that respectable office, openly violate all the duties attached to it, and, sinking the critic in the partizan, make a wanton attack on my veracity, it becomes proper to repel the injurious imputation; and the same spirit which dictates submission to the candid award of an impartial judge, prescribes indignation and scorn at the cowardly attacks of ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... ear of a Templar, or switching a poltroon lord; another sending a challenge to fight in a saw-pit; or to strip to their shirts, to mangle each other, were sanguinary duels, which could only have fermented in the disorders of the times, amid that wanton pampered indolence which made them so petulant and pugnacious. Against this evil his Majesty published a voluminous edict, which exhibits many proofs that it was the labour of his own hand, for the same dignity, the same eloquence, the same felicity of illustration, embellish the state-papers;[B] ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... dishonest churchwardens, and old monuments broken and defaced. The old stained-glass windows were destroyed. The Communion table was taken from the east end of the chancel, and seats erected round it. Crosses were defaced everywhere, and crucifixes destroyed. Puritan profanation and wanton destruction devastated our churches to a degree which has never been equalled since the hordes of heathens and barbaric Danish invaders carried fire and sword ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... country: And to speak from the very bottome of my heart... methinks he is much more happy in a Wood, that at ease contemplates this universe, as his own, and in it, the Sun and Stars, the pleasing Meadows, shady Groves, green Banks, stately Trees, flowing Springs, and the wanton windings of a River, fit objects for quiet innocence, than he that with Fire and Sword disturbs the World, and measures his possessions by the wast that ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... British provost marshal, as everybody knows, whose name became a synonym for wanton cruelty in the treatment of war prisoners. He had come to New York before the Revolution, and had kept a riding school there. As soon as the war broke out he took the royal side. It was he who had in charge the ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... arose after the perpetration of this wanton act that had attracted the attention of Haldor and his friends, when they were making for the ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... stood a creature whose dishevelled, rusty hair, blotched and bloated features, wanton, cunning, restless eyes, combined perfectly to form the head of the mythological Harpy. It required little effort of the imagination to believe that her foul, bedraggled dress concealed the "wings and talons of the vulture." Being still unsteady from her night's debauch, she leaned against the ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... an important moment of life comes, like the children when they are cold and hungry, I turn to Him, and even less than the children when their mother scolds them for their childish mischief, do I feel that my childish efforts at wanton madness are ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... not now thinking of the loss of property involved, immense and serious as that is, but only of the wanton and wholesale destruction of the lives of non-combatants, men, women and children engaged in pursuits which have always, even in the darkest periods of modern history, been deemed innocent ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson
... in your recollection, I venture to beg, that your Highness will treat such Greeks as may henceforth fall into your hands with humanity; more especially since the horrors of war are sufficiently great in themselves, without being aggravated by wanton cruelties on ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... ridiculed too much for his fears. The terrors that visit childhood are not the less real and overpowering from being unreasonable; and to excite them is wanton cruelty. Moreover, he was but a little lad, and had been up and down Yew-lane both in daylight and dark without any fears, till Bully Tom's tormenting suggestions had alarmed him. Even now, as he reached the avenue of yews from which the lane took its name, ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... telegraphed John W. Forney, "extends to men of all parties. I have not heard one Republican approve it."[1344] Among Sumner's correspondents Ira Harris noted the popular disapproval and indignation in New York. "Another term of such arrogant assumption of power and wanton acquiescence," said Schurz, "may furnish the flunkies with a store of precedents until people cease to look for ordinary means ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... erotic lust could suggest. But I digress. At present, her magic touch had brought me up to bursting point, she threw a leg over me, and raising her body, said she would help herself this time. Guiding my prick to the wanton lips that were longing for him, she sank slowly down on the stiff pole on which she was so delightedly impaling herself, until our hairs were crushed beneath her weight, and nothing more could be engulphed. She again rose, until the edge of the nut showed itself at the mouth ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... especial joy its victory in the town of Halle, which had formerly been a favourite seat of the Cardinal Albert and the chief scene of his wanton extravagances, and where now one of Luther's most intimate and most learned friends from Wittenberg, Justus Jonas, was installed as reformer and Evangelical pastor. Here the final impetus was given to the movement, among the mass of the population, of whom the large majority had long espoused ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... live a scrambling, rakish course of life himself, he had not the least idea of the extent of Lord Glenvarloch's mental sufferings, and thought of his temporary concealment as if it were merely the trick of a wanton boy, who plays at hide-and-seek with his tutor. With the appearance of the place, too, he was familiar—but on his companion it ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... actions which must consign her name to posterity (in spite of all palliatives) as one whose example, if followed, would be attended with the most pernicious consequences to society: a female who could brave the opinion of the world in the most delicate point; a philosophical wanton, breaking down the bars designed to restrain licentiousness; and a mother, deserting a helpless offspring disgracefully brought into the world by herself, by an intended act of suicide." Here follows a short sketch of the incidents recorded by Godwin, and then the article concludes: ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... the scene of their sanguinary exploit, they had drawn the waggons into a close clump and set fire to them, partly from a wanton instinct of destruction, partly from the pleasure of beholding a great bonfire, but also with some thoughts that it might be as well thus to blot out all the traces of a tragedy for which the Americans—of whom even these freebooters felt dread—might ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... dared to come anigh you?" he cried. "Hath she ventured to disquiet my friends, the wanton jade, the scheming—" and so on, pouring horrid words upon her that chilled my blood. 'T was terrible in him, that he could so swiftly change to these furies with one he had favoured, and to a rage frightful ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... social customs." Even if the Mormons had so construed it, the rebuke of their lack of patriotism would have aroused their resentment, and Bernhisel, in a letter to President Fillmore, characterized it as "a wanton insult." ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... maidens, The fairest moulded of woman kind, Are gathered in groups on the level ice. They look on the robe and its beauty gladdens, And maddens their hearts for the splendid prize. Lo the rounded ankles and raven hair That floats at will on the wanton wind, And the round brown arms to the breezes bare, And breasts like the mounds where the waters meet, [4] And feet as fleet as the red deer's feet, And faces that glow like the full, round moon When she laughs in the luminous ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... of Devotion have not escaped the lash of wanton criticism. They have excited the pious horror of some modern Pharisees because they contain a table of sins for the use of those preparing for confession. The same flower that furnishes honey to the bee supplies poison to ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... having. It is to gain the peak the climber strives, not to possess it. Fools marry thinking what they are going to get out of it: good store of joys and pleasure, opportunities for self-indulgence, eternal soft caresses— the wages of the wanton. The rewards of marriage are toil, duty, responsibility—manhood, womanhood. Love's baby talk you will have outgrown. You will no longer be his 'Goddess,' 'Angel,' 'Popsy Wopsy,' 'Queen of his heart.' There are finer names than ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... 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
... beautiful town, she attracts visitors from everywhere, and is, indeed, a very remarkable curiosity. Seals were at once placed, and very properly, on the captain's book-cases, lockers, and drawers, and wherever private property might be injured by wanton curiosity, and two keepers are on duty on the vessel, till her destination is decided. But nothing is changed from what she was when she came into harbor. And, from stem to stern, every detail of ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... last message (much mutilated by the Censor) events have moved rapidly. Two of the mules have died of their injuries in hospital; three others lie in a dangerous condition at Umwidi, four miles away, where they fled for refuge from the wanton onslaught of the Australian sheep. This sheep, it now transpires, was the personal attendant of General Riddlecombe, Head of the Military Mission, a circumstance which is not calculated to allay the local animosity which the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various |
