"Wanton" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... two scriptures that I shall use more, and then I shall draw towards a conclusion. One is that in Proverbs, where Solomon is counselling of young men to beware of strange, that is, of wanton, light, and ensnaring women. Take heed of such, said he, lest 'thou mourn at the last,' that is, in hell, when thou art dead, 'when thy flesh and thy body are consumed, and say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof, and have not obeyed the voice of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of undertakings and projects, his condition was attributed to a great flow of spirits. If, while talking very sensibly on many subjects and doing many proper things, he manifested a propensity to wanton mischief, why, then he was possessed with a devil and consigned to chains and straw,—unless he had committed some senseless act of crime, in which case he received from the law ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... have heard this wanton insult," continued Captain Truck, suppressing his wrath as well as he could: "in what mariner ought it to ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... land there was evidence of fierce combats and of wanton destruction of property; burning villages, fields of produce trodden in the earth, etcetera. Still further on I encountered long trains of wagons bearing supplies and ammunition to the front. As we advanced these ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... without reserve, to all the promptings of her voluptuous nature. Her appearance, conversation and actions were not without their influence on me, you may be sure; and if ever I envied mortal man, it was that young officer, who could revel at will in the arms of the beautiful wanton ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... house; but they were paying little heed to us for the moment, being engaged in watching their companions, who were running from cottage to cottage, firing them by thrusting torches under the thatch, and shouting and chattering to each other, as if these acts of wanton destruction were so much amusement ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... bone and therefore like to sticke fast in the flesh, for as it is said, Quod noua testa capit inueterata sapit) at least wise (as the French king suspected) began to fantasie the yoong ladie, and by such wanton talke and companie-keeping as he vsed with hir, he was thought to haue brought hir to consent to his fleshlie lust, which was the cause wherefore he would not suffer his sonne to marrie hir, [Sidenote: R. ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (5 of 12) - Henrie the Second • Raphael Holinshed
... incendiary. The air of the Virginia morning was so soft and warm, the honeysuckles along the wall were so languid sweet, the bees and the hollyhocks up to the walk so fat and lazy, the smell of the orchard was so rich, the south wind from the fields was so wanton! Moreover, I was only twenty-six. As it chances, I was this sort of a man: thick in the arm and neck, deep through, just short of six feet tall, and wide as a door, my mother said; strong as one man out of a thousand, my father said. ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... the body about 150 feet. The paws and breast were originally covered with a limestone facing. The present dilapidated condition of the monument is due partly to the tooth of time, but still more to wanton mutilation at the hands of fanatical Mohammedans. The body is now almost shapeless. The nose, the beard, and the lower part of the head dress are gone. The face is seamed with scars. Yet the strange monster still preserves a mysterious dignity, as though it were guardian of all the ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... evil results of war we would be compelled to name at least ten: The wanton destruction of human life; the maiming and suffering inflicted upon the wounded; the breaking up of homes and the terrible suffering caused to women and children; the loss of wealth and property, with the subsequent hardship for the poor which it entails, and the destruction of art, architecture, ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... for a Christian, has its dangers. No doubt it gives him a key to the understanding and therefore, in one sense, to the acceptance of many a dogma. Christian dogmas were not pieces of wanton information fallen from heaven; they were imaginative views, expressing now some primordial instinct in all men, now the national hopes and struggles of Israel, now the moral or dialectical philosophy of the later ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... it was the Act for the dissolution of some of the Irish bishoprics, passed in 1833, winch first made the authors of the Tracts resolve to commence their publication. Mr. Perceval himself cannot even now speak of that Act temperately; he calls it "a wanton act of sacrilege," "a monstrous act," "an outrage upon the Church;" and his friends, it may be presumed, spoke of it at the time in language at least equally vehement. Now, I am not expressing any opinion upon the justice or expediency of that Act; it was opposed by many ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... wonder that 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 of ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... to our room. Amidst universal applause, and in response to the demands of all, they made ready to perform the nuptial rites. I was completely out of countenance, and insisted that such a modest boy as Giton was entirely unfitted for such a wanton part, and moreover, that the child was not of an age at which she could receive that which a woman must take. "Is that so," Quartilla scoffed, "is she any younger than I was, when I submitted to my first man? Juno, my patroness, curse me if I can remember the time when I ever was a virgin, for ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... Negro would sacrifice his life or submit to deadly wounds rather than be captured. When only five out of a total of about 30,000 fell into the Germans' hands alive, it gives some idea of the desperate resistance they put up. Perhaps the stories they had heard about the wanton slaughter of prisoners by the Hun or the brutalities practiced on those who were permitted to live, had something to do with the attitude of the Negroes against being captured; but a more likely solution is that ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... of the wretched master and his amiable slave in the cars. The sketch reminded us of the best in 'Uncle Tom.' We need books filled with such pictures, to electrify the slumbering sensibilities of the North. Wanton candor in speaking of slavery, is the most unpardonable of sins. There is a time to tell the whole truth; but the wise man says. There is 'a time to ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... if there was some wanton, duplicity come up that I could handle myself and not have to leave to that pack of amateur thieves out in the bunk house, and it was dead sure and I didn't risk doing more than two years' penal servitude—yes, ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... no wonder, Guy, if the whole country turn out upon us. You are too wanton in your doings. Wherefore when I told you of your error, did you strike ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... of poetry, though bringing with them, in this case or in the other, their particular sense-accompaniment, must be left free to flow organically together, and to produce their effect in that primeval wanton carelessness, wherein the gods themselves may be supposed to walk about ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... the merchant brought back this reply, "to- morrow I will cause all the male inhabitants of this city to pass before your house, and your wife will stand at the window and watch for the man who did this wanton deed." ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... I revolved them anew, but they only acquired greater plausibility. No doubt I had been the victim of malicious artifice. Inclination, however, conjured up opposite sentiments, and my fears began to subside. What motive, I asked, could induce a human being to inflict wanton injury? I could not account for his delay; but how numberless were the contingencies ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... very 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 monument ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... me tell you, is a perfect lady, a nice, innercent young thing, and when the feller she's engaged to calls 'er an 'approved wanton,' you naturally claps yer 'ands to yer swords. A wanton is a kind of—well, you know—she ain't what ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... joyously light nor particularly airy, but their occupants could have suffered no extreme physical discomfort; and the thick wooden casing of the interior walls evidences at least the intention of the state to inflict no wanton hardships ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... down upon the unsheltered village. There was no shade anywhere—that is, outside the houses. For the place had grown up on the crests of the bald, green rollers of the Western plains as though its original seedling had been tossed there by the wanton summer breezes, and for no ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... which if it be 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 ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... shall not consent to any violence, no matter what the issue. Furthermore, I should like to be given charge of the palace, in order to see that his wants are properly provided for. We cannot afford to have our movement discredited at the outset by unnecessary bloodshed or by any wanton outrages." ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... earth-fast could not breathe. He permitted one for an instant to hear ringing "the prelude of a deeper, mightier, perchance a more evil and mysterious music; a super-German music which does not fade, wither and die away beside the blue and wanton sea and the clear Mediterranean sky; a music super-European, which would assert itself even amid the tawny sunsets of the desert; a music whose soul is akin to the palm-trees; a music that can consort and prowl with great, beautiful, lonely beasts of prey; a music whose supreme charm ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... and tame slavery, will stare at these accounts. Pray be acquainted with your own country, while it is in its lustre. In a regular monarchy the folly of the Prince gives the tone; in a downright tyranny, folly dares give itself no airs; it is in a wanton overgrown commonwealth that whim and debauchery intrigue best together. Ask me which of these governments I prefer—oh! the last—only I fear it ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... Cronaca della Citta di Perugia (Arch. St., vol. xvi. part 2, p. 23), gives a lively picture of the eagerness with which the French were greeted in 1495, and of the wanton brutality by which they soon alienated the people. In this he agrees almost textually with De Comines, who writes: 'Le peuple nous advouoit comme Saincts, estimans en nous toute foy et bonte; mais ce propos ne leur dura gueres, tant pour nostre desordre et pillerie, et qu'aussi les ennemis ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... hurled against the rock; a breath is even as effectual as is a tempest, when that breath is puffed against the dust. So buzzing blandishments of sighing fops, may blow the frail flowerets from weak, wanton natures; whilst vehement vows of otherwise most honorable men, though urged as strongly as the northern blast, are in vain against the marble front of virtue. I ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... St. Sophia, where he gave the necessary orders for the preservation of all the public buildings. Even during the license of the sack, the severe education and grave character of the Ottomans exerted a powerful influence on their conduct, and on this occasion there was no example of the wanton destruction and wilful conflagrations that had signalized the Latin conquest. To convince the Greeks that their orthodox empire was extinct, Mahomet ordered a mollah to ascend the bema and address a sermon to the Mussulmans, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... I speed well, I'll entertain you all. All. We thank your worship. Gav. I have some business: leave me to myself. All. We will wait here about the court. Gav. Do. [Exeunt Poor Men. These are not men for me; I must have wanton poets, pleasant wits, Musicians, that with touching of a string May draw the pliant king which way I please: Music and poetry is his delight; Therefore I'll have Italian masks by night, Sweet speeches, comedies, and pleasing shows; And ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... she might lead A Pharian triumph, Caesar in her train; And 'twas in doubt upon Leucadian (4) waves Whether a woman, not of Roman blood, Should hold the world in awe. Such lofty thoughts Seized on her soul upon that night in which The wanton daughter of Pellaean kings First shared our leaders' couches. Who shall blame Antonius for the madness of his love, When Caesar's haughty breast drew in the flame? Who red with carnage, 'mid the clash of arms, In ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... comfortable feeling of lending to the Lord—but it was no use at our end of the line. What to do with it was a problem. The lowest plantation darky would regard the gift as an insult, and to burn even the filthiest rags would give rise to stories of wanton waste. So we hit upon an expedient which had been successfully employed in other fields—that of putting worthless articles in nice, clean barrels, rolling them out on the doorstep, and forgetting to bring them in at night; and every morning ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... all duty. Indeed, the true spiritual life is quite other, not harsh and constrained, but free and spontaneous—a wealth of feeling playing about a constantly shifting centre. Spirit is not consecutive and law-abiding, but capricious and wanton, seeking the beautiful in no orderly progression, but in a refined and versatile sensibility. If this be the nature of spirit, and if spirit be the nature of reality, then he is most wise who is most rich in sentiment. The Romanticists were the exponents of an absolute sentimentalism. ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... muliebritie. O[223] female scandal! observe, doe but observe: Heere one walks ore-growne with weeds of pride, The earth wants shape to apply a simile, A body prisoned up with walles of wyer, With bones of whales; somewhat allyed to fish, But from the wast declining, more loose doth hang Then her wanton dangling lascivious locke Thats whirld and blowne with everie lustfull breath; Her necke in chaines, all naked lyes her brest, Her body lighter than the feathered Crest. Another powtes, and scoules, and hangs ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... well when it stated that sin consisted in being found out; but conscience was the traitor within the gates; it fought in each heart the battle of society, and caused the individual to throw himself, a wanton sacrifice, to the prosperity of his enemy. For it was clear that the two were irreconcilable, the state and the individual conscious of himself. THAT uses the individual for its own ends, trampling upon him if he thwarts it, rewarding him with medals, pensions, ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... 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 ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... 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 trout, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... contradictions must have been reconciled. Long ages are supposed to elapse between the plays. Prometheus yields. He reveals the secret and is freed from his bonds. What before seemed to be relentless wanton cruelty is now seen to have been only the harsh but necessary severity of a ruler newly established on his throne. By the reconciliation of this stern ruler with the wise Titan, the giver of good gifts to men, order is restored to the universe. Prometheus acknowledges ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... cruel grew, and wanton: Till they killed the colibris. Then outspake the great Good Spirit, Who can see ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... she had any hand in the composition of this maternal appeal, but appears to justify the conclusions at which the commissioners of 1806 and 1813 seem to have arrived. Her temper was obstinate and wilful. She knew that she was watched; and from a spirit apparently of wanton mischief, designed with the view doubtless of annoying her enemies, she indulged in a series of the most extraordinary and undignified vagaries. She took into her service and received into her closest confidence and ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... we got out the china cups, a wanton luxury on the plains, and tea and cake. As they rode off, Van Leshout called to us: "Come over to the shack. I built it myself. You'll know it by the crepe ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... nationalists were to be beaten at their own game of renewed invasion by enabling the loyalist population to defend the Colony, so in the new colonies he proposed to beat the guerilla leaders at their game of wanton and mischievous resistance by building up a new prosperity faster than they could destroy the old. The conditions under which he worked, and the state in which he found South Africa when he began to engage actively in the work of reconstruction, ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... comes the altar tomb (6) which now contains the remains of Bishop Beauchamp, who died in 1481. When this was removed from the aisle at the north end of the great transept it was empty, and showed no trace of its original dedication. During the wanton demolition of the Beauchamp chantry, where, "in marble tumbes," with his father and mother on either hand, the remains of Bishop Beauchamp had been unmolested for over three hundred years, his own tomb was "mislaid" and never ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... 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
... shoulders thrust back and his stubby forefinger pointed to within a few inches of my nose, "I said that I kenned her and her kind well, havin' watched the likes o' her ridden out o' Dawson City on a rail more times than once. I said that she was naethin' but a wanton"—only this was not the word Whinnie used—"a wanton o' Babylon and a temptress o' men and a corrupter o' homes out o' her time and place, bein' naught but a soft shinin' thing that was a mockery to the guid God who made her and a blight to the face o' the open prairie that ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... although I hope I could have still proven my innocence to Mr. Carstone, even if some unknown woman tried my door by mistake, and was seen doing it. But I am pained to think that YOU could have believed me capable of so wanton and absurd an impropriety—and such a gross disrespect to your ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... of 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 war. It was wiser to take the enemy's property—and ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... oppression of the one and the wanton cruelty of the other, have given Scotland too many wounds for me to hold a shield before them; meet them, and I leave them to ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... scot-free? What of the High Priestess then? ... If these poor lover-victims merited their doom, why is not Lysia slain? ... Is not SHE a willingly violated vestal? ... doth SHE not count her lovers by the score? ... are not her vows long since broken? ... is not her life a life of wanton luxury and open shame? ... Why doth the Law, beholding these things, remain in her case ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... front. No one was in sight on the broad thoroughfare and he found a measure of relief in its emptiness, for though he did not adhere to the rigid New England doctrine that governed his neighbors, he found no pleasure in wanton violation of their stiff code. Realizing that with snowshoes, gun and fox he jarred heavily upon the atmosphere of the quiet Sunday morning, ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... the great mountains by unknown paths, and as they travelled, the sailor died; and they came at last through innumerable hardships to the Kimash Hills, the hills of the Mighty Men, and there they stayed. It was not an evil land; it had neither deadly cold in winter nor wanton heat in summer. But they never saw a human face, and everything was lonely and spectral. For a time they strove to go eastwards or southwards but the mountains were impassable, and in the north and west there was no hope. Though the buffalo swept by them in the valley they ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the lea, And sparkles o'er the murmuring sea, The wanton wind sighs, Come! come! come! Oh, haste, Love, come with me, To the wild wood come with me— Come and gather luscious berries, Come with me; Clustering grapes and melting cherries Wait ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... repose. The flocks of teal now skimming the surface of the water, now rising higher towards the shelter of the forests, tempted our sportsman sorely; but, as there was little prospect of finding his game when it was brought down, he did not give way to the wanton pleasure of shooting ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... remember still thy end, Let not thy winding-sheete be staind with guilt; Trust not a fained reconciled frend, More than an open foe (that blood hath spilt): (Who tutcheth pitch, with pitch shalbe defiled), Be not with wanton companie beguiled. ...
