"Ruthless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Among your listeners will be the literary editors of several Boston papers, two celebrated painters, and several well-known professors of oratory," she said, and like Lieutenant Napoleon called upon to demonstrate his powers, I graved with large and ruthless fist, and approached my opening date with palpitating ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... girl to be esteemed a fortunate circumstance by the two persons who knew the true story of her parentage, the Minister and myself? Could we rejoice in an act of infidelity which had embittered and darkened the gentle harmless life of the victim? Or could we, on the other hand, encourage the ruthless deceit, the hateful treachery, which had put the wicked Helena—with no exposure to dread if she married—into her wronged sister's place? Impossible! In the one case as in the ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... evening," says Lieutenant Walpole, RN, writing of Samoa, "when, taking advantage of intervals of fine weather, we went for a ramble in the delightful woods, the quiet of the grove was often disturbed by a ruthless savage, who would rush out upon you, not armed with club or spear, but with slate and pencil, and thrusting them into your hands, make signs for you to finish his difficult exercise ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... Saints; the peculiarities of national temperament; the distinctions between popular language and that used by scholastic writers, or otherwise marked by circumstances; the special characters of some of the writers quoted, their "ruthless logic," or their obscurity; the inculpated passages are but few and scattered in proportion to their context; they are harsh, but sound worse than they mean; they are hardly interpreted and pressed. ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... account in prose of life on the island, entitled Norderney, The Book Le Grand, to which epigrams by Immermann were appended, and extracts from Letters from Berlin published in 1822. Pictures of Travel III (1830) began with experiences in Italy, but degenerated into a provoked but ruthless attack upon Platen. Pictures of Travel IV (1831) included English Fragments, the record of Heine's observations in London, and The City of Lucca, a supplementary chapter on Italy. In October, 1827, Heine collected ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... and for similar earlier utterances Bjoernson has been held up as Antichrist by the ministers of a narrow Lutheran orthodoxy, very much as the spokesmen of an antiquated caste-system of society have esteemed his ideas to be those of the most ruthless and radical of iconoclasts. But he is a stout fighter, and attacks of this sort only serve to arouse him to new energy. And so he toils manfully on for the enlightenment of his people, knowing that ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... ruthless old man whose history will not bear careful reading. His sins shall be visited upon him through his offspring. He will have to ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... consciousness of having misled me into joining him; whether it was only the stars and the cool air rousing atrophied instincts of youth and spirits; probably, indeed, it was all these influences, cemented into strength by a ruthless sense of humour which whispered that I was in danger of making a mere commonplace fool of myself in spite of all my laboured calculations; but whatever it was, in a flash my mood changed. The crown of martyrdom disappeared, ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... of his losses. Whenever the Boer dies in battle, his body is weighted and cast into a river, or into a trench as quickly as possible. His family are left in ignorance as to his fate, and their only conclusion is to assume that he is dead. But Mr. Kruger's methods and his ruthless military oligarchy were disapproved even by his own countrymen, and more especially by his own countrywomen, who now began to mistrust the continual story of Boer victory, and asked pitifully for permission themselves to ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... her, this made her harder, more ruthless. She was now up against her own fate. It was for her to choose between being Mrs. Skrebensky, even Baroness Skrebensky, wife of a lieutenant in the Royal Engineers, the Sappers, as he called them, living with the European population in India—or ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... azure vein Wander'd on fair-spaced temples; no soft bloom Misted the cheek; no passion to illume The deep-recessed vision:—all was blight; Lamia, no longer fair, there sat a deadly white. "Shut, shut those juggling eyes, thou ruthless man! Turn them aside, wretch! or the righteous ban Of all the Gods, whose dreadful images Here represent their shadowy presences, 280 May pierce them on the sudden with the thorn Of painful blindness; leaving thee forlorn, In trembling dotage to the feeblest fright Of conscience, for their long ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... Frederick across the harbor. The Indians had not yet become accustomed to the idea of British supremacy. Their natural allegiance—even after the downfall of Quebec—was to "their old father the King of France." Their prejudice against the English had been nurtured for generations and embittered by ruthless warfare, and we need not wonder that the coming of the first English settlers was viewed with a jealous eye. Even the proximity of the garrison at Fort Frederick did not prevent the situation of James Simonds and his associates from being very precarious, when the attitude ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... of frantic Sansculottism roared through all passages of this Tuileries, ruthless in vengeance, how the Valets were butchered, hewn down; and Dame Campan saw the Marseilles sabre flash over her head, but the Blackbrowed said, "Va-t-en, Get thee gone," and flung her from him unstruck: (Campan, ii. c. 21.) how in the cellars wine-bottles were broken, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... the doctor. The man had drugged him. He was a man whose profession, where the mind was warped, belittled life. Captain Simms had been charged with leaving a blind man on a broken floe. Lund was the type whose passions left him ruthless. The crew—they would be bound by shares in the enterprise, a rough lot, daring much and caring little for anything beyond their own narrow horizons. The girl was the only redeeming ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... labor and bring forth the screen adaptation. If the principal character in the work, as originally evolved by her creator, was the daughter of a storekeeper in a small town in Indiana who ran away from home and went to Chicago to learn the millinery business, he, wielding a ruthless but gifted blue pencil, would speedily transform her into the ebon-hearted heiress of a Klondyke millionaire, an angel without but a harpy within, and after opening up Reel One with scenes in a Yukon dance hall speedily would move all the important characters to New York, ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... The crowd of bathers is already far beyond hearing yet, frightened and tired, he wastes his remaining strength in fruitless shouts. Now the deceitful eddies, once so soft and friendly, whirl him down in ruthless exultation. He will never reach the shore, ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... Louis, "God pity the man whose ruthless hand has killed the blossoms of her loving heart. She looks ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... fate excited at the time an unusual degree of compassionate interest. Born in 1809, John Reid received his medical degree when but twenty-one years of age. A part of the two years following he spent in Paris, where Magendie was at the height of his notoriety for the ruthless cruelty of his vivisections. What attracted the young man we do not know, but Reid seems to have become greatly interested in physiological problems. Returning to Scotland, he pursued his investigations with all the zeal ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... other, scruples) was deliberately extirpating every soul whom he thought dangerous to the plutocracy, and is said to have pronounced "that boy" as "more to be dreaded than many a Marius." He did, however, escape; but till the vanquished party recovered in some degree from this ruthless massacre of their leaders, he could take no prominent part in politics. The minor offices of Quaestor, Aedile, and Praetor he filled with credit, and meanwhile seemed to be giving himself up to shine in Society, which was not, in Rome, ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... Graham saw that beyond this area of ruins, overhanging it and rising to a great height, was a ragged mass of white building. This mass had been isolated by the ruthless destruction of its surroundings. Black gaps marked the passages the disaster had torn apart; big halls had been slashed open and the decoration of their interiors showed dismally in the wintry dawn, and down the jagged walls hung festoons of divided cables and twisted ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... if this victim of the stiff dictation paper had looked at me when ruthless old Euclid, my former antagonist, came on the scene, he would in like fashion have pitied me; for I was quite fogged by an easy proposition that I had thought I knew by heart the night before, but now found I had not the slightest glimmering of, although ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Where did Helen get this ruthless philosophy? Had it always lain dormant in her, or was this business life already putting a ragged edge upon her finer perceptions? But he made no answer. He had never admitted to Helen that Brauer had insisted upon drawing up a hard-and-fast partnership ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... admiral, and it was held for one reason only, because of his real work and its importance. He was a super-psychologist, a trend-analyzer, a salesman, a promoter, a viewer, an expert on alien symbology and the spearhead of the most ruthless intelligence service in the known universe. Long ago, he had transferred from the battle fleet to the inner school at Sirius Prime for the most intensive training ever devised. Now it would be put ...
— Join Our Gang? • Sterling E. Lanier
... freely to study the face. The comparisons upon which she could draw were few and confusingly new, mixed with reality and the loose artistic conceptions of heroes in fiction. The young male, as she had actually seen him, had been of the sailor type, hard-bitten, primordial, ruthless. For the face under her gaze she could find but one expression—fine. The shape of the head, the height and breadth of the brow, the angle of the nose, the cut of the chin and jaws, all were fine, of a type she had never before ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... what they had done, and remembering the stern and ruthless nature of their sovereign, they sent deputies to implore his clemency and forgiveness. The tyrant received them, without making any reply. His chief minister lamenting the condition of these unhappy people, resolved upon an expedient to move the soul of his offended ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... spoke, that ruthless chief, in tones both stern and dread: "Girl! listen! mark me well, or else thy blood be on thy head! Thou art accused of worshipping Jesus the Nazarene— Of scorning Rome's high, mighty Gods,—speak, say ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... dreaming Moor, was fiercely shouted by the well of Cawnpore to a chorus of shrieking women, English wives and mothers, and spluttering of blood-choked babes, and clash of red knives, and drunken shouts of slayers, ruthless ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... love for his wife. He loved his mother very much, yet, till his uncle had spoken about her in the office, he had only thought about Rosamund in connection with his decision to enlist. The very great thing had swallowed up the big thing. There is something ruthless, almost at moments repellent, in the very great thing which rules in a man's life. But his mother would ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... a hard despot, ruthless as a tiger who strikes his fellow-workers numb and dumb with fear. "But he is under no illusions as to the real sentiments of the members of the Soviet who back him, nor does he deign to conceal those which he entertains toward them.... Whenever ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... no consequence. On the other hand, the refusal of states to receive others, and for their own citizens never to go to other places, is an utter impossibility, and to the rest of the world is likely to appear ruthless and uncivilised; it is a practice adopted by people who use harsh words, such as xenelasia or banishment of strangers, and who have harsh and morose ways, as men think. And to be thought or not to be thought well ...
— Laws • Plato
... with pleasant words, "Trusty and well-beloved, we greet you well;" Then with a ruthless hand he strips from me All that which makes me what I am; as if From some old general in the field, grown gray In service, scarred with many wounds, Just at the hour of victory, he should strip His badge of office and his well-gained honors, And thrust ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... them'. The effective conclusion of her involvement as early as the end of 3.2 impoverishes the rest of the play. The Queen's less admirable character is highlighted by the way she is prepared to condone the taking of life in order to secure her position. Her ruthless outlook is punished when she is deprived of her position and forced to return ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker
... taunted the laboring people—told them they were fools and cowards to submit to the degrading slavery of their capitalist owners. With biting invective and blistering epithet he pictured their employer enemies as the brutal and ruthless destroyers of their homes. With thrilling eloquence he fanned the flames of class hatred, inspired the loyalty of his followers to himself and held out to them golden promises of reward if they would prove themselves men and take ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... ruthless Macbeth live down the murder of the king as he does in the history? I believe that we must here go still further back than to the Chronicle, even to the creator of the tragedy himself. There is a certain important crisis in Shakespeare's life, where according to the ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... me on my lesser pilgrimage among the cupolas and the colonnades, where grave men dream in the silence near marble fountains, or bend muttering their prayers beneath domes that are dimmed by the ruthless fingers of Time. In the buildings consecrated to prayer and to meditation I first sought for the magic that still lurks in the teeming ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... Wade of this, she set her teeth together and answered at once: "That settles it! The end is very near. HE will insist upon their going, to save them from that woman's ruthless kindness; and SHE will refuse to give up any part of what she calls her duty. HE will reason with her; he will plead for his children; SHE will be adamant. Not angry—it is never the way of that temperament to get angry—just calmly, sedately, and insupportably ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... of Rome has past Transforming all our Britain; Ruthless plough, Which plough'd the world, yet o'er the nations cast The seed of arts, and law, and all that now Has ripen'd into commonwealths:—Her hand With network mile-paths binding plain and hill Arterialized ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... dwindle and decrease, Such fates the ruthless years unfold; And yet we shall not wholly cease, We shall not perish unconsoled; Nay, still shall Freedom keep her hold Within the sea's inviolate fosse, And boast her sons of English mould, Ye Islands of ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... sculpture, a negative answer is at once suggested. It is manifestly impossible to establish an order of aesthetic excellence between these subjects. The idea of peasants telling their beads is more beautiful than the idea of a ruthless destroyer only in so far as it is morally higher; and this distinction, therefore, has reference to the theme and not to the subject. How far, however, moral and aesthetic excellence are coincident is a question for which we are not yet ready. At this point we care only to point out that ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... It was only by the greatest cunning, by the greatest determination, by the most ruthless disregard of everything that I succeeded in getting away from home. My younger sister tried to bar the door. Even the servant girl! But I told mama that if they wouldn't let me out through the door, they might just as well bar the window, else I'd reach the street through it, although it's three ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... was now about to enter it under most amazing circumstances, as the associate of cutthroats and ruffians, as a sworn member of a conspiracy to assassinate the Prince of the Republic, as the prisoner of a ruthless outlaw, as a suspected associate of a chieftain who might stab me at the slightest false action, motion, ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... depend upon it. Maginnis called him back, you know, and no doubt hauled him off bodily, positively refusing to let him pause for good-byes. A man of ruthless determination, ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... hopelessness with which being naturally of so courageous a spirit she resigned herself to the thraldom in which he held her. That iron chain, of which some of the massive links were round her feminine waist, and the others in his ruthless hand,—or which, perhaps, bound the pair together by a bond equally torturing to each,—must have been forged in some such unhallowed furnace as is only kindled by evil passions, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... nature in its brighter and better manifestations, would rush to the conclusion that the sight of the greatest man of his time in his eighty-fourth year, thus wan, wearied, pathetic, would appeal to the imaginations or the hearts of even political opponents. Simple man, you know nothing of the ruthless cruelty which dwells in political breasts, of the savagery which lies in the depths of the horse-jockey squire or the overdressed youth—anxious to distinguish himself, if it be only by throwing mud at a stately column—you have no ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... my son! Dear hope for ever lost! The ruthless gods have served me but too well. For what a life of anguish and remorse ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine
... a disaster in one family, however, was not only sad but alarming. Death knows no hatred: death is deaf and blind, nothing more, and astonishment was felt at this ruthless destruction of all who bore one name. Still nobody suspected the true culprits, search was fruitless, inquiries led nowhere: the marquise put on mourning for her brothers, Sainte-Croix continued in his path of folly, and all things went on as before. Meanwhile Sainte-Croix had ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... her Their waters amain In ruthless disdain, - Her who but lately Had shivered with pain As at touch of dishonour If there had lit on her So coldly, so straightly Such ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... we may for treasures he has taken, Poor as we feel of hoarded wealth bereft, More precious are those implements forsaken, Found in the wreck his ruthless hands have left. ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the rich, ruthless King, to whom Queen Moira gave her daughter Fiona, despite the girl's bitter sorrow, was a masterpiece. It was modelled on Joel Mazarine. It was the behemoth transferred to Ireland, to the cromlechs and castles, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... with a volume of meaning condensed in these innocent words. "A nice, dry, cheerful sort of place to meet your cousin in, too; uncommon lively; hope it'll raise his spirits to see all his cousins a-grinning there; his spirits don't seem much in sorts now," continued the ruthless inquisitor, with a glance at the "keeper's tree" by which they stood, in the middle of dank undergrowth, whose branches were adorned with dead cats, curs, owls, kestrels, stoats, weasels, and martens. To ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... with the least possible diminution for public needs. When more of the people's substance is exacted through the form of taxation than is necessary to meet the just obligations of the Government and the expense of its economical administration, such exaction becomes ruthless extortion and a violation of the fundamental principles of a ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... model of symmetry and breeding by the fancy, or even pronounced a beauty and exquisitely proportioned by connoisseurs; but sweetly pretty—never! I could not stomach that, especially when Albert growled and laid bare his ruthless set ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... highest degree, quickness to conceive and courage to execute? On the other hand, all faculties that can make greatness, contain those that can attain goodness. In the savage Scandinavian or the ruthless Frank lay the germs of a Sidney or a Bayard. What would the best of us be if he were suddenly placed at war with the whole world? And this fierce spirit was at war with the whole world,—a war self-sought, perhaps, but it was war not the less. You must ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... poor who would send him their blessing when they read in to-morrow's paper that he was married; the shop-people in Eastman who knew him for the kindest employer they had ever had:—these were they who "truly cared"; and the knowledge was warm at his heart, as with a ruthless hand he scored off names of the mighty in the ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... to exclaim, "O that my words were now written! O that they were printed in a book! Graven with an iron pen," that the whole world might know what a fearful and bitter thing it is to be a nun! To be subject to the control of those ruthless tyrants, ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... others had been the scene of fire and slaughter. Out of this little society nearly a thousand staunch men, including not few of broad culture and strong promise, had lost their lives, while of the scores of fair women and poor little children that had perished under the ruthless tomahawk, one can hardly give an accurate account. Hardly a family throughout the land but was in mourning. The war-debt of Plymouth was reckoned to exceed the total amount of personal property in the colony; yet although it pinched every household for many a year, it was paid ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... into his kingdom. To which Jesus replies, "This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise," implying that he will spend the three days of his death there. In short, every device is used to get rid of the ruthless horror of the Matthew chronicle, and to relieve the strain of the Passion by touching episodes, and by representing Christ as superior to human suffering. It is Luke's Jesus who has won ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... to blurt out more malicious things than ever about the ways of adventuresses, and the duty of relations in saving young men from the clever clutches of designing creatures. She was ruthless in her ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... her were these same comic poets, who were themselves prisoners at the bar; and her judges, with the ruthless impartiality of undiscriminating zeal, condemned the whole of her works, as well as those of her accusers, to ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... planted it and kept it to his fancy while he was away fighting the Stuarts in Ireland; and when she was dead, he continued to pull down and build up at Hampton Court as long as he lived, laying the sort of ruthless hand upon its antiquity with which the unsparing present always touches the past. He sickened towards his end there, and one day his horse stepping into a mole-hill when the king was hunting (in the park where the kings from Henry VIII. ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... continent, Utah and Yaqui, Kiowa and Comanche, Apache and Navajo, have all proved their superiority over the degenerated descendants of Cortez: as in the south have Cuncho and Cashibo, Goajira and Auracanian, over those of the ruthless Pizarro. The red man no longer goes to war as a mere savage. He has disciplined his strength into a perfect strategy; and possesses a military system as complete as that of most civilised nations. The Comanche cavalry ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... its administration. A gentleman [Mr. Childers], almost unknown to English politics, was strangely preferred to one of the highest places in the councils of her Majesty. He set to at his task with ruthless activity. The Consulative Council, under which Nelson had gained all his victories, was dissolved. The secretaryship of the Admiralty, an office which exercised a complete supervision over every division of that great department,—an office ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... position of England did goodly service in maintaining its liberties and its internal peace. We cannot forget how Lord Howard of Effingham, aided also by the weather, defeated the armada that boasted itself "invincible," sent to strangle freedom in its chosen home by the most execrable and ruthless tyrant that Europe has ever seen, a tyrant whose victory would have meant not simply the usurpation of the English crown but the establishment of the Spanish Inquisition at Westminster Hall. Nor can we forget with what longing eyes the Corsican barbarian ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske
... slaves they turned on me; Like the bears in Scripture, they'd rend me there, The while they worshiped with bended knee This ruthless wretch with the missing hair; For he rules them all with relentless hand, This bald-headed tyrant ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... news did not thrill. In America one's withers are unwrung by such scares. The "exclusiveness" of Lord Cholme's information, indeed, defeated his object. Lord Cholme, I knew, was loved neither in Fleet Street nor in Park Place. His ruthless competition with the news agencies, his capture of numerous cable-routes, had gradually divided England into two classes: those who read The Morning and those who didn't. Everyone remembers the exclusive description of the destruction ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... Christ's unique superiority and of His inherent right of dominion; but, whatever the purpose behind the writing, the inscription stands in history as testimony of a heathen's consideration in contrast with Israel's ruthless rejection ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... in most cases, it is the community, not the individual, which is selfish; for communities are often ruthless destroyers of ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... The ruthless, bitter, biting air Hath dried the life which flourish'd there, Throughout the warmer seasons; The nourishment hath ceas'd to flow Through veins, where once it us'd to go— Hath ceas'd ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... This ruthless destruction of the forest brings down upon Calendau the anger of his lady; he has dishonored the noble mountain. "Sacrilegious generation, ye have the harvest of the plains, the chestnut and the olives of the hillsides, but the beetling brows of the mountains ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... knew, was bound to be a terribly painful thing for him, but there was no other way, and harsh necessity made her ruthless. She did what she could with an improvised sling, and helped him to stand on his uninjured leg. The pain he endured was shown in his white face, and in the bitten under lip, which trickled red. She was afraid that he was about to faint, but he recovered himself and three-quarters of a minute ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... on the team in those days, and among them were such men as Devereaux, Brotherlin, Bryan, Irv. Withington, and the mighty McNair. The scrub team player at that time was pretty nearly any chap that was willing to take his life in his hands by going down to the field and letting those ruthless giants step on his face and generally ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... our transience here make offering To an orient Word that will not be erased, Or, save in incommunicable gleams Too permanent for dreams, Be found or known. No tonic and ambitious irritant Of increase or of want Has made an otherwise insensate waste Of ages overthrown A ruthless, veiled, implacable foretaste Of other ages that are still to be Depleted and rewarded variously Because a few, by fate's economy, Shall seem to move the world the way it goes; No soft evangel of equality, Safe cradled in a communal repose That huddles ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... influence, being himself no less a hero than the Circassian chieftains, possessing a noble form, a soul of bravery, hardy, persevering, and chivalrous. He secured by his gentle treatment the respect of those tribes which submitted to his rule, and by his ruthless severity made a terrible example of those who refused to do so. Going in advance of his arms, his intrigue penetrated into the fastnesses of the mountaineers, and taking advantage of the mutual jealousy of the tribes, fanning the hate of private feuds, ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... and his ruthless destruction of Chambersburg led to many recommendations on the part of General Grant looking to a speedy elimination of the confusion then existing among the Union forces along the upper Potomac, but for a time the authorities at Washington would approve none of his ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... enormously alarmed at the loss of their privileged position. The chief of them was Jovan Plamenac, a former Minister whom the people at Podgorica had refused to hear, a few weeks previously, when he attempted to address them. He was hated on account of the most ruthless fashion in which, as Minister, he had executed certain of his master's critics at Kola[vs]in. There was a time, during the first Balkan War, when he advocated union with Serbia and on April 6, 1916, he wrote in the Bosnische ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... it was purely self-defense. Perkins would have killed him if he could. And he really deserved it—Perkins was a perfect fiend. The Doctor, as they call him, is no better, although entirely different. He is so utterly heartless and ruthless, so cold and scientific. Do ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... Prayer Book with massive silver clasps, inscribed, "Dearest Mary, on our wedding day, June 4th, 1847, from Gilbert." There, in a red morocco case, is a miniature of a handsome naval officer. At the back, under glass, are two locks of hair, joined by a true lover's knot in seed pearls. Some ruthless hand will pick out those pearls and ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... must have been familiar with such situations, and must have appreciated the humorous, ruthless treatment of Dolon, the spoiled only brother of five sisters. Mr. Monro admitted that Dolon is Shakespearian, but added, "too Shakespearian for Homer." One may as well say that Agincourt, in Henry V., is "too Homeric ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... to have upheavals of great magnitude here. Now all other countries are moved by different spirits, some by patriotism and gallantry like the French, some by superstition and ignorance worked on by mystic religion, as in my country—some by ruthless materialism like Germany; but that dull, solid sense of duty is purely English—and it is ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... hills to Skiddaw! Science-dowered, serenely rich, Safe in its snugly sheltered homes, our England lies at ease, Whilst round her cliffs gale-scourged to wrath the tiger-throated seas Thunder in ruthless ravening rage, with rending crash and shock, Through the dull night and blinding drift on leagues of reef and rock. More furious than the Spaniards they, more fierce, persistent foes, These deep-gorged, pallid, foaming waves. Yes, bright the beacon glows, Warmly ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various
... was gone, the Master called Bohannan and Leclair, outlined the next coup in this strange campaign, and assigned crews to them for the implacable carrying-out of the plan determined on—surely the most dare-devil, ruthless, and astonishing plan ever conceived by the brain ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... there are good and bad, clever and foolish, amongst them, as amongst all large bodies of people; however, after the tribe had been governed for upwards of thirty years by such a person as old Fraser, it were no wonder if the greater part had become either rogues or fools; he was a ruthless tyrant, Belle, over his own people, and by his cruelty and rapaciousness must either have stunned them into an apathy approaching to idiocy, or made them artful knaves in their own defence. The qualities of parents are generally transmitted to ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... a treasure mound Ralph would have followed a much more ruthless tyrant than Captain Horn, and although he made no remarks, he went willingly enough. When they had climbed the mound, and the captain had lifted the stone from the opening in the top, Ralph held the lantern while ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... quickly into the skiff beside the killed. Ruthless hands seized the dead boy heartlessly and raised him to the low gunwale. A little shove, a splash, some widening ripples broken by the sudden surge of a dark, hidden body from the slimy depths, and the coveted canoe was in the sole possession of the white man—more ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... contact with a backward Oriental Society, the relations between debtor and creditor are entirely changed. A social revolution is effected. The Western applies his code with stern and ruthless logic. The child-like Eastern, on the other hand, cannot be made to understand that his house should be sold over his head because he affixed his seal to a document, which, very probably, he had never read, or, at all events, had never ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... aloof from the wars of Greece unless itself be threatened. A single battle in a common cause might suffice to depopulate the Spartan race, and leave it at the mercy of the thousands that so reluctantly own its dominion, Hence the ruthless determination to crush the spirit, to degrade the class of the enslaved Helots; hence its dread lest the slumbering brute force of the Servile find in its own masses a head to teach the consciousness, and a hand to guide the movements, of its power. These are the necessities of the ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... nay, a bloody light in its gloom; and his face flushed—olive cheek and hueless forehead received a glow, as from spreading, ascending heart-fire; and he stirred, lifted his strong arm; he could have struck Mason—dashed him on the church floor—shocked by ruthless blow the breath from his body; but Mason shrank away, and cried faintly, "Good God!" Contempt fell cool on Mr. Rochester—his passion died as if a blight had shriveled it up; he only asked, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... state of calm despair, and, kneeling down upon the floor, she began, with dreadful earnestness and solemnity, to call upon Almighty God, imploring him to avenge the death of her children, and invoking the bitterest curses upon the head of their ruthless murderer. ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... was industrious; I wanted to repay my friends and to marry; I wanted work; I went in search of it; and before long I had more on my hands than anybody else. Bah! I had every soul in Mantes against me—attorneys, notaries, and even the bailiffs. They tried to fasten a quarrel on me. In our ruthless profession, as you know, madame, if you wish to ruin a man, it is soon done. I was concerned for both parties in a case, and they found it out. It was a trifle irregular; but it is sometimes done in Paris, attorneys in certain cases hand the rhubarb and take ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... England, as I have told you, the adventurers who met at my father's rooms talked of the ruthless savage—the lurking Indian of the forest and prairie, and also of our neighbours the Spaniards; but as soon as we reached the place, it seemed to all that the Indians did not exist; and as to the Spaniards, they were far south, separated by long stretches of open land, forests, ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... commissary stores began to fail. Rations, always plain, became scant. Our foragers met with little success. But for the patriotic devotion of the families whose farms and plantations lay for miles around Ringgold (soon, alas! to fall into the ruthless hands of the enemy), even our sickest men would have been deprived of suitable food. As it was, the supply was by no means sufficient. One day I asked permission to try my fortune at foraging, and, having received ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... extra-illustrator is nearly always the person responsible for the decrepit condition of many of the books which 'unfortunately lack the rare portrait,' or have, 'as usual,' some valuable plate or map lacking. Were this professional despoiler, or his minions, the ruthless booksellers, to destroy the sad wrecks which result from their piratical depredations, all would be well. But they set these poor maimed hulks adrift again, to seek salvage from some deluded collector, or some impoverished or ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... time of the wars, and had had an eventful history, for after being burnt by the Danes it was restored by Alfred the Great in the year 860, only to be destroyed once more by William the Conqueror in his ruthless march through the northern counties. A survival of Alfred's wise government still existed in the "Wake-man," whose duty it was to blow a horn at nine o'clock each night as a warning against thieves. If a robbery occurred during the night, ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... as Spanish ambassador, and in Venice he died at an advanced age. He was a man designed to be an object of intense hatred to the people; he was simply ruthless in ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... assuming the responsibility which he had thrust upon her—was fitting the burden to her shoulders. She did not analyze the position; did not see that he had been ruthless; that he had no right to use such a weapon against her. She only saw that he suffered, that he needed her, ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... retain enough realism and common sense not to wish to transfer these complicated conventions and compromises to a land of such ruthless logic and such rending divisions. We may hope to reproduce our laws, we do not want to reproduce our legal fictions. We do not want to insist on everybody referring to Mr. Peter or Mr. Paul, as the honourable member for Waddy Walleh; ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... theological doctrines with the demands of the conscience for love and justice in a world made by a just and loving God. I could not do so. The awakening to what the world was, to the facts of human misery, to the ruthless tramp of nature and of events over the human heart, making no difference between innocent and guilty—the shock had been too great for the equilibrium to be restored by arguments that appealed to the emotions ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... bird-of-paradise plumes, she said, would be like visiting Japan without buying a kimono. The bird is usually sold entire, the prices ranging from twenty-five to thirty dollars, according to size and condition, though, owing to the ruthless slaughter of the birds to meet the demands of the European market, prices are steadily advancing. The Winsome Widow bought four of the finest birds I have ever seen—gorgeous, flame-colored things with plumes nearly ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... the true words he must hear. It was pitifully mean; but whom has not his own hidden lust made to crawl like a thief, afraid of a shadow, in his own house? Narcissus' young lust was himself, and Moloch knew no more ruthless hunger than burns in such. Of course, it did not present itself quite nakedly to him; he persuaded himself there could ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... refused; you, surely, never made a slave's home desolate by taking her child from her. No, such words as those which I have just quoted from your letter, are a perfect assurance that neither you nor your kindred, within your knowledge, are guilty of ruthless violations of domestic ties among your colored people. Otherwise, you could not write as you do about "desolate homes" and "the child gone." While I read your letter and think of you, I am reminded of those words: "Is not this he whom they seek to kill?" ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... conferred hastily. Bala Khan was a fierce Mohammedan, a ruthless soldier; his followers were without fear. The men of Allaha might put up a good defense, but in the end they would be whelmed; and the gods of Hind would be cast out to make way for the prophet of Allah. This young woman with the white skin had for the nonce beaten them. Durga ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... but she would never again be tender till her daughter should have repudiated her base,—her monstrous engagement. She bound up all her faculties to harshness, and a stern resolution. Her daughter had been deceitful, and she would now be ruthless. There might be suffering, but had not she suffered? There might be sorrow, but had not she sorrowed? There might be a contest, but had not she ever been contesting? Sooner than that the tailor should reap the fruit of her labours,—labours which had been ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... into license, the ruthless predatory instinct of certain bold and unscrupulous persons may, and almost certainly will, place at their disposal the goods, the honours, and the preferment justly the due of others; and in those more numerous and certainly more ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... duty to tell them that this was not one of those ordinary "breach-of-promise" cases which were too often the occasion of ruthless mirth and indecent levity in the court-room. The jury would find nothing of that here. There were no love-letters with the epithets of endearment, nor those mystic crosses and ciphers which, he had been credibly informed, chastely hid the exchange of those ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... cruel because I was glad; there is nothing so ruthless as happiness. "And you would thwart ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith |
