"Soft-hearted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... they raised them to the 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 musical efforts which persons in what ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... longer cares 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 ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... against it, 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 ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... good Lord, I reckon, don't make lads as true and white 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 ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... fit of abstraction than was altogether usual with him, "now will Bill Hinkley beat about the bush without bouncing through it, until it's too late to do anything. He's mealy-mouthed with the woman, and mealy-mouthed with the man, and mealy-mouthed with everybody. —quite too soft-hearted and too easy to get on. Here's a stranger nobody knows, just like some crow from another corn-field, that'll pick up his provisions from under his very nose, and he doing nothing to hinder until there's no use in trying. If I don't push in ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... It's true—be certain of that, you soft-hearted fool. I tell the truth sometimes, Roy—when it serves my purpose. And I want you to imagine the details of what is going to happen to her. Think of it, Roy—the Lady of the Golden Bough, the saintly Mrs. Swope, the sweet Mary ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... was an 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 ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... you won't hear of it,' she said, 'but if I was in your place I'd make him smart. I'd have him up and make him pay, see if I wouldn't. Trust him, he knows you're too soft-hearted, and he takes advantage of you. It's girls like you as encourages men to think they can do as they like. You've no right, you haven't, to let him off. I'd have him in the newspapers and show him up, see if I wouldn't. And he shan't have it ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... reflection came after, how easy it were to get out of the coil of humanity. A faint smile of bitterness curled his lips as he recalled a remark which Helen Greyson had once quoted to him as having been made of him by her dead husband. "He'll want to kill himself, but he won't. He's too soft-hearted, and he'd never forget other people and their opinions." He had acknowledged to himself that this was true, and he wondered whether Mrs. Greyson appreciated ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... of him? He was twelve, healthy and intelligent—which led directly to the evening when I sat, very cross, at my desk and fished young John's note out of the scrap-basket. I had got as far in answer as "Dear John"—when these visions of the past interrupted. I am not soft-hearted. I am crabbed and prejudiced and critical, and I dislike irregularity. Above all I am thoroughly selfish. But the sum of that is short of being brutal. Only sheer brutality could repel the lad's note and request. My ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... corner as he passed, and watching with some interest the efforts of a stray mongrel to get itself adopted. Its victim had sworn at it, cut at it with his stick, and even made little runs at it—all to no purpose. Finally, being a soft-hearted man, he was weak enough to pat the cowering schemer on the head, and, being frantically licked by the homeless one, took it up in his arms and walked ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... was very soft-hearted, and said that she never could make bacon of a pig like that; and I answered that if she ever got him it would be unwise to do so. However, the law was laid down in both books that golden fowls and diamondic pigs must die the death before they begin to overeat ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... probably she would at the last minute seek some safer retreat than Billingsfield and make tip her mind to hide for the rest of her life. But Mr. Juxon had heard of women who had carried charity as far as to receive back their husbands under even worse circumstances; women were soft-hearted creatures, reflected the squire, ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... said Nick. He reached out a skeleton finger and laid it on her arm. "I thought you would be feeling soft-hearted, so I have come to ask you a favour. Not that I shouldn't have come in any case, but it seemed a suitable moment ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... little to his liking in the editorial and still less in the critical part of his work. "I do not profess," he wrote, "the art and mystery of reviewing, and am not ambitious of being wise or facetious at the expense of others." He was never a good critic, for he was too soft-hearted, and too little in conceit with his own judgment to give an unfavorable opinion. And this was in the period of "slashing" criticism, when it was the proper thing, unless an author could show good reason for being declared the greatest man ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... 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 ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald
... 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
... his son—his only son—was coming home for the first time? Really, that was not such an event as to put him beside himself in this way! And then next he blamed himself for having thought it unbefitting an old soldier, and too soft-hearted altogether, to go and fetch his son from the station. He could not remain in the house, so he went to a spot on the highway whence he could watch the railway. He could see the train coming in, and the clouds of white smoke from the engine rising up from behind the station; then he ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... more kinds of a fool than you can think of for not coming right out flat-footed and making Thornton tell me the whole story. But some way, when I 'd look into those eyes with the fire all dead and ashen within them, and see the lines of an old man in his young face, I—well, I guess I 'm too soft-hearted to make folks suffer. I just ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... and these rosy urchins, springing forward, shouted affectionately, "Maman! Maman!" to the great astonishment and bewilderment of James Gann, who well-nigh fainted at this sudden paternity so put upon him. However, being a good-humoured, soft-hearted man, he kissed his lady hurriedly, and vowed that he would take care of the poor little things, whom he would also have kissed, but the darlings refused his ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... 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