— The Affectionate Shepherd • Richard Barnfield
... such a confidant looked on and asked questions, was more than Pallas Athene herself could do, though she looked out forever from the windows of her Acropolis over the Blue AEgean. The sea is capricious, fickle, angry, fawning, violent, savage and wanton; it caresses and raves in a breath, and has its moods of silence, but Esther's huge playmate rambled on with its story, in the same steady voice, never shrill or angry, never silent or degraded by a sign of human failings, and ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... practice of scalping an enemy, generally indulged in by the Sioux, is a wanton desire cruelly to mutilate the foe. Such is not the case at all; he is prompted solely by the desire of procuring proof of his success, and he will take more chances to get a scalp than he would for any other object in life. Among the Sioux, and I believe most of the tribes ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... 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 ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... it. 'Comrades and fellow workers, how long are we to endure the tyranny 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
... hands, and through the livelong nights shrouded with thick darkness which might cover any pilfering approach, nevertheless every sunrise found the doubloon where the sunset left it last. For it was set apart and sanctified to one awe-striking end; and however wanton in their sailor ways, one and all, the mariners revered it as the white whale's talisman. Sometimes they talked it over in the weary watch by night, wondering whose it was to be at last, and whether he would ever live ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... the Moorish ranks was deeply interested in forwarding their views, his disorderly and savage followers were affording proofs of their wanton cruelty and insubordination. El Feri saw with disgust and sorrow, that the men he led to the field adhered not to the principles which they pretended to profess. He perceived that his army more resembled a horde of undisciplined barbarians than true and sincere patriots; that the gratification ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... precious thoughts; Ogilvy threw 'em into me when he was here. How's the wanton Muse, Louis? Sitting on your ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... of 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, made him so signally the Favourite of Heaven, ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... 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, clustered high in blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes, made, in the shopkeepers' benevolence, to dangle ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... youths were 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 ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... 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 is now a pitiable object for scorn to point the ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... shows us also how they spurned at restraint and fretted under it, how they would brook no wrong to themselves, and yet too often inflicted wrong on others; their feats of terrible prowess are interspersed with deeds of the foulest and most wanton aggression, the darkest treachery, the most revolting cruelty; and though we meet with plenty of the rough, strong, coarse virtues, we see but little of such qualities as mercy for the fallen, the weak, and the helpless, or pity for a gallant and ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... unvarying Hodge ceased to exist. He had been disintegrated into a number of varied fellow-creatures—beings of many minds, beings infinite in difference; some happy, many serene, a few depressed, one here and there bright even to genius, some stupid, others wanton, others austere; some mutely Miltonic, some potentially Cromwellian—into men who had private views of each other, as he had of his friends; who could applaud or condemn each other, amuse or sadden themselves by the contemplation of each other's foibles or vices; men every one ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... really the effect of anger, for a fortnight passed by without my seeing the young man in the theatre, the public walks, or in any of the public places he used to frequent, and I became sad and dreamy, feeling all the time ashamed of my own wanton fancies. I longed to know his name, which I could only learn from my maid, and it was out of the question for me to ask Oeiras. I hated my maid, and I blushed when I saw her, imagining that she knew all. I was afraid that she would suspect my honour, and at another ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... my dimber dell I courted [1] She had youth and beauty too, Wanton joys my heart transported, And her wap was ever new. [2] But conquering time doth now deceive her, Which her pleasures did uphold; All her wapping now must leave her, For, alas! my ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... instruction in the language of gallantry and courtship, specimens are these,—"With your ambrosiac kisses bathe my lips;" "You are a white enchantress, lady, and can enchain me with a smile;" "Midnight would blush at this;" "You walk in artificial clouds and bathe your silken limbs in wanton dalliance." What could Milton do, so far as such a production came within his knowledge, but shake his head and mingle smiles with a frown? Clearly the elder nephew too had slipped the Miltonic restraints. He had not lapsed, however, so decidedly as his brother; and we may partly ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... bathing excursions to the New River, which Lamb recalls with such relish, better, I think, than he can—for he was a home-seeking lad, and did not care for such water-parties. How we would sally forth into the fields; and strip under the first warmth of the sun; and wanton like young dace in the streams; getting appetites for the noon; which those of us that were penny less (our scanty morning crust long since exhausted) had not the means of allaying—while the cattle, ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... of nature, formally and in words renounce their allegiance to their Creator. Put an instance, then, with respect to any one of these three. Though we should suppose profane swearing, and in general that kind of impiety now mentioned, to mean nothing, yet it implies wanton disregard and irreverence towards an infinite Being our Creator; and is this as suitable to the nature of man as reverence and dutiful submission of heart towards that Almighty Being? Or suppose a man guilty of parricide, with all the circumstances ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... pantomimist, continually inventing practical jokes; and perhaps to startle me with a false alarm in the very skin of the old Bruin which had so nearly done for him, he had thrown it round him on finishing its cleaning, and so, in mere wanton fun, had crept on deck at the hour of his watch. The head of the bear-skin, and the fog, must have prevented him ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... I, too, feel in myself. I also am a child, just as old as that other was; I have never yet been beaten. Once my parents were compelled to rebuke me for wanton petulance; and from head to foot I was pervaded through and through by one raving idea: "If they beat me I should take my own life." So I am also infected with the hereditary disease—the awful spirit is holding out his hand over me; captured, accursed, he is taking me with him. ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... all,' said he, 'this is wanton waste of time. Let the girl understand the fact. Let her take it from me, if you like, who have been run away from, myself. Here, what's your name! Your father has absconded - deserted you - and you mustn't expect to see him again as ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... good order against that practice, was brought the malefactors, who drank greedily of it. After this the three thoughtless young men, who at first seemed not enough concerned, grew most shamefully daring and wanton. They swore, laughed, and talked obscenely. At the place of execution the scene grew still more shocking; and the clergyman who attended was more the subject of ridicule than of their serious attention. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... for impiety. As, for example, would a parishioner learn to be proud, he or she need look no farther than to the priest, his wife, and family; for there is a notable pattern before them. Would the people learn to be wanton? they may also see a pattern among their teachers. Would they learn to be drunkards? they may also have that from some of their ministers; for indeed they are ministers in this, to minister ill example to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... a part aspires! Calm is my soul, nor apt to rise in arms, Except when fast-approaching 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, justice, indignation start, Tear off reserve, and bare my swelling heart; 390 Till half a patriot, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... the officers who signed it, though (with characteristic 'slimness') not the army which the mountaineers had captured and liberated under the agreement. To destroy the temples in an enemy's country was an act of wanton impiety; Herodotus cannot understand the religious intolerance which led the Persians to burn the shrines of Greek gods. Thus religion had a restraining influence in war throughout antiquity, and in the Middle Ages. The Pope, who was believed to ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... official power. The value of a man's services to society fixes his rank in it. Compared with the effect of our social arrangements in impelling men to be zealous in business, we deem the object-lessons of biting poverty and wanton luxury on which you depended a device as weak and uncertain as it was barbaric. The lust of honor even in your sordid day notoriously impelled men to more desperate effort than the ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... to youthful vigor and manhood?" To be destitute of that which may be described as raw material in the human frame, means that no really vigorous manhood can have place; to burn up the juices of the system in the fires of lust is madness and wanton folly, {418} but it can be done. To divert the currents of life and energy from blood and brain, from memory and muscle, in order to secrete it for the shambles of prostitution, is death to true manhood; but remember, it can be done! The generous ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... attacks of judicial functionaries. It will readily be understood that by connecting the censorship of the laws with the private interests of members of the community, and by intimately uniting the prosecution of the law with the prosecution of an individual, legislation is protected from wanton assailants, and from the daily aggressions of party spirit. The errors of the legislator are exposed whenever their evil consequences are most felt, and it is always a positive and appreciable fact which serves as the ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... lightly the wanton killing of a Negro has come to be regarded in some Southern communities is brought out by an incident of the week at Memphis, which hardly needs comment. An inoffensive Negro was hawking chickens about the street, when ——, who was not in uniform at the time, jumped to the conclusion that the chickens ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... of the raiding during the winter of 1852-53. With the knowledge which he and his lieutenants had gained at Mokelumne Hill the chief directed operations, but as the weeks went by the influence of Three-Fingered Jack grew until his methods were employed in every robbery. By December the list of wanton murders had grown so great that the State of California offered a reward of five thousand dollars for Joaquin ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... the people to be punished at his own discretion. Lycurgus abstained from all vengeance, but on the contrary instructed and made a good man of him. Producing him in public in the theatre, he said to the astonished Spartans:—"I received this young man at your hands full of violence and wanton insolence; I restore him to you in his right mind and fit ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... reached the level of straight and simple relations with her. I asked myself despairingly, "What am I to do?" In foolish dreams I imagined her now as my mistress and now as my wife, but rejected both ideas with disgust. To make her a wanton woman would be dreadful. It would be murder. To turn her into a fine lady, the wife of Dmitri Andreich Olenin, like a Cossack woman here who is married to one of our officers, would be still worse. Now could I turn Cossack like ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... harbour, and there bade it depart in St. Cuthbert's name, whereon it flew off free, and was no more seen. Such tales as these may be explained, even