"Wanton" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lax code of the duellist. The expressions which he called upon him to avow or disavow, were vague, and were based upon the report of a person who specified neither time, place, nor the words. It was a loose matter of hearsay which was alleged—evidently a wanton provocation to a murderous duel. Burr demanded so broad a retraction from Hamilton of all he might have said, that compliance was impossible. It was an attempt to procure an indorsement of his character ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... shadows—a mosaic of nature fit for the tread of angels or the dance of fairy sprites. Beyond the fence that fringed the little cottage rolled great waves of upland, shimmering in the heat of the midsummer glare—that hot breathing of the earth when wooed too fiercely by her wanton paramour, the sun—while the horizon discovered lines of dreamy sweep all crowned with haze, the vestibules to other hills grander and ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... do, Wherewith they bring their babes to rest, And lullaby can I sing too As womanly as can the best. With lullaby they still the child; And if I be not much beguil'd, Full many wanton babes have I, Which must be ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... pointed out by the Minister of General Police. I was fortunate enough to keep my friend M. Moreau de Worms, deputy from the Youne, out of the fiat of exiles. This produced a mischievous effect. It bore a character of wanton severity quite inconsistent with the assurances of mildness and moderation given at St. Cloud on the 19th Brumaire. Cambaceres afterwards made a report, in which he represented that it was unnecessary for the maintenance of tranquillity ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... things which are conformable neither to good conscience nor nature, man ought in reason lightly to pass over, holding them in slight esteem as they deserve." Nor have we less respect for Palmerin of England who after a risque scene declares, "Herein is no offence offered to the wise by wanton speeches, or encouragement to the loose by lascivious matter." But these are not oriental ideas, and we must e'en take the Eastern as we find him. He still holds "Naturalla non sunt turpia," together with "Mundis omnia munda"; and, as Bacon assures ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... are here, suppose I give you a lesson in manipulating your tackling. If you proceed as you have begun, there will very soon not be so much as a minnow within a mile of us. Easy now, Angel; just move your fly gently on top of the water so that his bright wings may attract the eye of the most wanton trout. Easy, John—by the lord, I've caught a Greyling! And come and sniff him, and you'll find he ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... cloth drew close; too fruitful love my fruitless life outran; The townfolk marvelled, when we moved, at such a caravan! I wonder not my lads grew wild, when, bright, without the door Spread the ripe, luring, wanton world—and we, ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... true, by imagery acquired in its passage through the medium of the poet's mind, but in other respects essentially the language of the historical personages who are made to speak. The diction belongs in each case to the period of the ballad in which it is employed, and yet there is no wanton use of archaisms, or any disposition manifested to resort to meretricious artifices by which to impart an appearance of probability to the story other than that which comes legitimately of sheer narrative ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... Difficulty, the Interpreter's House, the place somewhat ascending with a cross standing upon it, and a little below, in the bottom, a sepulchre, not to speak of her who assaulted Faithful, whose name was Wanton, and who at one time was like to have done even that trusty pilgrim a lifelong mischief. Christian rather boasted to Charity of his wariness, especially in the matter of his children's amusements, but Charity ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... and prepared it for human sustenance. To anticipate her seasons, or to prolong them, is a misapplication of labour, and a perversion of the bounties of providence into secret poisons, to indulge the wanton cravings of a depraved appetite. The properties of animal food in general seem not to restrict the use of it to any particular season, but rather to admit its common use at all times. The only period in which it is less seasonable than at any ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... character. It recorded his quaint and childish tastes, his restless endeavors, his partial and halting successes. The ante-room in which he had paused with Ferris was painted to look like a grape-arbor, where the vines sprang from the floor, and flourishing up the trellised walls, with many a wanton tendril and flaunting leaf, displayed their lavish clusters of white and purple all over the ceiling. It touched Ferris, when Don Ippolito confessed that this decoration had been the distraction of his own vacant moments, to find that it was like certain grape-arbors he had ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... the first true, it would not be unjustifiable. The Creeks have now a second time commenced against us a wanton and unprovoked war, and the present one in the face of a recent treaty, and of the most friendly and charitable offices on our part. There would be nothing out of the common course of proceeding, then, for us to engage ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... portal, stopped the enchanted voice, The uplifted wine spilled from the nerveless hand Of Rabbi Jochanan. "God pity us! Our enemies are upon us once again. Hie thee, Rebekah, to the inmost chamber, Far from their wanton eyes' polluting gaze, Their desecrating touch! Kiss me! Begone! Raschi, my guest, my son"—But no word more Uttered the reverend man. With one huge crash The strong doors split asunder, pouring in A stream of soldiers, ruffians, armed with ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... committed in worshipping a calf. And a cow is mentioned rather than a calf, because it was thus that the Lord was wont to designate the synagogue, according to Osee 4:16: "Israel hath gone astray like a wanton heifer": and this was, perhaps, because they worshipped heifers after the custom of Egypt, according to Osee 10:5: "(They) have worshipped the kine of Bethaven." And in detestation of the sin of idolatry it was sacrificed outside the camp; in fact, whenever ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... of a mask disdain'd, When Folly triumph'd, and a Nero reign'd, Petronius rose satiric, yet polite, And show'd the glaring monster full in sight; To public mirth exposed the imperial beast, And made his wanton court the common jest.'" ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... cares Lap me in soft Lydian airs; Married to immortal verse Such as the meeting soul may pierce, In notes with many a winding bout Of linked sweetness long drawn out; With wanton heed, and giddy cunning, The melting voice through mazes running; Untwisting all the chains that tie The hidden soul ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... that this garden, created in olden days to conceal wanton mysteries, had been transformed and become fitted to shelter chaste mysteries. There were no longer either arbors, or bowling greens, or tunnels, or grottos; there was a magnificent, dishevelled obscurity falling like a veil over all. Paphos had been made over into Eden. It is impossible to ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... with thick darkness which might cover any pilfering approach, nevertheless every sunrise found the doubloon where the sunset left it last. For it was set apart and sanctified to one awe-striking end; and however wanton in their sailor ways, one and all, the mariners revered it as the white whale's talisman. Sometimes they talked it over in the weary watch by night, wondering whose it was to be at last, and whether he would ever ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... showed himself the wisest and most sincere of counselors. When Essex rejected his advice, forfeited the Queen's confidence by the follies from which Bacon had earnestly striven to deter him, and finally plunged into wanton and reckless rebellion, Bacon, with whom loyalty to his sovereign had always been the supreme duty, accepted a retainer from the Crown, and assisted Coke in the prosecution. The crime of Essex was the greatest ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... know of law and justice convinces me that the wanton destruction of other people's property is a misdemeanour of evil example" ("Nineteenth Century," ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... unseen, unnoticed, unlamented. Come then, sad Thought, and let us meditate While meditate we may. * * * * * I hoped I should not leave The earth without a vestige; Fate decrees It shall be otherwise, and I submit. Henceforth, O world, no more of thy desires! No more of Hope! the wanton vagrant Hope; I abjure all. Now other cares engross