... 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. ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... who, in spite of her anger, was very soft-hearted, was touched at their distress, and flew ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... there was ever a man too low and vile to get woman's pity, if he only had a pretty face," she said, caustically. "If he was an ugly, old, half-decent fellow, you wouldn't be making any soft-hearted surmises as to what he might have been under different circumstances. He has spoiled the lives of several tenderhearted women like ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... sneering. I would not for a moment sneer at anything that helps to keep hearts tender in this hard old world. We men are cold and common-sensed enough for all; we would not have women the same. No, no, ladies dear, be always sentimental and soft-hearted, as you are—be the soothing butter to our coarse dry bread. Besides, sentiment is to women what fun is to us. They do not care for our humor, surely it would be unfair to deny them their grief. And who shall say that their mode ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... have taken upon myself to bear you a message which your servants declined to bring. It is to announce a visitor. The hour for reception has gone by, but he was so urgent, that I really could not refuse his entreaties that you might be told of his presence. Pardon my officiousness, but you know how soft-hearted I am. I never could ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... canvas." Said Ralph: "I 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 evil ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... 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 was law ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... hands, and sobs and cries out at the evil she has done; but cries much louder, that the hearts of men are horrible and bloody; that their instincts are barbarous and terrible; that she alone is tender and soft-hearted and forgiving; that she would never have plunged the sword into the bosom, or sent the ball tearing its way through the heart; that man alone is horrible and cruel and depraved; that she is noble and pure-hearted, true and innocent; that woman is above this miserable humanity—great like Diana ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... and no carriage of note had passed, Edith ventured to get her transplanting trowel, doff her gloves, and commence dividing her flower roots, that she might put them elsewhere. She became so interested in her work that she was positively happy, and soft-hearted Malcom, with his eye for the beauties of nature, was getting his rows crooked, because of so many admiring glances toward her as she went ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... it's a terrible thing for me to say," she added hastily. "But she was such a delicate, soft-hearted sort of a woman: I couldn't help feelin' th' Lord spared her a deal of bitter sorrow by taking her away. My! It does bring it all back to me so—the house and the yard, and all. We'd all got used to seeing it a ruin; and now— Whatever put it in your head, dearie, ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... social hopes on her position as their friend. Her forebodings proved true. Her little gush of thankfulness and penitence did not touch Mr. Gray's heart in the least. He saw that Berry was a dangerous friend for his soft-hearted, easily influenced Georgie, and told his wife that he decidedly objected to the girls' having anything more to do with her. Mrs. Gray agreed with him in opinion; and though there was no open rupture between the families, ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... Countess 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 the heart of an Esquimaux. She was rather one of those women ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... in which a few scattered remains of stout walls and big bastions looked venerable and picturesque. A little boulevard winds around 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 enough ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... had my way, mon Lieutenant, we would take no prisoners, hands up or hands down," he said; "we are too soft-hearted in this war." ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... was a great favourite, shook his head reproachfully at her, as he paused to rest and wipe his heated countenance. He was a greasy and affable personage, whose temper was as easy as his morals. He was more soft-hearted than most of his compatriots, and he honestly liked Arithelli and admired ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... tree appears when it has been struck by lightning. Next time you pass one, look at it. I have not the slightest doubt that this was the way the mistake was made. We have an occasional wag at the South, and some one has practised upon a soft-hearted New Englander in search of horrors; this is the result. She mentions that the ashes were black. Do not infer from this that it must have been a black man or negro. But I will no longer arraign your good sense. It was not, take ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... suitor, if she had any hope of tying him to her for life, was a popular form of belief in the community; and strangely enough it was chiefly the women, not the men, who made it current. Now and then a soft-hearted and chivalrous male would observe indulgently of some village beauty, "I shouldn't wonder a mite if she could 'a' had Bill for the askin'"; but this opinion would be met by such a chorus of feminine ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... soft oval 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. He ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... 