to their most minute details, by simply natural causes: and yet, in this age of wanton destruction of wild birds, one is tempted at moments to wish for the return of some such graceful and humane superstition which could keep down, at least in the name of mercy and humanity, the needless ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... have given way, sir, in these observations, to any wanton hyperbole, or exaggerated assertions, they will, I hope, be pardoned by those who shall reflect upon the real absurdity of the proposal, which I am endeavouring to show in its true state, and by all who shall consider, that to ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... woman-friend why it was that his elder niece, who had been privily married, "could no longer hide her secret" (the reticence of his friend was the sort of silly thing that you get in books and plays, but never in life) was perhaps a little wanton and caused needless embarrassment both to the young wife and to us. And one need not be very squeamish to feel that it was a pity to put into the lips of a mere child, a younger sister, the rather precocious comment that she makes on the inconvenience ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... neither before the former date nor after the latter date, in spite even of the most threatening orders from the Palace. This book will indeed have been written in vain if the reader lays it down without having realized that no such wanton interference on the part of their rulers would be tolerated by the Chinese people. But we are wandering away ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... would have had no difficulty in picking off one of the warriors, but he had not the remotest intention of doing so. There could be no justification for such a wanton act, and the consequences could not fail to be disastrous to himself. He was never better prepared to support the creed of the frontiersmen who would willingly leave the red men unmolested if they in turn sought to ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... Mr. R. Ed. his boke and letter. 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 ...
— The Private Diary of Dr. John Dee - And the Catalog of His Library of Manuscripts • John Dee
... sure that his eyes had read her heart and that he was looking toward the future, his future with the wanton mistress he had found. ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... agreeable, is a sort of blunt insensibility to giving physical pain. If they are cruel to animals, for instance, it always reminds me of children pulling off flies' legs, in a sort of pitiless, untaught, experimental way. Yet I should not fear any wanton outrage from them. After all their wrongs, they are not really revengeful; and I would far rather enter a captured city with them than with white troops, for they would be more subordinate. But for mere physical suffering they would ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... what he thought of that. The reply was, 'Lions have no painters.' For days the unblushing apostles of sham Democracy have in this House drawn pictures of the ignorance and degradation of the people of color in the District of Columbia. Had the subjects of their wanton defamation had a Representative here, there would have been a different coloring to the picture, and I would gladly leave their defense to the Representatives of classes who have by hundreds darkened these galleries with their sable countenances, waiting for ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... he shivered with the horror of it, but for the first time it came to him: Briscoe had provoked his own death. He had physically attacked the Lhari—threatened them, goaded them to shoot him down in self-defense! "I've been on shipboard with them for months. They're not wanton murderers." ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... never forgive this wanton self-sacrifice," she said, unsteadily. Then the car rolled silently past me, swifter, swifter, and her white face faded from my sight. Yet still I stood there, bareheaded, in the rain, while the twin red lamps on the rear car grew smaller ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... that our present 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 secrecy, by ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... have already suggested of Silenus and the satyrs; and this is an allegory not only of himself, but also of his words. For, altho I forgot to mention this before, his words are ridiculous when you first hear them; he clothes himself in language that is as the skin of the wanton satyr—for his talk is of pack-asses and smiths and cobblers and curriers, and he is always repeating the same things in the same words, so that an ignorant man who did not know him might feel disposed ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... World. On either hand hung the little Flora's great-grandmother-in-law, and her great-grandfather accordingly, Mrs. Mehitable and Parson Job Hyde, peering out, one from a bushy ornament of pink laurel-blossoms, and the other from an airy and delicate garland of the wanton sweet-pea, each stony pair of eyes seeming to glare with Medusan intent at this profaning of their state and dignity. "Isn't it charming, dear?" said the innocent little beauty, with a satisfaction half doubtful, as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... "The Lay Preacher," And as first editor of the Port Folio, He contributed to chasten the morals, and to Refine the taste of this nation. To an imagination lively, not licentious, A wit sportive, not wanton, And a heart without guile, he United a deep sensibility, which endeared Him to his friends, and an ardent piety, Which we humbly trust recommended him to his God. Those friends have erected this tribute of their Affection to his memory; To the mercies of that God is their resort ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... sorry to 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 himself ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... principle. Reason and understanding are represented as the voluntary slaves of the senses. Hence we shall find that the very principle of Comedy necessarily occasioned that which in Aristophanes has given so much offence; namely, his frequent allusions to the base necessities of the body, the wanton pictures of animal desire, which, in spite of all the restraints imposed on it by morality and decency, is always breaking loose before one can be aware of it. If we reflect a moment, we shall find that even in the present day, on our own stage, the infallible and inexhaustible source of the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... build massive as you can, The wanton grass-roots will defeat the plan By shouldering asunder all the stones In what to you would be ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... have died for naught; the "red wine of youth," the wanton waste of life, has shown us the price of life, and we will have to keep our oath to make the future worthy of ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... let this suffice To save you. When by evil lust entic'd, Remember ye be men, not senseless beasts; Nor let the Jew, who dwelleth in your streets, Hold you in mock'ry. Be not, as the lamb, That, fickle wanton, leaves its mother's milk, To dally with itself ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... be surprised at anything happening in Garlock —where it would seem a wanton waste of imagination to look forward to anything happening—yet at about noon of the day that Harley P. Hennage looked over the rail fence into the feed corral at San Pasqual and discovered that Bob ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... the greatest blessings and favours, and receiving such gracious looks from the Sun and Heaven, that, if there be any fault in Italy, it is, that her Mother Nature hath cockered her too much, even to make her become Wanton." Plainly, our Tannhaeuser is but too ready to go back ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... cried, leaping up and catching at a rugged cord of trunk, with his other hand pointing up the hill. From the base of the castle a broad blaze rushed, showing window and battlement, arch and tower, as in a flicker of the Northern lights. Then up went all the length of fabric, as a wanton child tosses his Noah's ark. Keep and buttress, tower and arch, mullioned window and battlement, in a fiery furnace leaped on high, like the outburst of a volcano. Then, with a roar that rocked the earth, ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... their nearest neighbours, with whom they had long maintained a continued intercourse of kindness and good offices. Nay, even death was the slightest punishment inflicted by these monsters in human form; all the tortures which wanton cruelty could invent, all the lingering pains of body, the anguish of mind, the agonies of despair, could not satiate revenge excited without injury, and cruelly derived from no just cause whatever. ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... your mind, Mr. Daney. You'll not refuse the hurdle when you come to it. As for this wanton Brent girl, tell her that we will think her proposition over and that she may look for a call from us. We do not care how long she looks, do we mother?" And she laughed her gay, impish laugh. "In the meantime, Mr. Daney, we will do ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... his cardinal fault. With his tongue in his cheek he dashes away from his story to give us either a long or short digression; no more confirmed digressionist ever put pen to paper, and the wonderful thing is that these wanton excursions are worth following. True he often apologises for them, but I do not think that we need take these apologies seriously. This book is divided into four parts, "The Way to the Land," "The Land," "Seed Time," and "Harvest," and in "Seed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various
... midst of nature's bounty curs'd, And in the loaden vineyard dies for thirst. O Liberty, thou goddess heavenly bright, 120 Profuse of bliss, and pregnant with delight! Eternal pleasures in thy presence reign, And smiling plenty leads thy wanton train; Eased of her load, subjection grows more light, And poverty looks cheerful in thy sight; Thou mak'st the gloomy face of nature gay, Giv'st beauty to the sun, and pleasure to the day. Thee, goddess, thee, Britannia's isle adores; How has she oft exhausted all her stores, ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... meaner knights of the "revolver and bowie knife," greater than card sharper, fugitive bravo, or sly wanton, giant schemers appeared, who throw, yet, dark shadows over the ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... 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 ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... which, according to our author, gives us the vision of the ideal, this Power which sets the mark of its approval upon our surrender to its behests, this Power which manifests its character in doing justice upon individuals and nations alike, weeding out the selfish, the wanton, the luxurious, and preserving the pure and upright; may we not ask what reason there is for withholding from that Power the one adequate name ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... soars clear out of sight. These are the paradises of her own: Thy Pegasus, like an unruly horse, Though ne'er so gently led, To the loved pastures where he used to feed, Runs violent o'er his usual course. Wake from thy wanton dreams, Come from thy dear-loved streams, The crooked paths of wandering Thames. Fain the fair nymph would stay, Oft she looks back in vain, Oft 'gainst her fountain does complain, And softly steals in many windings down, As loth to see the hated ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... O the sun! See, see, he shakes His big red hands at me in wanton fun! A glorious image that! it might be Blake's; As in my critical capacity I took occasion to remark elsewhere, When heaping praise On this exceptionally happy phrase, Although I made it up myself. But I and Blake, ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman
... with wanton grace, Then unto sudden tears give place, While gazing, silent, on my face With mild devotion. Her's all the art of tenderness, That pleases while it wounds no less: Her breasts, half-covered, now ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... could have got to no greater height though we had had no Police but our own riding- whips and walking-sticks—the Police to which I myself appeal on these occasions. The throwing of stones at the windows of railway carriages in motion—an act of wanton wickedness with the very Arch-Fiend's hand in it—had become a crying evil, when the railway companies forced it on Police notice. Constabular contemplation had until then been the ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... lip and brow of scorn, The worshiper of reason and of self, The atheist, wanton, and the giddy maid, The faith-betrayer and the love-betrayed; Self-righteous pharisees, who would adorn Or hide with pious garb their ...
— Across the Sea and Other Poems. • Thomas S. Chard
... 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
... a grand committee, proceeded to hear counsel for the merchants, and examine evidence; by which it appeared that amazing acts of wanton cruelty and injustice had been perpetrated by Spaniards on the subjects of Great Britain. Mr. Pulteney expatiated upon these circumstances of barbarity. He demonstrated, from treaties, the right of the British traders to the logwood of Campeachy, and to the salt of Tortugas; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... 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
... seperate principles I found them inextricably intwined together & I was again cast into perplexity & doubt—I might have considered the earth as an imperfect formation where having bad materials to work on the Creator could only palliate the evil effects of his combinations but I saw a wanton malignity in many parts & particularly in the mind of man that baffled me a delight in mischief a love of evil for evils sake—a siding of the multitude—a dastardly applause which in their hearts the crowd gave to triumphant wick[ed]ness ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... "The wanton taste no flesh nor fowl can choose, For which the grape or melon it would lose, Though all th' inhabitants of earth and air Be listed in the glutton's bill ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... thought of it too much since leaving Heliodora yesterday afternoon. It began to nettle him that his grief should be for her merely an amusement. Never having seen the Gothic maiden, whose beauty outshone hers as sunrise outdoes the lighting of a candle, this wanton Greek was capable of despising him in good earnest, and Basil had never been of those who sit easy under scorn. He felt something chafe and grow hot within him, and recalled the days when he, and not Heliodora, had ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... smoke, as Lucian says. Therefore the cause that the bright sun doth rest At the low point of the declining west— When his oft-wearied horses breathless pant— Is to refresh himself with this sweet plant, Which wanton Thetis from the west doth bring, To joy her love after his toilsome ring: For 'tis a cordial for an inward smart, As is dictamnum to the wounded hart. It is the sponge that wipes out all our woe; 'Tis like the thorn ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... hitherto been the case; should they cause any unknown species to be brought into public view, and thus add a little more to the page of natural history, it will please me much. But should they unfortunately tend to cause a wanton expense of life; should they tempt you to shoot the pretty songster warbling near your door, or destroy the mother as she is sitting on the nest to warm her little ones, or kill the father as he is bringing a mouthful of food for their support—Oh, then! deep indeed will be the regret ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... pray to Venus, but again and again the wanton jests of the men who were used to accompany the maidens came into her mind, and memories of how she herself had eagerly listened for the only too frequent cries of admiration, and had enticed the silent with a glance, or thanked the more clamorous with a smile. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... naturally possess; that he was too grossly ignorant to perform, intelligently, the duties of the soldier; that his provocation had been so great as a slave, that when once armed, and conscious of his power as a soldier, he would abuse it by acts of revenge and wanton cruelty. ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... from the dead repose of rolling years; When sacred worthies she bids breathe anew, That men may be what she displays to view; By fashion's law with light fantastic mien The Comic Sister trips it o'er the scene; Armed at all points with wit and wanton wiles, Plays off her airs, and calls forth all her smiles; Till each fine feeling of the heart be o'er, And the gay ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... that evening, as he returned to Holborn after a long and trying afternoon spent in the squalid streets and slums of St Pancras and Islington. The goddess of Chance, bestowing her favours with true feminine caprice, had taken it into her wanton head, at the last moment, to accomplish for him the seemingly impossible feat of tracing the pawnbroker's marked shilling, through various dirty hands, to the pocket of the man who had pawned the pencil-case. ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... my opinion no man should be allowed with impunity to make a wanton attack upon such venerable characters as the judges of the land. We award costs and damages to the aggrieved party in the most trifling actions. By what analogy, then, can we refuse the same justice in the most important cases, to the most important personages? If we allow ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... singing. This is my last evening with you. Do you think a woman has the right to be as gloriously beautiful as you are to-night? Do you think it's fair to the feelings of a poor wretched man, who adores her, and whom she, in mere wanton wickedness, is sending to the ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... mischievous king of the fairies, has been commonly identified with pogge, the toad, which was believed to sit upon most of the unwholesome fungi; and the Champignon (or Paddock Stool) was said to owe its growth to "those wanton elves whose pastime is to make midnight mushrooms." One of the "toad stoo's" (the Clathrus cancellatus) is said to produce cancerous sores if handled too freely. It has an abominably disgusting ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... Our wanton accidents take root, and grow To vaunt themselves God's laws, until our clothes, Our gems, and gaudy books, and cushioned litters Become ourselves, and we would fain forget There live ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... Satyre in the whiche he wrote by name the vices of certayne princes and Citezyns of Rome And that with many bourdes so y^t with his mery speche myxt with rebukes he correct al them of the cyte that disordredly lyued. But this mery speche vsed he nat in his writing to the intent to excercyse wanton wordes or vnrefrayned lascyuyte, or to put his pleasour in suche dissolute langage: but to ye intent to quenche vyces and to prouoke the commons to wysdome and vertue, and to be asshamed of theyr foly ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... sea, to sea! 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 sea! ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... of stuff which is not true," said Honor firmly. "It isn't sense to impute to a loving God acts of wanton cruelty, and we dishonour Him by so doing." She kissed Mrs. Meek's cheek and spoke tenderly to her of her ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi |
