"Unkindness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... threw himself into his bed in a transport of despair, mingled with resentment, during the predominancy of which he determined to proceed in the career of adventure, and endeavour to forget the unkindness of his mistress ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... 'cutting away of all lower delectations.' Both rate men's praise or blame at their real worthlessness; 'Let not thy peace,' says the Christian, 'be in the mouths of men.' But it is to God's censure the Christian appeals, the Roman to his own soul. The petty annoyances of injustice or unkindness are looked on by each with the same magnanimity. 'Why doth a little thing said or done against thee make thee sorry? It is no new thing; it is not the first, nor shall it be the last, if thou live ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... mother had left me to settle my troubles, but now, she told me I must turn and demand justice; that generosity was more than thrown away; that I never could live with my husband and bear his neglect and unkindness and that of his family. I must leave him, defend myself, or die. That I should have been expected to gather apples and dig potatoes, filled her with indignation. She advised me to stay with her and refuse to see him, but I shuddered ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... in many respects. I don't think she ever wanted to marry and certainly I can call home no adventures in the way of courting that fell to her lot. And yet a pleasant woman, though not comely. In fact, without unkindness, she might have been called a terribly ugly woman. Yellow as a guinea, with gingery hair, yellow eyes, and no figure to save her. You would have thought her property might have drawn an adventurer or two, for Little Sherberton was a tenement farm and Mary's very own; ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... continued the same lady, with an arch smile that had nothing of unkindness in it, 'for we both have married far above our original stations in life; we are both unpunctual in our habits, and, in consequence of this failing of ours, we have both had to suffer mortification ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... their hearty love of honest earthly life, in their devotion to their friends, their kindness to dependents, and in their obedience to duty. What caused each of them the most pain was the recollection of a past unkindness. The poignancy of Dr. Johnson's grief on one such recollection is historical; and amongst Lamb's letters are to be found several in which, with vast depths of feeling, he bitterly upbraids himself for ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... repeating, as mothers will, marvellous tales of his size and growth, and framing tender phrases for his infant lips. And we catch glimpses of her, too, in sadder moods, mourning her mother's loss or wounded by neglect and unkindness. We note how keenly her proud spirit resents wrong and injustice, and how in her turn she is not always careful of the rights and feelings of her rivals. But whatever her faults and mistakes may have ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... constraint, and believe that it arises from no lack of appreciation of your magnanimity, but only springs from my own weakness; and asking your pardon for all unkindness of thought, word, or act in the past, ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... said, "I am the cause of this. How can I ever forgive myself for my unkindness to you, who were so good and generous to me, and mine, and never even reproached me ...
— Beauty and the Beast • Unknown
... is of a quality approaching to unkindness; and that (on some person or other) every reform must operate as a sort of punishment. Indeed, the whole class of the severe and restrictive virtues are at a market almost too high for humanity. What is worse, there are very few of those virtues which are not capable of being ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... afraid I mortified her without meaning it! She suddenly turned away. 'He looks at the billiard balls,' I heard her say. 'Anything rather than look at me!' Before I could stop her, she had left the hall. I am not quite easy about it, Betteredge. Would you mind telling Rosanna that I meant no unkindness? I have been a little hard on her, perhaps, in my own thoughts—I have almost hoped that the loss of the Diamond might be traced to her. Not from any ill-will to the poor girl: but——" He stopped there, and going back to the billiard-table, ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... welcome. Come, we have a hot venison pasty to dinner: come, gentlemen, I hope we shall drink down all unkindness. ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... these transactions, the parliament was prorogued by the king, who let fall some hints, though in gentle terms, of the sense which he entertained of their unkindness ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... me with unkindness? I have omitted nothing that could do you good, or give you pleasure, unless it be that I have forborne to tell you my opinion of your Account of Corsica. I believe my opinion, if you think well ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... shall tempt to rise, Then whirl the wretch from high, To bitter Scorn a sacrifice, And grinning Infamy. The stings of Falsehood those shall try, 75 And hard Unkindness' alter'd eye, That mocks the tear it forc'd to flow; And keen Remorse with blood defil'd, And moody Madness laughing wild Amid severest ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... manhood. I went to her and looked down at her brown head; the brave brown head that she had carried so high through all the terror and unkindness that had come to her. I touched her hair with my lips, and I grew as ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... so transformed from what he was that he is considered to be out of his mind. She hears the question constantly discussed what the cause of this sad change can be; and her heart tells her—how can it fail to tell her?—that her unkindness is the chief cause. Suddenly Hamlet forces his way into her chamber; and his appearance and his behaviour are those of a man crazed with love. She is frightened—why not? She is not Lady Macbeth. Rosalind would have been frightened. Which of her censors would be wholly ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... speak one word, his heart was so full. No boy could be happier than he was during these holydays: "the genial current of his soul," which had been frozen by unkindness, flowed with all its natural freedom and force. When Dominick returned to school after these holydays were over, Mr. Owen ap Jones, who now found that the Irish boy had an English protector with ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... is God. Against Him we have sinned. We do wrong; and if wrong were all that we had to charge ourselves with, it would be because there was nothing but law that we were answerable to. We do unkind things, and if unkindness and inhumanity were all that we had to charge ourselves with, it would be because we were only answerable to one another. We do suicidal things, and if self-inflicted injury were all our definition of evil, it would be because ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... was both sensitive and proud, and he could not quite bring himself to overlook what he considered an intentional unkindness on ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... never paid anything, Buteau only a part, and Delhomme, Fanny's husband, alone fulfilled his obligation. Mere Fouan died, and the old man lived alone for a year; after that he went to his daughter Fanny Delhomme, but her unkindness made his life miserable, and he accepted in turn the hospitality of his two sons, Buteau and Hyacinthe, both of whom had come to suspect the existence of his nest-egg and were anxious to secure it. In this sordid aim Buteau was eventually successful, and his subsequent treatment ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... died at the age of fifty-one. He hastened his father's death by his unkindness, as he wished to inherit his fortune, he tortured his wife, tormented his children, deceived his neighbors, robbed everyone he could, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... first and best friends are her parents; her wisest confidante, her mother. To these she may speak unreservedly of herself. With these she may freely talk over family matters. In a friendship with some outside the family it would be unwise to discuss family matters. It might be an unkindness to other members of the family, and in case of a break in the friendship the family secrets might be betrayed, and to the detriment of the trusting friend. I once read of such an affair, where one girl had confided to another certain matters that reflected on the honor of ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... and unmoral; it is also cruel and immoral. Philosophers and transcendentalists who believe in the Buddhist law of Karma, Westernized by Emerson and Carlyle into the great doctrine of Compensation, realize that every act of unkindness, every deed that is contrary to the dictates of our nobler instincts and reason, reacts upon us, and we shall truly reap that which we have sown. An act of brutality brutalizes, and the more we become brutalized the more we attract natures similarly ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon
... He had seen through the maternal precautions the last time he was at home, and talking with Cupples about it, who secretly wished for no better luck than that Alec should fall in love with Annie, had his feelings strengthened as to the unkindness, if not injustice, of throwing her periodically into such a dungeon as the society of the Bruces. So Annie remained where she was, much, I must confess, to her ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... Of great unkindness and of usage hard Of Cynthia, the Lady of the Sea, Which from her presence faultless ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... into the room with a willow branch in his hand, which he told her had arrived that instant from Germany for her special wearing. Lucy, as we have seen, was remarkably fond of her younger brother, and at that moment his wanton and thoughtless unkindness seemed more keenly injurious than even the studied insults of her elder brother. Her grief, however, had no shade of resentment; she folded her arms about the boy's neck, and saying faintly, "Poor Henry! you speak but what they tell you" she burst into a flood of unrestrained ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... feeling in this letter, I confess. As I said in it, I really pitied Madame d'Albret and forgave her her unkindness; but I sought revenge upon Monsieur de G—, and in seeking that, I planted daggers into the heart of Madame d'Albret; but I did not at the time that I wrote reflect upon this. What I wished to do was to vindicate myself, and that I could not do without exposing Monsieur ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... a whole. The second, which deals with our needs, starts with the cry for bread, and climbs up slowly through the ills of life, from bodily hunger to trespasses and human unkindness and personal weakness, and a world of temptation, and the double evil of sin and of sorrow, and so regains at last the starting-point of the first half, Heaven and God. The probable meaning of the difficult word ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Persia and Judaaa, the king's mother often held rank above his wife. The name of Philometor was given to him by his mother, because, though he had reached the years of manhood, she wished to act as his guardian; but her unkindness to him was so remarkable that historians have thought that it was a nickname. The mother and the son were jointly styled sovereigns of Egypt; but they lived apart, and in distrust of one another, each surrounded ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... understand and control the forces of nature in order to serve and develop the higher life, think what a civilization might have been developed here on this poor old planet by this time! How much of the disease, how much of the corruption, how much of the unkindness, how much of the cruelty, how much of all that still remains in us of the animal, might have been outgrown, sloughed ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... move to prevent, threw no obstacle in her path. Deliberately from his grip, from beneath his very eyes, fate, the relentless, was filching his one ewe lamb; yet he gave no sign of the knowledge, spoke no word of unkindness or of hate. Nature, the all-observing, could not but have ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... blameless boy; but he did not dare to harm him, for fear of their master, Mimer. And Siegfried busied himself at his forge, where the sparks flew as briskly and as merrily as ever before, and his bellows roared from early morning till late at evening. Nor did the foreman's unkindness trouble him for a moment, for he knew that the master's heart ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... subjection again as well as to gratify the writer's own Byronic instinct for pose. He had behaved badly. He acknowledged it but claimed forgiveness on the grounds of love, his love for her which had been goaded to mad jealousy by her thoughtless unkindness, her love for him which would not desert him no matter what ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... house, how she worried and harassed all around her with her whims, megrims and complaints could only too well be imagined, and how the entire pleasure of the day was destroyed. Lucy was never allowed a minute's conversation with her friend without being interrupted by a whine and complaints of unkindness and neglect. ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had been moved by this idea, but not consciously and, a little distressed at suspecting herself of an unkindness, entertained the Bishop with an entirely fanciful catalogue of Claudia's virtues, which, being overheard by Bob Territon, who had no lady, and was at liberty to ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... were here undecipherable, being faded and rubbed out). When I look back, I see that in all my life you have been my only friend—which makes me the more unhappy that this has happened. Mind, I don't mean to accuse your family of unkindness; I only say that I, perhaps naturally, was never one of them. If I thought that you would be willing, knowing how I feel toward you, to make me your wife, for the sake of your peace I might consent even to that. But you are not such ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... to them a free and easy access to the Atlantic and the Pacific, will, I trust, occasion such an activity of mind and such an employment of matter, that in the general good arising therefrom, all thoughts of former ill treatment or unkindness from the Mother Country will soon ...
— A Letter from Major Robert Carmichael-Smyth to His Friend, the Author of 'The Clockmaker' • Robert Carmichael-Smyth
... unkindness, Eddy, at all events, didn't resort to artifice as Rose,—Jack still smarted from it,—had done. He continued to smile, taking, up a small, milky vase to examine it, while he answered in his chill, cheerful tones: "Don't be up in arms, mama, because one of your swans gives the other ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... and cutting allusion to Mrs. Tulliver's bunches of blond curls, separated from each other by a due wave of smoothness on each side of the parting. Mrs. Tulliver had shed tears several times at sister Glegg's unkindness on the subject of these unmatronly curls, but the consciousness of looking the handsomer for them naturally administered support. Mrs. Glegg chose to wear her bonnet in the house to-day,—united and tilted ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... seemed to tell her what was in his mind. She snatched her hand away, and suddenly looked up at him. The tears were in her eyes. She said nothing; she let her eyes speak for her. They warned him—without anger, without unkindness—but still they warned him to press her ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... her reverie, repeated, "To care what becomes of you-? Oh Delvile!—make not my heart bleed by words of such unkindness!" ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... one who hears me this day think that refinement of manner or exquisiteness of taste or superiority of education can in any wise apologize for ill-temper, for an oppressive spirit, for unkindness, for any kind of sin. Disobedience Godward and transgression manward can give no excuse. Accomplishment heaven high is no apology for ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... These were lessons, delivered in the quiet dialect of art, which told their story faithfully, but gently. It is the same lesson, if you will - but how harrowingly taught! - when the woman you respect shall weep from your unkindness or blush with shame at your misconduct. Poor girls in Italy turn their painted Madonnas to the wall: you cannot set aside your wife. To marry is to domesticate the Recording Angel. Once you are married, ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was filled, at first, with maternal pride and joy; but her happiness was soon sadly alloyed by Darnley's continued unkindness. She traveled about during the autumn, from castle to castle, anxious and ill at ease. Sometimes Darnley followed her, and sometimes he amused himself with hunting, and with various vicious indulgences, at different towns and castles at a distance from her. He wanted her to dismiss her ministry ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... my eyes were opened. I followed you yesterday, out to that old negro's hut; I wrung the tale of your charities from your unwilling lips, and know and understand all. And now, in return for all my harshness, my neglect, my cruel unkindness, you save my life; you tend me, nurse me, watch me, and for what? For the love ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... he judged fit, under pretence of setting and settling the country, but asked not for, nor yet called his nephew Allan, who lived at Invershiel, within a few miles of Ellandonnan, but went away. Allan, suspecting this to have proceeded from unkindness, sends to one of his familiar friends to know the result of the meeting, or if there was any spoken concerning him. The man, perhaps, not being willing to be an ill instrument twixt so near relations, sends Allan the ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... that Martha neglected Pope "with shameful unkindness," in his later years. It is clearly exaggerated or quite unfounded. At any rate, the poor sickly man, in his premature and childless old age, looked up to her with fond affection, and left to her nearly the whole of his fortune. His biographers have ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... could displace. When the week, for which term of shelter she had paid, was ended, her hostess spoke upon this point, saying, more to convince Emilia of the necessity for seeking her friends than from any unkindness: "Me and my husband can't go on keepin' you, you know, my dear, however well's our meaning." Emilia drew the woman toward her with both her lands, softly shaking her head. She left ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the gate to see him off, bidding him good-by with many bows and entreating him to come again whenever he had the time. Thus the old man and his pet sparrow separated quite happily, the sparrow showing not the least ill-will for all the unkindness she had suffered at the hands of the old wife. Indeed, she only felt sorrow for the old man who had to put up with it all ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... to upset her ice cream in the presence of her lover or friend, denotes she will be flirted with because of her unkindness to others. To see sour ice cream, denotes some unexpected trouble will interfere with your pleasures. If it is melted, your anticipated pleasure will reach ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... manifest that she recognized those who moved about her bed, for she now and then addressed Bertha, Maurice, and even Madeleine by name. Madeleine's heart throbbed with joy when she dared to believe that there was no unkindness in Madame de Gramont's tone. Maurice and Bertha had made the same observation and augured future harmony and happiness from the unanticipated change. But their delusion was quickly dispelled, for it soon became apparent that the countess ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... I say? God can tell how to let Satan loose upon thee; when thou liest a dying he can license him then to assault thee with great temptations, he can tell how to make thee possess the guilt of all thy unkindness towards him, and that when thou, as I said, art going out of the world, he can cause that thy life shall be in continual doubt before thee, and not suffer thee to take any comfort day nor night; yea, he can drive thee even to a madness with his chastisements for thy ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... available, he sometimes used chalk, and even charcoal. Great was the surprise of the family when some of his verses were unearthed, literally unearthed, from under a heap of rubbish in a garret; but his father frowned upon these evidences of the bent of his mind, not out of unkindness, but because he doubted the sufficiency of the boy's education for a literary life, and did not wish to inspire him with hopes which might ...
— Our Holidays - Their Meaning and Spirit; retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... it, as her habit was, from the sleeping child, she slipped on her dressing-gown and opened the door. On the threshold she paused to look at her watch. Only half-past five! She thought with compunction of the unkindness of breaking in on Junie Fulmer's slumbers; but such scruples did not weigh an ounce in the balance of her purpose. Poor Junie would have to oversleep herself on ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... sin or attempt to analyse its essence, there is some dark secret there, of which from time to time we are grievously conscious. Who does not know the sense of failure to overcome, of lapsing from a hope or a purpose, the burden of the thought of some cowardice or unkindness which we cannot undo and which we need not have committed? No resolute determinism can ever avail us against the stern verdict of that inner tribunal of the soul, which decides, too, by some instinct that we cannot divine, to sting ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... carrying you too far, Edmee de Mauprat," said the president. "It would seem that, in order to save your relative, you are accusing yourself of coquetry and unkindness; for, how otherwise do you explain the fact that you exasperated this young man's passion by refusing ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... we know what it is to cherish love when sore at some unkindness, to overmaster ourselves when under provocation, to preserve gentleness during trial and unmerited wrong,—only then can we know in any degree the "manner of spirit" that was ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... away, Mr. George; there's nobody to defend ME." And George Osborne, as she walked away—and Amelia looked reprovingly at him—felt some little manly compunction for having inflicted any unnecessary unkindness upon this helpless creature. "My dearest Amelia," said he, "you are too good—too kind. You don't know the world. I do. And your little friend Miss Sharp must learn ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... patient son," exclaimed the father, "they who entertain angels unawares have nothing to look to with regret—except unkindness." ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... heroes who fail in action. Turgenev preaches no doctrine in his novels, has no remedy for the universe; but he sees clearly certain weaknesses of the Russian character and exposes these with absolute candor yet without unkindness. Much as he lived abroad, his books are intensely Russian; yet of the great Russian novelists he alone rivals the masters of western Europe in the matter of form. In economy of means, condensation, felicity of language, and ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... first time in Georgia, desecrated by political philippics. Pierce then, as now, was the leading minister of the Methodist Church in the State, and abstained in the pulpit, but made no secret of his preferences upon the street. Duffie travelled everywhere. He had by unkindness driven from him his wife with her infant child, and, in her helpless and desperate condition, she had taken refuge with the Shaking Quakers in the West, and remained with them until her death. His son came to him after maturity, and was established by him on a plantation with a number ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... among normal, healthy human beings), and took to solitary drinking, which carried him very rapidly to his grave; for the year before Hercules came of age his father was taken off by an apoplexy. His mother, whose love for him had increased with the growth of his father's unkindness, did not long survive, but little more than a year after her husband's death succumbed, after eating two dozen of oysters, to ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... being sorry for himself, and thinking only of the unkindness and wickedness of his cruel brothers, he made the best of everything, and set himself to do his new hard work as well as possible. If he was a slave he would, at any rate, be a thoroughly ...
— Joseph the Dreamer • Amy Steedman
... it was to see fresh places and to mix with strangers! And he was to go still farther, for he was not yet fourteen years old when he went out in a ship to see the world. He encountered bad weather, heavy seas, unkindness, and hard men—such were his experiences, for he became ship-boy. Cold nights, bad living, and blows had to be endured; then he felt his noble Spanish blood boil within him, and bitter, angry, words rose to his lips, but he gulped them down; it was better, although he felt as ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... man to man until primary signs of crudeness are worn off. Let a conceited professor get in a college chair! Watch a hundred students begin their delightful and salutary process of "taking him down" by the sort of mirth in which college boys excel! Their unkindness is not right, but the result is, they never molest a man ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... mother's frigid kiss of farewell hurting her more poignantly than her drastic punishment of an hour before. For Dinah was intensely sensitive, keenly susceptible to rebuke and coldness, and her warm heart shrank from unkindness with a shrinking that was ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... never, unless at some injustice or undeserved unkindness. But when she did cry, it was done as she did everything else, with ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... to read, how hard to do! Mrs. Gary's image was very ugly yet to Daisy. Could she speak pleasantly to her aunt? could she even look pleasantly at her? could she "forbear" all unkindness, even in thought? Not yet! Daisy felt very miserable and very much ashamed of herself, even while her anger was in ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... with the living! Youth doth fade— And Joy unclasp its tendril green, to die— The mocking tares our harvest-hopes invade, On wrecking blasts our garnered treasures fly, Our idols shame the soul's idolatry, Unkindness gnaws the bosom's secret core, Long-trusted friendship turns an altered eye When, helpless, we its sympathies implore— Oh! take us to your arms, that we ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... sympathy, did not in the least depend upon any harshness or stinginess of fate. Indeed, perhaps, no man had ever prepared for him an easier existence; no man had ever less misfortune sent to him by Providence, or less unkindness shown towards him by mankind, than this constantly struggling, this pessimistic and misanthropic man. The only son of Count Alfieri of Cortemiglia, of one of the richest and noblest families of Asti in Piedmont, his early ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... sacred panoply were eaten into holes; with respect to any such unhappy one, and all others (if others be) who should listen to his glozing, and make a common cause in his rebellion, where, I ask, is any injustice, or even unkindness done to him by Deity? Where is any moral improbability that such a traitor should be; or any just inconsistency chargeable on the attributes of God in consequence of such his being? Whom can he in reason accuse but himself for what he is? And what misery can such a one complain ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... what befell. Up to this, life had been without a cloud. Of course, as in every other society, there had been the necessity of fending for oneself—of picking up a scrap, for instance, quickly, if you wanted it at all. Such things are good, and make for progress and development. But harshness and unkindness, like injustice, had been altogether foreign to the mill and all who lived or worked there. Life sped on in that favoured spot with as even a surface as that of the river, whose waters flowed sluggishly up to the mill, barring the dam, and then went bubbling down the ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... them all, disowning, with becoming modesty, that one day's fair reception made a favourite, any more than one swallow a summer. But he observed that Blount did not join in the general congratulation, and, somewhat hurt at his apparent unkindness, he ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... were fixed on Mordecai as he sat down again, and none with unkindness; but it happened that the one who felt the most kindly was the most prompted to speak in opposition. This was the genial and rational Gideon, who also was not without a sense that he was addressing the guest of ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... woman—rather a tiresome person, a spinster with a curiously horse-like face and large teeth—sometimes stays for hours at a time and leaves us limp. Even gentle Mrs. Wilmot approaches, as nearly as it is possible for her to approach, unkindness in her comments on her. She has such playful, girlish manners, and an irritating way of giving vent to the most utter platitudes with the air of having just discovered a new truth. She has been with us this morning ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... never before uttered a syllable of unkindness to Harry Esmond, and her cruel words smote the poor boy so that he stood for some moments bewildered with grief and rage at the injustice of such a stab from such a hand. He turned quite white from red, which he had ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... are not very deep—by the studious attention to a pleasant way of saying or doing things?—so different from the heedless bluntness of some other races, which, even while it may proceed from no unkindness, yet gives, at any rate, the impression of disregard for the feelings of others. What a regard to appearances is not revealed in such common expressions as "Etre de mauvaise tournure" and "Avoir ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... have been. She had in her nature a certain sort of slow ugliness which delighted in dwelling upon a small offence, in asking irritating questions about it, in reiterating its details; all the while making it out a matter of personal unkindness or indifference to her that it should have happened. When she was in these moods, Stephen's silence sometimes provoked ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... I would relieve every distress, and should enjoy the benedictions of gratitude. I would choose my friends among the wise and my wife among the virtuous, and therefore should be in no danger from treachery or unkindness. My children should by my care be learned and pious, and would repay to my age what their childhood had received. What would dare to molest him who might call on every side to thousands enriched by his bounty or assisted by his power? And why should not life ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... and comparing it with the unfeeling treatment of her husband, she found herself so much the more unfortunate, as the expressions of the former were regarded by her as praise due to her merit, while the unkindness of the latter was unavailingly resented as the undeserved oppression of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... as he saw him in a traveller's habit, stopped his train, asked him who he was, and from whence he came? "Sir," said Noor ad Deen, "I am an Egyptian, born at Cairo, and have left my country, because of the unkindness of a near relation, resolved to travel through the world, and rather to die than return home." The grand vizier, who was a good-natured man, after hearing these words, said to him, "Son, beware; do not pursue ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... infuriated spirit of intemperance, regardless of the entreaties of the woman Strawberry, or the helpless situation of the unfortunate girl, he had struck her repeatedly; and the violent passion into which his brutal unkindness had hurried his victim produced premature confinement, followed by the death of her child, a ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... breakfast mournfully, therefore, reflecting on the unkindness of Fortune, who had afflicted Tinker with his fever at so inconvenient a time. For he had not been able to raise the money to take him to make his convalescence at one of the more expensive watering places, whither ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... to be reserved for his breakfast. In the night some lads of the family got up and ate it. Next morning the old man was in a great rage, rose, and said to his daughter that he was going off to commit suicide, he could bear no longer the unkindness of the family. He seized his staff and went off to the mountain, where there is a deep ravine. When he reached the edge of the precipice he called to his daughter, who had followed him, that he would jump over, and cause a ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... kind, darted flashes of anger as she spoke; and she tossed up her head with the mien of a Princess, adding such words of reproach and indignation that Harry Esmond, to whom she had never once before uttered a syllable of unkindness, stood for some moments bewildered with grief and rage at the injustice of her reproaches. He turned quite white from red, and answered her in a low voice, ending his little speech with these words, addressed to Lord Castlewood: "Heaven bless you and yours for your goodness to me. I ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... conventional nature of their sighs and complaints may often be guessed by an experienced reader from the titles of their poems: "Description of the restless state of a lover, with suit to his lady to rue on his dying heart;" "Hell tormenteth not the damned ghosts so sore as unkindness the lover;" "The lover prayeth not to be disdained, refused, mistrusted, nor forsaken," etc. The most genuine utterance of Surrey was his poem written while imprisoned in Windsor—a cage where so many a song-bird has grown vocal. And Wiat's little piece of eight lines, "Of ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... interest, never a human or an emotional one. His Journal does not reveal him going back to the old places, or lingering fondly over the memories of his youth. He speaks of his "unpleasing boyhood," of his unhappy recollections, etc., not because of unkindness or hardships experienced, but because of certain shortcomings or deficiencies of character and purpose, of which he is conscious—"some meanness," or "unfounded pride" which may lower him in the opinion of others. Pride, surely, ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... any messenger came in from St. James's, 'Well, sure, we shall soon have good news, she cannot hold out much longer.' And the princesses were writing letters to prevent the Princess Royal from coming to England, where she was certain to meet with brutal unkindness from her father, who could not endure to be put to any expense. Orders were, indeed, sent to stop her if she set out. She came, however, on pretence of taking the Bath waters; but George II., furious at her disobedience, obliged ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... for the eager and romantic association with other people, which was to play so large a part in Hugh's life, was not yet come. People had to be taken as they came, and their value depended entirely upon their kindness or unkindness. There was no sense of gratitude as yet, or desire to win affection. If they were kind, they were unthinkingly and instinctively liked. If they thwarted or interfered with the child's little theory of existence, his chosen amusements, ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... understand how I have felt. I would give worlds if I could take back the words that you say wounded you. I didn't mean to wound you. Nobody is to blame for them but me; nobody ever breathed a word about you that was meant in unkindness. ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... like to do for her, and for all who had befriended him; but he knew his Heavenly Father could do more and better for them, and he felt resigned to His will. He had, he said, forgiven all who ever wronged him, and he had now no feeling of anger or unkindness left towards any one, for all seemed kind to him beyond his deserts, and like brothers and sisters. He had much pity for the poor savages even, although he had suffered sorely at their hands; for he ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... should observe," said he smiling, "that even the unkindness of your refusal would not change my endeavour. I only give you, as in honour bound, the chance of doing all you can to prevent my succeeding. Will you ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... stairs; the smoking amateurs made way for him with great parade, and pushed back with equal unkindness the young and wistful throng who still hovered ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... maitre, when I heard of the misfortune of madame and the general, you would scarcely believe it, but I actually shed tears, and was sorry that I had parted with them in unkindness on account of that ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... gradual discovery of the fact that this woman treated her own daughter with systematic cruelty—a thing happily unusual in her class, as it is also, I think, among the very poor of London. At the end of eight or nine months my increasing knowledge of Mrs. Pelly's harsh unkindness to Fanny had begun to weigh on my mind a good deal. It was a singular case, in many ways. Here was a girl, a young woman rather, in her twenty-first year, who to all intents and purposes might be said to be carrying on with her own hands the entire work of a house ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... if anywhere, that a special backwardness on the part of the clergy to meet the religious wants of the age may, without injustice or unkindness, be alleged. It comes about very naturally; the training of the clergy is not in harmony with the exigencies of the position they are intended to occupy. The endeavors of the preparatory schools are not to be depreciated. It is scarcely possible to say too much of the fundamental importance ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... hung their heads with sorrow and vexation; but kind little Cinderella put her arms round their necks, kissed them, and forgave them for all their unkindness, so that they could not help ...
— Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper and Other Stories • Anonymous
... said slowly, "it shall be as you wish. I do not refuse to give you the money if you desire it; only this is not the way to get out of debt. I say this with no unkindness, you understand. Only you must ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... by treating them as they deserve to be treated! Few people sufficiently appreciate the attachment, fidelity, and sagacity of these too-often persecuted animals, or are aware how much they suffer from unkindness or harsh treatment. ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... Hyndman. A man of wide and deep reading, wielding most ably a singularly fascinating pen, with talents that would have made him wealthy in any career he adopted, he has sacrificed himself without a murmur to the people's cause. He has borne obloquy from without, suspicion and unkindness from those he served, and surrounded by temptations to betray the people, he has never swerved from his integrity. He has said rash things, has been stirred to passionate outbursts and reckless ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... their quota of significant looks and mysterious expressions to fill up the measure of curiosity to be raised in the unprivileged younger sisters. To Catherine's simple feelings, this odd sort of reserve seemed neither kindly meant, nor consistently supported; and its unkindness she would hardly have forborne pointing out, had its inconsistency been less their friend; but Anne and Maria soon set her heart at ease by the sagacity of their "I know what"; and the evening was spent in a sort of war of wit, a display ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... appear. For as the place such will be the thoughts that spring there; when all in us is peace divine, then, and not till then, shall we think the absolutely reasonable. Alas, that by our thoughtlessness or unkindness we should so often be the cause of monster-births, and those even in the minds of the loved! that we should be, if but for a moment, the demons that deform a fair world that loves us! Such was Mrs. Wardour, with her worldly wisdom, that day ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... aback at this rebuke from the mouth of a child that he dropped his whip, and, fumbling in his pocket, produced some money, which he offered to Hans to make up for his unkindness. ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... on the occasion. Miss Mackenzie, who had taken Susanna's hand, remained with it in her own during the greater part of the speech. Before the speech was done the poor girl's hand had been dropped, but in dropping it the aunt was not guilty of any unkindness. "Margaret," said Mrs Mackenzie, "this is a trial, a very great trial to a mother, and I hope that you feel ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... not evade the question: "From the unkindness of life," she said. "But I have concluded that such a motive for cloistered ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... too by his last words. There arose in her a reluctant and torturing pity for the wretched man who had been her husband; a pity, which passed on into a storm of moral anguish. Her whole past life looked incredibly black to her as she lay there in the dark—stained with unkindness, and selfishness, ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... dare to sin openly and unequivocally, but manage to do it "as it were" only. They do not lie straight, but they evade or equivocate, or imply enough falsehood to escape a real conviction of conscience. They do not openly accuse God of unkindness or unfaithfulness, but they strike at Him through somebody else. They find fault with circumstances and people and things that God has permitted to come into their lives, and, "As it were," murmur. They do not perhaps go ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... customs, debarring a man or woman from the sources of happiness within reach; and 'the positive evils of life, the great sources of physical and mental suffering—such as indigence, disease, and the unkindness, worthlessness, or premature loss of objects of affection.'[6] But every one of these calamitous impediments is susceptible of the weightiest modification, and some of them of final removal. Mr. Mill had learnt from Turgot and Condorcet—two of the wisest and noblest of men, as ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... answered without hearing, and left his wife to amuse herself in any way she might please. A literary husband is, without exception, although always at home, the least domestic husband in the world, and must try the best of tempers, not by unkindness, for my father was kind and indulgent to excess, but by that state of perfect abstraction and indifference which he showed to everything except the favourite pursuit which absorbed him. My mother had but to speak, ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... market day at Brainford [Brentford]. I set my wife down and went with the coach to Mr. Crew's, thinking to have spoke with Mr. Moore and Mrs. Jem, he having told me the reason of his melancholy was some unkindness from her after so great expressions of love, and how he had spoke to her friends and had their consent, and that he would desire me to take an occasion of speaking with her, but by no means not to heighten ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... are too easily forgotten by many people. There are few of us who do not remember helping others in time of great need and distress, only to lose their friendship in the end, perhaps, as a consequence of our serving them in their need. Sometimes the only return for costly kindness is cruel unkindness. ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... word Upon earth that is heard, Each deed of unkindness or hate, Some fairy must pass From the games in the grass And ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... And useful quality, and virtue, too. Attachment never to be weaned or changed By any change of fortune; proof alike Against unkindness, absence, and neglect; Fidelity that neither bribe nor threat Can move or warp; and gratitude for small And trivial favors lasting as the life, And glistening even in the ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... May Keeps me a restive prisoner in the house, For the first time the Spring's unkindness ever Held me aloof from her companionship, However roughly from the east her breath Came as if all the icebergs of Grand Bank Were giving up their forms in that one gust,— Now while on orchard-trees the struggling blossoms Break from the varnished cerements, and in clouds Of pink and white ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... round him, and said his last words to them. 'You, my wife, the companion of my days, will follow me ere many moons have waned to the island of the blest. But for you, O my children, whose lives are but newly begun, the wickedness, unkindness, and ingratitude from which I fled are before you. Yet I shall go hence in peace, my children, if you will promise always to love each other, and never to ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... thought me false; Thought my old age betrayed you: Kill me, sir, Pray, kill me; yet you need not, your unkindness Has left ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... painful, and she had been inclined to fix her residence in Flushing, in the edifice which had belonged to her husband, as Marquis of Vere. She had been persuaded, however, to remain in Holland, although "complaining, at first, somewhat of the unkindness of the people." ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... his cruelty, for they heard but little of that, but for his morose and churlish disposition, and, perhaps more than either, on account of the general belief that his wife, a lovely woman, and much younger than himself, had fallen a victim to his unkindness and cruelty. ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... recollection of this, and a still deeper one succeeded when the thought struck me, that though my little boy may not know to-morrow what he has lost to-day, yet when years have rolled by, and he shall have felt the unkindness of a deceitful, selfish ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... and you know all; yet do not on this account abandon the poor young man. Consider, sir, he was ignorant it was his own mother; and the discovery itself will most probably break his heart, without your unkindness." ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... generally insulted as well as caressed each other with impunity from their earliest years. This happy effect of the bonds of nature was no doubt made easier by the placid characters of the girls, who had no inclination to brood over an unkindness, nor any habit of thinking what was meant by a hasty word. On the contrary, when they remembered it in the morning, after their sound night's sleep, they said to each other that Theo could not possibly have meant it; that he must have been ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... a syllable of unkindness to Harry Esmond; and her cruel words smote the poor boy, so that he stood for some moments bewildered with grief and rage at the injustice of such a stab from such a hand. He turned quite white from ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... he has not wit enough for that; he has a tender heart, and I was cruel to him, and of course being desolate from my unkindness, he has effaced himself."-And then she ...
— Harper's Young People, August 31, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... bell," she said, with a tender, reproachful sweetness and dignity, which conveyed without unkindness the severest rebuke tempered by womanly pity, and proceeded to instruct me in the nature and uses of the bell-rope, as she would any little dairy-maid who had heard only the chime of cow-bells all the days of her life. Then she sailed out of the room, serene and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... unprecedented number amongst the aboriginal tribes of this part of Australia, all of whom he had left behind, as well as his wife, to oblige me; and many a time he regretted this before he saw them again, and after; not from any unkindness on my part, for my readers will see we were the best of friends the whole time we were together. On this little excursion it was very amusing to watch old Jimmy on horseback, and to notice the look of blank amazement on his face when he found himself at fault ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... looked down on the child's small form, and sorrowed for the little heir, and for her own unkindness in throwing the beams of her light just across old Mrs. Crump in her bed, and she stooped and kissed the poor boy as he lay on the hard cold stones, and tried in vain to warm ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... was room for Madame de Sauve and Mademoiselle de Nid de Merle. Madame la Comtesse should follow! It was self-evident that propriety would not admit of the only demoiselle being left behind among the gentlemen. Poor Eustacie, she looked mutely round as if she hoped to escape! What was the other unkindness to this? And ever under the eyes of Diane too, who followed her to their chamber, when she went to prepare, so that she could not even leave a token for him where he would have been most certain to find it. Moments were ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have alluded as having made such fearful use of his editorial powers, felt deep remorse when the news of his ill-timed death arrived. He also is now no more! Poor CONWAY! Had he possessed more nerve, he might still have triumphed over the unkindness of his fate: ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... will readily comply. In the meantime, while the appeal is made to the laws of their country, and to the constitutions of this State and of the United States, which are the supreme law, they trust that none of their fellow-citizens will have the unkindness to charge them with a want of respect to the government under which they live. As soon as the will of the government shall be fairly expressed, they will render to it a ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... grumbling, and looking for his hat. Magdalen sat down patiently to wait for him. She gratefully contrasted his treatment of her with the treatment she had received from the women. Resist it as firmly, despise it as proudly as we may, all studied unkindness—no matter how contemptible it may be—has a stinging power in it which reaches to the quick. Magdalen only knew how she had felt the small malice of the female servants, by the effect which the rough kindness ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins |