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 slain for such shadowy things as command and dominion; ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... proceeded laughingly, "we started a rhyming club; but the first meeting was not quite a success. Every one of us proved so soft-hearted! The rules therefore were set at naught. So I can't help thinking that we must enlist your services as president of the society and superintendent; for what is needed to make the thing turn out well is firmness and no favour. The next matter is: cousin Quarta explained to our worthy ancestor ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... him the reputation he bore throughout these wild miles of cattle land, the reputation of a man who was hard, hard as rock "on the outside," as she put it, hard inside, too, when they drove him to it, but naturally as soft-hearted as a baby. She wished she had a boy like him! Why, when she and John hit hard luck, last year, what with the cattle getting diseased first and her and John getting laid up next, flat of their backs with the grip, that man was an angel in britches and spurs if there ever was an ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... take Jeames to be, like most giants, good-natured, lazy, stupid, soft-hearted, and extremely fond of drink. One night, his lady being engaged to dinner at Nightingale House, I saw Mr. Jeames resting himself on a bench at the "Pocklington Arms:" where, as he had no liquor before him, he ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... said Joe. "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
... Shakespearean in part, probably in great part; and it immediately reminds us of King Lear. Both plays deal with the tragic effects of ingratitude. In both the victim is exceptionally unsuspicious, soft-hearted and vehement. In both he is completely overwhelmed, passing through fury to madness in the one case, to suicide in the other. Famous passages in both plays are curses. The misanthropy of Timon pours itself out in a torrent ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... of a timid child, who cries when he is put to bed because he is afraid of the dark. The "soft-hearted" parent stays with him, simply because he is sorry for him and wants to comfort him. The scientifically trained parent stays with him, because he realizes that the child is in a stage of development ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... damn tender, soft-hearted ways that will win in the end. My old Indian guide used to say, 'Much stick, good squaw.' Ann Penhallow has never in her whole life had any stick. Damn these sugar plum husbands! I'd like to know what Miss Leila Grey thinks of this performance. ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... was a soft-cheeked, soft-handed, and soft-hearted girl of eighteen, stood, hat in hand, before her mother with a slight smile on her ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... Monsieur le Prefet is disloyal to the Empire," Simon went on, "though he might easily be made to appear so. It is that he thinks there is no policy like a merciful one. Also he is too soft-hearted, and too ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... against the world," she said. "I have never had enough money to be soft-hearted. No woman with feeling can get five hundred per ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... 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 ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... it some way or other, Ruth. But the old-fashioned woman was a very soft-hearted creature, and, maybe, it was just as ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... 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 ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... soft-hearted fools like me permit crude little girls like you to speak a line without any excuse for so doing. We'll have no great acting in America until we shut the door upon every boy and girl who thinks he can act, by the ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... very kind-hearted to his wife; it seems they have a baby now, and I've no doubt Pinney is a pattern to parents. He's always advising you to get married; but he's a born Bohemian. He's the most harmless creature in the world, so far as intentions go, and quite soft-hearted, but he wouldn't spare his dearest friend if he could make copy of him; it would be impossible. I should say he was first a newspaper man, and then a man. He's an awfully common nature, and hasn't the first literary instinct. If I had any mystery, ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... have burned 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 of ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... said Cripps, 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 ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... got to let you cook for us and for the gang that's comin'. You'll find everything in the kitchen across the road. Go and get acquainted with it. By Gad! you can be thankful you run up against a soft-hearted ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... Educated in 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 ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... 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
... were anything fundamentally nasty about Morris Mr. Brock would not be inclined to overrate him. Mr. Brock pardons no unpardonable horrors: there are none here to pardon. But he overrates, or rather overmarks, William Morris as a scrupulous but soft-hearted examiner might overmark a sympathetic pupil. He never gives marks when the answer is wrong, but he gives a great many when it is right: and he is a little blind to deficiencies. He does not make it clear that Morris, ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... the Volscian army. 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 character ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... and wily person, and often presents himself to the soft-hearted celebrity in such humble and pathetic guise that one really hasn't the courage to snub him. He has come such a long way for such a little thing! it is such a lowly function he plies at the foot of that tall tree whose top you reached at a single bound! And he is supposed ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... when, in the course of the evening, she found courage to converse more freely, giving her views, for instance, on the great servant question, and on other matters of domestic interest, it became clear to Mr. and Mrs. Rymer that their landlady, though a soft-hearted and simple-minded woman, was by no means to be regarded as a person ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... keeps his more imperative goods on top. It is the nature of these goods to be cruel to their rivals. Nothing shall avail when weighed in the balance against them. They call out all the mercilessness in our disposition, and do not easily forgive us if we are so soft-hearted as to shrink from ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... 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 ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... 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
... men in cages, wearies Heaven with prayers, and Earth with strange devices, to preserve his own grotesque existence. A James the First, who can sanction at the least, if not direct, the torture to be applied to a poor, old, clergyman, was yet in the main a soft-hearted man, can feel most tenderly for a broken limb of any favourite, have an anxious affection for "Steenie and Baby Charles," and an undoubted, and provident, regard for his own "sacred" person. What shall we say, too, of that Chancellor of his, a man, like ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... to have received more gratitude. Perhaps when she hears how her adopted child wandered about at night, and ended by killing Clear, she will be glad she is dead and buried. Yet, I don't know. Women are wonderfully soft-hearted, and certainly Rhoda is thought no end of by ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... guilty conscience and his soft-hearted affection for Luck so deeply stirred by the money laid in his big-knuckled hand, shuffled his feet and cleared his throat and did not get one intelligible word ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... was very painful. At its close she exclaimed that she felt herself to blame, being a daughter of the house of Orleans, for ever having put faith in the Emperor Napoleon or his promises. Notwithstanding this reproach, the emperor, who was soft-hearted, pitied her extremely. She remained at Saint-Cloud for some hours, and that evening, when surrounded by the court circle, she threw back her head and begged for water. The emperor hastened to bring it to her with his own hand; but she exclaimed that she would not take it from him, for she ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... 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 ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a thumb and forefinger and dropping us over the veranda railing. For our attack lacked somewhat in gentle courtesy, notably so that of "the Rowdy." He was a chestless youth of the type that has grown so painfully prevalent in our land since the soft-hearted abolishment of the beech-rod of revered memory; of that all too familiar type whose proofs of manhood are cigarettes and impudence and discordant noise, and whose national superiority is demonstrated by the maltreating of all other ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... his own, no," Harris said; "only one that's going to be his later on. Did it ever strike you as queer that Slade, whose way is to crush every new outfit, should suffer a soft-hearted streak every year or so and befriend some party that had elected to start up for himself right in the middle of Slade's range? And later buy him out? That's the way he came into nearly every ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... even now the prophets hardly understand one another, or perhaps themselves; and some of them interlard their science with the most dubious metaphysics. Naturally the enemies of science have not been slow to seize this opportunity: the soft-hearted, the muddle-headed, the superstitious are all raising their voices, no longer in desperate resistance to science, but hopefully, and in its name. Science, they tell us, is no longer hostile to religion, or to divination of any sort. Indeed, divination ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... can't see what you think remarkable in his being a curate. Though I confess, as I said before, he ran me through the body. I'm rather soft-hearted, I believe, since ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... 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, ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... of 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 ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... like the soft-hearted old thing he is, he holds out his hands, and he says, 'God bless you, my boy, it was for your own ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit
... all people in the world the least given to be sentimental or soft-hearted in a foolish way; but strong as she was, there was something in these letters—or some mixture of things—that entered her heart like an arrow through the joints of an armour, and found her as defenceless. Tears came with that resistless, ceaseless, measureless flow, as when the secret ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... 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 ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... generous and soft-hearted fellow as a rule, he could not pardon this infamous wretch who had lured him into such a trap, even while professing the most ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... gone, I have sat alone here of a night thinking of him; thinking that he might come in upon me at any moment; almost listening for his footstep in the quiet of the place. But he never came. He would have found me very soft-hearted at such times. My mind changed to him a good deal after his mother's death. I used to think of him as he was in his boyhood, when Marian and I had such great hopes of him, and would sit and talk of him for hours together by this fireside. An old man left quite alone as I was ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... that's a possibility. If she's a sensible body I concur with your opinion she'll no come back, but women are a soft-hearted race and she'll maybe take pity on ye ...
— Hobson's Choice • Harold Brighouse
... incorporate them in its armies. A further explanation is to be found in the lassitude and exhaustion which must in time overtake the most warlike princes, the bravest generals, and the most highly tempered of conquering races. A few years of relaxed watchfulness, an indolent and soft-hearted sovereign, are enough to let loose all the pent up forces of insubordination and to unite them into one formidable effort. We thus see that, in many respects, nothing could be more precarious than the prosperity of that Assyria whose insolent triumphs had ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... especially observed in justice to poor Kit that he was by no means of a sentimental turn, and perhaps had never heard that adjective in all his life. He was only a soft-hearted grateful fellow, and had nothing genteel or polite about him; consequently, instead of going home again, in his grief, to kick the children and abuse his mother (for, when your finely strung people are out of sorts, they must ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... reason of this, when, on going up shortly afterwards to my little room, I discovered the soft-hearted creature bending over the sea-chest which I had been presented with—in addition to her son Teddy's clothes and other property—"having a good cry," as she said ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... reading the sporting news from a pink paper to a friend from the Outward Bills Department who lay luxuriously on the floor beside him, did not rank among Mr Waller's pleasantest memories. But Mr Waller was too soft-hearted to interfere with his assistants unless it was absolutely necessary. The truth of the matter was that the New Asiatic Bank was over-staffed. There were too many men for the work. The London branch of the bank was really only a nursery. New men were ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... to Mrs. Ingham-Baker for sympathy in this sentiment, and that soft-hearted lady deemed it expedient to turn hastily away, avoiding ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... bless 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; ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... I think there are soft-hearted readers here and there who will be glad to know that there never was any Jess. There is a little house still standing at the top of the brae which can be identified as her house, I chose it for her though I was never in ...
— A Window in Thrums • J. M. Barrie
... at Ryeburn that half. We both had it, but I was soon well again. It was not till Carlo was ill that he told me of having run over to wish you good-bye that morning—he had been afraid I would laugh at him for being soft-hearted—what a young brute I was—forgive my speaking so, Sawyer, but I can't look back to that time without shame. What a life we led you, and how you bore it! You ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... my advice," his soft-hearted spouse said, with some trepidation, "you will put that bit of paper into the stove and keep quiet about the whole matter. She is to join her husband in another two days, anyway, and then there would be an end to her intrigues in any case. Do me the favor, my dear Max, ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... genius might have 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. ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... you," said Garry, his voice changing, "salting the old man's fireplace with your own money so that his niece could come down here and study French and music! You wonderful, soft-hearted Irish lunatic! I love you ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... 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 ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... British Socialists the French Revolution was not sufficiently democratic, not sufficiently radical, not sufficiently violent. We are told that the French revolutionaries were soft-hearted men, and that our sympathy with their innocent victims, such as Queen Marie Antoinette, is quite uncalled for. "The Revolution was in its conception, its inception, and its results a middle-class revolution. The revolution was inaugurated by the Parliament ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... chevalier himself a frank, open-minded, open-hearted, lovable man who ought not, in the natural order of things, to have an enemy in the world. Despite his high-falutin' nom de theatre, he was Belgian—a big, soft-hearted, easy-going, unsuspicious fellow, who worshipped his wife, adored his children, and loved every ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... me—and surrendered at discretion. 'I should think anybody would marry ye who saw yer pretty face and heard yer sweet voice,' he answered. 'But, perhaps, ye'd better present yerself to Mr. Schoolcraft, the U.P. minister at Little Kirkton. He was aye soft-hearted.' ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... Gaspar, we've started on what's like to prove the last trail for both of us, understand? By night we'll both be outlawed. They'll have a price on us, and long before night, Kern will be after us. For the first time in your soft-hearted life you've got to work, ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... to terrify me, at first. But now I know what a colossal old fraud and humbug this same soft-hearted and granite-crusted specimen of humanity can be. For last night, after the usual demonstration, I slipped out to the Blue Room and found big Dunkie kneeling down beside little Dinkie's bed, with Dinkie's small hand softly enclosed in his dad's big paw, and Dinkie's ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... 