"Wantonly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is the same with us as it is with men," replied the policeman. "There are good ones and bad ones among us, and the bad ones have to be watched. Men destroy us wantonly; other animals and the sly serpents prey upon us and our eggs for food; but these are open enemies, and we know how we may best avoid them. Our most dangerous foes are those bandits of our own race who, instead of protecting their brethren, ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum
... the other two. He could not guess, of course, that the two jaloks were hunting with me; but he doubtless thought that after they had finished the lidi they would make after the human prey—the beasts are notorious killers, often slaying wantonly. ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... themselves when they felt thirsty. Amos Lawrence fell into the habit to which all were given, and for some time went along with the rest; but at length he came to the conclusion that such indulgence was wantonly ruining his health, and he resolved to abstain entirely. "We five boys," said he, years afterward, "were in the habit, every forenoon, of making a drink compounded of rum, raisins, sugar, nutmegs, etc., with biscuit—all palatable to eat ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... f-f-for it!" exclaimed Toby, just as indignant as though it had been his own boat that was injured so wantonly. ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... of counting in each line the accents, not the syllables. Though the latter may vary from seven to twelve, yet in each line the accents will be found to be only four. Nevertheless, this occasional variation in number of syllables is not introduced wantonly, 35 or for the mere ends of convenience, but in correspondence with some transition in the nature of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... doubts which he may previously have entertained regarding the misery of the country, and the moral degradation of his subjects, were removed effectually by all that he witnessed in a recent expedition into the interior—miserable hovels, uncultivated fields, magnificent forests wantonly destroyed, were the sights which met him at every turn. At length some restrictions have been placed on the wilful abuse of the greatest source of wealth which the country possesses. Nor are they premature, for the reckless destruction of the forests, combined with ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... reception accorded to him, and by force and in defiance of all resistance, seized and carried off from that hermitage the chief of the cows whose milk supplied the sacred butter, not heeding the loud lowing of the cow. And he wantonly pulled down the large trees of the wood. When Rama came home, his father himself told him all that had happened. Then when Rama saw how the cow was lowing for its calf, resentment arose in his heart. And he ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... lands closely attached to him by promising that if he ever came to power their rights to the farms they had taken without leave should be confirmed by law. Nor did he forget to denounce Adams for "wantonly giving away Texas" in the negotiations with Spain in 1819. Every movement of the Government was combated at every point and defeated if possible. Van Buren, Calhoun, and Benton were an able trio, and ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... excessive use of alcoholic stimulants is over-taxing the vital organs of his body in the most outrageous manner, and although Nature incessantly enters protest against being overworked, he either ignorantly fails to recognize the warnings, or wantonly disregards them. Let us for a few moments consider the work which the heart is called upon to do, and the amount of extra labor imposed upon it by the unwise use of alcohol. The average life of a man is thirty-eight years, and, ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... cross over Vasquez, murdered as wantonly as ever man was murdered for plunder, and could find nothing to say. Whatever the eternal equities of the case may be—and long since I have given up trying to guess what they are—the cold, practical fact remains, that never during our stay on the Porcupine did any Indian come near us again. ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... truth doth give. The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem For that sweet odour, which doth in it live. The canker blooms have full as deep a dye As the perfumed tincture of the roses. Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly When summer's breath their masked buds discloses: But, for their virtue only is their show, They live unwoo'd, and unrespected fade; Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so; Of their sweet deaths, are sweetest odours made: And so of you, ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... what heart there was within, taking note willfully, but I hope not wantonly, what an absurdly limp figure he was for a peddler of starch,—"certainly from you, brave fellow;" and the package being taken from his basket, the man turned to go away, so very wearily, that a cheap philanthropy protested: ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... spirit, is, perhaps, its best guard against presumption and uncharitableness; and, at all events, even if his own views of religion had not been brightened or elevated, he would have learned not wantonly to cloud or disturb those of others. But there was no such monitor near him. After his departure from Southwell, he had not a single friend or relative to whom he could look up with respect; but was thrown alone on the world, with his passions and his pride, to revel in the fatal discovery which ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... me? Had I grown in stature or developed a ferocious ugliness? No; I now was a famous swordsman. That was all. I now was expected to try to grab the maids and kiss them wantonly. I now was expected to clout the grooms on their ears if they so much as showed themselves in my sight. In fact, I was now a great blustering, ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... determined to give it the benefit of the doubt. The animal may break into the preserves of some unctuous hypocrites and trample a few choice flowers of sacerdotal folly; but I opine that no honest man of average intellect will find herein occasion for complaint. I would not wantonly wound the sensibilities of those earnest but ignorant souls who believe the very chapter headings of the Bible to have been inspired; who interpret literally every foolish fable preserved therein—"like flies in amber"; but the ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... introduced to him, and warned by his master against ever provoking him. Returning home, late one Saturday evening, on horseback, from a convivial meeting, as he galloped past the stable he met Arrogante, and wantonly struck at him with a hunting whip. He was a large man, and rode a powerful horse, which was going at full speed, so that he escaped before the astonished dog recovered from ...
— Minnie's Pet Dog • Madeline Leslie
... that it would compel him to return to the coast, these men so cruelly treated the animals that before long there was not one left alive. But as this scheme failed, they set about instigating the natives against the white men, whom they accused most wantonly of strange practices. As this plan was most likely to succeed, and as it was dangerous to have such men with him, the Doctor arrived at the conclusion that it was best to discharge them, and accordingly sent the Sepoys back to the coast; but not without having first furnished ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... South Carolina, by his bad management, had most wantonly provoked the Over-hill Indians into this condition of hostility. His foolish and unnecessary interference and cruelty had converted these usually peaceful neighbors into sufficient hostility to make it easy for French ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... if I can't be pleased just yet,' said Phoebe. 'You know I did not see her, and I can't think she deserves it after so wantonly grieving you, and still ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and opposed, often wantonly and cruelly, for no other purpose than to excite the violent impulses of her nature, the master's phlegm evidently took her by surprise. She stopped. She began to twist a lock of her hair between her fingers; and the rigid line of upper lip, drawn over the wicked little ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... influence of fashion, or its own seductive nature, or any other cause, very generally (which is the second case) connected with its abuse, and the abuse be also of the nature supposed, then the user or practiser, if the custom be unnecessary, throws himself wantonly into danger of evil, contrary to the watchfulness which christianity enjoins in morals; and, if he falls, falls by his own fault. This watchfulness against moral danger the Quakers conceive to be equally incumbent upon Christians, as watchfulness upon persons against the common ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... equal patience on matters more important. We all have our sufferings: why increase one another's wantonly? Be the blood Scotch or English, French or Italian, a drummer's or a buffoon's, it carries a soul upon its stream; and every soul has many places to touch at, and much business to perform, before it reaches its ultimate ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... make her look like a Pekingese. That was not vulgar abuse. It was sound, constructive criticism, with no motive behind it but the kindly desire to keep her from making an exhibition of herself in public. Wantonly to accuse a man of puffing when he goes up a flight of stairs ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... warlike people, but less truculent than the Sea Dayaks, more staid and conservative and religious, and less sociable. They do not wantonly enter into quarrels; they respect and obey their chiefs. They are equally industrious with the Sea Dayaks, and though somewhat slow and heavy in both mind and body, they are more skilled in the handicrafts than any of the other peoples. ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... has foolishly and wantonly conceived that his parents have sent him here to study," said the Moo Kow; "but that is against the rules of the Stalkies, who accept ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... with Horace Greeley. [And what makes that worn anecdote the more aggravating, is, that the adventure it celebrates never occurred. If it were a good anecdote, that seeming demerit would be its chiefest virtue, for creative power belongs to greatness; but what ought to be done to a man who would wantonly contrive so flat a one as this? If I were to suggest what ought to be done to him, I should be called extravagant—but what does the sixteenth chapter ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... blood rushing hotly to his head and with his two strong hands he would at that moment have bent a bar of iron, or smashed something to atoms, in order to crush that longing to curse against Fate, against his destiny that had so wantonly dangled happiness before him, only to thrust him into ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... Maitland to the Colonial Secretary, on the 6th of July, "that his [Mr. Willis's] restitution to office, while it would be received by the most portion of the population as a triumph over the Government which Mr. Willis has ungratefully and wantonly insulted, would be most pernicious to the peace of this colony, and an act of the most aggravating injustice to those faithful servants of the Crown against whom he has, for unworthy purposes, dishonourably laboured to excite the prejudice and hatred of the ignorant ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... dear to me, and of the terrible disadvantages under which I labor, and under which I must always labor, in consequence of my unaccountable errors, and I am confounded and dismayed. But then, on the other hand, I am reminded that I did not sin wilfully,—that I did not err purposely or wantonly,—that what I did amiss I did in ignorance,—that I verily believed myself in the way of duty when I went astray,—that I was influenced by a desire to know the truth,—that I believed myself, at the outset, bound as a Christian, and as a creature ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... day news was flashed all over the country that a party of railway engineers, led by a mad deputy sheriff had wantonly fired on a party of travelers who had had the misfortune to get upon the building ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... dragg'd him in with her: But truly the boy made no resistance; nor seem'd the girl frighted at the name of matrimony. When therefore they were lockt up, we sat without, before the threshold of the chamber; and Quartilla having waggishly slit a chink thro' the door, as wantonly laid an ape's eye to it; nor content with that, pluck't me also to see that childs play, and when we were not peeping, would turn her lips to me, and steal ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... he continued impenitent and defiant, and bought on till he was ruined, and now he is sinking into the earth bodily, though his friends dig and dig without ceasing night and day. It is curious how like the German legends the Arab ones are. All those about wasting bread wantonly are almost identical. If a bit is dirty, Omar carefully gives it to the dog; if clean, he keeps it in a drawer for making breadcrumbs for cutlets; not a bit must fall on the floor. In other things they are careless enough, but das liebe Brod is sacred—vide Grimm's Deutsche Sagen. ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... are less edifying, things which are trivial and vulgar, or even unwholesome and unclean. Children are naturally obedient and truthful; but in their attempts to find outlets for healthy activities which are wantonly repressed, they will go far down the inclined plane ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... its functions when it opens the New Testament. It cannot make itself the slave of men, not even though the men are Peter and Paul and John; no, not even though it were the Son of Man Himself. It resents dictation, not wilfully nor wantonly, but because it must; and it resents it all the more when it claims to be inspired. If, therefore, the Atonement can only be received by those who are prepared from the threshold to acknowledge the inspiration and the consequent authority of Scripture, it ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... for animals naturally followed the increased interest in humanity. The poems of Cowper, Burns, Wordsworth, and Coleridge show this quickened feeling for a starved bird, a wounded hare, a hart cruelly slain, or an albatross wantonly shot. The social disorder of the Revolution might make Wordsworth pause, but he continued with unabated vigor to ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... debts, instead of being reduced, were augmented by an arrear to the treasury in the payment of the four hundred thousand pounds; by another to the custom-house for duties unpaid; by a large debt to the bank, for money borrowed; and by a fourth, for bills drawn upon them from India, and wantonly accepted, to the amount of upwards of twelve hundred thousand pounds. The distress which these accumulated claims brought upon them, obliged them not only to reduce all at once their dividend to six per cent. but to throw themselves upon the mercy of govermnent, ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... Way may, perhaps, be justified in invading and subduing their Enemies' Territories, because it may be the happy means of hastening a Peace, and put an end to the shedding of human Blood. But, on such Occasions, the innocent Inhabitants should not be wantonly injured; because the quarrel, is not between private Individuals, but between their Governors, in which their real Interests are seldom consulted. Very few necessary Wars have ever disturbed the peace of ...
— An Enquiry into the Truth of the Tradition, Concerning the - Discovery of America, by Prince Madog ab Owen Gwynedd, about the Year, 1170 • John Williams
... and whale both stilly died together; then, such a sweetness and such plaintiveness, such inwreathing orisons curled up in that rosy air, that it almost seemed as if far over from the deep green convent valleys of the Manilla isles, the Spanish land-breeze, wantonly turned sailor, had gone to sea, freighted with these ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... resumed: "Nevertheless, Susan, I respect my father; whatever others may say of him, I shall never forget that I owe to his hard earnings the education that enables me to do or be any thing, and I shall not wantonly or rudely cross him. I do not despair of gaining his consent; my father has a great partiality for pretty girls, and if his love of contradiction is not kept awake by open argument, I will trust to time and you to bring ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... its roots in reality, but, like a plant, touches the ground only at one end. It stands unmoved and flowers wantonly into the air, transmuting into unexpected and richer forms the substances it sucks from the soil. It is therefore a fruit of experience, an ornament, a proof of animal vitality; but it is no vehicle for experience; it cannot serve the purposes of transitive thought or action. Science, on ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... little smile from the midst of his reverie. "It is really not so much the doubt as the certainty of it that troubles me." Then, starting to his feet: "If I thought she had lied to me; if I thought she could wantonly lead me on to suffer so for her, I would kill ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... centers around this point—what shall men be allowed to do? And so we find statutes to punish "strolling play-actors," "players on fiddles," "disturbers of the public conscience," "persons who dance wantonly," "blasphemers," etc. In England there were, in the year Eighteen Hundred, sixty-seven offenses punishable ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... commanding tone. "Upon your foreheads ye wear still the pledge of obedience to me, with whom rests alone the power of life and death. Ye shall have justice to the full: I will hear what they can say in their defence, but if wantonly they have caused life to be taken, white though they be, I swear unto ye that they shall surely die." The Dhahs shifted their arrows from the bowstrings and seemed reluctant to give us even this short ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... critic by profession;" and tells us, he gave this edition "to deter the unlearned writer from wantonly trifling with an art he is a stranger to, at the expense of the integrity of the text of established authors." Edwards has placed a N.B. on this declaration:—"A writer may properly be called unlearned, who, notwithstanding ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... to Arnoldo, and a chaste Wife. Guiomar, a vertuous Lady, Mother to Duarte. Hippolyta, a rich Lady, wantonly in Love with Arnoldo. Sulpitia, a Bawd, Mistress of the ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (1 of 10) - The Custom of the Country • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... Belgium, to look at those whom the State employs to-day. Eight hundred thousand Germans are under State control to make good the works they have wantonly destroyed. They may repair the bridges and the highways, but there are broken hearts they cannot heal, and—there are many empty chairs in ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... with the grim, fell ferocity of purpose of the other. The powerful rowdy was lying upon his back in the red dust, swinging flail-like blows into empty air, and upon him, in leopard-like crouch, pressing him to the earth, the man whom he had so wantonly attacked. And his throat was compressed in those brown, lean, muscular fingers, as in a claw of steel. It was horrible. His eyes were starting from his head; his face grew blue, then black; his swollen ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... royal captives, putting the poor pariah through an aperture made for the purpose in the cage; and they justify themselves by asserting that they thus get rid of a troublesome breed of curs, most of which are unappropriated, and which being numerous are very troublesome to passengers, often wantonly biting them, and raising a yelling noise at night, that sets all attempts to rest ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... in the retribution; but the crime which had been revenged by Marius was the massacre in the Forum by Octavius and his friends. The aristocracy found no mercy, because they had shown no mercy. They had been guilty of the most wantonly wicked cruelty which the Roman annals had yet recorded. They were not defending their country against a national danger. They were engaged in what has been called in later years "saving society;" that is to say, in saving their own privileges, their opportunities for plunder, their palaces, ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... to a witness, 'I will send you to prison': which, as he then had to explain, was not meant seriously. It came to be understood that, in his case, the formula was to be avoided on pain of being considered wantonly offensive. ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... that she would have been the first, to use her own expressive language, to require God 'particularly to damn' her impertinent sympathizers. As for Mr. Froude, he may yet discover his Nemesis in the spirit of an angry woman whose privacy he has invaded, and whose diary he has most wantonly published. ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... has been the peculiar study of Virginia. But there are some important truths connected with this science which she has hitherto overlooked or wantonly disregarded. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... solemn promises not to do it again; of spending hours—aye, days! piecing together the contents of my waste paper basket in your search for more letters; and then representing yourself as an ill used saint and martyr wantonly betrayed and deserted by a ...
— The Philanderer • George Bernard Shaw
... was full of fine spray or mist: then looking down just in front of the dam we saw trees, rocks and earth shot up into mid-air in great columns. It seemed as though some great unseen force was at work wantonly destroying everything; then the great wave, foaming, boiling and hissing, dashing clouds of spray hundreds of feet in height as it came against some obstruction in the way of its mad rush, clearing everything away before it, started ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... a siege of thirteen months. Then he burned the churches and other buildings, and laid waste the neighboring country. This was what the Vandals did whenever they took a town, and so the word vandal came to mean a person who needlessly or wantonly destroys ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren
... father used to run about playing the buffoon at other men's tables, and was only admitted to the kitchen as a favor. I may be only a priest's son, and dirt in the eyes of noblemen like you, but don't insult me so lightly and wantonly. I have a sense of honor, too, Alexey Fyodorovitch, I couldn't be a relation of Grushenka, a common harlot. I beg you to ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... often killing simply for pleasure and not for food: and I have always harboured animosity towards them since the night when one wantonly destroyed a whole herd of mine. I happened at the time to have a flock of about thirty sheep and goats which I kept for food and for milk, and which were secured at sundown in a grass hut at one corner of my boma. One particularly dark night we were startled by a tremendous ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... put boyish things behind me. Although Fothergill did not encourage my precocious affection for the press, wisely holding that a literary life was one reserved only for the few, and, like matrimony, not to be "taken in hand unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly," he did not, as so many men in his place might have done, stamp ruthlessly upon my aspirations or subject them to that cruel sarcasm which is so killing to the ambitions of the young. This, it is true, was done by another person in the same office—the manager; but, fortunately, ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... And, on this particular morning, she craved such assuagement of her spirit, for the conscience that, in spite of all her misdeeds, still lived was struggling within her. In her revolt against a world that had wantonly inflicted on her the worst torments, Mary Turner had thought that she might safely disregard those principles in which she had been so carefully reared. She had believed that by the deliberate adoption of a life of guile within limits allowed by the law, ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... I heard of wicked people, when thrown prostrate upon beds of affliction, calling upon the Lord, and even promising that if he would raise them up again they would do better. But how often does it turn out that such promises are either wantonly disregarded or thoughtlessly broken! But why is this so? What is the cause? I will tell you. Such prayers and promises do not proceed from a right motive, and they do not aim at a right end. Self is the beginning ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... therefore the proper course to abstain from all allusion to this controversy, and to keep it as far as possible in the background. The tranquillity of society depends so much on the stability of its religious convictions, that no one can be justified in wantonly disturbing them. But faith is in its nature unchangeable, stationary; Science is in its nature progressive; and eventually a divergence between them, impossible to conceal, must take place. It then becomes the duty of those whose lives have made them familiar with ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... his weird adventures, this latest pleased him least. It's one thing to take chances under cover of night when your heart is light, your pockets heavy, and wine is buzzing wantonly within your head: but another thing altogether to burglarise your enemy's apartments via the fire-escape, in broad daylight, and cold-sober. For by now the light was clear and strong, in ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... in legal diction, citing me to appear instantly before the commission then sitting, to answer an indictment preferred against me by Karl Gurtler, Supernumerary Deputy Road Inspector of the district, whose honourable character I had unjustly and wantonly assailed and deteriorated by the application of the scandalous and defamatory term, schurke. There was nothing for it but to obey the mandate; and accordingly, requesting the bearer to convey my compliments to the assembled council, and to say that I would ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... apprehension that something must come of it, and that this collision (for collision it is) between the Lords and the Commons will not be terminated without some violent measures or important changes; if such do take place, they will have been most wantonly and wickedly brought about, but it is a lamentable thing to see the two great parties in the country, equally possessed of wealth and influence, and having the same interest in general tranquillity, tearing each other to pieces ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... wantonly destroyed or not, it is certain that the present figures must be all regarded as modern, since the eight actually left have been, with the exception of St. John the Baptist, very much restored. Redfern, the well-known sculptor, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... her eyes the Senior Surgeon took the malted milk bottle and poured its remaining contents out quite wantonly into his waste basket. Then equally bluntly he took the White Linen Nurse by the shoulders and marched ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... handsomely and accurately on the smooth bark of a linden-tree of moderate age. The following autumn, when my affection for Annette was in its fullest bloom, I took the trouble to cut hers above it. Towards the end of the winter, in the mean time, like a capricious lover, I had wantonly sought many opportunities to tease her and cause her vexation: in the spring I chanced to visit the spot; and the sap, which was rising strongly in the trees, had welled out through the incisions which formed her name, and which were not yet crusted over, and moistened with innocent vegetable ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... dead. Wickedness shall walk with open face in those days; for then there will be none alive for God and his ways; wherefore, the beast and his train may do what they will: now will be the time for men to live carelessly and wantonly, and to make their wantonness their joy, (after the manner of the Zidonians) for there will be none to put them ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... elsewhere. For that the inhabitants of Alba did not think fugitives worthy of being received and incorporated as citizens among them plainly appears from the matter of the women, an attempt made not wantonly, but of necessity, because they could not get wives by good-will. For they certainly paid unusual respect and honor to those whom they ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... in the dimness of the summer night, to see that the old house was deserted and falling to decay. The kitchen door swung open on rusty hinges; the windows were broken and lifeless; weeds grew thickly over the yard and crowded wantonly up to the very threshold through the chinks ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... lawlessness and absolute anarchy." [Footnote: Mass. and its Early History, p. 110] His conclusion is: "It is to be as frankly and positively affirmed that their Quaker tormentors were the aggressive party; that they wantonly initiated the strife, and with a dogged pertinacity persisted in outrages which drove the authorities almost to ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... the Oxford converts to the Catholic Faith, was sent from England to the author of this Volume in the summer of 1847, when he was resident at Santa Croce in Rome. Its contents were as wantonly and preposterously fanciful, as they were injurious to those whose motives and actions it professed to represent; but a formal criticism or grave notice of it seemed to him ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... elsewhere, that if there was anything particularly annoying to John Jr., it was a sick or crying woman, and now, when he so often found Mabel indisposed or weeping, he grew more morose and fault-finding, sometimes wantonly accusing her of trying to provoke him, when, in fact, she had used every means in her power to conciliate him. Again, conscience-smitten, he would lay her aching head upon his bosom, and tenderly bathing her throbbing temples, would soothe her into a quiet sleep, from which she always awoke ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... the mind that dare not dwell upon realities. Who can say what dull, leaden, care may have weighed down the heart of William Shakespeare when his mind conceived that monster of a poet's grand imaginings, Othello! There is the flavour of racking care in that mighty creation. The strong soul wantonly tortured by a sordid wretch; the noble spirit distraught, the honourable life wrecked for so poor a motive; that sense of the "something in this world amiss," which the poet, of all other creatures, ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... course he was impelled all the more as Frederic, in further proof of his contempt of the most sacred obligations, when they stood in the way of his ambition, shortly added to his crimes against the Church another against public morals, by wantonly repudiating, out of motives of state policy, his lawful empress, to marry in her stead Beatrix of Burgundy. Any remnants of hesitation to adopt extreme measures which Adrian might still cherish, were completely eradicated in his mind by this crying scandal; ...
— Pope Adrian IV - An Historical Sketch • Richard Raby
... inhuman sensuality, in his works which is utterly revolting. I am not intimately acquainted with them generally. But I take up my ground on the first canto of 'Wilhelm Meister;' and, as the attorney-general of human nature, I there indict him for wantonly outraging the sympathies of humanity. Theologians tell us of the degraded nature of man; and they tell us what is true. Yet man is essentially a moral agent, and there is that immortal and unextinguishable yearning for something pure and spiritual ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... of this room were nine of these niches. "All of the walls of this room, from the floor to the peak of the arch, had been covered with painted designs, now wantonly defaced, but the remains of which present colors, in some places, still bright and vivid; and among these remains detached portions of human figures continually reappear, well drawn, the heads adorned with plumes of feathers and the hands bearing ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... herself for having spoken in so trifling a manner. The frigid politeness of her brother's speech, too, had not escaped her notice. It seemed to her now, that she had been wantonly rude. She hastened, therefore, to repair ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... trawlers of Brixham be allowed to slash at our cords and to send our wicker baskets adrift, spoiling our marine harvests and making our larders barren against the winter? They hover about our beautiful bay—these fiends in human shape, with brown wings outspread—and wantonly lay waste our fishing-pots in their reckless course, so that our crabs walk backwards into the sea. We have had gentlefolks down from London about it, men who argue and palaver, and wear high hats and are said to have long bills, and there is talk of a Government cutter to protect ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... down. I am going to be heard, and my country shall be vindicated." Nobody knows better than I did what it is to feel that every interest that touches the heart of a Christian man and a patriotic man and a lover of liberty is being assailed wantonly, to stand between one nation and your own, and to feel that you are in a situation in which your country rises or falls with you. And God was behind it all; I felt it and knew it; and when I got through and the vote was called off, you would have thought it was a tropical thunderstorm that ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... any trace of the place. The tide of immigration has brought so deep a deposit of "saloons" and suburban "balls" that the very face of the land is changed, old lovers of that shore know it no more. Never were the environs of a city so wantonly and recklessly degraded. Municipalities have vied with millionaires in soiling and debasing the exquisite shores of our river, that, thirty years ago, were unrivalled the ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... the Allies. At elections and in parliamentary discourses, undertakings were given, some of which were known to be impossible of fulfilment. Thus the ministers in some of the Allied countries bound themselves to compel the Germans not only to pay full compensation for damage wantonly done, but also to defray the ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... a thick growth of vegetation to conceal them from their most dreaded enemy—man. The prowling, restless elephant, for instance, though rarely seen, leaves indications of his nocturnal excursions in every wilderness, by wantonly knocking down the forest-trees. The morose rhinoceros, though less numerous, are found in every thick jungle. So is the savage buffalo, especially delighting in dark places, where he can wallow in the mud and slake his thirst without much ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... could understand. We once heard him tell a story upon Windermere, to the late Mr Curwen, then M.P. for Workington, which was meant, apparently, to account for this feeling. The story amounted to this: that, when a freshman at Cambridge, Mr Pitt had wantonly amused himself at a dinner party in Trinity, in smashing with filberts (discharged in showers like grape-shot) a most costly dessert set of cut glass, from which Samuel Taylor Coleridge argued a principle of destructiveness in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... I shall be wantonly misunderstood if these reflections be taken as a criticism of Germany. This situation involves Germany in censure no more than other nations. It is only that Germany shows herself to be somewhat childish and peevishly provincial, in girding at an unchangeable ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... translators, which had been in full swing ever since about 1380, as a special feature of the sixteenth century, helping thus to account for the great Elizabethan outburst of original work. No poor period of literature was ever more mercilessly or wantonly plundered to enrich its prosperous neighbours on either side; and having thus credited to other generations all its little claims to distinction, our literary historians fixed their glance sternly on the court poetry, which is its weakest feature, and made the case of ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... of his crime faded out of her mind. She suffered remorse—almost regret. Yet what could she have done? There had been no help for that impossible situation as, there was now no help for her in a right and just placing of Kells among men. He had stolen her—wantonly murdering for the sake of lonely, fruitless hours with her; he had loved her—and he had changed; he had gambled away her soul and life—a last and terrible proof of the evil power of gold; and in the end he had saved her—he had gone from her white, radiant, cool, ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... be considered as either wantonly disturbing the remains of the dead, or needlessly violating the religious rites of an harmless people, in having caused the tomb to be opened, that we might examine its interior construction. The whole outward form and appearance of the place was so totally different from that of any custom ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... expression of my conviction that I was self-doomed and desperate; and, writhing beside the inanimate angel whom I then would have recalled though with all her guilt—assuming all of it to have been true—to the arms that wantonly cast her off for ever—I grasped the cold senseless limbs in my embrace, and placed the drooping head once more upon the bosom where it could not long remain! What a weight! The pulsation in my own heart ceased, and, ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... It cuts into the deepest of the heart to see such noble and devoted fellows going to be again wantonly slaughtered by the combined military and civic inefficiency of McClellan-Lincoln-Seward, and, above ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... of this new charitable departure had been scathing and logical. He was not altogether displeased to see Brooks himself in the Strangers' Gallery. That young man would be better able to understand now the mighty power of the Church which he had so wantonly disregarded. ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the wise safeguards provided by both Church and State for the Sacrament of Marriage. Their object is to prevent the {122} marriage state being entered into "lightly, unadvisedly, or wantonly," to secure such publicity as will prevent clandestine marriages,[14] and will give parents, and others with legal status, an opportunity to ...
— The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments • E. E. Holmes
... Hercules out of the jaws of a lion, on the coins of Camarina. Those diminutive golden horns attached to the forehead, represent not fecundity merely, nor merely the crisp tossing of the waves of streams, but horns of offence. And our fingers must beware of the thyrsus, tossed about so wantonly by himself and his chorus. The pine-cone at its top does but cover a spear-point; and the thing is a weapon—the sharp spear of the hunter Zagreus—though hidden now by the fresh leaves, and that button ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... still to leave the public peace of the Union at the mercy of each state government." He proceeded to give a concrete instance: "For example, a party comes from a county of Virginia into Pennsylvania, and wantonly murders some friendly Indians. The national Government, instead of having power to apprehend the murderers and bring them to justice, is obliged to make a representation to that of Pennsylvania; that of Pennsylvania, again, is ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... thoroughly depraved that I doubt whether a parallel to it is possible to be found.'[563] There is scarcely a mention of Mackintosh without an insult. A partial explanation of Mill's wrath may be suggested by the chapter upon Bentham. Mackintosh there accused the Utilitarians generally of 'wantonly wounding the most respectable feelings of mankind'; of 'clinging to opinions because they are obnoxious'; of taking themselves to be a 'chosen few,' despising the multitude, and retorting the dislike which their ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... the Kansas Pacific-road was delayed eight hours in consequence of the passage of an enormous herd of buffaloes over the track in front of it. But the easy mode of travel introduced by the railroad brought hundreds of sportsmen to the plains, who wantonly killed this noble animal solely for sport, and thousands of buffaloes were sacrificed for their skins, for which there was a widespread demand. From 1868 to 1881, in Kansas alone, there was paid out $2,500,000 for the bones of this animal, ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... it," Miss Berry protested. "Captain Bothwell is too much of a gentleman to destroy a lady's things wantonly. Just look ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... he circulated, as he rattled down to Broadway's store and back, was that Cap'n Sproul and Hiram Look had attacked him with murderous intent, and that after he had bravely fought them off they had wantonly grabbed Mr. Dependence Crymble, jabbed him down a hole in the ground and kicked the ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... tick of the clock that Katharine had completely forgotten her engagement. Such things had happened less frequently since Christmas, but what if they were going to begin to happen again? What if their marriage should turn out, as she had said, a farce? He acquitted her of any wish to hurt him wantonly, but there was something in her character which made it impossible for her to help hurting people. Was she cold? Was she self-absorbed? He tried to fit her with each of these descriptions, but he had to own that ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... because my career ought to end by my being an unsuccessful suppliant to the individual whom both virtue and nature pointed out to me as my best friend, and whose proffered and parental support I have so wantonly, however thoughtlessly, rejected, I do not regret that this is written. No feeling of false delicacy can prevent me from applying to one to whom I have long ago incurred incalculable obligations, and no feeling of false delicacy will, I hope, for a moment, prevent you from refusing the application ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... ground for a bed, and the heavy dew of night penetrating the old canvass—the situation of the island being fifty miles from the usual track of friendly vessels, and one hundred and thirty-five from Trinidad—seeing my owner's property so unjustly and wantonly destroyed—considering my condition, the hands at whose mercy I was, and deprived of all hopes, rendered sleep or rest a ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... the virtuous; who cannot be esteemed, though entitled to be honored; and let us ask why this is so, what is the wisdom which hath drawn differences so arbitrary, and which, while proclaiming the necessity of justice, so openly, so wantonly, and so ingeniously sets ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... Congo. The antelopes had been drinking water from a pond or spring poisoned by the natives; which proved that our travellers had arrived in the neighbourhood of some tribe of the Bechuanas. Of this method for wantonly destroying animal life, practised by many of the native African tribes, the hunters had often heard. The many stories which they had been told of the wholesale destruction of game by poison, and which they had treated with incredulity, after all, had not ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... and in all criminals trials. That my principles of resistance may not be misapprehended and more than my principles of submission, I protest that I should be the last man in the world to encourage Juries to contradict rashly, wantonly, or perversely, the opinion of the Judges. On the contrary, I would have them listen respectfully to the advise they receive from the Bench, by which they may be often well directed in forming their own opinion; which, "and not anothers," is the opinion they are to return upon ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... said the silver voice of Evelyn, "for Heaven's sake, do not thus wantonly resolve on your own unhappiness! You wrong yourself, Caroline! you do, indeed! You are not the vain ambitious character you affect to be! Ah, what is it you require? Wealth? Are you not my friend; am I not rich enough for both? Rank? What can it give you to compensate for ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of what had been planned by the villain Oliver and his employers, these deluded men were immediately made prisoners, and committed to Derby Gaol; upon a charge of high treason. Unfortunately, one Jeremiah Brandreth, who was at the head of those rioters, very wantonly fired a shot at random through the back window of a farm-house, where the inmates had refused to admit them, or to deliver them any arms, which the rioters, scarcely one hundred in number, had demanded. It so happened that a boy was killed by this random shot, which gave a colouring to the ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... or to render its monopoly less injurious to the natives than hitherto it has been; the writer's labour will have been amply compensated. Interested as he still is in that Company, with a considerable stake depending on its returns, it can scarcely be supposed that he has any intention, wantonly or unnecessarily, to ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... more at large; I more readily throw myself upon the affairs of state and the world, when I am alone; at the Louvre, and in the bustle of the court, I fold myself within my own skin; the crowd thrusts me upon myself; and I never entertain myself so wantonly, with so much license, or so especially, as in places of respect and ceremonious prudence: our follies do not make me laugh, but our wisdom does. I am naturally no enemy to a court life; I have therein passed a good part of my ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various |
