"Wanton" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wanton way * Take heart and all her words obey: Nor joy nor mourn at anything * For all things pass and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... my lord the king: If I speed well, I'll entertain you all. All. We thank your worship. Gav. I have some business: leave me to myself. All. We will wait here about the court. Gav. Do. [Exeunt Poor Men. These are not men for me; I must have wanton poets, pleasant wits, Musicians, that with touching of a string May draw the pliant king which way I please: Music and poetry is his delight; Therefore I'll have Italian masks by night, Sweet speeches, comedies, and pleasing shows; And in the day, when he shall ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... which the two of England and Russia, who had already borne it, had clouded its immortality. She had never, in any way, interfered in political events. Malice itself had never whispered a circumstance to her dispraise. After this wanton assassination, it is scarcely to be expected that the innocent and candid looks and streaming azure eyes of that angelic infant, the Dauphin, though raised in humble supplication to his brutal assassins, with an eloquence which would have disarmed the savage tiger, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 7 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... defensive fortress. It stands on the margin of a lovely lake, and considering its delightful situation and its comparative comfort, it is not strange that it was a favorite residence of the Scottish kings. It owes its dismantled condition to the wanton spite of the English dragoons, who, when they retreated from Linlithgow in face of the Highland army in 1746, left the palace ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... upon him: The third day comes a frost, a killing frost; And, when he thinks,—good easy man,—full surely His greatness is a ripening,—nips his root, And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured, Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders, These many summers in a sea of glory; But far beyond my depth: my high-blown pride At length broke under me; and now has left me, Weary and old with service, to the mercy Of a rude stream, that must forever hide me. Vain pomp and glory of this world, I ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... live peaceably, but I have lately experienced so many instances of your most bare-faced and wanton oppression, to my prejudice, that there's no longer a doubt with me what course I must be under the disagreeable necessity to take, that I may obtain redress and do justice to myself and family. I shall expect your immediate answer for my future ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... eyes to clear the wandering night, But shining suns of true divinity, That make the soul conceive her perfect light! No wanton beauties of humanity Her pretty brows, but beams that clear the sight Of him that seeks the true philosophy! No coral is her lip, no rose her fair, But even that crimson that adorns the sun. No nymph is she, but mistress of the air, By ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... here is worth singing about like that!" continued the glazier, as the Scotchman again melodized with a dying fall, "My ain countree!" "When you take away from among us the fools and the rogues, and the lammigers, and the wanton hussies, and the slatterns, and such like, there's cust few left to ornament a song with in Casterbridge, ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... reason for the act and it served no purpose; it was merely the instinctive act of the bully who strikes in wanton cruelty at something or somebody he knows cannot retaliate. His Honor found a satisfaction now in watching the blood rise flaming to the roots of Kate's hair and it gave him a feeling of power knowing that she must accept the humiliation or leave with her errand ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... "they are better than your ordinary business; better to exercise idle and wanton cruelty on mute fishes than on your fellow-creatures. Yet why should I say so? Why should not the whole human herd butt, gore, and gorge upon each other, till all are extirpated but one huge and over-fed ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... their conduct was wanton and reckless. He should mark his sense of the outrage of which they have been found guilty, by passing on each of them a sentence of THREE (!) YEARS' IMPRISONMENT WITH ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... my reward," she cried, "for the kindness I've shown you! After all, you are nothing but a wanton." ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... any justifiable pretensions even of the lax code of the duellist. The expressions which he called upon him to avow or disavow, were vague, and were based upon the report of a person who specified neither time, place, nor the words. It was a loose matter of hearsay which was alleged—evidently a wanton provocation to a murderous duel. Burr demanded so broad a retraction from Hamilton of all he might have said, that compliance was impossible. It was an attempt to procure an indorsement of his character at the cost of the moral character of the indorser. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... and at that period no other mutilation was practiced. It was a small lock not more than three inches square, which was carried only during the thirty days' celebration of a victory, and afterward given religious burial. Wanton cruelties and the more barbarous customs of war were greatly intensified with the coming of the white man, who brought with him fiery liquor and deadly weapons, aroused the Indian's worst passions, provoking in him revenge ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... of that department as should be pointed out by the Minister of General Police. I was fortunate enough to keep my friend M. Moreau de Worms, deputy from the Youne, out of the fiat of exiles. This produced a mischievous effect. It bore a character of wanton severity quite inconsistent with the assurances of mildness and moderation given at St. Cloud on the 19th Brumaire. Cambaceres afterwards made a report, in which he represented that it was unnecessary for the maintenance of tranquillity to subject the proscribed to banishment, considering ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... thy pet slave waiteth without for her mistress. Now go to her for me and bid her come; and, love-sick boy, be sure she does not fascinate thee that thou be so transfixed to her side that passers-by think they see two statues by Scopas, dressed by some wanton ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... Nicholas, of Rhode Island, cheering letter written to Washington by, i. 597; supply of powder sent by, to the camp at Cambridge, i. 628; acting governor of Rhode Island in place of Governor Wanton ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... with other suggestions of unfair practices, rendered the conduct of the Otsego election justly liable to suspicion; and the committee were constrained to conclude that the usurpation of authority by Richard R. Smith was wanton and unnecessary, and proceeded from no motive connected with the preservation of the rights of the people or the freedom and ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... phenomenon is subject, until it degenerates into a habit with long practice, to the caprices of character, and not seldom to an admirable delicacy of feeling in actresses who are still young. Coralie, to all appearance bold and wanton, as the part required, was in reality girlish and timid, and love had wrought in her a revulsion of her woman's heart against the comedian's mask. Art, the supreme art of feigning passion and feeling, had not yet triumphed over nature in her; she shrank before a great audience from the ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... this profuse expenditure of loving care on every detail, the monuments of architecture belonging to the earlier Renaissance have a poetry that compensates for structural defects; just as its wildest literary extravagances—the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, for instance—have a charm of wanton fancy and young joy that atones to sympathetic students for ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... some years ago; a mutilated head in marble; it is now in Paris. You can see the very place from my roof here, on bright days. These men, Mr. Denis, were our masters. Do not be misled by what you are told of the wanton luxury of those shores; do not forget that your view of that age has filtered through Roman stoicism and English puritanism which speak with envy lurking at their hearts—the envy of the incomplete creature for him who dares express himself. A plague ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... a face I should never have suspected her of being an immodest wanton, were it not for the evidence of my own eyes. 'T is a strange world, senor. Yet I have often heard this is the way with ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... wide, art wildly driven hence, The outer world gives thee no recompense. Each shining sphere that trembles in blue space Hath orbit true—its own familiar place. Nor doth the planet pale that gems the night Reel wanton down, the smallest star to smite. No twining vine, tendril, or springing shoot Ere taught thee so; for bud and leaf and root Doth its best self lift upward into light, Yet climbing still, scorns not the sacred right That shrines its fellow. "So pattering rains ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... the coast through the great mountains by unknown paths, and as they travelled, the sailor died; and they came at last through innumerable hardships to the Kimash Hills, the hills of the Mighty Men, and there they stayed. It was not an evil land; it had neither deadly cold in winter nor wanton heat in summer. But they never saw a human face, and everything was lonely and spectral. For a time they strove to go eastwards or southwards but the mountains were impassable, and in the north and west there was no hope. Though the buffalo swept by them in the valley they could ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... paper, no bitter expression passed his lips, but tears filled his eyes as he referred to the destruction of his place, that had been the cherished home of the father of the United States. He could forgive their cutting down his trees, their wanton conversion of his pleasure-grounds into a graveyard, but he could never forget their reckless plunder of all the camp equipment and other relics of General Washington that Arlington House ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... the full height of Portofino Kulm, where the whole enchanted coast-line of the Riviera from Genoa to Sestri Levante lay spread out as a jewelled fringe of ocean. Elaine stood hatless while the wanton breeze caressed her glorious hair and caught at her ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... what was shared by those he envied—the power to pick and choose, to ignore, to punish. His to receive, not to seek; to dispense, not to stand waiting for his portion; his the freedom of the forbidden, of everything beyond him, of all withheld, denied by this bright, loose-robed, wanton-eyed goddess from whose invisible altar he had caught a whiff of sacrificial odours, standing there through the wintry years in the squalor and reek ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... great many acquaintance in the army, who were in considerable posts, to all of whom she exclaimed against the loose behaviour, as she termed it, of Edelia, and represented her charities to the prisoners as the effects of a wanton inclination:—this she doubted not but would come to prince Menzikoff's ears, and perhaps incense him enough to cause her to be privately made away with; for as she imagined nothing less than the most amorous intercourse between her and Horatio, she thought it unadvisable to declare ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... consistent with the oft-repeated declaration that the Constitution was a "covenant with hell," which stood as the caption of a leading abolitionist paper of Boston. That signs of coming danger so visible, evidences of hostility so unmistakable, disregard of constitutional obligations so wanton, taunts and jeers so bitter and insulting, should serve to increase excitement in the South, was a consequence flowing as much from reason and patriotism as from sentiment. He must have been ignorant ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... contrarie side, I beheld in the same manner the wanton and lasciuious Pasiph[ae] burning in infamous lust, lying in a Machine or frame of wood, and the Bull leaping vpon ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... these eyes of mine have never wandered, Still may they gleam with long forgotten light. Since in no wanton way my youth was squandered, Some sense of youth still clings ...
— Last Poems • Laurence Hope
... on this man was wanton, and entirely unprovoked on the part of McIntire, not only from his relation of the circumstance, but from the account of those who were with him, and who bore testimony to his being unarmed, the governor determined to punish the offender, who it was understood resorted with his tribe above ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... Indian Camp with deadly whisky in return for every valuable thing the Indians had to trade. And when the Indian Camp was ablaze with the light of campfires and was a mad whirl of dancing drunkenness the miscreant traders from the South, in a spirit of utter wanton devilry, got under cover of a cut bank by the creek where the camp was, and proceeded to shoot the Indians who were defenceless in their orgy. A volley or two accounted for two score killed and many wounded, only a few escaping to the hills. And this carnival of bloodshed was witnessed by ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... the woes of others, and even compassionates their weakness and wickedness. It will desire, therefore, as much as possible, to hide them from the public gaze, unless the good of others should require their exposure; and even then, will not do it with wanton feelings. But these remarks apply with much greater force to the practice of Christians speaking of one another's faults. Where is the heart that would not revolt at the idea of brothers and sisters scanning each other's faults, in the ears of strangers? Yet ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... so transitory, so fleeting, that he had come to love their brilliant changes, and to look forward with some dread to the possible permanence of them, or such fixedness as should take away the charming drift of his vagaries. If, in some wanton and quite impossible moment, the modest Rose had conquered her delicacy so far as to put her hand in his, and say, "Will you be my husband?" he would not have been so much outraged by her boldness as disturbed by the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red;— Great Villers lies—alas, how changed from him, That life of pleasure and that soul of whim. Gallant and gay in Clieveden's proud alcove, The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love; No wit to flatter, left of all his store; No fool to laugh at, which he valued more; There victor of his health, of fortune, friends, And fame; this lord of ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... were thrown into great trouble by the arrival of the princess, Rana Bahadur’s wife. The unprincipled chief had connected himself with one of these frail but pure beauties, (Gandharbin,) with which the holy city abounds, had stript his wife of her jewels to bestow them on this wanton companion, and finally had turned his wife out of doors. As the slave regent had the meanness to seize on the income of the town, assigned for the princess’s dowry, the poor lady was reduced to the utmost distress, and conceived that we were her enemies, being on an ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... glory rise Before my dazzled eyes! Young zephyrs wave their wanton wings, And melody celestial rings. All blooming on the lawn the nymphs advance, And touch the lute, and range the dance: And the blithe shepherds, on the mountain's side, Arrayed in all their rural pride, Exalt ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... went back to Rome and resumed his ordinary life there, without bearing with him any of the wholesome leaven of matrimony—a husband in name, and little more. Duchess Isabella, a mere child, wanton and wilful more than most, was thus left the uncontrolled mistress of a princely establishment, with no marital check to regulate her conduct. Surely as unstable a condition, and as conducive to infidelity, as can well ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... by straining your kindness so far," said he; and in wanton insolence, seeking again to show Mr. Rassendyll the mean esteem in which he held him, and the weariness his presence was, he raised his arms and stretched them above his head, as a man does in the fatigue of tedium. "Heigho!" ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... counsel they agreed to follow: to let out the womenfolk to meet the youth, namely, thrice fifty women, even ten and seven-score bold, stark-naked women, at one and the same time, and their chieftainess, Scannlach ('the Wanton') before them, to discover their persons and their shame[b] to him. [2]"Let the young women go," said Conchobar, "and bare their paps and their breasts and their swelling bosoms, and if he be a ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... that Congress and the country had the virtue and firmness to bear the infliction, that the energies of our people soon found relief from this wanton tyranny in vast importations of the precious metals from almost every part of the world, and that at the close of this tremendous effort to control our Government the bank found itself powerless and no longer able to loan out its surplus means. The community had learned ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... read this out some day, got up sprucely with a new toga, all in white, with your birthday ring on at last, perched up on a high seat, after gargling your supple throat by a liquid process of tuning, with a languishing roll of your wanton eye. At this you may see great brawny sons of Rome all in a quiver, losing all decency of gesture and command of voice, as the strains glide into their very bones, and the marrow within is tickled by the ripple of ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... "Oh, wanton malice! deathful sport! Could ye not spare my all? But mark my words, on thy cold heart A fiery ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... no hostility to existing wealth, no wanton or unjust violation of the rights of property, but a constant disposition to ameliorate the condition of the classes ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... followed this. I toiled and toiled for bread, And for the shelter of one stingy room. Temptation, which the hand of poverty Bears oft seductively to woman's lips, To me came not. I hated men like beasts; Their flattering words, and wicked, wanton leers, Sickened me with ineffable disgust. At length there came a change. One warm Spring eve, As I sat idly dreaming of the past, And questioning the future, my quick ear Caught sound of feet upon the creaking stairs, And a light rap delivered at my door. I said, "Come in!" with ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... venture to beg, that your Highness will treat such Greeks as may henceforth fall into your hands with humanity; more especially since the horrors of war are sufficiently great in themselves, without being aggravated by wanton cruelties on either side. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... thinking of the loss of property involved, immense and serious as that is, but only of the wanton and wholesale destruction of the lives of non-combatants, men, women and children engaged in pursuits which have always, even in the darkest periods of modern history, ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson
... shelf, and with deft fingers traced the course of this branch and that, and following all up in turn, tied those which were loose. After cutting the grass as he tied each knot, he examined the plant all over with his fingers till he found one wanton, wild, unnecessary shoot, and passing the knife-blade down to its origin, he was in the act of cutting it off when James Ellis made a gesture to stop him, but was arrested by Mrs Mostyn, who held up her ...
— A Life's Eclipse • George Manville Fenn
... since some of the injuries have been committed, the repeated and unavailing applications for redress, the wanton character of some of the outrages upon the property and persons of our citizens, upon the officers and flag of the United States, independent of recent insults to this Government and people by the late extraordinary Mexican minister, would justify in the eyes ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Polk • James Polk
... my first revelation of some of the elements of the character of the gypsy as it had existed in the imagination of Prosper Mrime when he wrote his novel. To me she presented a woman thoroughly wanton and diabolically equipped with the wicked witcheries which explained, if they did not palliate, the conduct of Don Jos. Here we had a woman without conscience, but also without the capacity for even a wicked affection; a woman who might ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the bands of marauders which followed the advance of the Confederate troops when they invaded Maryland, or, who perhaps, living unfortunately in the very track of the conflicting armies, found themselves driven from their burning homesteads, and devastated fields, victims of a wanton soldiery. Destitute, ragged and shelterless, their condition appealed with peculiar force to the friends of the Union. State aid was by no means sufficient, and unorganized charity unavailable to ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... to suffer. At present we have no other course than to endure in silence the persecution of our tyrants, and conform to the servitude imposed on us. We may well exclaim that this is a country where The wanton whites new penal statutes draw Whites grind the blacks, and white men rule the law. Nevertheless, it is not too late to mend. The estrangement between the two races is not irreconcilable. Europeans could, with advantage ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... following that, and assured of her support, I would defy Kirby, denounce him if necessary to the military authorities, identifying myself by means of my army commission, and insist on the immediate release of the girl. The man had broken no law—unless the wanton killing of Shrunk could be proven against him—and I might not be able to compel his arrest. Whatever he suspected now relative to his prisoner, he had originally supposed her to be his slave, his property, and hence possessed a right under the law to restrain her liberty. ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... balustrade, these lords and lusty ladies are met to romp and wanton in the fulness of love, under the solstice of a noon in midsummer. Water gushes in fantastic arcs from the grotto, making a cold music to the emblazoned air, while a breeze swells the sun-shot satin of every lady's skirt, and tosses the ringlets that hang like bunches of yellow ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... have been discovered to be an absolute wanton, men from any of the clans make a ring round her, she being bound, and tossed from one to the other, and when exhausted is unbound and left by her relations to the men to do as they please to her—the almost inevitable result is death. With this terror before ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... said Evellin, "after my strict injunctions, do not insult me with empty titles. Have I not told you that my patent of nobility is cancelled? I am Goodman Evellin of the Fells, husband of the best of women, and father of two wanton prattlers, who know not the misery of having fallen from an eminently glorious station. Mark, Williams, the story of what I was shall die with me, or only survive close shut in the treasured remembrance ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... associates as idle and thoughtless, and as good-natured, as himself, to make a jest of domestic life and domestic virtues. And, by-and-by, there is a stronger stimulus wanted, and the jest becomes more wanton over the roulette table or the keenly contested rubber; and the wine circulates more freely as the fire of youth goes out and leaves the ashes of mental and moral desolation. Ah no! the club-house is ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... sails are impatiently flapping. Each wave jerks the mast and canvas with a smart loud crack like that of a whip. The sound is unspeakably irritating, it seems so useless and wanton, and so perfectly de trop while the wind is absolutely calm. At other times, in such a case, you can stop this provoking clatter by hauling up the boom and lowering the jib; but here, in mid ocean, we must not hamper the sails ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... sensations too deep for tears. 'No, Owen, it has not left me; and I will be honest. I own now to you, without any disguise of words, what last night I did not own to myself, because I hardly knew of it. I love Edward Springrove with all my strength, and heart, and soul. You call me a wanton for it, don't you? I don't care; I have gone beyond caring for anything!' She looked stonily into his face ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... which Dr. Ephraim Brevard, a finished scholar; Col. William Kennon, an eminent lawyer of Salisbury, and Rev. Hezekiah J. Balch, a distinguished Presbyterian preacher, were the chief speakers. During the session of the convention, an express messenger arrived, bearing the news of the wanton and cruel shedding of blood at Lexington on the 19th of April, just one month proceeding. This intelligence served to increase the general patriotic ardor, and the assembly, as with one voice, cried out, "Let us be independent. ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... recesses, separated by bars of light. The shape of these recesses is at present a matter of no importance to us: it was, indeed, endlessly varied; but needlessly, for the value of a recess is in its darkness, and its darkness disguises its form. But it was not in mere wanton indulgence of their love of shade that the Flamboyant builders deepened the furrows of their mouldings: they had found a means of decorating those furrows as rich as it was expressive, and the entire frame-work of their architecture was designed with a view to the effect of this ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... casaque[Fr]. Adj. capricious; erratic, eccentric, fitful, hysterical; full of whims &c. n.; maggoty; inconsistent, fanciful, fantastic, whimsical, crotchety, kinky [U. S.], particular, humorsome[obs3], freakish, skittish, wanton, wayward; contrary; captious; arbitrary; unconformable &c. 83; penny wise and pound foolish; fickle &c. (irresolute) 605; frivolous, sleeveless, giddy, volatile. Adv. by fits and starts, without rhyme or reason. Phr. nil fuit unquain sic inipar ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... arranged so as to form a rough square, with one large and several small courtyards. The outside dimensions of the compound are about 160 feet by 145 feet. The builders showed the familiar Inca sense of symmetry in arranging the houses, Due to the wanton destruction of many buildings by the natives in their efforts at treasure-hunting, the walls have been so pulled down that it is impossible to get the exact dimensions of the buildings. In only one of them could we be sure that there had been ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... disclosed the lawless joy. Stung to the soul, indignant through the skies To his black forge vindictive Vulcan flies: Arrived, his sinewy arms incessant place The eternal anvil on the massy base. A wondrous net he labours, to betray The wanton lovers, as entwined they lay, Indissolubly strong; Then instant bears To his immortal dome the finish'd snares: Above, below, around, with art dispread, The sure inclosure folds the genial bed: Whose texture even the search of gods deceives, Thin as the filmy threads the spider weaves, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... whichever side I turn my eyes myriads of happy beings crowd upon my {18} view. 'The insect youth are on the wing.' Swarms of new-born flies are trying their pinions in the air. Their sportive motions, their wanton mazes, their gratuitous activity, their continual change of place without use or purpose, testify their joy, and the exultation which they feel in their lately discovered faculties.... The whole winged insect tribe, it is probable, are equally ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... he said angrily. "I am going to talk plain to you. You are a fool, a downright, empty-headed silly fool. What you have destroyed in wanton carelessness would have kept the life in a man a whole day. Haven't you sense enough to see it's going to be nip and tuck if we ever get out of this? You've shown yourself, from start to finish, a ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... wreaked upon it. And look at it now. There was an old rattletrap ruin where the bungalow now stands. I put up with it, but I immediately pulled down the cow barn, the pigsties, the chicken houses, everything—made a clean sweep. They shook their heads and groaned when they saw such wanton waste by a widow struggling to make a living. But worse was to come. They were paralyzed when I told them the price of the three beautiful O.I.C.'s—pigs, you know, Chesters—which I bought, sixty dollars for ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... Slough that I perceived you fell into, and got up to the gate without that danger; only I met with one whose name was Wanton, who had like to have ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of the loops, about as thick as your arm, your companion, if you have a forester with you, will spring joyfully. With a few blows of his cutlass he will sever it as high up as he can reach, and again below, some three feet down, and, while you are wondering at this seemingly wanton destruction, he lifts the bar on high, throws his head back, and pours down his thirsty throat a pint or more of pure cold water. This hidden treasure is, strange as it may seem, the ascending sap, or rather the ascending pure rain-water ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... wanton extravagance, and all the more disapproving that she herself badly wanted to be extravagant too, and wear dainty colours for a change, instead of the useful black and white, if only her sensitive conscience could have ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... he said. "But I think you may as well know it for your present edification and future guidance. Madam, I am that wicked, wanton, wily fox, that whipper-snapper, that unmitigated ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... official power. The value of a man's services to society fixes his rank in it. Compared with the effect of our social arrangements in impelling men to be zealous in business, we deem the object-lessons of biting poverty and wanton luxury on which you depended a device as weak and uncertain as it was barbaric. The lust of honor even in your sordid day notoriously impelled men to more desperate effort than the love of ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... carefully, and disclosed a tiny shoe, homely but neat, a little child's chemise, and an old, faded, pink print sun-bonnet, minus a string. In the upper leather of the shoe were several cuts, the work of some wanton hand. Sitting back upon her heels, she let the open parcel fall into ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... discussion of this passage I should hardly suppose to be necessary. Nothing could be more wanton than to assign this passage to an imaginary Gospel merely on the ground alleged. The hypothesis was less violent in regard to the Synoptic Gospels, which clearly contain a large amount of common matter that might also have found its way into other ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... Spies in the employ of the San Luang penetrate into every family of wealth and influence. Every citizen suspects and fears always his neighbor, sometimes his wife. On more than one occasion when, vexed by some act of the king's, more than usually wanton and unjust, I instinctively gave expression to my feelings by word or look in the presence of certain officers and courtiers, I observed that they rapped, or tapped, in a peculiar and stealthy manner. This I afterward discovered was one of the secret signs of the San Luang; and the warning ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... behaved on its advance to Smolensk, things were even worse as they left the ruined town behind them and resumed their journey towards Moscow. It seemed that the hatred with which they were regarded by the Russian peasantry was now even more than reciprocated. The destruction they committed was wanton and wholesale; the villages, and even the towns, were burnt down, and the whole country made desolate. It was nothing to them that by so doing they added enormously to the difficulties of their own commissariat; ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... Eveleth in her former marriage, and treating her as a foolish crank or an audacious flirt. The goodness of her life, her self-sacrifice and works of benevolence, counted for no more against these wanton attacks than the absolute inoffensiveness of my own; the writers knew no harm of her, and they knew nothing at all of me; but they devoted us to the execration of their readers simply because we ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... with its sixty men and numerous well-loaded canoes—whose cargoes had been the bone of contention between Hudson's Bay and Nor'-Westers at Seven Oaks—arrived at Fort Douglas. The newcomers were surprised to find us in possession of the enemy's fort. The last news they had heard was of wanton and successful aggression on the part of Lord Selkirk's Company; and I think the extra crews sent north were quite as much for purposes of defence as swift travel. But the gravity of affairs startled the men from Fort William; ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... most amusing part of the affair was that I construed Angelique's wanton insult into a declaration of love. I was astounded. Lucrezia, remarking the state I was in, touched my arm, enquiring what ailed me. I told her, and she said ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... admitted that their unwonted activity was due to my successful stratagem, the fact remains that the summary discharge of several attendants accused and proved guilty of brutality immediately followed and for a while put a stop to wanton assaults against which for a period of four months I had protested in vain. Patients who still lived in the violent ward told me that comparative peace reigned about ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... time of ye forenoone service on s'd Day by her rude and Indecent Behaviour in Laughing and Playing in ye time of ye s'd Service which Doinges of ye s'd Tabatha is against ye peace of our Sovereign Lord ye King, his Crown and Dignity." Wanton Tabatha had to pay three shilings sixpence for her ill-timed mid-winter frolic. Perhaps she laughed to try to keep warm. Those who laughed at the misdemeanors of others were fined as well. Deborah Bangs, a young girl, in 1755 paid a fine of five shillings ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... tastes, his restless endeavors, his partial and halting successes. The ante-room in which he had paused with Ferris was painted to look like a grape-arbor, where the vines sprang from the floor, and flourishing up the trellised walls, with many a wanton tendril and flaunting leaf, displayed their lavish clusters of white and purple all over the ceiling. It touched Ferris, when Don Ippolito confessed that this decoration had been the distraction of his own vacant moments, to find that it was like certain grape-arbors he had seen in remote ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... unnoticed, unlamented. Come then, sad Thought, and let us meditate While meditate we may. * * * * * I hoped I should not leave The earth without a vestige; Fate decrees It shall be otherwise, and I submit. Henceforth, O world, no more of thy desires! No more of Hope! the wanton vagrant Hope; I abjure all. Now other cares engross me, And my tired soul, with emulative haste, Looks to its God, and prunes ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... forgotten. I will not close this narrative without mentioning an act of bravery performed by a lone woman which stopped the vulgar and inhuman searching of women in our section of the city. The most atrocious and unpardonable act of the mob was the wanton disregard for womanhood. Lizzie Smith was the first woman to make a firm and stubborn stand against the proceeding in the southern section. It was near the noon hour when Lizzie, homeward bound, reached the corner of Orange and ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... it be right, This window open to the night? The wanton airs, from the tree-top, 20 Laughingly through the lattice drop; The bodiless airs, a wizard rout, Flit through thy chamber in and out, And wave the curtain canopy So fitfully, so fearfully, 25 Above the closed and fringed lid 'Neath which thy slumb'ring ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... penalties. Maybe you know nothing of the meaning of crime, as we understand it. Maybe you think us just paid machines, without feelings, without sentiment, cold, ruthless creatures who are here to run down criminals, as the old-time Indians ran down the buffalo, in a wanton love of destroying life. Believe me, it isn't so. We're particularly humane, and would far rather see folks well within the law and prospering, the same as we want to prosper ourselves. We don't fancy the work of shutting up our fellow creatures from all enjoyment of the life ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... our whole prosperity, and make us the victims of a theory which, even if sound, could not profess to give us one tittle more advantage than the course which we had so long pursued! We believe that if the annals of legislation were searched through, we could not find a parallel case of such wanton and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... to the Puritan nostrils, and their public celebration was at once rigidly forbidden by the laws of New England. New holidays were not quickly evolved, and the sober gatherings for matters of Church and State for a time took their place. The hatred of "wanton Bacchanallian Christmasses" spent throughout England, as Cotton said, in "revelling, dicing, carding, masking, mumming, consumed in compotations, in interludes, in excess of wine, in mad mirth," was the natural reaction of intelligent and thoughtful minds against the excesses of a festival ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... Our wanton accidents take root, and grow To vaunt themselves God's laws, until our clothes, Our gems, and gaudy books, and cushioned litters Become ourselves, and we would fain forget There ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... gay, the black, the friskey, Would kiss like any wanton Gipsey; Nor was her Mouth alone the Case, A Man of ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)
... than the other. The nobleness, it seems, consisted in the greater imminence of the danger, in having to contend with armed men instead of ferocious brutes, and in the higher value of the prizes which they would obtain in case of success. The idea of there being any injustice or wrong in this wanton and unprovoked aggression upon the territories of a neighboring nation seems not to have entered the mind either of the royal robber ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... for some reason unknown the thief had transferred its contents to some other bag—perhaps his own—and then had discarded the original one, in wanton humor ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... that the getting up of a person's birth formula is a test of his social position. They commence by setting forth, That whereas A. B. was a member of the kingdom of the unborn, where he was well provided for in every way, and had no cause of discontent, &c. &c., he did of his own wanton restlessness conceive a desire to enter into this present world; that thereon having taken the necessary steps as set forth in laws of the unborn kingdom, he set himself with malice aforethought ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... was more dreadful than any wild outcry of grief, Ramona sat on the ground by Alessandro's body, and held his hands in hers. There was nothing to be done for him. The first shot had been fatal, close to his heart,—the murderer aimed well; the after-shots, with the pistol, were from mere wanton brutality. After a few seconds Ramona rose, went into the house, brought out the white altar-cloth, and laid it over the mutilated face. As she did this, she recalled words she had heard Father Salvierderra quote as ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... to hear the music float Along the gloaming lea; 'Tis sweet to hear the blackbird's note Come pealing frae the tree; To see the lambkins lightsome race— The speckled kid in wanton chase— The young deer cower in lonely place, Deep in her flowing den; But sweeter far the bonny face That smiles in ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... descended into the licence of a highwayman; his pride in the opportunity for helpfulness grew to be the braggadocio of a bully; his freedom of personal choice became the insolence of lawlessness; his pretended purity and justice proved wanton selfishness. ...
— Stories of King Arthur and His Knights - Retold from Malory's "Morte dArthur" • U. Waldo Cutler
... would have remained neutral during the remainder of the war, had it not been for one of those border outrages, which lawless and unprincipled white men but too often commit upon the Indians, under pretence of self defence or retaliation, often a mere pretext for wanton bloodshed and murder. Previous to joining Colonel Dixon, Black Hawk had visited the lodge of an old friend, whose son he had adopted and taught to hunt. He was anxious that this youth should go with him and his band and join the British ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... social customs." Even if the Mormons had so construed it, the rebuke of their lack of patriotism would have aroused their resentment, and Bernhisel, in a letter to President Fillmore, characterized it as "a wanton insult." ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... a tragic room, but it had never seemed that to Becky. She came of a race of men who had hunted from instinct but with a sense of honor. The Judge and those of his kind hated wanton killing. Their guns would never have swept away the feathered tribes of tree and sky. It was the trappers and the pot-hunters who had done that. There had motored once to the Judge's mansion a man and his wife who had raged at the brutes who hunted for sport. They ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... right to expect dividends from their railroad stock. If I had the money, that was represented in the stuff destroyed by our troops that day, I could run a daily newspaper for years, if it didn't have a subscriber or a patent medicine advertisement. And who was benefitted by such wanton destruction of property. As we rode along I told the colonel I thought it was a confounded shame to do as we had done, and that such a use of power, because we had the power, was unworthy of American soldiers. He said it was a soldier's duty to obey orders and not talk back, and ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... his crime, will his captain insist that he shall do the duty of a sailor? Will he command him to go aloft when it is impossible for him to do it, and punish him as guilty of disobedience? Surely if there be any such thing as justice and injustice, this would be unjust and wanton cruelty" (Hamilton's Reid, ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... not every day but sometimes, one gets a little weary even of the best tricks. Need the author depend quite so much on the printer for his effects? Scenes and passages in a book seem to be standing very near the edge, and the wanton thought occurs to one that a little shove would send them over. In fact, one gets irritable. And then anything bad may happen. This ...
— If Winter Don't - A B C D E F Notsomuchinson • Barry Pain
... Sc. 4: Having been menaced with death by the wanton judges, Susanna tells her father, mother, and sister of the ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... know I ought never to have dreamt of sending that valentine—forgive me, sir—it was a wanton thing which no woman with any self-respect should have done. If you will only pardon my thoughtlessness, I ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... place on, throughout the territory over which this patriotic army had operated, were the desolated homes of helpless people, stripped of every valuable they possessed, and outraged at the wanton destruction of their property, scarcely knowing how to repair the damage or to take up again their broken fortunes. Night had now fallen, but a bright moon rather added to the risks of continuing my journey. An old negro man, however, ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... glorious a light of learning and Religion, so suddain, and palpable a darknesse, so strange and horrid a barbarity should over-spread them, as now we behold in all that goodly tract of the Turkish dominions: And what was the cause of all this, but the giddinesse of a wanton people, the Schisms and the Heresies in the church, and the prosperous successes of a rebellious Impostor, whose steps we have pursued in so many pregnant instances; giving countenance to those unheard of impieties, and delusions, as if God be not infinitely ...
— An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) • John Evelyn
... He was very unwilling to tell me, but it came out at last that Dermot and Harold—being, he feared, in an improperly excited condition—had insisted on going to the den with the keeper, and had irritated the animal by wanton mischief, and he was convinced that this could not have taken place ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in the Press you have no word to offer. In it I quote verbatim Professor Sanderson's own description of one of the many wanton torments that he has inflicted upon the good creatures of God. I ask how medicine is advanced by the agonies of the dogs he has slowly suffocated, and I get no answer (though I have sent the letter to him and some ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge
... the ditch, And fill'd it in; and o'er it bridg'd a way Level and wide, far as a jav'lin's flight Hurl'd by an arm that proves its utmost strength. O'er this their columns pass'd; Apollo bore His AEgis o'er them, and cast down the wall; Easy, as when a child upon the beach, In wanton play, with hands and feet o'erthrows The mound of sand, which late in play he rais'd; So, Phoebus, thou, the Grecian toil and pains Confounding, sentest panic through their souls. Thus hemm'd beside the ships they made their stand, While each exhorted each, and all, ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... those tempting eyes, that faultless form, Those looks with feeling and with nature warm; The neck, the softly-swelling bosom hide, Nor, wanton gales, blow the light vest aside; For who, when beauties more than life excite Silent applause, can gaze without delight! But innocence, enchanting maid, is thine; Thine eyes in liquid light unconscious shine; And may ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... Great Britain" many instances are given of the wanton and wholesale destruction of church and churchyard memorials, even late in the eighteenth century. In some cases the church officers, as already stated, gave public notice prior to removal of gravestones, in order that persons claiming ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... But wheeling round, and wheeling round, The cruel spoiler aim'd a shot, Cured her heart's wound, cured her heart's wound. She will not hear their helpless cry, Nor see them pine in slavery! The burning breast she will not bide, For wrongs of wanton knavery. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Experience do not enter. They stay without, together with the dull, dead clay of which they form a part; while the freed brain, released from their narrowing tutelage, steals softly past the ebon gate, to wanton at its own sweet will among the mazy paths that wind through the ...
— Dreams - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... go, if go she will. Seek not, O fool, her wanton flight to stay. Of all she gives and takes away The best remains ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that one reason that this day doth so swarm with wanton professors, is, because they have not sound conviction for, nor go to God with sincere confession of, sin: and one cause of that has been, that they did never seriously fall in with, nor yet sink under either the certainty or terribleness, ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... Our future sumptuous edition will be a sign that he is among the immortals. But an edition de luxe now would be a wanton Hic jacet." ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... is to haste my carcase hence: Youth stole away and felt no kind of joy, And age he left in travail ever since; The wanton days that made me nice and coy Were but a dream, a shadow, and ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... Lucian says. Therefore the cause that the bright sun doth rest At the low point of the declining west— When his oft-wearied horses breathless pant— Is to refresh himself with this sweet plant, Which wanton Thetis from the west doth bring, To joy her love after his toilsome ring: For 'tis a cordial for an inward smart, As is dictamnum to the wounded hart. It is the sponge that wipes out all our woe; 'Tis like the thorn ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... came to the conclusion that since they had all seen it, there was nothing to do but continue the investigation and send the details to the 'Society for Psychical Research,' when he got down from his horse and walked towards the door of the house. At his approach, as if to rebuke his wanton curiosity, a great blast of snow blew out of the window and got him full in the face. He howled—the ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... wretched master and his amiable slave in the cars. The sketch reminded us of the best in 'Uncle Tom.' We need books filled with such pictures, to electrify the slumbering sensibilities of the North. Wanton candor in speaking of slavery, is the most unpardonable of sins. There is a time to tell the whole truth; but the wise man says. There is 'a time ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... his stubby forefinger pointed to within a few inches of my nose, "I said that I kenned her and her kind well, havin' watched the likes o' her ridden out o' Dawson City on a rail more times than once. I said that she was naethin' but a wanton"—only this was not the word Whinnie used—"a wanton o' Babylon and a temptress o' men and a corrupter o' homes out o' her time and place, bein' naught but a soft shinin' thing that was a mockery to the guid God who made her and a blight ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... taxes. Very little is known of the procurators appointed after the deposition of Archelaus, until Tiberius sent Pontius Pilate in A.D. 26. He held office until he was deposed in 36. Josephus gives several examples of his wanton disregard of Jewish prejudice, and of his extreme cruelty. His conduct at the trial of Jesus was remarkably gentle and judicial in comparison with other acts recorded of his government; yet the fear of trial at Rome, which ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... The wanton infliction of pain on man or beast is a crime; pity is that so many of those who (as I think rightly) hold this view, seem to forget that the criminality lies in the wantonness and not in the act of ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... Kuhn recognises a fire-myth. Roth, again (whose own name means red), far from thinking that Urvasi is 'the chaste dawn,' interprets her name as die geile, that is, 'lecherous, lascivious, lewd, wanton, obscene'; while Pururavas, as 'the Roarer,' suggests 'the Bull in rut.' In accordance with these views Roth explains the myth in a fashion of ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... cannonade and bombardment, by which the town was reduced to ashes. An attempt was then made to penetrate into the country; but the militia and minute men, rather irritated than intimidated by this wanton act of unavailing devastation, drove the party, which had ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... Then, at intervals, all the heads in the row are briskly lifted and as briskly lowered, time after time, with an automatic precision worthy of a Prussian drill-ground. Can it be their method of intimidating an always possible aggressor? Can it be a manifestation of gaiety, when the wanton sun warms their full paunches? Whether sign of fear or sign of bliss, this is the only exercise that the gluttons allow themselves until the proper ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... high in the seneschal's chair. This foot was of narrow proportions, delicately curved, as broad as two fingers, and as long as a sparrow, tail included, small at the top—a true foot of delight, a virginal foot that merited a kiss as a robber does the gallows; a roguish foot; a foot wanton enough to damn an archangel; an ominous foot; a devilishly enticing foot, which gave one a desire to make two new ones just like it to perpetuate in this lower world the glorious works of God. The page was tempted to take the ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... redy to fall, shamelesse, wanton, subtyle, paynted Femme impudicque, lubricque, affrontee, mignarde, ...
— An Introductorie for to Lerne to Read, To Pronounce, and to Speke French Trewly • Anonymous
... drunken and misdirected ferocity seemed vastly to incense the young warriors; and the senior waxing as wrathful at the wanton destruction of his liquor, there immediately ensued a battle of tongues betwixt the two parties, who scolded and berated one another for the space of ten minutes or more with prodigious volubility and energy, the juniors expatiating upon the murder of the horse as an act ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... civilized lands to some consistency of action are lacking here, and the morals of the natives run along other lines than ours. Faith and truth are no virtues, constancy and perseverance do not exist. The same man who can torture his wife to death from wanton cruelty, holding her limbs over the fire till they are charred, etc., will be inconsolable over the death of a son for a long time, and will wear a curl, a tooth or a finger-joint of the dead as a valuable ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... yellow, with very few exceptions; and secondly, to the inartificial manner in which they paint; for they do not, as I am most satisfactorily informed, even attempt an imitation of nature, but besmear themselves hastily, and at a venture, anxious only to lay on enough. Where therefore there is no wanton intention, nor a wish to deceive, I can discover no immorality. But in England, I am afraid, our painted ladies are not clearly entitled to the same apology. They even imitate nature with such exactness that the whole public ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... "the haughty oppression of the one and the wanton cruelty of the other, have given Scotland too many wounds for me to hold a shield before them; meet them, and I ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... has chipped the urn," he continued, feeling exceedingly vexed, as a Vicar always does when he finds any wanton defacement of the building ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... revolver and rode over at once to investigate. It was fortunate that he did so, for he would have reached the old camp and found it, not only deserted, but also wrecked, with torn gear and evidences of wanton destruction all over the place. He would naturally have thought that his former companions had either been killed or carried off, and as the sandstorm had covered up all tracks, he would not have known ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... Then sent I speech to thee in verses such as burn The heart; reproach therein was none nor yet unright; Yet with perfidiousness (sure Fortune's self as thou Ne'er so perfidious was) my love thou didst requite And deemedst me a waif, a homeless good-for-nought, A slave-begotten brat, a wanton, ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... together, have destroyed many thousands of our beautiful Kentucky forest acres. Much of this one time "nature lover's paradise" is now ugly, barren, and eroded, and too poor to give a living to either man or beast. Wanton destruction of God-given treasure and beauty is a sin and a shame. Thanks to the men of vision and foresight of the U.S.D.A., state agricultural colleges, and our own fraternity of nut tree lovers, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... hypochondriacal. If he were elated and restless, ready for all sorts of undertakings and projects, his condition was attributed to a great flow of spirits. If, while talking very sensibly on many subjects and doing many proper things, he manifested a propensity to wanton mischief, why, then he was possessed with a devil and consigned to chains and straw,—unless he had committed some senseless act of crime, in which case he received from the law the usual doom ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... send a mouth to every kiss, Seeing the blossom of this bliss By gathering doth grow, certes! By Godd-es fay, by Godd-es fay! Thy brow-garland pushed all aslant Tells—but I tell not, wanton May! ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... was at an utter loss to comprehend his adversary's plan. He could not believe that this wanton butchery of men was all there was to the contest. To his mind such an awful sacrifice of human life would never have been made unless for the purpose of paving the way for another enterprise absolutely ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... sides there was still a vigilant guard kept up; the sentinels bristled the walls of Baza with their lances, and the guards patrolled the Christian camp, but there was no sallying forth to skirmish nor any wanton ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... much since leaving Heliodora yesterday afternoon. It began to nettle him that his grief should be for her merely an amusement. Never having seen the Gothic maiden, whose beauty outshone hers as sunrise outdoes the lighting of a candle, this wanton Greek was capable of despising him in good earnest, and Basil had never been of those who sit easy under scorn. He felt something chafe and grow hot within him, and recalled the days when he, and not Heliodora, ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... out into the street in their apoplectic opulence. There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish onions, shining in the fatness of their growth like Spanish Friars, and winking from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were pears and apples clustered high in blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes, made, in the shopkeepers' benevolence, to dangle from conspicuous hooks that people's ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... mellow softness fills the air,— No breeze on wanton wings steals by To break the holy quiet there, Or make the waters fret and sigh, Or the yellow alders shiver, That bend to kiss the placid river, Flowing on and on forever; But the little waves are sleeping, O'er the pebbles slowly creeping, That last night were flashing, leaping, ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... trees recede, and leave A little space of green expanse, the cove 405 Is closed by meeting banks, whose yellow flowers For ever gaze on their own drooping eyes, Reflected in the crystal calm. The wave Of the boat's motion marred their pensive task, Which naught but vagrant bird, or wanton wind, 410 Or falling spear-grass, or their own decay Had e'er disturbed before. The Poet longed To deck with their bright hues his withered hair, But on his heart its solitude returned, And he forbore. Not the strong impulse hid 415 In those ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... curious, incidentally (but not really more curious than most human affairs), that Pete (or Mr. Corcoran) whether he was merely chaffing us, or whether he was really curious about a scarf of such wanton colour scheme, should have mentioned it just when he did, for as a matter of fact that tie had been on our mind all morning. You see to-day being warm (and please remember that what we call to-day, is now, when you are reading this, yesterday) we did not wear our waistcoat, or, if you ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... scarred upon his face: who stalked grotesquely comfortless in his ill-fitting clothes: who with the art of dress had lost in the boozing-kens of Europe the graces of social intercourse. It counted for nothing that he was middle-aged, deserted forever by the elusive wanton, inspiration, condemned (she knew it in her heart) to artistic barrenness in perpetuity. It counted for nothing that her gods awakened his contempt, and his gods her fear. It counted for nothing that they had scarcely a single taste or thought in common—half-educated, half-bred ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... and vanishes at once when the longing is stilled, to be replaced by fresh wants, that is, by new pains. In view of the indescribable misery in the world, to favor optimism is evidence not so much of folly and blindness as of a wanton disposition. The old saying is true: Non-existence is better than existence. The misery, however, is the just punishment for the original sin of the individual, which gave itself its particular existence by an act of intelligible freedom. Redemption ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... safe shores the white boats ride away, Salving the wreckage of the portless ships The light desires of the amorous day, The wayward, wanton wastage of the lips. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... be well to conclude the account of this interesting relic by a notice of its wanton destruction, as translated from the Annals of Loch ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... every hour passed by ruthless hands, and through the livelong nights shrouded with thick darkness which might cover any pilfering approach, nevertheless every sunrise found the doubloon where the sunset left it last. For it was set apart and sanctified to one awe-striking end; and however wanton in their sailor ways, one and all, the mariners revered it as the white whale's talisman. Sometimes they talked it over in the weary watch by night, wondering whose it was to be at last, and whether he would ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... One wanton villain—it was the French gutter-snipe, Virot—paused a moment to ride up to a window of the hall and discharge his revolver through the glass. Fortunately his aim was as evil as his intent. Beyond shattering a priceless vase, ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... for adultery, desertion or neglect for six months, habitual cruelty or constant strife, gross and wanton neglect of conjugal ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... very definite plan of attack. The more important of the damaged buildings, such as the waterworks and the power station, have been repaired, the tramway was working, and, after Moscow, the town seemed clean, but plenty of ruins remained as memorials of that wanton and unjustifiable piece of folly which, it was supposed, would be the ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... sheriff, who offered to arrest old Zack if the board would provide him with a warrant. It seemed simple enough, at first, to draw a warrant for old Zack's arrest, but legal difficulties arose. He could not well be taken for assault, for it was the lawyer that had attacked him; or for wanton mischief, for his intent in going to school was not mischievous; or yet for trespass, for he had offered to ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens |