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 on ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... soft-hearted fellow. He never knew what happened to him; but after uncounted minutes he seemed to be choking, while the orchestra and the people in boxes and the singer herself swam in a hazy distance. He shook himself, called somebody he knew very well an idiot, ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... poor girl! [Pats Susan's head.] There, there! your feelings do you the greatest credit; but don't cry, because it makes your eyes red. Now, look here, Susan; there's only one thing more. You are very soft-hearted, I perceive, and it must be distinctly understood between us that you need never intercede with me in favor of that scoundrel Charles. I won't have it. You wouldn't succeed, of course, but if I ever happen to get ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... 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
... your 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 yet ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... from her teens had he seen his niece in tears. The memory of that terrible day swept over his soul. Something desperate was doing. Hard as the little man was to the world against which he had fought his way to his present position of distinction, to his niece he was soft-hearted as a mother. "There, there!" he exclaimed hastily. "We'll give the boy a chance. No mother, eh? And a confounded prig for a father! No wonder the boy goes all wrong!" Then with a sudden vehemence he cried, striking one hand into the other, "No, by—! that is, we will certainly give the lad the benefit ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... head as Muller knew he 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 a poet. For Joseph Muller, ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... This soft-hearted but tenacious gentleman found fault with his (p. 098) neighbor, Michael of Tver, for entering into an alliance with Lithuania. To settle the difficulty, he invaded the dukedom, and annexed it to Moscow. Then, ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... at all," he said, emphatically. "This is my treat. It was mighty decent of you to drop everything and come along with me into this d——d exile. And," he finished, easily, "I'll have more money than I'll know what to do with when the old man gets soft-hearted again." ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... and Grace Davoren!" he exclaimed, in a voice of well-feigned astonishment. "You mean my brother Charles. Why, Caterine, that soft-hearted and softheaded idiot, for I can call him nothing else, has made himself a perfect fool about her, and what is worst of all, I am afraid he will break his engagement with Miss Goodwin, and marry this wench. Me! why, except ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... much, going a bit free, as she did when close-hauled, the wind drawing more abeam as it veered north; and Captain Snaggs was not the last to notice this, you may be sure. He thought he might just as well take advantage of it, as not being one of your soft-hearted sailors, but a 'beggar to carry on when he had the chance,' at least, so said Hiram Bangs, who had ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... that Magde possessed his affections. She, had she so chosen, could have abused him as if he had been a dog, and like a cur he would have crept back to kiss the hand which had maltreated him. Magde, however, was soft-hearted, and did not abuse her power over the singular boy; but she compelled him to labor with much more assiduity than he had formerly. When at home, Carl generally performed the duties of a nursery maid. The children remained with him willingly, for ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... Will (his brother) sailed in 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 bees, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... hard-hearted to their fates, thus Soft-hearted shrink from our own, When the measure we mete is meted to us, When we reap as we've always sown? Shall we who for pastime have squander'd life, Who are styled "the Lords of Creation", Recoil from our chance of more equal strife, And our ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... 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 ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... Berlin Carson," she said, in a strangely hardened tone. "In the old days on the ranch I was no soft-hearted, ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... soft-hearted. She named her girl-baby Daniel, and called her Danny, which was not, after all, so bad, and her old uncle loved the child as if she had been his own. Little Daniel—he always called her Daniel, or, rather, ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... straight the happier I shall be. And let me tell you, mother, that if I get Helen through this business well and happy, I shall quit fooling round as godfather, or stage uncle, or any other sort of soft-hearted idiot. Meanwhile, Bower has jumped ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... 