me, And my tired soul, with emulative haste, Looks to its God, and prunes its ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... for granted that the author is a merry fellow, who troubles himself little about the cries, tears and tricks of the lady you call glory, fashion, or public favour, for he knows her to be a wanton who would put up with any violence. He knows that in France her war-cry is Mount Joy! A fine cry indeed, but one which certain writers have disfigured, and which signifies, "Joy it is not of the earth, it is there; ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... had decided that he could dispose of her as he would. Present, he recognized that she would have a voice, and probably a casting voice, in the disposal of herself. He might sever her from her friends in the Forest, but he would not thereby attach her to friends and kinsfolk in the north. His last wanton act of selfish unkindness, in refusing to let her see her old home in passing, was evidently producing its effect in silent ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... high, and therefore she was beneath him; but for this her loveliness would atone, and she had wit and learning enough to fill any place that he could give her. Also, great as was his wealth, his wanton, spendthrift way of life had brought him many debts, and she was the only child of one of the richest merchants in England, whose dower, doubtless, would be a fortune that many a royal princess might envy. Why not again? He would turn Inez and those others adrift—at any rate, ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... family, for this is the source of much of it. Because he did not burn witches and magicians it was presently said that he was himself a warlock, and that he practised black magic. It was not, perhaps, wanton calumny; it was said in good faith, for it was the only reason the times could think of that should account for his restraint. Because he tolerated Moors and Jews it was presently said by some that he was a Moor, by others ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... Du Sang was shooting him down. It was wanton. Du Sang stood in no need of the butchery; the escape could have been made without it. His victim had pulled an engine throttle too long to show the white feather, but he was dying by the time he had dragged a revolver from his pocket. Du Sang did the killing ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... enough to tell me the name of this hulking young blackguard who assaults quiet elderly gentlemen, taking constitutionals, in this most unprovoked and wanton fashion," said the higher mathematician in the ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... proud suppressed consciousness of a Goddess-like symmetry, locked up by 'fear and niceness, the handmaids of all women,' from the wonder and worship of mankind. I said so then, and I think so now: my tongue grew wanton in the praise of this passage, and I believe it bore the bell from its competitors. Wells then spoke of Lucius Apuleius and his Golden Ass, which contains the story of Cupid and Psyche, with other matter rich and rare, and went on to the romance of Heliodorus, Theagenes ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... irony of the position, a blackness of misery fell upon Katherine. And then, since she was of a strong, undaunted spirit, an immense anger possessed her, a revolt against nature which could work such wanton injury, and against God, who, being all-powerful, could sit by and permit it so to work. All the foundations of faith and reverence were, for the time being, shaken to the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... of my heart... methinks he is much more happy in a Wood, that at ease contemplates this universe, as his own, and in it, the Sun and Stars, the pleasing Meadows, shady Groves, green Banks, stately Trees, flowing Springs, and the wanton windings of a River, fit objects for quiet innocence, than he that with Fire and Sword disturbs the World, and measures his possessions by the wast that lys about ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... at a rugged cord of trunk, with his other hand pointing up the hill. From the base of the castle a broad blaze rushed, showing window and battlement, arch and tower, as in a flicker of the Northern lights. Then up went all the length of fabric, as a wanton child tosses his Noah's ark. Keep and buttress, tower and arch, mullioned window and battlement, in a fiery furnace leaped on high, like the outburst of a volcano. Then, with a roar that rocked the earth, they broke into a storm of ruin, sweeping the heavens with a flood of fire, and spreading ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... She wanted to shake Madame Foucault into self- respect and sagacity. Moral reprehension, though present in her mind, was only faint. Certainly she felt the immense gulf between the honest woman and the wanton, but she did not feel it as she would have expected to feel it. "What a fool you have been!" she thought; not: "What a sinner!" With her precocious cynicism, which was somewhat unsuited to the lovely northern youthfulness of that face, she said to herself that the whole situation ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... some light, wanton freak Of Nature's mind, She planted hair upon our back, And, in capricious mood, did ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... the time may ever come when the temples of justice in our land shall be desecrated by this unhallowed and contaminating influence, or by wanton disregard of the Constitution, or by a perfidious delinquency on the part of the ministers of the law. Here let passion and prejudice find no abiding place. Here let equal and exact justice be meted out to all men—to rich and to ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... natural, depend upon our original constitution, and are born with us; but a great part of those which are counted natural, would have been known to be from unheeded, though perhaps early, impressions, or wanton fancies at first, which would have been acknowledged the original of them, if they had been warily observed. A grown person surfeiting with honey no sooner hears the name of it, but his fancy immediately carries sickness and ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... Third still upon the throne—by insulting and cruel search of American vessels upon the high seas, was rendering inevitable the declaration of war by Congress,—a war of humiliation upon our part by the disgraceful surrender of Hull at Detroit and the wanton burning of our Capitol, but crowned with honor by the naval victories of Lawrence, Decatur, and Perry, and eventually terminated by the capture of the British army at New Orleans. As an object lesson of the marvels of the closing century, ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... donors that comfortable feeling of lending to the Lord—but it was no use at our end of the line. What to do with it was a problem. The lowest plantation darky would regard the gift as an insult, and to burn even the filthiest rags would give rise to stories of wanton waste. So we hit upon an expedient which had been successfully employed in other fields—that of putting worthless articles in nice, clean barrels, rolling them out on the doorstep, and forgetting to bring them in at night; and every ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... the Izreelites, infuriated at the wanton invasion of their country, and fully realising what would have been their own fate had the savages chanced to have been the victors, they relentlessly pursued the flying enemy during the whole of their retreat down the passes, and would doubtless ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... he was undiscovered, the Dahcotah raised his person again, and bending forward, he moved his dark visage above the face of the sleeper, in that sort of wanton and subtle manner with which the reptile is seen to play about its victim before it strikes. Satisfied at length, not only of the condition but of the character of the stranger, Mahtoree was in the act of withdrawing his head, when a slight movement of the sleeper announced the symptoms of reviving ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... her words before she foamed them from her, "if you weren't a daughter of mine, I'd—I'd say you were a wanton woman. You know in your heart, as your father always taught you—as you could read in the Bible now—if you ever do read your Bible—that the sins of the fathers, yes, and the mothers too, will fall on the children until the third and fourth generation; ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... inartificial manner in which they paint; for they do not, as I am most satisfactorily informed, even attempt an imitation of nature, but besmear themselves hastily, and at a venture, anxious only to lay on enough. Where therefore there is no wanton intention, nor a wish to deceive, I can discover no immorality. But in England, I am afraid, our painted ladies are not clearly entitled to the same apology. They even imitate nature with such exactness that the whole public is sometimes ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... a feather would have knocked me down. The coarse insult, the wanton injustice, had deprived me of the use of my limbs and of my speech. Then ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... remembered that tragic year, and now, after forty-four years, the memory came back, and they shuddered. They had seen the horrors of war and knew the meaning of it—its waste of life, its sacrifice of splendid young manhood, its wanton cruelties, its torture of women, its misery and destruction. France had been brought to her knees then and had suffered the last humiliations which may be inflicted upon a proud nation. But she had recovered miraculously, and gradually even her desire for revenge, the passionate hope that ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... however, that the countries adjacent to France have escaped the consequences of a like improvidence. The southern flanks of the Alps, and, in a less degree, the northern slope of these mountains and the whole chain of the Pyrenees, afford equally striking examples of the evils resulting from the wanton sacrifice of nature's safeguards. But I can afford space for few details, and as an illustration of the extent of these evils in Italy, I shall barely observe that it was calculated ten years ago that four-tenths ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... and felt naturally ashamed at what I had seen: some Frenchmen came up to me and requested me to report what I had witnessed to the Duke of Wellington; but, upon my telling them it would be of no avail, they one and all said the English ought to blush at having allies and friends capable of such wanton brutality. ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... you can be ty'd up to a Wife? Whilst here in London, and free, you have the whole World to range in, and like a wanton Heifer, eat of ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... what word? What have I said? what done? that thou should'st deem I could do this, this, this, that is so foul, My baffled tongue deserts me. Thou should'st know me, Thou hast set spies on me. What! have they told thee I am a wanton? I do love this man As fits a virgin's heart. Heaven sent such thoughts To be our solace. But to act a toy For his loose hours, or worse, to find him one Procured for mine, grateful for opportunities Contrived with decency, ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... comes out better than might be expected is Judas. The conception of his character is very fine and very human. Judas, as the treasurer of the little band, naturally felt indignant at the apparent wanton extravagance which led Mary Magdalene to pour ointment worth 300 pence upon the head of her master. There is real human nature and sound practical common sense in his reply to those who told him not to worry about the money, when he retorted, "Who is there to take care about it ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead
... how they spurned at restraint and fretted under it, how they would brook no wrong to themselves, and yet too often inflicted wrong on others; their feats of terrible prowess are interspersed with deeds of the foulest and most wanton aggression, the darkest treachery, the most revolting cruelty; and though we meet with plenty of the rough, strong, coarse virtues, we see but little of such qualities as mercy for the fallen, the weak, and the helpless, or pity for ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Monuments of Great Britain" many instances are given of the wanton and wholesale destruction of church and churchyard memorials, even late in the eighteenth century. In some cases the church officers, as already stated, gave public notice prior to removal of gravestones, ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... fruit; then it was served up on golden salvers and people sat down to it at a table. It is because pleasure was not vile or bestial. This woman holding a bouquet in her hand in this grand columnar saloon has not the vapid smile or the wanton and malicious air of an adventuress about to commit a bad action. The calm of evening enters the palace through noble architectural openings. Under the pale green of the curtains lies the figure on a white sheet, slightly ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... enterprise. In Homeric times it was dignified with a respect worthy of a nobler cause—a sentiment in which the freebooters of later centuries took arrogant pride. The pirate—cruel, vicious, debased to the lowest degree of turpitude—established a moral code governing his actions and circumscribing his wanton license, and it was in the rigorous observance of these "trade laws" and customs of their realm that this abortive sense of ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann
... and for that purpose they ask leave of the legislature to construct a rival line at the expense of a few millions! Now, keeping in mind what we have said as to capital, is not this, in the present state of things, most wanton prodigality? The same "few millions"—and we rather suspect they are fewer than is commonly supposed—would open up counties hitherto untouched by the railway system—would give us communication through the heart of the Highlands, through the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... ready for all sorts of undertakings and projects, his condition was attributed to a great flow of spirits. If, while talking very sensibly on many subjects and doing many proper things, he manifested a propensity to wanton mischief, why, then he was possessed with a devil and consigned to chains and straw,—unless he had committed some senseless act of crime, in which case he received from the law the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... class and often with similar expressions and features: a delicate nose, a bow-shaped, smiling mouth, intelligent eyes with no mysterious depths, dimpled cheeks, a string of pearls round the neck, a loosely-tied kerchief just revealing a swelling bosom, wanton curls dancing against a dark background in a frame of roses upheld by Cupids. And the quiver and the arrows and the flying ribbons and the turtle-doves: all this, joined to the letters, the maxims or the verses, ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... take place in men's hearts when acted upon by the furious and diverse forces of a crowded population. In your strange behavior this evening I fancy a story lurks. I read in your act something deeper than the wanton wastefulness of a spendthrift. I observe in your countenance the certain traces of consuming grief or despair. I repeat—I invite your confidence. I am not without some power to alleviate and advise. ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... the reign of Nero is immediately traceable to the accusation brought against the Christians by the emperor, that they had caused the terrible fire at Rome, which there seems little doubt was in reality the result of his own wanton wickedness, whilst that under Domitian appears to have been connected with the conversion of some of the members of his own family, his cousin Flavius Clemens being the ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... that the character of every part of the country, so far as slavery or freedom was concerned, was now settled, either by law or nature, and that he should resist the insertion of the Wilmot Proviso in regard to New Mexico, because it would be merely a wanton taunt and reproach to the South. He then spoke of the change of feeling and opinion both at the North and the South in regard to slavery, and passed next to the question of mutual grievances. He depicted at length the grievances of the South, including ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... Theophilus, consular of the province of Syria, who in a time of scarcity had been massacred by the people of Antioch, with the connivance, and almost at the instigation, of Gallus, was justly resented, not only as an act of wanton cruelty, but as a dangerous insult on the supreme majesty of Constantius. Two ministers of illustrious rank, Domitian the Oriental praefect, and Montius, quaestor of the palace, were empowered by ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... towards love of others, which if it be not spent upon some one or a few, doth naturally spread itself towards many, and maketh men become humane and charitable; as it is seen sometime in friars. Nuptial love maketh mankind; friendly love perfecteth it; but wanton love ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... sentences had been taken from the Jewish council by Roman decree. The high-priestly court, however, decided that Jesus was worthy of death, and so certified when they handed Him over to Pilate. In their excess of malignant hate, Israel's judges abandoned their Lord to the wanton will of the attendant varlets, who heaped upon Him every indignity their brutish instincts could suggest. They spurted their foul spittle into His face;[1266] and then, having blindfolded Him, amused themselves by smiting Him again and again, ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... grave consigned, of rival fame, A reverend Doctor and a wanton dame. Well for the world both did to rest retire, For each, while ...
— Notes & Queries,No. 31., Saturday, June 1, 1850 • Various
... she solved in such short space the Jesuitical problem how to display a bosom whiter than her soul by hiding it in gauze? How could she look so ethereal while her eyes drooped so murderously? Those almost wanton glances seemed to give promise of untold languorous delight, while by an ascetic's sigh of aspiration after a better life the mouth appeared to add that none of those promises would be fulfilled. Ingenuous ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... evil wrought by war is not the wanton destruction of life and property, sinful though it is; it is not even the lowered vitality of succeeding generations, though that is attended by appalling injury to the moral nature—the real iniquity of war is ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... hastened, as, in the natural course of things, she must ere long be released. The suddenness of her reputed illness, the absence of her daughter, and probably of her other children, at the time—all favoured the supposition of her imprisonment. Its origin—jealousy perhaps, or wanton ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... professions of mutual kindness, which then passed between Spain and England. Keene was directed to protest, that nothing more than mere discovery was intended, and that no settlement was to be established. The Spaniard readily replied, that, if this was a voyage of wanton curiosity, it might be gratified with less trouble, for he was willing to communicate whatever was known; that to go so far only to come back was no reasonable act; and it would be a slender sacrifice to peace and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... 'tis that, Give it to me; with care. It is most costly. Touch it with care. And now, my noble Lord - Nay, pardon, I have here a Lucca damask, The very web of silver and the roses So cunningly wrought that they lack perfume merely To cheat the wanton sense. Touch it, my Lord. Is it not soft as water, strong as steel? And then the roses! Are they not finely woven? I think the hillsides that best love the rose, At Bellosguardo or at Fiesole, Throw no such blossoms on the lap of spring, Or if they do their blossoms droop and die. Such is the ...
— A Florentine Tragedy—A Fragment • Oscar Wilde
... ladies; and on the second, their slaves behind them, but without any distinction of rank by their dress, all being in the state of nature, that is, in plain English, stark naked, without any beauty or defect concealed. Yet there was not the least wanton smile or immodest gesture amongst them. They walked and moved with the same majestic grace, which Milton describes our general mother with. There were many amongst them, as exactly proportioned as ever any goddess was drawn by the pencil of a Guido or Titian,—and ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... he may eat and himself live," answered Gilbert. "And the men who fought to-day fought for a cause. But I smote for the wanton love of smiting that is in all our blood, and I am ashamed. Bid the priest pray ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... high-bred feet for Wilhelm to pull off her silk stockings. He knelt and kissed the little feet, while she gazed down at him with burning misty eyes, and between the blood-red lips slightly parted in a wanton smile gleamed pearly teeth that looked as if they could bite with satisfaction into a quivering heart. It was the Sphinx and the poor trembling mouse in the dust before her ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... leaving the well-known scenes embalmed in Elia's praise, one might take the three or four single words in which Vindici (The Revenger's Tragedy), on as many several occasions, refers to the caresses of Spurio and the wanton Duchess. Each is of such amazing propriety, is so keenly discriminated, is so obviously the product of an imagination burning with rage and hate, that it strikes you like an affront: each is an incest taken in the fact and branded there and then. And this quality of verbal fitness, this power ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... the Sixteenth on the other. As to our share of that war, let reverence to the dead and respect to the living prevent us from reading lessons of this kind at their expense. I don't know how far the author may find himself at liberty to wanton on that subject; but, for my part, I entered into a coalition which, when I had no longer a duty relative to that business, made me think myself bound in honor not to call it up without necessity. But if he puts England out of the question, and reflects ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the fairies, has been commonly identified with pogge, the toad, which was believed to sit upon most of the unwholesome fungi; and the Champignon (or Paddock Stool) was said to owe its growth to "those wanton elves whose pastime is to make midnight mushrooms." One of the "toad stoo's" (the Clathrus cancellatus) is said to produce cancerous sores if handled too freely. It has an abominably disgusting odour, and is therefore named the "lattice stinkhorn." ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... march in the rain, and dumb beasts share their exposure? There is more at stake in this battle. In ancient times God commanded the bloody sacrifice of innumerable animals for the sake of moral and religious effect. Moral and religious effect is worth just as much now. Nothing can excuse wanton cruelty; but the soldier who spurs his horse against the enemy, and the sentinel who keeps his out in a winter storm, are not cruel. But many farmers about here will overwork and underfeed all the week, and on Sunday talk ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... the lea, And sparkles o'er the murmuring sea, The wanton wind sighs, Come! come! come! Oh, haste, Love, come with me, To the wild wood come with me— Come and gather luscious berries, Come with me; Clustering grapes and melting cherries Wait ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... bad! by Heaven, much worse! discours'd with him! Wert thou so wretched, so depriv'd of Sense, To hold Discourse with such an Animal? Damn it; the Sin is ne'er to be forgiven. —Hadst thou been wanton to that leud degree, By dark he might have been conducted to thee; Where silently he might have serv'd thy purpose, And thou hadst had some poor excuse for that: But bartering words with ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... virgin ham? To touch with unhallowed proboscis the immaculate lip of beauty, the unprotected scalp of old age, the savoury glories of the kitchen? To invade with the most reckless indifference, and the most wanton malice, the siesta of the alderman or the philosopher? To this we answer in the eloquent and emphatic language of the late Mr. Canning—No! Unamiable and unconciliating monsters! The wildest and most ferocious inhabitants of the desert may be reclaimed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 346, December 13, 1828 • Various
... moment, young ladies," said the head-mistress in that slightly vibrating and authoritative voice of hers. "I have a word or two to say to you all. Miss Good has just brought me a painful story of wanton and cruel mischief. There are fifty girls in this school, who, until lately, lived happily together. There is now one girl among the fifty whose object it is to sow seeds of discord and misery among her companions. Miss Good has told me of three different occasions ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... remarkably well. Albania now has no means of communicating with the outer world, save through those who wish her destruction—Greece, Italy and Jugoslavia. All three are working to overthrow the Albanian Government. At the moment of going to press the Serbs have made a wanton attack on North Albania from three points. But they will not kill the spirit of the Albanian people, who have resisted denationalization for a thousand years, and who beg only for the right to take their place in the Balkans and live in freedom and harmony with their neighbours, ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... covered and overflowed all England, few books were read in our tongue saving certain books of chivalry, as they said, for pastime and pleasure, which, as some say, were made in monasteries by idle monks or wanton canons: as one, for example, Morte Arthure, the whole pleasure of which book standeth in two special points, in open manslaughter and bold bawdry. This is good stuff for wise men to laugh at or honest men to take pleasure at. Yet I know when God's Bible was banished the Court, and Morte Arthure ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... subsequent addresses. Replying in the affirmative, Prince Max then promised to acquiesce in armistice terms that would leave the military situation unchanged, and further agreed to order a cessation of unrestricted submarine warfare and of the wanton destruction caused by the German armies in their retreat. Finally he declared in answer to Wilson's demand, that the request for an armistice and peace came from a government "which is free from any arbitrary and irresponsible influence, and is supported by the approval of an ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast; In the spring the wanton lapwing gets himself ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... and "annex" three hundred and thirty-three acres of ground in the heart of Boston or New York. Their newspapers have broken out into flaring head-lines an inch high, and are wild in their denunciations of what they term an outrage; an infamous, high-handed act, a wanton, deliberate theft of territory from a peaceful and friendly country. Really, these Chinese newspapers seem to be describing the business in much the same words, with much the same force and fury and resentment, as our American papers probably would employ in describing such ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... door, Tho' all, that knew him, know his face no more, His faithful dog shall tell his joy to each, With that mute eloquence which passes speech.— And see, the master but returns to die! Yet who shall bid the watchful servant fly? The blasts of heav'n, the drenching dews of earth, The wanton insults of unfeeling mirth, These, when to guard Misfortune's sacred grave, Will firm Fidelity exult to brave. Led by what chart, transports the timid dove The wreaths of conquest, or the vows of love? Say, thro' ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... the Truce, to defray expenses incurred by them for board and lodging of servants, forage of horses, and the like-which had accidentally stopped at Barneveld's door and was forthwith sent on to John Spronssen, superintendent of such affairs. Passing over this wanton bit of calumny with disgust, he solemnly asserted that he had never at any period of his life received one penny nor the value of one penny from the King of Spain, the Archdukes, Spinola, or any other person connected ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... in any way, interfered in political events. Malice itself had never whispered a circumstance to her dispraise. After this wanton assassination, it is scarcely to be expected that the innocent and candid looks and streaming azure eyes of that angelic infant, the Dauphin, though raised in humble supplication to his brutal assassins, with an eloquence which would have disarmed the savage tiger, could have ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... asked questions, was more than Pallas Athene herself could do, though she looked out forever from the windows of her Acropolis over the Blue AEgean. The sea is capricious, fickle, angry, fawning, violent, savage and wanton; it caresses and raves in a breath, and has its moods of silence, but Esther's huge playmate rambled on with its story, in the same steady voice, never shrill or angry, never silent or degraded by a sign of human failings, and yet so frank and sympathetic that she had no choice ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... men crowded upon the three whalers saw the fruits of their years of labor thus destroyed in an afternoon, and heaped curses upon the heads of the men who had thus robbed them. What wonder if, in the face of such apparently wanton destruction as this, they overlooked the niceties of the law of war, and called their captors pirates! Yet for the men of the "Shenandoah" it was no pleasant duty to thus cruise about the world, burning and destroying ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... your father out of this town and this state," he exclaimed. "They shall know here in San Mateo, and wherever you go if it's in my power to reach there, what sort of a pretending, double-faced, disreputable wanton——" ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... knights of the "revolver and bowie knife," greater than card sharper, fugitive bravo, or sly wanton, giant schemers appeared, who throw, yet, dark shadows over the records ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... Standish and his men saw the glittering eyes of the savages watching their approach; and before they could decide whether to advance or retreat, a shower of arrows was discharged, several of which took effect, though not mortally. This wanton aggression roused the spirit of the sturdy Englishmen, and regardless of the efforts which Captain Standish made to restrain them, a volley of musket balls instantly replied to the challenge of the red men; and the wild ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... Christian morality. All the people on Bora Bora were Christians. But he was a heathen, the only unbeliever on the island, a gross materialist who believed that when he died he was dead. He believed merely in fair play and square-dealing. Petty meanness, in his code, was almost as serious as wanton homicide, and I am sure that he respected a murderer more than a man given to small practices. Concerning me, personally, he objected to my doing anything that was hurtful to me. Gambling was all right. He was an ardent gambler himself. But late hours, he explained, were bad ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... Of southmost Abarim; in Hesebon And Horonaim, Seon's real, beyond The flowery dale of Sibma clad with vines, And Eleale to th' Asphaltic Pool: Peor his other name, when he enticed Israel in Sittim, on their march from Nile, To do him wanton rites, which cost them woe. Yet thence his lustful orgies he enlarged Even to that hill of scandal, by the grove Of Moloch homicide, lust hard by hate, Till good Josiah drove them thence to Hell. With these came they who, from the bordering flood Of old Euphrates to the brook that parts Egypt ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... domestic or social customs." Even if the Mormons had so construed it, the rebuke of their lack of patriotism would have aroused their resentment, and Bernhisel, in a letter to President Fillmore, characterized it as "a wanton insult." ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... any practical interest. Some are too distant to be perceived; the proximity of others passes unnoticed. It is far from requisite, in pursuing safety, that every strange animal be regarded as either a friend or an enemy. Wanton hostilities would waste ammunition and idle attachments would waste time. Yet it often happens that some of these beings, having something in common with creatures we are wont to notice, since we stand to them ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... I had settled that my health would never survive such a wanton infringement of all sanitary laws, Irene again sank on her knees and buried her face in her hands. Now was my time. I crept noiselessly back up the corridor until my hand was actually on the baize door. Then excitement got the better of prudence; and, tearing it open, I rushed wildly across ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... that you will obey my orders, nor wait upon me," replied Newton. "All I request is, that you will lay aside your wanton animosity, and exert yourself to save your life. For what you have already attempted against me, may God forgive you, as I do! For what you may hereafter attempt, you will find me prepared. Now follow me into ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... did make repair; But now the wild flowers round them only breathe: Yet ruined Splendour still is lingering there. And yonder towers the Prince's palace fair: There thou too, Vathek! England's wealthiest son,[bb][50] Once formed thy Paradise, as not aware When wanton Wealth her mightiest deeds hath done,[bc] Meek Peace voluptuous lures was ever ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... speaks of but in terms of veneration. No poet but Shakspeare, and scarcely Shakspeare, has set before the world so rich a gallery of female portraits. They range from the lowest to the highest,—from the wanton to the saint; they are drawn in firm lines, and limned in imperishable colors, ... each bearing the stamp of her own individuality, and each confessing a master's hand. These may be considered as representing different ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... good company at jeists. And wanton when he came to feists, He scorn'd the converse of great beasts, O'er a sheep's head; He laugh'd at stones about ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... comes the altar tomb (6) which now contains the remains of Bishop Beauchamp, who died in 1481. When this was removed from the aisle at the north end of the great transept it was empty, and showed no trace of its original dedication. During the wanton demolition of the Beauchamp chantry, where, "in marble tumbes," with his father and mother on either hand, the remains of Bishop Beauchamp had been unmolested for over three hundred years, his own tomb was "mislaid" ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... grey-bearded gentleman called Christmas, who was wont to be a very familiar ghest (sic). Whoever finds him again shall be rewarded with a benediction from the Pope, a hundred oaths from the Cavaliers, forty kisses from the wanton wenches, and be made pursuivant to the next Archbishop.' 'The poor,' he added, 'are sorry for it. They go to every door a-begging, as they were wont to do, 'Good Mistress, somewhat against this good time.' Instead of going to the alehouse to be drunke, they ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... tears. 'No, Owen, it has not left me; and I will be honest. I own now to you, without any disguise of words, what last night I did not own to myself, because I hardly knew of it. I love Edward Springrove with all my strength, and heart, and soul. You call me a wanton for it, don't you? I don't care; I have gone beyond caring for anything!' She looked stonily into his face and ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... naked hills lie wanton to the breeze, "The fields are nude, the groves unfrocked, "Bare are the shivering limbs of shameless trees, "What wonder is it that the ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... recounting all the infamies imputed by fable to the gods of antiquity. His adversaries answer him with commonplaces that signify nothing. The partisans of Bayle and his enemies have almost always fought without making contact. They all agree that Jupiter was an adulterer, Venus a wanton, Mercury a rogue. But, as I see it, that is not what needs consideration. One must distinguish between Ovid's Metamorphoses and the religion of the ancient Romans. It is quite certain that never among the Romans or even among the Greeks, was there ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... Thy snowy gown, Whose rustle made sweet music, part revealed Thy perfect form. Thy thoughtful eyes and brown, Beneath their drooping lashes half concealed, Swam in a sea of tears. Thy tresses played Wild wanton with the wind, and kissed each cheek, That flushed and paled, till one had well nigh said. Thy very blood did think and ...
— Fleurs de lys and other poems • Arthur Weir
... gallant captain! Farewell too my heart's content! Count not Spanish ladies wanton, Though to thee my love was bent: Joy and true prosperity goe still with thee! "The like fall ever to thy ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... Sir H. Nicolas that the lines in question are "a wanton interpolation," I think Mr. Hannah was perfectly justified in contenting himself with ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 179. Saturday, April 2, 1853. • Various
... now thinking of the loss of property involved, immense and serious as that is, but only of the wanton and wholesale destruction of the lives of non-combatants, men, women, and children engaged in pursuits which have always, even in the darkest periods of modem history, been deemed innocent and legitimate. Property can be paid for; the lives of peaceful and ...
— Why We are at War • Woodrow Wilson
... Cuban shore, but outside the 3-mile limit, was fired upon by a Spanish gunboat. Protest was promptly made by the United States against this act as not being justified by a state of war, nor permissible in respect of vessels on the usual paths of commerce, nor tolerable in view of the wanton peril occasioned to innocent life and property. The act was disavowed, with full expression of regret and assurance of nonrecurrence of such just cause of complaint, while the offending officer was relieved of his command. Military arrests of citizens of the United States in Cuba have occasioned ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... ever May, Spied a blossom, passing fair Playing in the wanton air; Through the velvet leaves the wind, All ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... spiritual being. Life, they said, is not all duty. Indeed, the true spiritual life is quite other, not harsh and constrained, but free and spontaneous—a wealth of feeling playing about a constantly shifting centre. Spirit is not consecutive and law-abiding, but capricious and wanton, seeking the beautiful in no orderly progression, but in a refined and versatile sensibility. If this be the nature of spirit, and if spirit be the nature of reality, then he is most wise who is most rich in sentiment. The Romanticists ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... idea captivated him. He was weary of destruction, having seen it in full operation and practised on the gigantic scale. Henceforth he would devote all the energy he possessed to construction—on however modest and private a one—to a building up, as personal protest against much lately witnessed wanton and chaotic pulling-down. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... even in the daytime. Drunken they roved through the city, with the greatest tumult and uproar; they broke into the houses of peaceful citizens to plunder and rob, and wherever anything was refused them, they committed the most wanton acts, laughing and singing over the tortures they inflicted. In vain had the burghers applied to the officers of these ungovernable outlaws and besought them to restrain the soldiery from outrages, to confine them to their quarters, ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... terrified and distressed woman from the comfortable abode which had formerly cost her and her deceased husband so many years of toil to erect and furnish, and having, to add to the wrong, either injured or destroyed the greater part of her little stock of goods, by the wanton or careless manner in which they had been removed, this brutal officer next proceeded to the barn, and by virtue of his copias for costs, seized the cow and oxen, the last remaining property of the wronged and ruined young man, which, after intrusting the ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... equal to that which rang through the world when the Germans shelled the cathedral at Rheims and destroyed Louvain. The Austrians replied that the attack was a serious military operation, and by no means the wanton outrage their enemies had ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... composed." Appius Claudius, who was naturally severe, and, by the hatred of the commons on the one hand, and praises of the senators on the other, was become quite infuriated, said, "That these riots proceeded not from distress, but from licentiousness. That the people were rather wanton than violent. That this terrible mischief took its rise from the right of appeal; since threats, not authority, was all that belonged to the consuls, while permission was given to appeal to those who ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... a mild tone, with a very startling representation of the criminal liability which Tag-rag had incurred by his wanton outrage upon Mr. Titmouse; his own guest, in violation of all the laws of hospitality. Tag-rag furiously alleged the imposition which had been practised on him by Titmouse; but seemed quite collapsed ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... their historians chiefly that the complaints of Iroquois cruelties have descended to us; but the same historians have not omitted to inform us that the first acquaintance of the Iroquois with triese colonists was through two most wanton and butcherly assaults which Champlain and his soldiers, in company with their Indian allies, made upon their unoffending neighbors. No milder epithets can justly describe these unprovoked invasions, in which the Iroquois bowmen, defending their homes, were shot ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... behind him. Including the girl, there were four prisoners: Vittoria was absent. The Englishman, as he was being propelled forward, addressed Angelo in French, asking him whether he could bear to see an unoffending foreigner treated with wanton violation of law. The soldiers bellowed at their captive, and Angelo sent a stupid shrug after him. They rounded a bend of the road. Angelo tightened the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... everyday sight in India, but this man was as the gods, and Leonie, beautiful, drugged Leonie, looked at him from the corner of her eyes as looks the wanton, and laughed. ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... saints—the sanctity of the temple known as the "meeting-house" was desecrated by proceedings more in keeping with the shrine of Venus—and the inspired writings themselves were used as the medium of amatory and wanton flirtation by the defendant in his ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... sparingly, and with judgment. It is to be used, not abused. I call that an abuse which squanders the precious and unreturning hours over long chronicles of depravity. The murders, the suicides, the executions, the divorces, the criminal trials, are each and all so like one another that it is only a wanton waste of time to read them. The morbid style in which social disorders of all kinds are written up in the sensational press, with staring headlines to attract attention, ought to warn off every healthy mind from their perusal. Every scandal ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... Cockneydom invasion threat? Then let the louns beware, Sir! Scotland, they'll find, is Scotland yet, And for hersel' can fare, Sir. The Thames shall run to join the Tweed, Criffel adorn Thames valley, 'Ere wanton wrath and vulgar greed On Scottish ground shall rally. ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various
... cases of prisoners surrendering and being instantly shot; nor did civilians complain of any wanton looting of the occupied premises, though at Jacobs's and Boland's full use was made of the stores; nor were there any of the Volunteers found drunk. Certainly they should have prevented looting, but it was a duty as much incumbent ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... every kind of such buffoonery in the church when men are gathered to hear and learn the Word of God. But the practice is common where many come together. Even where at first things of a serious nature are discussed, men soon pass to frivolous, wanton, foolish talk, resulting in a waste of time and the neglect of better things. For instance, on the festival of Easter, foolish, ridiculous stories have been introduced into the sermon to arouse ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... Adakar encountered unceasing perils from wanton boys, who sought the meadows to sport or gather flowers, and soon learned that his safety depended on perpetual watchfulness. If he lighted on a flower he felt his heart beating least some secret enemy was near, and the honeyed dew, sweet as it was, became embittered by the apprehension of being ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... love, with unconfined wings, Hovers within my gates, And my divine Althea brings To whisper at my grates; When I lie tangled in her hair, And fettered in her eye; The birds that wanton in the air Know ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... the ransom which would restore me to liberty. In the same field in which some light work was appointed me, I saw an old blind woman attached like a mule to a plough, and driven on by blows from a heavy stick. She was a Christian slave, whose eyes had been put out in wanton cruelty. I learned that she was an Italian by birth, a native of a small village in the environs of Porto Fiero, a seaport not far from Genoa. She had no relatives who could pay her ransom, and she had consequently been fastened to the plough like ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... lawyer of Salisbury, and Rev. Hezekiah J. Balch, a distinguished Presbyterian preacher, were the chief speakers. During the session of the convention, an express messenger arrived, bearing the news of the wanton and cruel shedding of blood at Lexington on the 19th of April, just one month proceeding. This intelligence served to increase the general patriotic ardor, and the assembly, as with one voice, cried out, "Let us be independent. Let us ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... my certie, I shall ghaist them—if they had their heads as muckle on their wark as on their daffing they wad play na sic pliskies—it's the wanton steed that scaurs at the windlestrae. Ghaists! wha e'er heard of ghaists in an ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... with increasing violence around the granary where Arthur lay tossing upon his hard bed. It seized the door and rattled it in wanton playfulness, as if to deceive the sick man with the hope that a friend's hand was on the latch, and then raced blustering and screaming down to the meadows below. The fanning mill and piles of grain bags made fantastic ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... God's justice is so rigorous toward the wanton, His mercy is never so great as toward those who need it most, who desire it and ask it. The most touching episodes in the Gospels are those in which Christ opened wide the arms of His charity to sinful but repentant creatures, and lifted ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... barbarians, who were advancing slowly, because they feared an attack in the unfavourable ground which they were traversing, arrived within fifteen miles from the station of Nice, which was the aim of their march, the emperor, with wanton impetuosity, resolved on attacking them instantly, because those who had been sent forward to reconnoitre (what led to such a mistake is unknown) affirmed that their entire body did ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... were for the most part honest men whose occupation in life was the first thought, and they were content to leave politics to Mr. Braden—that being his profession. To the most intelligent of these Mr. Crewe's garden-party was merely the wanton whim of a millionaire. It was an open secret to them that Job Braden for reasons of his own had chosen Mr. Crewe to represent them, and they were mildly amused at the efforts of Mrs. Pomfret and her assistants to secure votes ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... soft as vair, Round sylvan statues and the old Stone dial—Pompadours, that wear Their royalty of purple and gold With wanton air.... ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... touches. "His days were passed," says Tacitus, "in sleep, his nights in the duties or pleasures of life; where others toiled for fame he had lounged into it, and he had the reputation not, like most members of that profligate society, of a dissolute wanton, but of a trained master in luxury. A sort of careless ease, an entire absence of self-consciousness, added the charm of complete simplicity to all he said and did. Yet, as governor of Bithynia, and afterwards as consul, he showed himself ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... mill has gone to decay, and the sturdy men who fed it with the giant oaks of the forest are sleeping quietly in the village graveyard. The waters of the mill-pond, too, relieved from their confinement, leap gayly over the ruined dam, tossing for a moment in wanton glee their locks of snow-white foam, and then flowing on, half fearfully as it were, through the deep gorge overhung with the hemlock and the pine, where the shadows of twilight ever lie, and where the rocks frown gloomily down upon the stream below, ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... for miles around having long since been delivered up to brutal destruction, wanton waste, hideous massacre, and a goodly number of the churches of which the pious man was taking so much pains to record the history, were now but ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... harmless man who had always loved her, would be swept aside like anyone else who stood in the way. James would shoot him down as he had shot Conroy down; even, she fancied, he would shoot him down for the wanton amusement of destroying ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... of a cleft, sat he—majestical Pan! Ivy drooped wanton, kissed his head, moss cushioned his hoof; All the great God was good in the eyes grave-kindly—the curl Carved on the bearded cheek, amused at a mortal's awe As, under the human trunk, the goat-thighs grand I saw. "Halt, Pheidippides!"—halt I did, my brain of a whirl: 70 "Hither to me! Why ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... Sutlej to watch the progress of events; but the Sikhs have hitherto cautiously abstained from giving any pretext for our interference; and, as long as their disorders are confined within their own frontier, such an act would bear the aspect of wanton aggression. But though the appropriation of the Punjab, in whatever form effected, cannot be long delayed, "the pear" (to use a Napoleonic phrase) "is not yet ripe;" and as we intend to return to the subject at no distant period, we shall dismiss it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... and good-natured; but, used to live a scrambling, rakish course of life himself, he had not the least idea of the extent of Lord Glenvarloch's mental sufferings, and thought of his temporary concealment as if it were merely the trick of a wanton boy, who plays at hide-and-seek with his tutor. With the appearance of the place, too, he was familiar—but on his companion it produced ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... wanton hand had pulled out the nails; and this person was none other then Juan's second brother. "I am ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... the reports of the fall of York, Bradford, Leeds, Halifax, Hull, and Huddersfield, and the apparently wanton demolition of Norwich Cathedral. The sinking of the Dreadnought near the Nore was known in London within the hour. Among the half-equipped regulars who were hurried up from the southwest, I saw dozens ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... same nobility whom von Stein accused of injuring the nation and Immermann satirized and exposed in Muenchhausen. They decide to seek salvation in the primitive idealism of India, appointing Merlin their guide. Merlin, however, succumbs to the silly Niniana, the personification of wanton desire. She makes him tell her a fated word, after promising not to repeat it. She thoughtlessly repeats it. He now loses his superhuman power, i. e., the power of absolute spiritual integrity, and becomes subject to the limitations of earth, like a common ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... attention) this Manor of Baskerville was held by Hugo of that name, nor can it be gainsaid that he was a most wild, profane, and godless man. This, in truth, his neighbours might have pardoned, seeing that saints have never flourished in those parts, but there was in him a certain wanton and cruel humour which made his name a byword through the West. It chanced that this Hugo came to love (if, indeed, so dark a passion may be known under so bright a name) the daughter of a yeoman who held ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... Our wanton accidents take root, and grow To vaunt themselves God's laws, until our clothes, Our gems, and gaudy books, and cushioned litters Become ourselves, and we would fain forget There live who need ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... you go a-shopping, Without an escort loaded up with lead; Always maintain a desultory popping At anyone who wags a wanton head; If, as he passes, some low boy should whistle With nose in air and shameless chin out-thrust, Making your scandalised moustaches bristle— ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 14, 1914 • Various
... to his table, and then he had made up his mind to let the boy live. To kill him off, too, was more than his augmented stock of human nature could endure. After all, the lad's death had been purely accidental, wanton. It was just that he should live—with one of the author's inimitable suggestions of future greatness; but, at the end, the parting was almost as bitter as the other. Orth knew then how men feel when their sons go forth to encounter the world and ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... the gay licentious proud, Whom pleasure, power, and affluence surround; They, who their thoughtless hours in giddy mirth, And wanton, often cruel, riot waste; Ah! little think they, while they dance along, How many feel, this very moment, death And all the sad variety of pain. How many sink in the devouring flood, Or more devouring flame; how many bleed, By shameful variance betwixt man and ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... left perhaps as soon as they were finished. Though Saxony is one of the richest and most fertile provinces of Germany, and the vicinity of Leipzig has been remarkable for abundance, yet it cannot appear surprising, that, with such wanton waste, famine, the most dangerous foe to an army, should have at length found its way into all the French camps. Barns, stables, and lofts, were emptied; the fields were laid bare; and the inhabitants fled into the woods and the towns. Bread and other provisions had not ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... you may be right, good friend," quoth Rachel Harmer, as she sat beside her spinning wheel, and spoke to the accompaniment of its pleasant hum. "And yet, methinks, the vice and profligacy of this great city, and the lewdness and wanton wickedness of the Court, are enough to draw down upon us the judgments of Almighty God. The sin and the shame of it must be rising up ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... bring every word and look into captivity, to condemn them to silence and seeming indifference. The glowing heart bounds against these iron bands; it longs to cast off the yoke of silence, and to breathe unfettered as the wanton air. Princess Amelia had borne two days of this martyrdom, and her courage failed. She was resolved to grant him a private interview as soon as he dared ask for it. She wished to see this handsome face, now clouded ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... be valued, and the avoidance of wanton opposition honoured. All men are swayed by class feeling and few are intelligent. Hence some disobey their lords and fathers or maintain feuds with neighbouring villages. But when the high are harmonious ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... but was the victim of a compact, in which his disasters were part of the price paid by the powers of darkness for an immortal soul! He who pined in consumption supposed that his own waxen effigy was revolving and melting at the charmed fire; the changes of his sensations told him when wanton cruelty damped the flame, to waste it lingeringly, or roused it in the impatience of revenge: and when came those sharp and shooting pains, the hags were thrusting in their bodkins, and their laugh rang in his ears: ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... with ceaseless dip And pause, and rise and dip again, had borne The trackless trade winds. Tui Tua Kau, "King of the Reefs," had ventured over far From Tonga's shore. Caught by a wanton gale, His idle racing, lengthened in a whim To cheat his laughing mates, grew a wild flight. The frail canoe seemed, on the angry sea, A sweet rose petal blown across the night. Yet wisely now the winds had mind to crown Their joyous ...
— The Rose of Dawn - A Tale of the South Sea • Helen Hay
... great number of holydays now at this present time, with very small devotion, be solemnised and kept throughout this your Realm, upon the which many great, abominable, and execrable vices, idle and wanton sports, be used and exercised, which holydays, if it may stand with your Grace's pleasure, and specially such as fall in the harvest, might, by your Majesty, with the advice of your most honourable council, prelates, and ordinaries, be made fewer in number; and those that shall be hereafter ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... fishes, and wild animals. Go to, Ab Gwilym, with thy pseudo-amatory odes, to Morfydd, or this or that other lady, fair or ugly; little didst thou care for any of them, Dame Nature was thy love, however thou mayest seek to disguise the truth. Yes, yes, send thy love- message to Morfydd, the fair wanton. By whom dost thou send it, I would know? by the salmon forsooth, which haunts the rushing stream! the glorious salmon which bounds and gambols in the flashing water, and whose ways and circumstances thou so well describest—see, there he hurries upwards through the flashing ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... of conflicting emotions. At last he said with solemn emphasis, "My choice is made: I cast in my lot with my adopted country. I believe this invasion of a peaceful territory by an armed host is a wanton outrage and cannot have the smile of Heaven. I daresay I shall encounter obloquy and suspicion from both sides, but I must ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... circumstance find a place in your recollection, I venture to beg, that your Highness will treat such Greeks as may henceforth fall into your hands with humanity; more especially since the horrors of war are sufficiently great in themselves, without being aggravated by wanton cruelties ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... hammered out for himself an iron spade?" He condemned Scott's historical writings: "Strange," he said, "that a man should think he was writing the history of a nation while he is describing the amours of a wanton young woman and a sulky booby blown up with gunpowder." After having slighted biography in this characteristically Carlylese utterance, he straightway set to work, with splendid inconsistency, to base his philosophy of history mainly on the biographies ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... States which has finally and deliberately determined to begin war and to carry it on regardless of its most solemn engagements to the contrary. In other words, there could be no war as between the parties to the Protocol without a wilful, wanton and wicked disregard ...
— The Geneva Protocol • David Hunter Miller
... the same second. Zeke instinctively kicked at the brute in self-defense. His foot took the animal fairly in the jaw, and lifted it from the floor, just as the girl turned. She cried out in shrill anger at this rough stranger's wanton attack on her pet, for so she interpreted the event. She maintained her hold on the leash bravely, lest worse follow. But her strength was insufficient to restrain the creature of fighting breed. It lunged forward with such suddenness that both its mistress and its enemy were taken unawares. ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... soon to be overcast. England and France had long been at war; and, at the period of which we are treating, France had become the ruthless bandit of the land, and England the wanton pirate of the sea. Each desired the cooperation of the United States in the war—and each determined, in the event of our refusal to take part in the controversy in its favor, to cripple our commerce by all means within its reach. That commerce, fostered by our accidental position as neutrals ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... his Tibullus: "Verbal translations are always inelegant, because always destitute of beauty of idiom and language; for by their fidelity to an author's words, they become treacherous to his reputation; on the other hand, a too wanton departure from the letter often varies the sense and alters the manner. The translator chose the middle way, and meant neither to tread on the heels of Tibullus nor yet to lose sight of him."[430] The preface ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... joined by the blacksmith; and as soon as it was dark, Mr. Park was invited to see the sports of the inhabitants. A great crowd surrounded a dancing party; the dances, however, consisted more in wanton gestures, than in muscular exertion or graceful attitudes. The women vied with each other in displaying the ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... most criminal, too," said Lucien, "because the least necessary. The other creatures were but following out their instincts to procure food, whereas Basil's only motive was one of wanton destruction." ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid |
