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Wantonly   Listen
adverb
Wantonly  adv.  
1.
In a wanton manner; without regularity or restraint; loosely; sportively; gayly; playfully; recklessly; lasciviously.
2.
Unintentionally; accidentally. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Wantonly" Quotes from Famous Books



... of the inhabitants. Such anomalies may, perhaps, be inseparable from the jealousies, the resentments, and the heart-burnings, which are engendered in civil commotions; but certain it is that right and justice had seldom been more wantonly outraged, than they were by those who professed to have drawn the sword in the defence of right ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc

... before her eyes the Senior Surgeon took the malted milk bottle and poured its remaining contents out quite wantonly into his waste basket. Then equally bluntly he took the White Linen Nurse by the shoulders and marched her ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... this charge I am in a very awkward and unpleasant situation; but it is a situation in which, with all the disagreeable circumstances attending it, I must proceed. I am, in this business, obliged to name many men: I do not name them wantonly, but from the absolute necessity, as your Lordships will see, of the case. I do not mean to reflect upon this gentleman: I believe, at the time when he made this case, and especially the article which I state as a falsification, he must have ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... to the character of the King and the ministers, whom Mr. Walpole so often and so wantonly depreciates, to solicit the reader's attention to such passages as this, in which he imputes to others, and therefore implies in himself, an unfair disposition to ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... an easy spoil to the British, and at Martinique and Basseterre American merchantmen were caught in the harbor. Their crews were impressed, their cargoes, not yet discharged, seized, the vessels themselves wantonly destroyed or libelled as prizes. Nor were passengers exempt from the rigors of search and plunder. The records of the State Department and the rude newspapers of the time are full of the complaints of shipowners, passengers, and shipping merchants. The robbery was prodigious in its amount, ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... my father's directions, resumed my civilian dress, as had also Mr Laffan, who was, I should have said, at this time safe in our house. There was, however, much probability that the Spanish soldiers, on entering to plunder the house, might wantonly kill him, and ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston

... sacrilege and mockery. What benefits accrued to the conquerors from the three fires which annihilated so vast a portion of the buildings and riches of the city? What a stock of such things, as could neither be used nor transported, was maliciously or wantonly destroyed! How much treasure was idly wasted in gaming, debauchery, and riot! And what precious objects were bartered for a vile price by the impatience or ignorance of the soldiers, whose reward was ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... into the stable gone, Where stood thirty good steeds and three; He's taken his own steed by the head, And home rode he right wantonly. ...
— Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Third Series • Various

... the faithful trees, still gladly green, Show fretted depths of blue their boughs between, Though placid sunlight sleeps upon the lawn, It only tells us of what might have been Of fickle favours wantonly withdrawn. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891 • Various

... shamble quickly off again. In former years they had been plentiful in the district, and provided good food for the aborigines when the latter organised their big hunting parties. But as the country was taken up as cattle runs, hundreds of the great birds were wantonly shot by white men for the mere pleasure of killing, and all the months we lived in the district we did not see ...
— "Five-Head" Creek; and Fish Drugging In The Pacific - 1901 • Louis Becke

... companion for five years past. He had lived with it, breathed his own life into its movements,—should he renounce the clock? It, as well as Marguerite, had become a part of himself; it had long stood him in the place of family, of love, of all those enjoyments which youth so wantonly and earnestly clings to. The results of success, ambition, honors, wealth,—all this he would give up for Marguerite; but his ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various

... among the most distinguished emperors of Rome; his reign of twenty-one years was upon the whole prosperous for the empire, and creditable to the Roman name. He was severe, but not wantonly cruel, and we ought to remember that mercy was not a Roman virtue. His conduct after his abdication shows that his was no common mind. The chief charge against him is his haughtiness in introducing the Oriental ceremonial of prostration into the Roman ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various

... described, in speaking of a horse, as "loco" or crazy. Such animals—they are generally males—are extremely dangerous to hunt and are generally given a wide berth. They are mischievous in the extreme, moreover, and do great damage, seemingly wantonly, to any crops or garden patches that they may find in their neighborhood. Usually the natives are too terrified to offer any resistance and placidly allow the animal to devastate to the bent of his will. The cliff dwellers, however, had ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... to us. Stockmar has, I know, communicated to you what has passed, and he will send you copies of the King's letter and my answer. Our conduct has been throughout honest, and the King's and Guizot's the contrary. How the King can wantonly throw away the friendship of one who has stood by him with such sincere affection, for a doubtful object of personal and family aggrandizement, is to me and to the whole country inexplicable. Have confidence in him ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria

... purpose required as the other. Rejection by a not over-fastidious enemy disposes of the one; of the other it was as mad a proceeding as taking a horse straight off grass and backing him to win you a stake at even weights with trained horses. The millions of the public money which lie wantonly strewed over the South African veldt would appal even the most phlegmatic of financiers. The waste in horse-flesh is inconceivable; and the man with the stiff upper lip who refused to realise that it takes gentle breaking to bring the ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer

... certainly remarkable. He had the true welfare of his people at heart, and with a firm hand he maintained justice, protecting the weak, and restraining the strong. The laws which he made he enforced with stern impartiality, and no man could plead birth or privilege before him, if he wantonly offended. The farmers were Rollo's special care; for warrior though he was, he well knew that war is destructive, and that the prosperity of a land must be founded upon productive labor. The peasantry of Normandy were not slow to discover that they ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various

... outlines of men and women were about three feet in height. In some places the storms, the wind and the water, had erased parts of the engraving. In other places hunters had built their smoking camp-fires against the face of the rock and blurred the markings, or had wantonly fired bullets into the faces and destroyed ...
— The Sheep Eaters • William Alonzo Allen

... was I not written to? Why was I not told I had a child?" Again a groan escaped him. "My God!" he cried, "I forgot I had no right to expect that. Like a self-willed child I wantonly threw away life's choicest blessings, was unmindful of its ...
— That Old-Time Child, Roberta • Sophie Fox Sea

... merely dangerous to life, but created such a quarrelsome disposition, that many of these dogs were never happy but when fighting; and the force granted them by nature for self-defence was too often used most wantonly to the annoyance of their neighbours. It one day happened that Job was sitting quietly on a steep bank of the river where it runs into the wood at some distance from the city, at one moment watching the birds as they skimmed over the water, at another following the movements of a large ...
— The Adventures of a Dog, and a Good Dog Too • Alfred Elwes

... stumble with him down Piccadilly with a. hideous, numbing sense of being under the hand of Fate. Why, at this moment, in all time, should this letter of Norah Monogue's have made its unhappy appearance? With what difficulty and sorrow had he and Clare reached once more a reconciliation only, so wantonly, to be plucked away from it again! From the top of his omnibus he looked down upon a sinister London. It was a heavy, lowering day; thick clouds like damp cloths came down upon the towers and chimneys. The trees in the Green Park were black and chill and in and out of the Clubs ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole

... revolting it must have been to have seen those soldiers wantonly smashing your chandelier and gloating over their mischief," he said. "Really, the Captain was to blame for letting his men get out of hand. He seems not to have been a competent man. We can train and train an officer, but when war comes—well, no amount of training will supply a certain quality ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... were masters in Spain, they proved to be terrible agents of destruction; leaving marks of their devastation everywhere. Not content with stealing many unequalled works of art, they often wantonly destroyed what they could not conveniently take away with them. In the tomb of Ferdinand and Isabella, at Grenada, they pried open the royal coffins, in search of treasure; at Seville they broke open the coffin of Murillo, and scattered his ashes ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou

... a confusion of ideas—a political idea and a military idea—under the one term of "defence." Politically, it has always been assumed in the United States, and very properly, that our policy should never be wantonly aggressive; that we should never seek our own advantage, however evident, by an unjust pressure upon another nation, much less by open war. This, it will be seen, is a political idea, one which serves for ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan

... unalterable determination to carry the war to a successful conclusion and to spare no sacrifices which could lead to that end. Amid the humiliation of our reverses there was a certain undercurrent of satisfaction that the deeds of our foemen should at least have made the contention that the strong was wantonly attacking the weak an absurd one. Under the stimulus of defeat the opposition to the war sensibly decreased. It had become too absurd even for the most unreasonable platform orator to contend that a struggle had been forced upon the Boers when every fresh detail ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... commending to all men everywhere the duty of seeking and preserving Peace, we bear in mind the Apostle's injunction, 'First pure, then peaceable,' and do not deny but affirm the right of a Nation wantonly invaded by a foreign army, or intolerably oppressed by its own rulers, to resist force ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... topicks of this nature with barbers." One would not willingly, even now, discuss the foreign policy of her Majesty's Ministers with the person who shaves one. There are opportunities and temptations to which no decent person should be wantonly exposed. The bad effect of Whiggery on the temper was evident in this, that "the Mohocks are all of the Whiggish gang, and indeed all Whigs are looked upon as such Mohocks, their principles and doctrines leading thus to all manner of barbarity and inhumanity." So true is it that Conservatives are ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang

... frank and full apology for his conduct. Indeed the action of the prince seems to suggest an approach to insanity rather than deliberate and reasoned perverseness. He had forced his wife to run the risk of losing her own life and her child's life, he had grossly and wantonly offended his father and mother, and he had thrown a secrecy and mystery round the birth of the infant which, if ever there came to be a dispute about the succession, would give his enemies the most plausible excuse ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... young braves who have been selected as the executioners; their rifles are loaded, the locks carefully examined, and all is ready when the word shall be given. There, too, under guard, are the five doomed men, who are to pay the forfeit for the five lives so wantonly and treacherously taken. ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve

... or dilating the imagination, fail totally of their effect. The ghastly, grotesque, repulsive images are so overcharged that they cease even to offend. We find ourselves in a region where tact, sense of proportion, moral judgment, and right adjustment of means to ends, have been wantonly abandoned. Marino avowed that he only aimed ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... supposed to approach the place. Her hair was shining darkly in the sun and the shorter locks were blowing about her face in a downright tantalizing fashion; they made a man want to brush them back and kiss the spot they were caressing so wantonly. She was humming a tune softly to herself. Weary caught the words, sung absently, ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower

... We had drawn, of course, a ground plan of the whole place, to scale, showing each ground-floor door and window, so that we might respect its customary or projected use. A great point, that, in Where to Plant What. I once heard of a school whose small boys were accused of wantonly trampling down some newly set shrubs on the playground. "Well," demanded one brave urchin, "what made 'em go and plant a lot of bushes right on first base?" And no one was ready with an answer, for there is something morally wrong about any garden that will rob ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable

... principle: | | namely, that of counting in each line the accents, not the | | syllables. Though the latter may vary from seven to twelve, | | yet in each line the accents will be found to be only four. | | Nevertheless, this occasional variation in number of | | syllables is not introduced wantonly, or for mere ends of | | convenience, but in correspondence with some transition in | | the nature of the imagery or passion." Even here there is | | implied a vague perception of the time unit, but Coleridge | | was apparently unaware of its significance. See Leigh Hunt's | ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum

... Varney," said Mr. Chillingworth, "we're your guests; we come here at your invitation to partake of a meal. You have wantonly attacked both of us. I need not say that by so doing you cast a far greater slur upon your own taste and judgment than ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... been set at naught by the raven, which flew about wantonly but brought no tidings concerning the condition of the earth, he took a dove, thinking that she would more truly perform the mission. The text almost authorizes us to say that those two birds were sent forth at the same time, so that Noah might ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther

... and Eternal, being essential to the happiness of all created intelligences, whether pure or sinful. As, the fear and love of the Creator, who preserves and bountifully blesses his creatures; and flowing from this is love to all his creation. He who wantonly destroys life in order that he may glut a demoniac propensity with the agonizing death struggle, is a practical atheist. The Christian will cherish and promote the happiness of all; he dares only to take ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... self-denying kindness, is not in his nature,' returned Mr Cheeryble. 'Such kindness as he knows, he regards her with, I believe. The mother was a gentle, loving, confiding creature, and although he wounded her from their marriage till her death as cruelly and wantonly as ever man did, she never ceased to love him. She commended him on her death-bed to her child's care. Her child has never forgotten ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... the shy colt is bounding Across the wide mead, And his wild hoofs resounding, Increases his speed; Now starting and crossing At each shadow he sees, Now wantonly tossing His mane ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... situated in the Strand, next Earl Sandwich's, and of the king and the duke being with that lady: again, in the Chapel Royal, Whitehall, he observed, whilst Dr. Herbert Croft prayed and preached, "how the Duke of York and Mrs. Palmer did talk to one another very wantonly through the hangings that part the king's closet and the closet where the ladies sit." And later on, when he witnessed "The Humorous Lieutenant" performed before the court, he noted the royal favourite was likewise present, ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy

... said the old gentleman, stepping forward. "We had, on my honour, nothing whatever to do with the outrage of which you complain. The people who attacked you were those whose vessels you have so wantonly destroyed. They came to revenge themselves. When they found that we had pledged ourselves to preserve the peace they returned quietly homewards. If you wish to complete the watering of your ships we will in no way molest you, ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston

... wantonly cruel, Le Balafre was, from habit, indifferent to human life and human suffering; he was profoundly ignorant, greedy of booty, unscrupulous how he acquired it, and profuse in expending it on the gratification of his passions. The habit of attending exclusively to his own wants and interests had ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... his way up the hill; his temper was not improved by noticing unmistakable marks of badger. No one else grubs up the moss so wantonly ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter

... there. Neither was repentance there. He seemed quite satisfied with himself, quite ready to commit further crimes for sake of his own safety or desire. He was hard, she decided, but he was not unnecessarily harsh; cruel, without being wantonly brutal. He was, in short, the strangest man she had ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower

... Goethe's long poem. Again, there is a profligacy, an inhuman sensuality, in his works which is utterly revolting. I am not intimately acquainted with them generally. But I take up my ground on the first canto of 'Wilhelm Meister;' and, as the attorney-general of human nature, I there indict him for wantonly outraging the sympathies of humanity. Theologians tell us of the degraded nature of man; and they tell us what is true. Yet man is essentially a moral agent, and there is that immortal and unextinguishable yearning for something ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... imperceptible. In these circumstances, poor widow Butler was supplied with her full proportion of fines for nonconformity, and all the other oppressions of the time, until Beersheba was fairly wrenched out of her hands, and became the property of the Laird who had so wantonly, as it had hitherto appeared, persecuted this poor forlorn woman. When his purpose was fairly achieved, he showed some remorse or moderation, of whatever the reader may please to term it, in permitting her to occupy ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... Goths. Their retreat to the maritime city of Heraclea, where the fleet had probably been stationed, was attended by a long train of wagons, laden with the spoils of Bithynia, and was marked by the flames of Nico and Nicomedia, which they wantonly burnt. [117] Some obscure hints are mentioned of a doubtful combat that secured their retreat. [118] But even a complete victory would have been of little moment, as the approach of the autumnal equinox summoned them to hasten their return. To navigate ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... Oliver, and having told him of the imputation that had been cast upon his reputation, said that he would start from the camp next morning, and either leave his body bleaching in the woods, or return with such trophies from the enemy, as would relieve his character from the suspicion that had been wantonly cast upon it ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake

... senseless damage has been done in the villages occupied by the enemy. Property has been wantonly destroyed. Pictures in chateaus have been ripped up and houses generally have ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... life there is hope," said the surviving Bishop[223] on the side of Narcottus: who now taking upon him the command of the army, and perceiving Sir Launcelot to be pretty nearly exhausted with fatigue, and wantonly exposing his person, ordered the men at arms to charge him briskly on all sides; while his own two castles kept a check upon the remaining castle, knight, and bishop of the opposite army: also, he exhorted the ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... in the State House. In February 1769 parliament declared the people of Massachusetts rebels, and the governor was directed to arrest those deemed guilty of treason, and send them to England for trial. In the city of New York, in 1770, the soldiers wantonly cut down a liberty pole, which had for several years stood in the park. The most serious affray occurred on March 5th, in Boston between a party of citizens and some soldiers, in which three citizens were shot down and ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean

... antelopes had been drinking water from a pond or spring poisoned by the natives; which proved that our travellers had arrived in the neighbourhood of some tribe of the Bechuanas. Of this method for wantonly destroying animal life, practised by many of the native African tribes, the hunters had often heard. The many stories which they had been told of the wholesale destruction of game by poison, and which they had treated with ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid

... in every child's mouth: Bessus the Paeonian, being reproached for wantonly pulling down a nest of young sparrows and killing them, replied, that he had reason to do so, seeing that those little birds never ceased falsely to accuse him of the murder of his father. This parricide had till then been concealed and ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... many a chance threepenny job by the added thousands who contended with him against starvation, nevertheless, somehow he continued to subsist, as those tough old oaks of the cliffs, which, though hacked at by hail-stones of tempests, and even wantonly maimed by the passing woodman, still, however cramped by rival trees and fettered by rocks, succeed, against all odds, in keeping the vital nerve of the tap-root alive. And even towards the end, in his dismallest ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville

... herself over the fire inspecting the iron. The man watched her curiously. What could it mean? A cow killed wantonly, a calf bawling with pain and fear, and this girl responsible for it. The tenderfoot could not down the suspicion stirring in his mind. He knew little of the cattle country. But he had read books and had ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine

... or protection, to say nothing of respect? Carters, porters, messengers—these are the beasts of burden amongst mankind; by all means let them be treated justly, fairly, indulgently, and with forethought; but they must not be permitted to stand in the way of the higher endeavors of humanity by wantonly making a noise. How many great and splendid thoughts, I should like to know, have been lost to the world by the crack of a whip? If I had the upper hand, I should soon produce in the heads of these people an indissoluble ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer

... will be no more in love with law than with virtue, 'if he be forced to it with rudeness and incivilities.'[34] If, then, ye would bear the burden of the lowly, O ye great—feel not only for them, but with! Watch that your pride does not chafe them—your power does not wantonly gall. Your worldly inferior is of the class from which the apostles were chosen—amidst which the Lord of Creation descended from a throne above ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... worms cover you;—and for them there shall be no consolation, and on you no vengeance,—only the question murmured above your grave: 'Who shall repay him what he hath done?' Is it therefore easier for you in your heart to inflict the sorrow for which there is no remedy? Will you take, wantonly, this little all of his life from your poor brother, and make his brief hours long to him with pain? Will you be readier to the injustice which can never be redressed; and niggardly of mercy which you can bestow but once, and which, refusing, you refuse for ever? ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... this latest pleased him least. It's one thing to take chances under cover of night when your heart is light, your pockets heavy, and wine is buzzing wantonly within your head: but another thing altogether to burglarise your enemy's apartments via the fire-escape, in broad daylight, and cold-sober. For by now the light was clear and strong, in ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance

... full fortnight every door and window was left open for ventilation, ere M. Moysant could begin his work of selection. He selected about 5000 volumes only; but the infuriated Revolutionists, on his departure, wantonly plundered and destroyed a prodigious number of the remainder ... "et enfin (concluded he) vous voyez, Monsieur, ce qu'ils nous out laisse." You will give me credit for having listened to every word of ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... he walked over the earth where it was hidden, crying, "Here am I, Lord! do with me what thou wilt!" That he used language with that intimate possession of its meaning possible only to the most vivid thought is doubtless true; but that he wantonly strained it from its ordinary sense, that he found it too poor for his necessities, and accordingly coined new phrases, or that, from haste or carelessness, he violated any of its received proprieties, I do not believe. I have said that it was fortunate for him ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... purposes this unorganized country was attached. All of us accompanied the outfit returning, and a gala week we spent, as no less than half a dozen buffalo robes were secured before reaching Fort Griffin. Deer and turkey were plentiful, and it was with difficulty that I restrained the boys from killing wantonly, as they were young fellows whose very blood yearned for the chase or any diverting excitement. We reached the ranch on the Clear Fork during the second week in January, and those of the outfit who had no regular homes were made welcome guests ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams

... shirt front had a broad wrinkle across it. I have never seen a more unutterably abhorrent sight than Titherington in evening dress. The nurse rebuked him for having wakened me, which showed me that she was a fool as well as a wantonly cruel woman. I had not been asleep and any nurse who knew her business would have seen that I was only pretending. Titherington took no notice of her. He was bubbling over with something he wanted to say, and twenty nurses ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham

... people living three thousand miles from their country: a circumstance to be noted; for your Englishman is apt to err on the side of contempt for others, and as a rule he fears nobody. Others have so wantonly misrepresented the character of our cause,—Mr. Carlyle is a notable member of this class,—that it is impossible not to be offended, when listening to their astounding falsehoods. But it is the British press that has done most to array Americans against England. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... is that we do not honour it enough. I do not mean honour by acknowledgment of service, though sometimes we are slow in doing even that. But we do not honour it enough in consistent regard to the lives and souls of our soldiers. How wantonly we have wasted their lives you have seen lately in the reports of their mortality by disease, which a little care and science might have prevented; but we regard their souls less than their lives, by keeping them in ignorance ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin

... left Fort Leavenworth about the 10th of May, and were soon again on the plains. Many of the troops had never seen any buffalo before, and found great sport in wantonly slaughtering them. At Walnut Creek we halted to secure a cannon which had been thrown into that stream two seasons previously, and succeeded in dragging it out. With a seine made of brush and grape vine, we caught more fine fish than we could possibly dispose ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman

... should I refer, Master Jocelyn," Wolfe rejoined, "but to my lord of Buckingham, whom you wantonly insulted? For the latter indiscretion there can be no excuse, whatever there may be for the former; and it was simple madness to affront a nobleman of his exalted rank, second only in authority to ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth

... one of those true stories stranger than fiction. This man, who wantonly murdered a child in his path and told of it for the amusement of a party of pleasure-seekers aboard a yacht on Puget Sound, who should be serving a prison sentence to-day, yet never came to a trial, ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson

... first fell into my hands—a strange instance of the partiality of man's good and man's evil. I know no one whom I less admire than Goethe; he seems a very epitome of the sins of genius, breaking open the doors of private life, and wantonly wounding friends, in that crowning offence of Werther, and in his own character a mere pen-and-ink Napoleon, conscious of the rights and duties of superior talents as a Spanish inquisitor was conscious of the rights and duties of his office. ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson

... individuality of his works must be lost. If his masterpiece is valuable for one thing more than any other, it is the vivid distinctness with which English men and women of the fourteenth century are there painted, for the study of all the centuries to follow. But we wantonly balk the artist's own purpose, and discredit his labour, when we keep before his picture the screen of dust and cobwebs which, for the English people in these days, the crude forms of the infant language ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... my men to arms came over me, but I remembered how Lodbrok had told me that resistance to vikings, unless it were successful, meant surely death, but that seldom would the unresisting be harmed, even if the ship were wantonly burnt after plunder, and the crew set adrift in ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler

... a curious duett. Wilfrid merely wished to terminate his sentence; Mrs. Chump wantonly sought to prevent him. Each was burdened with serious matter; but they might have struck hands here, had not this ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... to plague, as Caliban would have done. And caprice is Setebos's method. He does things wantonly. No noble master passion flames in him. No goodness blesses him. Such a god Caliban makes, so that it is odds whether Caliban make God or God make Caliban. Be sure, a man-made god is like the man ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... in a bad state. The doors have nearly all been battered down. The wooden Gothic statues in the nave have been smashed or destroyed by fire. The altars and confessionals were wantonly destroyed. The collection boxes had been pried open and emptied. We were told that the holy-water font and the vestments of the priests had been profaned and befouled. It is not ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson

... be the end of it! June recognised the bitter truth at last. Magda had indeed robbed her of everything she possessed. And robbed her wantonly, seeing that she herself set no value on Dan's love—had, in fact, tossed it ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler

... assistance, then begins the task of critical sagacity: and some changes may well be admitted in a text never settled by the author, and so long exposed to caprice and ignorance. But nothing shall be imposed, as in the Oxford edition, without notice of the alteration; nor shall conjecture be wantonly or unnecessarily indulged. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... are two considerations that may help us to feel that the German people, so far from being truly represented by the miscreants who have organised and carried through the atrocities on land and on sea, are wantonly ...
— No. 4, Intersession: A Sermon Preached by the Rev. B. N. Michelson, - B.A. • B. N. Michelson

... place their own actions in the worst light, to exaggerate their faults and conceal their virtues. If the fictions and artifices of vanity be detestable, the concealment of our good actions is surely not without guilt. The conviction of our guilt is painful to those that love us: wantonly and needlessly to give this pain is very perverse and unjustifiable. If a contrary deportment argue vanity, self-detraction seems to be the ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown

... in it self ridiculous and contemptible. There is, I am convinced, no Method like this, to give young Women a Sense of their own Value and Dignity; and I am sure there can be none so expeditious to communicate that Value to others. As for the flippant insipidly Gay and wantonly Forward, whom you behold among Dancers, that Carriage is more to be attributed to the perverse Genius of the Performers, than imputed to the Art it self. For my Part, my Child has danced her self into my Esteem, and I have as great ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... the temples was liable to be cut to pieces, if he met another stronger than himself. Some, disdaining easy finds, hunted for hidden hoards, and dug out buried treasure, flogging and torturing the householders. They held torches in their hands and, having once secured their prize, would fling them wantonly into an empty house or some dismantled temple. Composed as the army was of citizens, allies, and foreign troops, differing widely in language and customs, the objects of the soldiers' greed differed also. But while their ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... suddenly and wantonly attempted are often strengthened by promptness of action, and in order to neglect nothing, Nebridius, who had been recently promoted through the influence of Petronius to be prefect of the praetorium in the place ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... prose and becoming poetry. I have in the same place selected, as a companion passage from a very different original, the Charity passage of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, which has been so miserably and wantonly mangled and spoilt by the bad taste and ignorance of the late revisers. I am tempted to dwell on this because it is very germane to our subject. One of the blunders which spoils this passage in the Revised Version is the pedantic substitution ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... and more energetic and unsparing as he advances in civilization, until the impoverishment with which his exhaustion of the natural resources of the soil is threatening him, at last awakens him to the necessity of preserving what is left, if not of restoring what has been wantonly wasted. The wandering savage grows no cultivated vegetable, fells no forest, and extirpates no useful plant, no noxious weed. If his skill in the chase enables him to entrap numbers of the animals on which he feeds, he compensates this loss by destroying also the lion, ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... Certainly, without previous practice, it would be highly improper to attempt this sort of cruising; for the yachts, with bowsprits run out, and jiggers and mizen-booms projecting, are at anchor here on the implied understanding that no one will wantonly endanger a collision by sailing about in the crowd, merely for fun. After practice, however, for weeks in the same craft, the operation of guiding her safely through a maze of boats, and on a strong cross-tide, becomes like the unnoticed and nearly involuntary muscular efforts of ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor

... deliver us?" What would he have said of a freeborn people butchered—their towns desolated, and become an heap of ashes—their inhabitants become beggars, wanderers and vagabonds—by the cruel orders of an unrelenting tyrant, wallowing in luxury, and wantonly wasting the people's wealth, to oppress them the more? Would he not have said, it was oppression and ingratitude in the highest degree, exceeding the oppression of the children of Israel? and, like Moses, have cried out, let the people go? Would ...
— The Fall of British Tyranny - American Liberty Triumphant • John Leacock

... grotesque and absurd as the Chinese pictures of lions: having never seen that animal, the Chinese can paint him only from the descriptions of voyagers, which are sometimes ignorantly, sometimes wantonly exaggerated. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... for it was, maybe, an hundred thousand years gone that they had been used, and found to be of no great worth in a close attack, and harmful otherwise to the peace, in that they angered, unneedful, the Forces of that land, slaying wantonly those monsters which did no more than beset the Mighty Redoubt at a great distance. For, as may be seen by a little thought, we did very gladly keep a reasonable quietness, and refrained from aught that should wake that Land; for we were born to the custom of that strange life, and lived ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson

... lingering torment for the mere gratification of their own personal enmity and their love of cruelty. Out of their own mouths are they judged and condemned; they have misused their power, and therefore is it taken from them. They have wantonly taken the lives of others, therefore are their own lives forfeit. The sentence passed upon them is that they die a shameful and ignominious death. Take them, therefore, fasten strong ropes about their necks, and hang them both from the great branch ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... fugitives. It was not till Mahtoree had taxed his courage that Big Horse had ventured on the perilous quest. He approached with the strength of heart and singleness of purpose which accompany an Indian warrior who deems the eyes of his nation upon him. When first the brave was discovered thus wantonly, and with no other purpose but the shedding of blood, intruding on the dominions of the spirits, no words can tell the rage which appeared to possess their bosoms. Secure in the knowledge of their power to repel the attacks of every living thing, the ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous

... aristocracy consented to it, because we had guaranteed full indemnification. The very material existence of this class of former landowners is depending on that indemnification, to defray their debts, (which they formerly had the habit wantonly to contract,) and to provide for the cultivation of their own large allodial property, which they formerly cultivated by the hands of their leaseholders, but now have to ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth

... The fact is that quotations were a part of Hazlitt's vocabulary, which he used with the same freedom as common locutions and with less scrupulous regard for the associations which were gathered about them. He negligently misquoted or wantonly adapted to his purpose, but the reader is willing to pardon the moments of irritation for the numerous delightful thrills which he has provoked by some happy poetic memory "stealing and giving odor" to a sentiment ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... river and was laying plans for a drink and a swim, and the trail led me far up on the grassy brow of a mountain, from which spread a vast panorama of pine-clad world. But the trails of Honduras are like spendthrift adventurers, struggling with might and main to gain an advantage, only wantonly to throw it away again a moment later. This one pitched headlong down again, then climbed, then descended over and again, as if setting itself some useless task for the mere pleasure of showing its powers of endurance. It subsided at last in the town of Santa Rita, ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... from me, all gods and goddesses, how cloud-gathering Zeus begins to dishonour me wantonly, when he has made me his true-hearted wife. See now, apart from me he has given birth to bright-eyed Athena who is foremost among all the blessed gods. But my son Hephaestus whom I bare was weakly among all the blessed gods and shrivelled of foot, a shame and disgrace to me in heaven, ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod

... to be noticed," said the Honourable Tim. "It is easy to spoil them." And he watched the best of boys rather closely, for a habit of interrupting reading lessons, wantonly and without reason, was a trait in the young of which ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly

... Poynders, when I think of all these things, I can only say you must not expect the Martians to admit your claim that terrestrials are 'highly' civilised; for surely no 'highly' civilised people could act so illogically and so unwisely, or be so wantonly cruel as to tax ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks

... a newspaper, but even if we did I could not come anywhere near appreciating or correctly estimating the tempest you have been buffeting your way through—only the man who is in it can do that —but I have tried not to burden you thoughtlessly or wantonly. I have been wrought and unsettled in mind by apprehensions, and that is a thing that is not helpable when one is in a strange land and sees his resources melt down to a two months' supply and can't see any sure daylight beyond. The bloody machine offered but a doubtful outlook—and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... were as selfish, as deceitful, and as indolent, as those who were still heathens. They had repaid the kindnesses of the missionaries with the basest ingratitude, killing their cattle and swine, and robbing them of their harvests, which they wantonly destroyed. He had abandoned the idea of effecting any general good to the Indians. He had conscientious scruples, as to promoting an enterprise so hopeless, as that of missions among the Indians, by sending accounts ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller

... the last serious menace from the Indians. And so the colonists, having no further use for them, began trying to make the land they had delivered too hot to hold them. There were, of course, exceptions; and the American colonists had some real as well as pretended grievances. But wantonly baiting the redcoats had already become a most ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood

... surface of which was covered with the ambatch fragments of a native canoe. There were many canoes on the river, several of which immediately went to the assistance of two men who were struggling in the water. A hippopotamus had wantonly charged the canoe, and seizing it in his mouth, together with the poor old blind sheik who could not avoid the danger, crunched the frail boat to pieces, and so crushed and lacerated the old man that, although ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... cross over Vasquez, murdered as wantonly as ever man was murdered for plunder, and could find nothing to say. Whatever the eternal equities of the case may be—and long since I have given up trying to guess what they are—the cold, practical fact remains, that never during our stay on the Porcupine did any Indian come near us ...
— Gold • Stewart White

... bitterness and tears;— Homes rifled, hopes defeated, feelings torn By a fierce conqueror's scorn; The national gods o'erthrown—treasure and blood, Once boundless as the flood, That 'neath his fixed and unforgiving eye Crept onward silently; Scattered and squandered wantonly, by bands, Leaguered in shame, the scum of foreign lands, Sent forth to lengthen out their infamy, With the wild ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... that need not proofs. Bulgaria, therefore, could not more wantonly accuse Servia than by saying that we allied ourselves with the enemies of Slavdom. The cynicism of these accusations is proved by the following officially ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times

... the pathetic silence of desolation, and yet not dumb—for their pictured faces eloquently proclaim the tale of buoyant life and action entrusted to them many thousands of years ago. Sometimes, it is a natural rock, cut and smoothed down at a height sufficient to protect it from the wantonly destructive hand of scoffing invaders, on which a king of a deeper turn of thought, more mindful than others of the law which dooms all the works of men to decay, has caused a relation of the principal events of his reign to be engraved in those curious characters ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin

... played over the dark fur. "The more devoted a woman shows herself, the sooner the man sobers down and becomes domineering. The more cruelly she treats him and the more faithless she is, the worse she uses him, the more wantonly she plays with him, the less pity she shows him, by so much the more will she increase his desire, be loved, worshipped by him. So it has always been, since the time of Helen and Delilah, down to Catherine the ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

... landlady a sovereign in payment for our dinner, but she only kept eyeing with intense anger and disgust and shame this wretched specimen of a fellow-countryman who had wantonly insulted two of her colonial guests in her house and in her presence. During the gravy-rubbing performance she had run downstairs to tell her husband in case there should be a "scene," and he had retailed the story to the crowd of "select patrons" gathered ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith

... like a prince, and fights like a devil. I think he has no quarrel with either side, My Lord, and so, as you certainly do not make war on women, you will let us go our way in peace as we were when your soldiers wantonly ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... about those accusations of plagiarism of which far too much has been made by more than one critic; we ourselves having, perhaps, been guilty of too wantonly stirring these waters at one time of our lives; and in the attempt to make matters more clear, only, it may be, succeeded in muddying them. Stolberg, Matthison, Schiller, Frederika Brun, Schelling, and others, whom he has been supposed to have robbed of trifles, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... they shake off taxation, but they usurp property, and declare that, being the Nation, whatever belongs to the Nation belongs to them. The forests of Alsace are laid waste, the seignorial as well as communal, and wantonly destroyed with the wastefulness of children or of maniacs. "In many places, to avoid the trouble of removing the woods, they are burnt, and the people content themselves with carrying off the ashes."—After the decrees of August 4th, and in spite of the law which licenses the proprietor ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... Carolina, by his bad management, had most wantonly provoked the Over-hill Indians into this condition of hostility. His foolish and unnecessary interference and cruelty had converted these usually peaceful neighbors into sufficient hostility to make ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore

... combat with the furious Jishnu may be likened to thy kicking up a mighty, terrible, full-grown and furious lion asleep in a mountain cave. The encounter thou speakest of with those two excellent youths—the younger Pandavas—is like unto the act of a fool that wantonly trampleth on the tails of two venomous black cobras with bifurcated tongues. The bamboo, the reed, and the plantain bear fruit only to perish and not to grow in size any further. Like also the crab that conceiveth for her own destruction, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... was to Derry. It was probably during this visit that he founded that church on the other side of the Foyle, whose ivy-clad walls and gravelled area the reader of "Thackeray's Sketch Book" may remember; but few know that it was wantonly demolished by Dr. Weston (1467-1484), the only Englishman who ever held the See of Derry; and "who," adds Colgan, "began out of the ruins to build a palace for himself, which the avenging hand of God did not allow ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various

... ordered that the weight of public indignation might descend upon him, whoever he might be, (and, of course, the more heavily, according to the authority of his station and his power of inflicting wrong,) who should thus wantonly abuse his means of influence, to the dishonour or injury of an unoffending party. We clothe a public officer with power, we arm him with influential authority over public opinion; not that he may apply these authentic sanctions to the backing of his own malice, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... was being served them. One guard was killed and the balance were gagged and tied up to posts in the barracks. The revolters stripped their prisoners of arms, ammunition and what money they had. Next they broke into the commissary, taking a large amount of clothing and provisions and wantonly destroying the rest. They then made their escape on horses belonging to the guards. As soon as their absence was discovered, bloodhounds were put upon the trail which led towards the interior. The dogs were soon completely baffled, however, for the fugitives had evidently taken to ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... more; they died too, and he continued impenitent and defiant, and bought on till he was ruined, and now he is sinking into the earth bodily, though his friends dig and dig without ceasing night and day. It is curious how like the German legends the Arab ones are. All those about wasting bread wantonly are almost identical. If a bit is dirty, Omar carefully gives it to the dog; if clean, he keeps it in a drawer for making breadcrumbs for cutlets; not a bit must fall on the floor. In other things they are careless ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... Nor wantonly vengeful in spirit their prayer, Since the weal of the whole world forbids them to spare; What hope would there be for mankind if our race, Through the rule of the brutal, is ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various

... hast consented to see power oppress a fellow-heir of glorious liberty, how canst thou complain, if its all-grasping iron hand should seize upon thyself, or whatever thou holdest most dear? then wouldst thou, too late, bewail that thou hadst ever suffered power wantonly to set foot on ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown

... even medicines; he was required to send all back into Turkey. Resuming his journey on the 7th of August, Mr. Perkins passed on rapidly to the Arras, which divides Georgia from Persia. Here he was needlessly and wantonly detained six days, for his passports. The hardships resulting from such treatment, with other causes, had now brought Mrs. Perkins into a very critical state of health. As a last resort, Mr. Perkins addressed a letter to Sir John Campbell, British ambassador ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson

... I labor, and under which I must always labor, in consequence of my unaccountable errors, and I am confounded and dismayed. But then, on the other hand, I am reminded that I did not sin wilfully,—that I did not err purposely or wantonly,—that what I did amiss I did in ignorance,—that I verily believed myself in the way of duty when I went astray,—that I was influenced by a desire to know the truth,—that I believed myself, at the outset, bound as a Christian, and as a creature of ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... invaders—took Constantinople by storm. No "infidels" could have treated in worse fashion this home of ancient civilization. They burned down a great part of it; they slaughtered the inhabitants; they wantonly destroyed monuments, statues, paintings, and manuscripts—the accumulation of a thousand years. Much of the movable wealth they carried away. Never, declared an eye-witness of the scene, had there been such plunder ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... bled with the blow and fall I had received: no one had reproved John for wantonly striking me; and because I had turned against him to avert farther irrational violence, I was loaded with ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... means of regular requisitions for the supply of your own army and the increase of its offensive range. In short, the reform arose from a desire to husband your enemy's resources for your own use instead of wantonly wasting them. ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett

... heretic—I determined to give it the benefit of the doubt. The animal may break into the preserves of some unctuous hypocrites and trample a few choice flowers of sacerdotal folly; but I opine that no honest man of average intellect will find herein occasion for complaint. I would not wantonly wound the sensibilities of those earnest but ignorant souls who believe the very chapter headings of the Bible to have been inspired; who interpret literally every foolish fable preserved therein—"like flies ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... miseries that attended this encampment. The rattling of arms was heard on every side, for the soldiers were shivering to such a degree that they could not hold their guns steadily. What would they not now have given for some of the wood they had so wantonly destroyed in the forests of the Tell! But the bivouac was not even supplied with chiah—one of the commonest plants in Sahara, having a ligneous root, which had hitherto served us for fuel when everything else failed. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various

... voice of Evelyn, "for Heaven's sake, do not thus wantonly resolve on your own unhappiness! You wrong yourself, Caroline! you do, indeed! You are not the vain ambitious character you affect to be! Ah, what is it you require? Wealth? Are you not my friend; am I not rich enough for both? Rank? What can it give you to compensate for the misery of a ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... that coveted it earnestly, had sprung up as a crop of poisonous tares, and choked the patch of wheat; gold, unhallowed gold, light come, light gone, had scared or killed the flock of unfledged loves that used to nestle in the cotter's thatch, as surely as if the cash were stones, flung wantonly by truants at a dove-cot; and forth from the crock, that egg of wo, had been hatched a red-eyed vulture, to tyrannize in this sad home, where but lately the pelican had dwelt, had spread her fostering wing, and poured out ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... holiday in the deserted rooms. Partitions were removed, folding doors were made, windows were cut down, and large panes of glass were substituted for those of more ancient date. The grounds and garden too were reclaimed from the waste of briers and weeds which had so wantonly rioted there; and the waters of the fish- pond, relieved of their dark green slime and decaying leaves, gleamed once more in the summer sunshine like a sheet of burnished silver, while a fairy boat lay moored upon its bosom as in the olden time. Softly the hillside brooklet fell, like a ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes

... without the patronizing dictation of aboard of specialists nurtured on foreign and uninspiring theories of instruction. A ballot against Miss Luella Bailey, the competent and cultivated lady whose name adds strength and distinction to our ticket, and who has been needlessly and wantonly opposed by those who should be her proud friends, will signify a willingness to renounce one of our most precious liberties—the free man's right to choose those who are to impart to his children mastery of knowledge and love of ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant

... rantingly, sae wantonly, Sae dauntingly gaed he; He played a spring and danced it ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various

... if I can't be pleased just yet,' said Phoebe. 'You know I did not see her, and I can't think she deserves it after so wantonly grieving you, and still choosing to forsake ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... him tell a story upon Windermere, to the late Mr Curwen, then M.P. for Workington, which was meant, apparently, to account for this feeling. The story amounted to this: that, when a freshman at Cambridge, Mr Pitt had wantonly amused himself at a dinner party in Trinity, in smashing with filberts (discharged in showers like grape-shot) a most costly dessert set of cut glass, from which Samuel Taylor Coleridge argued a principle ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... the noble dignity of a queen, "I told you before that God is above us, and hears our words. You have spoken, wantonly, and God has heard you. To Him I leave the punishment of your wantonness. Stand up, my lord! the king shall know nothing of an insult which would have brought you into ignominy with him forever. But if you ever, by a glance or a gesture, recall this both wanton and ridiculous scene, ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach

... one,—without dust, and neither too hot nor too cold for comfort The performances properly—or rather improperly—commenced in the small hours of the night previous by the discharge of a cannon in front of the college buildings, which, as the cannon was stupidly or wantonly pointed towards the college buildings, blew in several hundred panes of glass. We have not heard that anybody laughed at ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... they saw trenches that had been hastily dug, and then discarded when they were no longer of use. Repeatedly they saw the ruins of villages, some of which had been wantonly, barbarously destroyed ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking

... the beautiful, though often indiscriminating and lacking in taste, was profound and sincere. It does not appear that in all her conquests her armies ever wantonly destroyed beautiful things. On the contrary, her generals brought home all they could with uncommon care, and the consequence was that in Horace's day the public places of the city were vast open-air museums, and the great temples picture galleries of which ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... eggs of the final lay were taken like the rest, and the whole bird life was depleted below paying quantities. But "egging" still goes on in other ways, especially at the hands of Newfoundlanders, who are wantonly wasteful in their methods, unlike the coast people, who only take what the birds will replace. The Newfoundlanders and other strangers gather all the eggs they see, put them into water, and throw away every one that floats. Thus many more bird lives are destroyed than eggs ...
— Draft of a Plan for Beginning Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood

... gathered on one spot. The latter is then deserted, and the following year another patch of virgin soil takes its place. There is thus a good deal of waste, not only in land, but also in trees, which are wantonly cut down for any trifling purpose, regardless of their value or the possible scarcity in the future of timber. Accidental forest fires also work sad havoc at times, destroying thousands of pounds' worth of timber in a few hours. Pine resin burns almost as fiercely as ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... Sweden—away from politics and scheming, leaving the work of preparation to your accredited agents here. That work I have been slowly but surely pushing forward. It was not to be hurried; men of position are not to be won over in a day; men with anything to lose need some guarantee that they are not wantonly casting their possessions to the winds. By next spring, as was agreed, all would have been ready. Delay could not have hurt you. Indeed, with every day by which you delayed your coming you did good service to your cause, you strengthened its prospects of success; ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini

... thing of convention to start with—artificial light, no natural atmosphere or perspective, no fourth wall, and so on—all the rest should be convention too. The answer, again almost too obvious, is that, since the audience has to bear the strain of unavoidable convention, you should not wantonly add to their worry. And, anyhow, the human figures on your stage (I leave out fairies and superhumans for the moment) are bound to challenge reality by the fact that they are alive. If Mr. BARKER ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 18, 1914 • Various

... fever and diphtheria. No precautions have been taken with regard to sanitation. She is the child of rich people, but they have been wantonly neglectful, almost cruel in their negligence and ignorance. The mother, a young woman, is nearly certain to take the complaint and, to complicate everything, there is another baby expected before long. Now you understand. If you get into ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade

... general deportment, Colin, that makes ye think me an assassin or an idiot? I never wantonly shot an unsuspecting enemy, and I'm little likely to shoot Montrose and have a woman and bairn suffer the worst for a stupid ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro

... tries in succession several other methods in order to obtain relief. As the prodigal attempted to keep body and soul together by the most desperate and loathsome expedients, rather than throw himself on his father's compassion; so an alienated human soul, conscious of having wantonly offended a good God, and therefore hating deeply the Holy One, will bear and do the will of the wicked one to the utmost extremity of misery rather than come home a beggar, and be indebted for all to a father's love. The picture, ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... Camarina. Those diminutive golden horns attached to the forehead, represent not fecundity merely, nor merely the crisp tossing of the waves of streams, but horns of offence. And our fingers must beware of the thyrsus, tossed about so wantonly by himself and his chorus. The pine-cone at its top does but cover a spear-point; and the thing is a weapon—the sharp spear of the hunter Zagreus—though hidden now by the fresh leaves, and that button of pine-cone (useful also to dip in [64] wine, to check the sweetness) which he has ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... chosen a curious method of displaying your pleasantry," retorted Denviers, glancing sternly at the heavy-bearded Russian who had so wantonly insulted us. Rachieff drew a chair to the table, and, sitting down, leant his head upon his hands, narrowly scrutinizing ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... squatters on the public lands closely attached to him by promising that if he ever came to power their rights to the farms they had taken without leave should be confirmed by law. Nor did he forget to denounce Adams for "wantonly giving away Texas" in the negotiations with Spain in 1819. Every movement of the Government was combated at every point and defeated if possible. Van Buren, Calhoun, and Benton were an able trio, and they ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd

... it for my information was to be trusted, it was simply perfect. No, it was not that. He was not ashamed. He was shocked at being the selected victim, not of robbery so much as of contempt. His tranquillity had been wantonly desecrated. His lifelong, kindly nicety of ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad

... l. 34, Must wed with me.]—In Aeschylus and Sophocles Electra is unmarried. This story of her peasant husband is found only in Euripides, but is not likely to have been wantonly invented by him. It was no doubt an existing legend—an [Greek: on logos], to use the phrase attributed to Euripides in the Frogs (l. 1052). He may have chosen to adopt it for several reasons. First, to marry Electra ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides

... a year old, now (the season fit) into the Field, and let him range, [obediently.] If he wantonly babble or causelesly open, correct him by biting soundly the Roots of his Ears, or Lashing. Assoon as you find he approaches the Haunt of the Partridge, known by his Whining, and willing, but not daring, to open, speak and bid him, Take heed: If notwithstanding ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett

... outside the cave's entrance, keeping himself warily from view of the prisoners, craned forward and stared with fallen jaw, reckless of observation. Humble tenants, pensioners of Judith and the Turrentines, with these words Blatch had wantonly stripped the poor roof from above their grey heads, and turned them out defenceless, to the anger of that strong family. Come what ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan

... possessing a given quantity of cash, and every year wantonly burning the half of its produce; I will undertake to prove by the protective theory that this nation will not be the less rich in consequence of such a procedure. For, the result of the conflagration must be, that everything would double in price. An inventory made before this event, ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat

... against her Majesty, notwithstanding I was commanded, nor liked those doings.'—'No, but with your writings you will set us together by the ears,' saith the Earl of Arundel.—'He hath spent his living wantonly,' saith Bourne, 'and now saith he hath spent it in the King's service; which I am sorry for: he is come of a worshipful house in Worcestershire.' [Note 4]—'It is untruly said of you,' said I, 'that I have spent my living wantonly. I never consumed no part thereof until I came into the King's ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt

... came over the lad, though, once more, as he led the way through the hazel wood, where Sir Godfrey had had endless paths cut, every one of which was carpeted with moss; for there were the marks of hoofs, hazel stubs had been wantonly cut down, and the nearer they drew to the ruined Hall, the more frequent were the traces of destruction, while, when at last they came from the shrubbery and stood in full view of the place, the picture of desolation was so ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn

... my friend Daniel. On this occasion he has come to judgment upon a subject of which he knows so little that it is worse than nothing. I have reason to believe that he has a profound respect for one of you, and, being a bachelor, such exalted notions of your sex in general that he would not wantonly misjudge the humblest individual of it. His remark was but the fruit of such sheer innocence with regard to your charming sisterhood, that he has yet to learn that there is not a single member of it, who confesses to less than seventy years, to whom, even if she is black, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... shall be on my guard. I have in the last few hours lived through so much that makes life worth living, that I would not wantonly expose myself to any danger. Still, I cannot go without certainty—cannot, if there is some truth in our fears, leave ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck

... Hedwig, standing like a statue before him, "and you have the right to offer me whom you please for a husband, but you have no authority to allow me to be wantonly insulted." ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford

... business to reform the world; and writing in October, when so many of the idealists who felt with Parsifal in his remorse about the duck-shooting episode are applying the lesson by wantonly slaughtering every harmless creature they can hit, it would be superfluous to point out in any detail how very wrong and absurd is the world's estimate of the Bayreuth performance. In fact, were it my object to assist in the destruction of Bayreuth, no better plan ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman

... But this assumption is, and must be, a gross falsehood. Men and cattle are separated from each other by the Creator, immutably, eternally, and by an impassable gulf. To confound or identify men and cattle must be to lie most wantonly, impudently, and maliciously. And must we prove, that Jesus Christ is not in favor of palpable, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... take up their abode in the Forest Cantons,—Landenberg in Unterwalden, near Sarnen, in a castle of the King's, while Gessler built a prison-castle by Altorf in Uri; for within the memory of men no lord had dwelt in Schwyz. They used their power wantonly;—unjust and weary imprisonments for slightest faults; haughty manners, and all the stings of insolent authority;—and no redress to be had at the King's hands. The peace and happy security of the men of Schwyz were gone, and they looked in one another's faces for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various

... Canaan, Abraham did not yet know that it was the land appointed as his inheritance. Nevertheless he rejoiced when he reached it. In Mesopotamia and in Aramnaharaim, the inhabitants of which he had seen eating, drinking, and acting wantonly, he had always wished, "O that my portion may not be in this land," but when he came to Canaan, he observed that the people devoted themselves industriously to the cultivation of the land, and he said, "O that ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... stood at the window, watching Cydaria's light feet trip across the meadow, and her bonnet swing wantonly in her hand. But now Cydaria disappeared among the trunks of the ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope

... Nicias, and my own namesake, and Pericles. {22} But ever since these speakers have appeared who are always asking you, 'what would you like?' 'what may I propose for you?' 'what can I do to please you?' the interests of the city have been wantonly given away for the sake of the pleasure and gratification of the moment; and we see the consequences—the fortunes of the speakers prosper, while your own are in a shameful plight. {23} And yet consider, ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes

... 'twixt his horns, crimson-red as cochineal., Bobbing, wagging wantonly they tickled him, and oh, How his deft lips puckered round the reed, seemed to chase and steal Sky-music, earth-music, tree-music low! I said "Good-day, Thou!" He said, "Good-day, Thou!" Wiped his reed against the spotted doe-skin ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE

... lawns free from all interference from men and hoes; the pinks are closely nibbled off at the beginning of each summer by selfish hares intent on their own gratification; most of the beds bear the marks of nocturnal foxes; and the squirrels spend their days wantonly biting off and flinging down the tender young shoots of the firs. Then there is the boy who drives the donkey and water-cart round the garden, and who has an altogether reprehensible habit of whisking round ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim

... its own seductive nature, or any other cause, very generally (which is the second case) connected with its abuse, and the abuse be also of the nature supposed, then the user or practiser, if the custom be unnecessary, throws himself wantonly into danger of evil, contrary to the watchfulness which christianity enjoins in morals; and, if he falls, falls by his own fault. This watchfulness against moral danger the Quakers conceive to be equally incumbent upon Christians, as watchfulness upon persons against the common dangers of life. ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... and ivory have left not a vestige behind. Those of bronze, once numbered by thousands, went long ago, with few exceptions, into the melting-pot. Even sculptures in marble, though the material was less valuable, have been thrown into the lime-kiln or used as building stone or wantonly mutilated or ruined by neglect. There does not exist to-day a single certified original work by any one of the six greatest sculptors of Greece, except the Hermes of Praxiteles (see page 221). Copies are more plentiful. As nowadays many museums and private houses have on their walls ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell



Words linked to "Wantonly" :   promiscuously, licentiously, wanton



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