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, tender enthusiasm. Until Lavretsky came, no one had troubled ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... abstract I agree with you: but I am not aware that Rowley's death is required. Say rather that he is ower young to turn King's evidence." I stepped back from the door. "Mrs. McRankine," I said, "I believe you to be soft-hearted. I know you to be curious. You will be pleased to sit perfectly still and listen ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... writers appear, underneath the conventions of the period, to be genuinely moved. But what unpleasantly strikes a reader is, that these devout unfortunates found a revenue in their devotion. It is everywhere the same tale; on the side of the soft-hearted ladies, substantial acts of help; on the side of the correspondents, affection, italics, texts, ecstasies, and imperfect spelling. When a midwife is recommended, not at all for proficiency in her important art, but because she has 'a sister whom I [the correspondent] esteem and respect, and [who] ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... you the painted chamber will you promise not to be too unhappy?" asked Nancy. "You can't help crying with rage and grief that it is our painted chamber, not yours; but try to bear up until you get to the hotel, because mother is so soft-hearted she will be giving it back to ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Wickham turned out to be a soft-hearted and sentimental old lady who was completely won by her young companion's charm and unmistakable air of good breeding. After a short time, she either adopted her, or, on dying, left her ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... picture of her high-bred profile, shown in chiaroscuro at the fireside, the line of her chin and neck, the tumbled masses of her hair. These were things I did not care to remember; and I hated myself as a soft-hearted fool, seeing ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... sold, and now there was little left, and the cattle and horses were few, and only a small flock of sheep kept just to provide the house with mutton. His poor relations living scattered about the district knew that he was not only an improvident but an exceedingly weak and soft-hearted man, in spite of his grand manner, and many of the poorest among them had been allowed to build their ranches on his land and to keep a few animals for their sustenance: most of these had built their ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... forbidden luxury at Park Hill, and when, a little later on, I heard Chirper calling me by name, I made haste to dry my eyes and compose my features. She scanned me narrowly as I ran up to her. "You dear, soft-hearted little thing!" she said. And with that she stooped suddenly and gave me a hearty kiss, that might have been heard a dozen yards away. I was about to fling my arms round her neck, but she stopped me, saying, "That will do, dear. Mrs. Whitehead ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... tormented her. To be fastidious to such a point is to grow more so. And Victoria Tatham was nothing if not fastidious. She had money, taste, patience, yet ennui confronted her in many paths; and except for the son she adored she was scarcely a happy woman. She was personally generous and soft-hearted, but all "causes" found in her rather a critic than a supporter. The follies of her own class were particularly plain to her; her relations, with their great names, and great "places," seemed to her often ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is soft-hearted about him because he has lost his fortune. And Gilbert Vane is like to lose his in the general settling up. So she can administer the same kind of consolation ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Rowles muttered to himself; "but then all printers are not like him. Here, Phil, see what you can do to put the Fairy in order again. But as for that Juliet, if my wife was not so soft-hearted I would turn the girl out to run home or ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison
... sleepless in the soft and radiant 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 ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... bless soft-hearted, pleasant-spoken Irishmen! This one rescued us from a slow death by torture. He was amenable to blarney. He got it. The result was that never again did any of the serial of janitors, which ran continuously next door, empty garbage-cans in ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... wrong thing again, 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. ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... said the boy confidently. "I am beginning to think that she will come after all. She is sure to. She must know how jolly hungry I should be. She looked so kind. A gal like that wouldn't leave us to starve. She is a nice, soft-hearted one, she is, though she is Spanish. I wouldn't take no notice, but I see the tears come in her eyes, and one of them dropped on my hand when she leaned over me and looked so sorry because I was in ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... moment, unfortunately, Captain West returned. All the victuals and munitions having been put ashore, the old factious projects were revived. The soft-hearted West was made to believe that the rebellion had been solely on his account. Smith, seeing them bent on their own way, took the row-boat for Jamestown. The colony abandoned the pleasant Non-such and returned to the open air at West's Fort. On his way down, Smith met with the accident that ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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 take ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... been in Trombin's nature to be rough with a woman. In the two or three cases in which he had been concerned in 'removing' a lady, obnoxious to her husband or relations, he had been accused by his companion of being soft-hearted; but while Ortensia was speaking he was in such a state of rapt adoration that he quite forgot to listen to what she said; and instead of answering when she waited for his reply, he took the hand that lay on his sleeve in his, with such a gentle and sympathetic touch that she ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford |
