"Soft-hearted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bedroom and the red-cotton comfort for one night at least, and Mrs. Bowse was a soft-hearted woman. If she'd heard the fellow sobbing behind the fence, she'd have been in a worse fix than he was. Women were kinder-hearted than men, anyhow. The way the fellow's voice sounded when he said, "Help me, help me, help me!" sounded as though he was in hell. "Made me feel as if I ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... with the title of Lord Kinedder. Erskine had been irrecoverably wounded by the circulation of a cruel and unfounded slander upon his moral character. It so preyed on his mind that its effect was, in Scott's words, to "torture to death one of the most soft-hearted and sensitive of God's creatures." On the very day of the King's arrival he died, after high fever and delirium had set in, and his funeral, which Scott attended, followed in due course. "I am not aware," says Lockhart, ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... Nicky Vro that he's troublin'," said Mrs. Benny. "Terrible soft-hearted he is; but you ought to know your father better by this time than to upset ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... not but grieve at suffering the whole burthen of this clamorous imposition to fall upon the soft-hearted Mr Arnott, whose inability to resist solicitation made him so unequal to sustaining its weight: but when Mrs Harrel was again able to go on with her account, she heard, to her infinite surprise, that all application ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... victimized by a clever practical joke, and while he chuckled over the recollection that it had been an expensive jest to the perpetrator, who had lost a valuable gold coin by the transaction, he had no fancy for exposing himself to any further ridicule on the occasion. So the bluff, imperious, soft-hearted captain issued an ukase commanding silence on the subject; and silence was observed, not in the least because Rosamond Duncombe or Susan Trott were afraid of him, but because Rosamond loved her father, and Susan Trott respected her master too much ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... palpable artifice, which yet the credulous Timon was too blind to see, would affect to admire and praise something that Timon possessed, a bargain that he had bought, or some late purchase, which was sure to draw from this yielding and soft-hearted lord a gift of the thing commended, for no service in the world done for it but the easy expence of a little cheap and obvious flattery. In this way Timon but the other day had given to one of these mean lords the bay ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... nothing daunted; "I shouldn't hesitate. And, at all events, I should be civil to him at all times. Why, the way you treated that wretched young man to-day at Clonbree Barracks was, I consider, shameful! And you call yourself, I dare say, soft-hearted. To look at you, one would think you couldn't be unkind if you tried; and yet the barbarity of your conduct to-day, to a person who literally worships the ground you walk ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... don't!' Arkady smiled affectionately. 'What a thing to apologise for!' he thought to himself, and his heart was filled with a feeling of condescending tenderness for his kind, soft-hearted father, mixed with a sense of secret superiority. 'Please, stop,' he repeated once more, instinctively revelling in a consciousness of his ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... might of a taste, Senator; nothing like your experience, though. You see, it was this way with me. I was captured by a pretty good sort of a fellow—a big, husky, soft-hearted chap who wouldn't hurt a flea. That's him over there," pointing to Senator Bull, "and he has held me prisoner ever since. He ran up against ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... the man whom many call a cynic, but whom I regard as one of the most soft-hearted of human beings, sweet as Charity itself, who went about the world dropping pearls, doing good, and never wilfully inflicting ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... to be said, at this point in my story, that I had never been what would be called an even-tempered man. Truth to tell, I was a spoiled boy. My mother was a saint, but she was a soft-hearted one. My father was a scholar. Like many another boy of decided individuality, I came up anyhow. Nobody managed me. At an early age my profession made it my duty to manage everybody else. I had a nervous temperament to start on; neither my training nor my occupation had poised it. I do not think ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... you; and may children always be yours! My daughter has been stolen from me. Alas! how much happier is your lot than mine'; and, though weeping is impossible for the gods, as she spoke, a bright drop, like a tear, fell into her bosom. Soft-hearted, the little girl and the old man weep together. And after that the good man said, 'Arise! despise not the shelter of my little home; so may the daughter whom you seek be restored to you.' 'Lead me,' answered the goddess; 'you have found out the secret of moving me;' and she ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... Various opinions were current among the Volscians about what had taken place. Some blamed him severely, while others approved, because they wished for peace. Others again, though they disliked what he had done, yet did not regard him as a traitor, but as a soft-hearted man who had yielded to overwhelming pressure. However, no one disobeyed him, but all followed him in his retreat, though more out of regard for his noble ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... but they said nothing more in opposition, knowing that it would be of no avail. Obliging, generous, and soft-hearted, the candidate, nevertheless, had a temper of steel when his mind was made up, and the others had learned not to oppose it. But all shunned the journey with him to Crow's Wing except Harley, Mr. Plummer, Mr. Herbert Heathcote—because there is no zeal like that ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... for three days. The discipline in the troop was growing ragged with startling rapidity, and Perkins felt it. The men, under the constant abuse heaped upon one whom they respected and pitied, were growing sullen and restive. Each of these soft-hearted troopers was gradually acquiring and nursing a personal grudge. They were forgetting their ideas of the fitness of things. They lost sight of everything except a clearly ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... When she heard the King coming back and breathing heavily, she stood up, and with huge tears on her red and crumpled face she looked out upon the fields as if she had never seen them before. An immense sob shook her. The King stamped his foot with rage, and then, because he was soft-hearted to them that he saw in sorrow, he put his hand upon ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... favourite sister in her maiden days was thus:—'Well, Mary, you do look uncommonly nice and pretty; but now'—most persuasively—'you'll be a good girl and not cry, will you?' and as Mary fluttered, tried to smile, and looked out through very moist eyes, he continued, 'I feel horribly soft-hearted to-day, and if you howl I must, you know; so mind, if I see you beginning, I shall come out with my father's old story of the spirit of the flood and the spirit of the fell, and that will stop ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... The soft-hearted Slowboy trailed off at this juncture, into such a deplorable howl, the more tremendous from its long suppression, that she must infallibly have wakened the baby and frightened him into something serious (probably convulsions) if her attention had not been forcibly ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... war he had come to a pass. He would not join himself to the King, because the King was an evil man, and he liked not evil; yet he loved not rebellion, and feared for his safety if the King had the upper hand; but it was still more that he had grown idle and soft-hearted, and feared the hard faring and brisk jesting of the camp. Yet even so the thought of the war lay heavy on his heart, and he wondered how men, whose lives were so short upon the goodly earth, should find it in their hearts to slay and be ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... sir, off and on, for nigh three hundred years. We're a good many Simlins'—and we're a good set, I'll say it! a pretty good set. Not thin-skinned, you know,—we can take a scratch without bein' killed—but we never would stand bein' trampled on. We're soft-hearted too; plenty o' what I may call tendrils, ready to take hold of anything; and when we take hold we do take hold. We cover a good deal of ground in the country, here and elsewhere—in the various branches. My mother was a Mush, and my grandmother was a Citron; ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... she never would reach, the Mouse and the Grouse thought best to put an end to her checkered career and boil her in a pot over a slow fire; because that's the way to make a fowl who had traveled and endured so much grow tender and soft-hearted and fit to eat, corn and all, popped or unpopped—Pass the pan, Alfaretta! while the pot boils and the Little Red Hen—Next!" continued Littlejohn Smith, with a readiness which was unexpected; while Molly B. took up the ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... Sherman's expedition, it was a blue day enough: how his mother and the girls did carry on! (Nabbes and Will supported the family, by the way; and Nabbes, inside of his slang, billiards, etc., was a good, soft-hearted fellow.) However, the country was looking up now. There were our victories,—and his own salary was raised. Will was snug down at Port Royal,—sent the girls home some confoundedly pretty jewelry; they were as busy as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... "Come, come," said soft-hearted Mr. Fabian; "none of that nonsense. Place yourself in my hands, to be guided by me and to work for my interests, and none of these evils shall happen to you. You shall live and die in wealth and luxury, my father's honored wife, the mistress ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... good report could be given by his masters and ushers of that thick-set, square-faced, black-eyed, soft-hearted little Irish boy. He was very idle. He was whipped deservedly a great number of times. Though he had very good parts of his own, he got other boys to do his lessons for him, and only took just as much trouble as should enable him to scuffle through ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... looked out of the window and waved her hand to him, as he was left behind. Chatty—Chatty who was so gentle, so little apt to take anything upon her, even to judge for herself, was it possible that on this point she was less soft-hearted than her mother? This thought went through him like an arrow as he stood and saw the carriages glide away in a long curving line. She was gone and he was left behind. She was gone, was it in resentment, was it in disdain? thinking of him in his true aspect as a false lover, believing him ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... natural way in the world when he asked Lucy to be his wife. A governess like Lucy had been quite foolish to expect that such a man as Greystock was in earnest. Of course she must give up her lover; and if there must be blame, she must blame herself for her folly! Nevertheless, Lady Fawn was so soft-hearted that she believed that the sorrow would crush Lucy, even if it did ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... she should be, young hussey. A fine thing for her. Married and respectable. If that soft-hearted, simple little husband of hers knew all I know! Strange that I should have dropped on to her and that first lover of hers down in that quiet place. Strange, wasn't it? Now I daresay they thought they were ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... taking it altogether it has been unfortunate. I am not a soft-hearted fellow, but I am driven to pity him. The worst of it is that, had not my father been induced at last to tell the truth, from most dishonest causes, he would not have been a bit better off than he is. I doubt whether he could have raised another couple of thousand on the day when he went. If ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... restore it? Did she not well remember how eloquently and precisely Mr. Kennedy had, the very last Sunday, expounded the passage, "Thou shalt not respect the person of the poor." Right was right, whatever soft-hearted people might say or think. Anyone might give what was his own, but who could be right in giving away what was another's? It was time she had done it without thinking; but she had known, or might have known, well enough that to whomsoever it might belong, it was not ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald
... nor Ben was willing to go to such extremes. Jake Bradley had had rough experiences, and he was no soft-hearted sentimentalist, but he had a natural repugnance to taking the life ...
— Ben's Nugget - A Boy's Search For Fortune • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... the Gironde. "The majority of the king's officers," says the contemporary historian, Thomas Basin, "advised him to punish by at least the destruction of their walls the Bordelese who had recalled the English to their city; but Charles, more merciful and more soft-hearted, refused." He confined himself to withdrawing from Bordeaux her municipal privileges, which, however, she soon partially recovered, and to imposing upon her a fine of a hundred thousand gold crowns, afterwards reduced to thirty ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... it and I went out into the kitchen to laugh it over with the cat. I'm a soft-hearted boob and I hate to take a sucker, at that. But accordin' to my dope, that dough of friend Alex's was the same as in ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... and she stood waiting at her kitchen door, hoping that Joseph would stop on his way out to tell her Jesus' decision, but he went away without speaking, and she began to think it unlikely that anything was decided. He is soft-hearted and without much will of his own, she said.... Jesus is going to stay with us, so we may all hang upon crosses yet, unless, indeed, Master comes to hear something in Jerusalem that will bring him round to my way of thinking. He believes, she continued, that Jesus is ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... that day had been completely performed and all were betaking themselves homeward, the conspirators began to blame one another with having turned soft-hearted at no fitting time, and they postponed the plot for a second attempt on the following day. And on the next day they acted in the same manner and departed from the sanctuary without doing anything, and entering the market place, they reviled each other openly, ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius
... her happiness really depends on it he will give his leave. It all depends on that. If I judge your father rightly, he's just as soft-hearted as other people. The man who holds out is not the man of the firmest opinion, but the man ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... of cotton. Perched on a high stool, at an isolated table in a state of chaos, he was absorbed in making a boat, entirely oblivious of the racking tooth-ache which had been his excuse for staying from school. As cool, saucy, hard-handed, and soft-hearted a little specimen of young America was Toady as you would care to see; a tyrant at home, a rebel at school, a sworn foe to law, order, and Aunt Kipp. This young person was regarded as a reprobate by all but his mother, sister, and sister's sweetheart, Van Bahr Lamb. Having been, through much ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... grown man, Rocco," he said, "instead of a soft-hearted boy, you would know that there is one form of murder that is always found out—the trunk murder. And I want to say this to you," he added with growing heat, "that if I hear one more word of rebellion from you this prisoner will be alive some hours after you have departed. ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... "I'm a soft-hearted fool or I'd ha'—" began Melissa, somewhat ominously, but checked herself after a quick glance at her mistress's face. "Try to go to sleep, Uncle Joe," she substituted. "I'll have some toast and tea for you when you wake up. You—you look as if you hadn't eat anything ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... as he to be killed off by a pack of jail vermin. Come to the wall as he told us to. Maybe we'll get a shot at those murderers before the day is done. Come along an' stop that blubberin'," and he grabbed the soft-hearted little darky by the arm and dragged him to ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... place, in which a few scattered remains of stout walls and big bastions looked vener- able and picturesque. A little boulevard winds round the town, planted with trees and garnished with more benches than I ever saw provided by a soft-hearted municipality. This precinct had a warm, lazy, dusty, southern look, as if the people sat out-of-doors a great deal, and wandered about in the stillness of summer nights. The figure of the elder town, at these hours, must be ghostly ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... restoration of the erring mother?" General Darrington had struck his cane violently on the floor, and exclaimed: "Don't talk such infernal nonsense! Did you ever hear of my pardoning a wrong against my family name and honor? Does any man live, idiotic enough to consider me so soft-hearted? No, no. On the contrary, I was harsh to the girl; so harsh that she turned upon me, savage as a strong cub defending a crippled helpless dam. They know now that the last card has been played, and the game ended; for I ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... the last words which the god had spoken on the subject, and was not therefore called upon to be specially soft-hearted. "I never saw a poor devil look so sick in my life," Aeolus ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... These big, soft-hearted trappers were all crying now like women. No other thought occurred to them than that these ghastly remains were Bob's, for the toboggan and things ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... he turned on his heel and left her in his own room. He only turned once to look in at the door again. "If you're in any trouble, I'm real soft-hearted, Eliza; I'll be real good to you, though ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... the sweet order, and amid the decorous virtues of the roof of Besso, Fakredeen, who, from his susceptibility, took the colour of his companions, even when he thought they were his tools, had figured for ten years as a soft-hearted and somewhat timid child, dependent on kind words, and returning kindness with ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... course of being worked out. This is not the first time that I have had the privilege and pleasure of addressing a Manchester audience. I have often enough, before now, thrown myself with entire confidence upon the hard-headed intelligence and the very soft-hearted kindness of Manchester people, when I have had a difficult and complicated scientific argument to put before them. If, after the considerations which I have put before you—and which, pray be it understood, I by no means claim particularly for myself, for ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... unfolding it and reading out, with his back to the boy, "'Three months after date I promise to pay George Cripps thirty-five pounds, value received. Signed, E. Loman.' That's about it, eh, young gentleman? Well, blessed if I ain't a soft-hearted chap after the doing you've given me over this here business. Look here; ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... night. Both girls were excited by memories of the day that was past, and by thoughts of the day that was coming. Ida was brooding a little upon her disappointment in Brian Wendover. He had very pleasant manners, he seemed soft-hearted and sympathetic, he was very good-looking—but he was not the Brian of her dreams. That ideal personage had never existed outside her imagination. It was a shock to her girlish fancy. There was a sense ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... moonlight, when toward twelve o'clock Graham came forth from his last visit for the night, and she lifted up her head and looked him dumbly in the face,—dumbly, yet imploring a word of hope or comfort,—and it was more than the soft-hearted Scot could bear. "Major," said he, as he gently laid a big hand upon the black and tangled wealth of hair, "that lad in yonder would have been beyond the ken of civilization days ago if it hadn't been for this little savage. I'm thinking ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... the ladies of the palace, turned her head a little, but even this feminine joy did not lessen her usual graciousness; she always succeeded in maintaining her rank, even when most deferential to those men and women who lent it a new lustre by their brilliant names." She was very kind, extremely soft-hearted, and always overwhelming her companions with attentions and regards. Mademoiselle Avrillon, her reader, says: "I do not believe that there ever lived a woman with a better character, or with a less changeable disposition." She never dared to utter a word of blame or reproach. ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... Parliament that they may yet have the whipping, fleecing, and flaying of us in their diabolical courts, to tear the flesh from our bones, and into our wide wounds, instead of balm, to pour in the oil of tartar, vitriol, and mercury. Surely a right, reasonable, innocent, and soft-hearted petition! O the relenting bowels of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... it," said soft-hearted Mr. Garland, moved by the boy's distress, "if you really mean to do better—Why, look out, child, you'd have fallen over that stump if I hadn't pulled you back. Where in the world ...
— The Twin Cousins • Sophie May
... but her brown eyes were dim with tears as she ended her little appeal. Dr. Carr, who was soft-hearted where women were concerned, was touched. Perhaps his face showed it, for Mrs. Ashe added in a more ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... for her own forgiveness, with the belief that she and Faith had talked it over, and only thus could her full friendship be secured. She would lead him on to fuller confession before committing herself. It would serve him rightly for his insolence! Because her sister was soft-hearted was no reason she should be, and when he offended one he must learn that ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... contour, the clear olive complexion. She had also lustrous brown eyes; but these were full of tears. She only turned them on him for a moment; then she resumed her apparently interrupted occupation of sobbing. Aristide was a soft-hearted man. ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... suppose thy meaning is that we shall see the mountains from hence?" "Yea," said David; "so hold up thine heart when that sight first cometh before thine eyes. As for us, we are used to the sight, and that from a place much nigher to the mountains: yet they who are soft-hearted amongst us are overcome at whiles, when there is storm and tempest, and ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... is he doing Society absolutely no damned good while he's locked up for fifty years, he's also eating up his share of the standard of living. Then to top this off, so long as this nut is alive, there is the danger that some soft-hearted fathead will succeed in getting him turned loose ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... view of "making arrangements" about this bill; and had he seen John Tozer, John would have been compelled to accord to him some little extension of time. Both Tom and John knew this; and, therefore, John—the soft-hearted one—kept out of the way. There was no danger that Tom would be weak; and, after some half-hour of parley, he was again left by Mr. Sowerby, without having evinced any symptom ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... Gertrude was a soft-hearted woman. She answered her son that if there was nothing wrong about this business, it was certainly a good thing to help Jost, who had received nothing from his father, not even tools for his trade, and who had seemed to ...
— Veronica And Other Friends - Two Stories For Children • Johanna (Heusser) Spyri
... pleased with your letter at all. I am quite disconsoled about it. It makes me feel like wet cold feet that has no hopes of ever getting dry and cosy again. When I seen yourself last Friday night I was not feared for anything, for you was that kind and soft-hearted, and you laughed that gentle and pretty, and your words did sound sweet even when they was chaffing-like. But now I am fearing something has gone wrong. Are you offended? I did not mean to do so. Have ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... reverend gentleman's custom in the afternoon, and such also in the morning. I do not know whether the smoking of four or five cigars daily by the parson of a parish may now-a-day be considered as a vice in him, but if so, it was the only vice with which Mr. Clavering could be charged. He was a kind, soft-hearted, gracious man, tender to his wife, whom he ever regarded as the angel of his house, indulgent to his daughters, whom he idolized, ever patient with his parishioners, and awake—though not widely awake—to the responsibilities of his calling. The world had ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... soft-hearted old thing he is, he holds out his hands, and he says, 'God bless you, my boy, it was for your ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit
... not at their worst. Marion Daintree was a soft-hearted, gentle-mannered little woman. It cannot be said that she regarded the permanent instalment of her mother-in-law in her home with pleasurable feelings; she would have been more than human had she done so. But then she was unfeignedly fond of her husband, and ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... died believing they were fighting for men who would keep their word. The war was to go on till victory was won.. They died happily, believing that those who had spoken for England would keep their word. You're very soft-hearted in that article, sir, about the living. Did you think, when you sat down to write it, about the dead?—about that wilderness of white crosses out in France? You're proposing in cold blood to let those devils stay on ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... "It's hard luck." But I saw he was thinking only of himself and his narrow escape from having to give up his big house and all the rest of it; that, soft-hearted and generous though he was, to those poor chaps and their wives and children he wasn't giving ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... returned Bill. "Your soft-hearted folk at home would say, 'Oh, horrible! impossible!' to that, and then go away as comfortable and unconcerned as if their sayin' 'Horrible! impossible!' had made it a lie. But I tell you, Ralph, it's a fact. I've seed it with my own eyes the last time I was here, an' mayhap ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... kids would crowd around the coaches crying "Bully-beef, biscuits, cigarettes for my papa, prisoner in Germany." It was all new to us, and we gave them all we could spare. Later on we got wise to the kids, and we found that if we were soft-hearted or soft-headed, they would say the whole family were prisoners. One thing that surprised and shocked us was to hear the little kids swearing; they would use the most frightful oaths, and the funny part of it was that ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... if I had my way, some of those whose stomachs are too nice for this work, and who profess to serve the King with their lips while they intercede for his worst enemies, should themselves have cause to remember Taunton assizes. Oh, most ungrateful rebels! Have ye not heard how your most soft-hearted and compassionate monarch, the best of men—put it down in the record, clerk—on the intercession of that great and charitable statesman, Lord Sunderland—mark it down, clerk—hath had pity on ye? Hath it not melted ye? Hath it not made ye loathe yourselves? ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sky, and, chanting clear and earnestly, seemed to be imploring the blessing of Heaven on us now departing from them over the wild seas. Kit took off his cap; and we all followed his example, as if impelled to it. It was really an affecting incident. Our hardy captain is not a soft-hearted man; but I saw him wipe a tear from his eye as the chant ceased. I have not sought to color the picture. There was a wonderful pathos about it. We had not heard the song before; and I am inclined to believe it extempore,—one of those ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... I have mixed myself up in their affairs. And I ain't overcheerful, I can tell you. Yes, yes, I sat up the whole blessed night—it was pretty cold, too, about four o'clock. That's a fact. Well, I have always been a fool—I'm too soft-hearted." ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... single day he could not change into a fire-eater and go merrily upon the man-hunt. What an utterly mad idea it was, too, to try to cast all people into the same mould! No one dreamed of making a soft-hearted philanthropist of Weixler; and he was supposed so lightly to turn straight into a blood-thirsty militarist. He was no longer twenty, like Weixler, and these sad, silent men who had been so cruelly uprooted from their lives were each of them far more to him than a mere rifle ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... presented of the Reverend Septimus, feinting and dodging with the utmost artfulness, and hitting out from the shoulder with the utmost straightness, while his radiant features teemed with innocence, and soft-hearted benevolence beamed from his ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... upon their jibes and offered Andy a cigarette he had just rolled; not that Andy was too sick to roll his own, but because Pink was notably soft-hearted toward a sick man and was prone to ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... face of the rock, and hung over us in a material but symbolic cloud. It was naturally cold. The man began with a plea for some "clodin." We began with a plea for some children. How many would he swap for a start in clothing and "tings for his winter"? He picked out and gave us Jimmie. The soft-hearted mate, on whose cheeks the tears were literally standing, grabbed Jimmie—as the latter did his share of the gull. But we were not satisfied. We had to have Willie. It was only when a breaking of diplomatic relations altogether was threatened ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... "You are very soft-hearted, all of a sudden, senorita," he said, with a fairly well-defined sneer, when he could bear no more. "You won't enjoy the bull-fighting, then, to-morrow—for all you have been looking forward to it so ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... the right in all things over her destiny; but so young—so soft-hearted, if she should love one of her ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... amorous style, but the main subject of the letter was that he would have nothing to do with that actress for the future; that he had discarded all his love for her, and transferred it to his correspondent,) when she, I say, wept plentifully, this soft-hearted man could bear it no longer; he uncovered his head and threw himself on her neck. Oh the worthless man! (for what else can I call him? there is no more suitable expression for me to use,) was it for this that you disturbed the city by nocturnal alarms, ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... my fingers in pulling your goose out of the fire, you must get into a passion. You have no need to smile, sir. I suppose it were finer to say chestnuts, but a goose she is, and always will be, and I love her like a child. Your soft-hearted Excellency was to see me last week, and saying that he had no children, I, that have no right to any, said I was as ill off, and we looked at each other and said nothing for a little, because God had given to neither the completeness ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... than the burning presentation of them in the morning's sermon. She was spared questions herself, as she was a stranger; and sat to hear girls of her own age and older men and women who looked as soft-hearted as herself, utter definitions of the method of salvation and the being and character of God that compelled the assent of her intellect, while they jarred with her spiritual experience as fiercely as brazen trumpets ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... had not often met men in the course of his sordid work with whom he really wanted to shake hands. But somehow this great, soft-hearted, simple giant made him feel as he had never felt before. He abruptly thrust out a hand, forgetful of the previous handshakes he had endured, and, in a moment, it was seized in a ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... soothed her, "it's all for the best. Don't cross your bridges before you come to them. Wait till I tell you everything. That fox, Daney, had the common sense to call the girl on the telephone and explain the situation; he induced her to come out here and tease that soft-hearted moonstruck son of ours back to life. And when Donald's strong enough to stand alone—by Jupiter, that's exactly how he's going to stand!—We're not the slightest bit compromised, my dears. The McKaye family is absolutely in the clear. The girl has done this solely ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... with his wife to Nottingham, Anna ran about happily enough, or unconcerned, for a long time. Then, as afternoon came on, there was only one cry—"I want my mother, I want my mother——" and a bitter, pathetic sobbing that soon had the soft-hearted Tilly sobbing too. The child's anguish was that her mother was ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... The soft-hearted shore-going critics of conduct themselves would not dare, The trivial cocksure belittlers of dangers they have not to share, Claim much—oh so much, from rough manhood,—unflinching cool daring in fray, ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, Feb. 13, 1892 • Various
... sure. Maybe I was soft-hearted. We don't always know why we do things in business. There's a great deal more in the weather where big money is moving than you might think. For instance, there was never a great revolution in winter. But as for making people lose their ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... probable that we, who held back our admirable and highly disciplined Sikhs and Ghoorkas, would break our self-imposed restrictions in order to enrol the inferior but more savage races of Africa. Yet no charge has been more often repeated and has caused more piteous protests among the soft-hearted and ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Mrs. Merrit, as she came into the study one afternoon toward dusk with a step-ladder. "You'd much better leave Peter alone. Starve him into surrender, Mrs. Merrit, and don't leave bananas and seed about for him to peck at when he fancies he's hungry. You're far too soft-hearted." ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... any of the previous occurrences in the life of Pius Aeneas, and the poor princess had reason to rue the day when she listened to that glib and dangerous orator. Harry Warrington had not pious Aeneas's power of speech, and his elderly aunt, we may presume, was by no means so soft-hearted as the sentimental Dido; but yet the lad's narrative was touching, as he delivered it with his artless eloquence and cordial voice; and more than once, in the course of his story, Madam Bernstein found herself moved to a softness to which she had very ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... when, as a blooming school-girl, the latter used to trip by the Cranston homestead, and had striven to aid her through the failing fortunes of the months preceding Mart's last strike; it was her voluble account of the state of affairs that prompted this soft-hearted squadron commander to take Mart by the hand and bid him tell his troubles. Mart broke down. He'd been a fool and a dupe, he knew and realized it, but Elmendorf had so preached about his higher destiny and the absolute certainty ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... nurses, trying one change after another. It was duller than ever at the ranch. We sat down three at table in a dining-room forty feet long, Aunt Isabel Dwight, Fraeulein Henschel, and myself. Fraeulein was the resident governess. She was a great, soft-hearted, injudicious creature, a mass of German interjections, but she had the grand style on the piano. There had been weeks of such weather as we are having now. Exercise was impossible till after sundown. I had dreamed ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... we know, had always been soft-hearted towards women, so now he was embarrassed. In the handling of these cattle he was carrying out the orders of his superiors; he had no power to grant favors to any one, and he told Miriam this again and again. But she would not listen to him. "Please, Peter, please! For ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... such a darling grandmother to my little ones? There, now, I did not mean to make you look sorrowful. I will come and see you every year, if it be only for an hour's talk at the grating; and my Lady, who is soft-hearted as she is rough-tongued, will never ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... antitheses of Lady Mary to obscure and blur the man as they might have found him in his work. Booth and Jones have been taken for definite and complete reflections of the author of their being: the parts for the whole, that is—a light-minded captain of foot and a hot-headed and soft-hearted young man about town for adequate presentments of the artist of a new departure and the writer of three or four books of singular solidity and finish. Whichever way you turn, you are confronted with appearances each more distorted and more dubious than ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... in a disagreeable day or two after his call upon the judge. He was dissatisfied with the ending of their interview. He felt that he had been foolishly soft-hearted in promising to call at the Fair Harbor, or, to consider for another hour the preposterous offer of management of that institution. He must say no in the end. How much better to have said it then and there. Fifteen hundred a year looked like ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... meant for hard words, nor their delicate features for the frowns of anger. When they lose their temper they forget themselves; often enough they have just cause of complaint; but when they scold they always put themselves in the wrong. We should each adopt the tone which befits our sex; a soft-hearted husband may make an overbearing wife, but a man, unless he is a perfect monster, will sooner or later yield to his wife's gentleness, and the ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... ever been good lord to all, Sir,' said Kennedy, affectionately, for he really loved and pitied the soft-hearted Duke. ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... whose tangled rigging looked like monstrous cobwebs half swept down, Captain Cuttle appeared at the coach-window, and invited Florence and Miss Nipper to accompany him on board; observing that Bunsby was to the last degree soft-hearted in respect of ladies, and that nothing would so much tend to bring his expansive intellect into a state of harmony as their presentation to the ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... come over by some good-for-nothing chap (for she's at the time o' life when they say women pray for husbands—"any, good Lord, any") and has let him into our house, and the chap has made off with your brooch, and m'appen many another thing beside. It's only saying that Norah is soft-hearted and doesn't stick at a ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... has got a sharp tongue in his head. He's an odd compound, just like a great big roasted potato, all crusty and crabbed without, but mealy and soft-hearted within. He takes me to be half a rogue and all the rest of me a scoundrel—Och, by St. Patrick! I'll bother his ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... soft-hearted folk ain't goin' to let ye chaw the gentleman up to-day, but, if ever I set eyes on either of the scum agin, I'll give the varmints what's comin' to 'em, and I'll do it sudden-like, and I'll do it so it stays done, and there ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... the truth, Rachel had a thorough good cry before she went to bed that night. Though there was something hard, fixed, imperious, almost manlike about her manner, still she was as soft-hearted as any other girl. We may best describe her by saying that she was an American and an actress. It was impossible to doubt her. No one who had once known her could believe her to be other than she had declared herself. ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... lateness of the hour Margaret was too soft-hearted to rouse Jean, who had lain down in her clothes, trembling for her father. She went instead into Gavin's room to look admiringly at him as he slept. Often Gavin woke to find that his mother had slipped in to save him the enormous trouble of opening a drawer for a clean collar, or of pouring ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... 'You're too soft-hearted, that's where it is, boy. You want your mettle dipping in cold water, to temper it. ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... whom she hurts," runs another passage in this letter; "like an unloved child at bay she means, to smash and kill. The pity of it! Never was there a more generous, soft-hearted, kindly people. Germany, the land of the Christmas tree and folk songs, and hearthsides and gay childish laughter, turned into a relentless fighting machine! But each individual is a cog firmly fixed in the machine, which will go ever on ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... there sounded the silver notes of early youth. The slightest pleasurable sensation would bring a fascinating smile to her lips, and add a deeper light, a kind of secret tenderness, to her already lustrous eyes. Kind and soft-hearted, thoroughly penetrated by a feeling of duty, and a fear of injuring any one in any way, she was attached to all whom she knew, but to no one person in particular. To God alone did she consecrate her love—loving Him with a timid, ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... counseled him to pitch himself into the water sooner than plunge into literature. After heart-searching hesitations, after a profound scrutiny of the various countenances, more or less encouraging, soft-hearted, churlish, cheerful, or melancholy, to be seen through the window panes, or in the doorways of the booksellers' establishments, he espied a house where the shopmen were busy packing books at a great rate. Goods were being despatched. The ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... sublimations, the social and creative instincts. A great deal of evidence is in our possession concerning the disturbances of emotion accompanying disturbances of this gland, and controllable by its control. It might be said to energize deeply the tender emotions, and instead of saying soft-hearted we should say much-pituitarized. For all the basic sentiments (as opposed to the intellectualized self-protective sentimentalism), tender-heartedness, sympathy and suggestibility are interlocked ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... unjust and painful accusation Dora threw herself and the doll upon their faces, and wept bitterly. The eyes of the soft-hearted Nicholas began to fill with tears, and he squatted down before her, looking most dismal. He had a fellow-feeling for her attachment to an old toy, and yet Robin's will ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... reverse side is fanaticism; and that way madness lies. It is the duty of every sane man and woman to consider the cold logic of every question affecting the welfare of man and nature. Fanaticism when carried to extremes can become a misdemeanor or a crime. The soft-hearted fanaticism of humanics that saves a brutal murderer, or would-be murderer like Berkman, from the gallows or the chair, and eventually turns him loose to commit more crimes against innocent people, is not only wrong, and wicked, but in aggravated ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... am, and always shall be awkward in my ways toward women. A woman's tears always unman me, and make me soft-hearted. So I knew not what to say to her, and for the life of me I could not be angry. In the providence of God all men love all women, only there must be one especially to stir the depths of each man's heart. And, verily, had not mine heart been taken captive, I should ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... and Arloeux. Brought up in the midst of tilts and tournaments, of banquets and feasting, and all the lavish display of the rich Bavarian court, she was, as we learn from her chroniclers, the leader of adoring knights and vassals, the idol of her parents, the ruler of her soft-hearted boy husband, an expert falconer, a daring horsewoman, and a fearless descendant of those woman warriors of her race, Margaret the Empress, and Philippa the Queen, and of a house that traced its descent through the warlike Hohenstaufens back to ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... anaemic, scrofulous little man, with strangely flaxen mutton-chop whiskers of which he was very proud. He was a clerk and had almost always something wrong with his eyes. He was rather soft-hearted, but self-confident and sometimes extremely conceited in speech, which had an absurd effect, incongruous with his little figure. He was one of the lodgers most respected by Amalia Ivanovna, for he did not get drunk and paid regularly for his lodgings. Andrey Semyonovitch really ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... our modern consciousness, and may be based on all previous social experiments. This matter is of great importance to us, on account of our large number of paupers. The weaker characters among us, discouraged by external pressure, spoilt by the soft-hearted charity of our rich men, easily sink until they ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... groaned. "Griswold, it would make my father turn over in his coffin if he could know that we've come to that! But I guess you're right. Everybody says I'm too soft-hearted to be a master of men. Well, I must be getting home. To-morrow morning, at the plant? All ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... Lady, I beg your Pardon. How soft-hearted she is! I am in love; I find already a kind of tickling of I know not what, run ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... he is about everything. Dear, sensible, odd, saintly, emotional, strong-headed, soft-hearted little ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... would have to have to-day. Always a light drinker, it was one of his rules never to touch a drop of liquor during this first stage of the mental working out of any new problem which presented itself. But soft-hearted as he was, he repented of his irritation a moment later and soothed the waiter's wounded feelings by a rich tip. The boy ran out to open the cab door for his strange customer and looked after him, wondering whether the man was a cranky millionaire or merely ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... avert his fate, for he was tabu to the gods. Though no excuse could be offered for the slaying of their own clansman except the direful hold of religion, which in Tahiti, as in Europe not so long ago, put Protestant and Catholic on the pyre in the name of Christ, yet so soft-hearted were these people that they could not disturb the peace of mind of the offering, and until the moment when he was struck down from behind he was as unconcerned as any one. They never tortured as the English and French tortured Joan of Arc, and as the police of ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... was no soft-hearted Saxon maiden, any more than she was a cold-blooded, cut-throat American girl, calculating her romance by the yard, booking her flirtations by double-entry and marrying at compound interest, with the head of a railway president and ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... in Scotland Yard is its demoralizing effect on the finer sentiments," he said sadly. "Men lose all human instincts when they become detectives or newspaper reporters. Now the ordinary policeman ofttimes remains quite soft-hearted. For instance, Police Constable Farrow, though preening himself on being the pivot on which this case revolves, was much affected by Hilton Fenley's first heart-broken words to him. 'Poor young gentleman,' said Farrow, when we were discussing the affair this afternoon, ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... mother's, the existence of our family, hang upon your conduct. Yet, yet there is time to prevent this desolation. I am controlling my emotions; I wish you to save us, you, all! Throw yourself at your cousin's feet. She is soft-hearted; she may ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli |
