"Wantonness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... orphan children heard and heeded no more than the butterfly which lighted upon the engraven words, "Dust to dust," and poised gracefully, as it bathed in the sunshine, stretching its wings in wantonness ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... your shame and ours, a band of Spanish landloupers and other foreigners, together with three or four self-seeking enemies of their own land, to keep their feet upon our necks. Let them no longer, in the very wantonness of tyranny, drive us about like a herd of cattle—like a ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... self-indulgence. Long anger, the sense of his uncontrolled power, spoils the frank and generous nature of the West Wind. It is as if his heart were corrupted by a malevolent and brooding rancour. He devastates his own kingdom in the wantonness of his force. South-west is the quarter of the heavens where he presents his darkened brow. He breathes his rage in terrific squalls, and overwhelms his realm with an inexhaustible welter of clouds. He strews the seeds of anxiety upon the decks of scudding ships, makes the foam-stripped ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... proper weight to the consequences resulting therefrom), notwithstanding order on order and some exemplary punishments, had been incorrigibly guilty of every excess. It had not only seized with violence all that its wants demanded, but destroyed in mere wantonness what did not tempt its cupidity. No vandal ferocity was ever more destructive. Those crimes, however, were not committed with impunity. Want, sickness, and an enraged peasantry, inflicted terrible reprisals, and caused daily a ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... of the tastefully distributed garden was broken down in several places; the parterres and melon-beds were trampled and destroyed by the hoofs of the Carlist horses, which had seemingly been turned in there to feed, or perhaps been ridden through it in utter wantonness by their brutal owners. The ground in front of the house was strewed with broken furniture, and with articles of wearing apparel, the latter of which appeared to have belonged to the Carlists, and to have been exchanged by them for others of a better description found ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... interference of men would have curtailed one of these privileges. For a mandate was issued by the papal legate in Germany in the 14th century, decreeing, that "the apparel of women, which ought to be consistent with modesty, but now, through their foolishness, is degenerated into wantonness and extravagance, more particularly the immoderate length of their petticoats, with which they sweep the ground, be restrained to a moderate fashion, agreeably to the decency of the sex, under pain of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... ranch in Harney and the Cummins ranch on the John Day were exceptions. In the fights at these places some of the Indians were killed and the houses were burned out of revenge. With characteristic Indian wantonness and wastefulness hundreds of cattle were shot down, only the tongue being taken out for food. They, however, would come back as buffalo and cover the land with plenty. But horses were everywhere taken, and when that armed, mounted and tufted host debouched into Harney Valley ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... madame, that your frivolity went so far as continually to wound the laws, the customs, and the hallowed order of things. You do it—you do it, scorning every thing established with the random wantonness of a child that plays with fire, and does not know that the waves will flare up and consume it. Madame, I have come here to warn you once more, and for the ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... Who, having spilt much blood, and done much wast Subduing nations, and achieved thereby Fame in the world, high titles, and rich prey; Shall change their course to pleasure, ease, and sloth, Surfeit, and lust; till wantonness and pride Raise out of friendship hostile deeds in peace. The conquered also, and enslaved by war, Shall, with their freedom lost, all virtue lose And fear of God; from whom their piety feigned In sharp contest of battle found no aid Against invaders; therefore, cooled in zeal, Thenceforth ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... than for the beggar who could not eat his veal without oranges? Is it not the highest indignity to human nature, that men should be such poltroons as to suffer the kingdom and themselves to be undone, by the vanity, the folly, the pride, and wantonness of their wives,[93] who, under their present corruptions, seem to be a kind of animal, suffered, for our sins, to be sent into the world for the destruction of families, societies, and kingdoms; and whose ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... good wife, Sweetbine, were very much grieved at the foolish trifling of their daughter, Dewbell—for they were well assured that Dewbell loved the noble knight, Sir Timothy, and that it was only a spirit of mere wantonness that led her to vex and torment him. Long into the night did the royal couple converse, striving to devise some means of bringing their wayward daughter to her senses. They at last hit upon a plan, which they fondly hoped might be the means of securing ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... her head. "Oh, no! There will be no rapturous song of birds for us, none of that fine wantonness that doesn't stop to count the cost. If we marry no doubt we'll have good reasons, but not the very best one—that we ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... bound Himself by an oath to be kissed if Judas planned to kiss Him, and He came through the trees to that bridal with the dawn of every day. He had foreseen the chalice, foreseen that it would be filled at every moon and every sun by the bitter gall of ingratitude and wantonness and hate, but He had pledged Himself—"Even so, Father"—and He was here to drink it. Small wonder, then, that the paving on which Peter Graham knelt seemed to swim before his eyes until it was in truth a moving ocean of love that streamed from the altar and enclosed of every kind, ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... unconventionality. Woman was something so inexpressibly sacred to him, that he could not bear to see any good woman venturing where the footing was precarious. Whatever good woman thus ventured, overstepping the metes and bounds of sex and status, he deemed did so of wantonness. And wantonness of such order was akin to—well, he could not say it when thinking of Frona, though she hurt him often by her unwise acts. However, he only felt such hurts when away from her. When with her, ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... Theseus. He slew also Sciron, upon the borders of Megara, casting him down from the rocks, being, as most report, a notorious robber of all passengers, and, as others add, accustomed out of insolence and wantonness, to stretch forth his feet to strangers, commanding them to wash them, and then while they did it, with a kick to send them down the ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... did he gaze upon the gold; he saw the hideous contrast of his own dim hovel and that radiant chamber—he remembered the pining faces of his babes, and gentle Grace with all her hardships—he thought upon his poverty and well deserts—he looked upon wastefulness of wealth and wantonness of living—these reflections struck him in a moment; no one saw him, no one cared about the gold; that little blessed morsel, that could do him so much good; all was confusion, all was opportunity, and who can wonder that his fingers closed upon ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... the different sale-stables in town, and to look at horses with a view to buying at private sale. Every facility for testing them was offered him, but he could not make up his mind. In feeble wantonness he gave appointments which he knew he should not keep, and, passing his days in an agony of multitudinous indecision, he added to the lies in the world the hideous sum of his broken engagements. From time to time he forlornly appeared at the Chevaliers', ...
— Buying a Horse • William Dean Howells
... comes, he moves like an avalanche, carrying destruction in his path. The peasantry sink before him. The country, too, is too poor for plunder, and too rough for a valuable conquest. Nature presents her eternal barrier on every side, to check the wantonness of ambition. And Switzerland remains with her simple institutions, a military road to climates scarcely worth a permanent possession, and protected by ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... Undoubtedly, the Spirit designed such order in view of future abominations that should follow the devil's establishment of tyranny and worldly dominion among Christians. This is the case at present. Dominion occupies chief place. Everything in Christendom must yield to the wantonness of tyranny. Prophecy, ministry, teaching, exhortation, benevolence—all must give way to tyranny. Nothing may interrupt its sway; it must not yield to prophecy, teaching ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... therefore, that here we have to do with an act of pure wantonness; nay, with an impudent defiance offered to those members of the community who work with their heads by those who work with their hands. That such infamy should be tolerated in a town is a piece of barbarity ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... about to cross the river Gyndes (one of the affluents from the east which joins the Tigris near the modern Bagdad, and along which lay the high road crossing the pass of Mount Zagros from Babylon to Ekbatana) when one of the sacred white horses, which accompanied him, entered the river in pure wantonness and tried to cross it by himself. The Gyndes resented this insult and the horse was drowned: upon which Cyrus swore in his wrath that he would so break the strength of the river as that women in future should pass it without wetting their ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... of this collision between Milton, young and unknown, and the venerable prelate, whom he was assaulting with the rude wantonness of untempered youth, deserves to be mentioned here. Usher had incautiously included the Ignatian epistles among his authorities. This laid the most learned man of the day at the mercy of an adversary of less reading than himself. Milton, who at least knew so much suspicion of the genuineness ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... for a noble lady? To be told to knit gloves for a set of lazy canons. Marry, she had better send the men at once to her room, to have them tried on. No wonder that levity and wantonness should ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... mirth and laughter. Nothing now remained but to pay our taxes, which were indeed laid with inconceivable severity. Lodging was raised sixpence, fire in the same proportion, and even candles, which had hitherto escaped, were charged with a wantonness of imposition, from the beginning, and placed under the style of oversight. We were raised a whole pound, whereas we had only burned ten, in five nights, and the ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... shooting star. In our way we stooped o'er a moonlit isle, Which the fairies had built in the lonely sea, And the Surf Sprite's brow was bent with a smile, As we gazed through the mist on their revelry. The ripples that swept to the pebbly shore, O'er shells of purple in wantonness played, And the whispering zephyrs sweet odors bore, From roses that bloomed amid silence and shade. In winding grottos, with gems all bright, Soft music trembled from harps unseen, And fair forms glided on wings of light, 'Mid forests of ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... ran over the names of these Italian toasts, he was thinking of the Princess Visconti. This great lady, finding herself unable to enthral Bonaparte, had given herself to his Chief of the Staff, whom she loved with a fire of wantonness and a refined sensuality which left their mark on the weak-kneed Berthier for the rest ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... entertained Queen Elizabeth at Kenilworth Castle, laid before her Majesty a fork of pure silver. I the more easily credit it, as Master Thomas Coriatt doth vouch for having seen the same monstrous sign of voluptuousness at Venice. We are surely the especial favourites of Providence, when such wantonness hath not melted us quite away. After this portent, it would otherwise have appeared incredible that we should have broken ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... she, 'O folk ye have made me to break the bounds of modesty and the circle of free born women and indulge in idle talk of chambering and wantonness, which beseemeth not people of learning. But the breasts of free-borns are the sepulchres of secrets' and such conversations are in confidence. Moreover, actions are according to intentions,[FN250] and I crave pardon of Allah ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... great tragic figure of the war—the whole world does her homage. We are not invaded—and so less tragic, less appealing. But we are fighting the fight which is the fight of all freemen everywhere—against the wantonness of military power, against the spirit that tears up treaties and makes peaceful agreement between nations impossible—against a cruelty and barbarism in war which brings our civilisation to shame. We have a right to your sympathy—you who are the heirs of Washington ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... The wantonness of this generation was in a measure due to the ideal conditions under which mankind lived before the flood. They knew neither toil nor care, and as a consequence of their extraordinary prosperity they grew insolent. In their arrogance they rose up against ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... discernment easily discovered, his imagination might sometimes incite him to mention too ludicrously. A little knowledge of the world is sufficient to discover that such weakness is very common, and that there are few who do not sometimes, in the wantonness of thoughtless mirth, or the heat of transient resentment, speak of their friends and benefactors with levity and contempt, though in their cooler moments they want neither sense of their kindness nor reverence for their virtue; ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... Aurelian himself! He will stand at a corner, in some public place, and preach to the crowds, and give never an inch for all their curses and noise. They fear him too much, I believe, to attack him with aught but words. And I wonder not at it. A few days since, a large dog was in wicked wantonness, as I must allow, set upon a poor Christian boy. Macer, so he is called about the city, at the moment came up. Never tiger seized his prey as he seized that dog, and first dashing out his brains upon the pavement, pursued then the pursuers of the boy, and beat them to jelly with the carcase ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... Judah saw, yes she saw,(177) that, all because recreant Israel committed adultery, I had dismissed her and given her the bill of her divorce; yet her sister treacherous Judah was not afraid, but also went and played the harlot. 9. And it came to pass that, through the wantonness of her harlotry, she polluted the land, committing adultery with stones and with stocks. 10. And yet, for all this, treacherous Judah(178) has not returned to Me with all her heart, but only in feigning.(179) 11. And the Lord said to me, Recreant Israel hath justified herself more than ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... soul, if yielded to. She preached to me incessantly. She kept me from the society of boys of my own age, for fear I should be contaminated,—and from the approach of any of the other sex, lest my mind should be diverted from serious matters and led into wantonness and folly. She would have made a priest of me, had it not been for my father;—he objected. His brother, for whom I was named, was a distinguished professor, to whom I bore, as he thought, a close resemblance, and he desired I should imitate him in my pursuits. I had good abilities, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... punished terribly. After we went west even the death penalty for wantonness was enforced, though at the time ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... matter of course, the less likely are the sexual feelings to be developed precociously. The child thus, indeed, becomes immune to impure influences, so that later, when representations of the nude are brought before him for the object of provoking his wantonness, they are powerless to injure him. It is important, Enderlin adds, for familiarity with the nude in art to be learnt at school, for most of us, as Siebert remarks, have to learn purity ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the Persians in wantonness, or in hatred of the Egyptian religion; and the priests now put upon it the name of Philip Arridaeus, for whom ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... shall sleep to the music of leaflets, By zephyrs in wantonness shook, And dream of the Skoodoowabskooksis, And, perhaps, of ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... because no works pacify the conscience, new works, in addition to God's commands, were from time to time devised [the hypocrites nevertheless used to invent one work after another, one sacrifice after another, by a blind guess and in reckless wantonness, and all this without the word and command of God, with wicked conscience as we have seen in the Papacy]. The people of Israel had seen the prophets sacrificing on high places [and in groves]. Besides, the examples of the saints very greatly move the minds of those, ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... always an age of frivolity, of heartless levity, of dwarfish objects and pursuits, of dreadful contrasts—laughter amid mourning, rioting and wantonness amid judgments and executions; dancing and music at the hour of death. Such was the frivolity of the days of Nero; such was the mirth of the "death-dance" in the days of Robespierre. Nothing like this sickly and appalling joy could be seen in the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... head bare, stared forward after the fleeting murmurs and shadows we were pursuing. Sometimes she warned us, "More to the left "; or, "Faster!" We had to put forth our best, for Manuel, as if in the very wantonness of confidence, had set a ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... over, to his entire surprise and some confusion, a soprano voice, high, childish, but infinitely quaint and fascinating, was mischievously uplifted. But alas! even to his ears, ignorant of the language, it was very clearly a song of levity and wantonness, of freedom and license, of coquetry and incitement! Yet such was its fascination that he fancied it was reclaimed by the delightful childlike and innocent expression ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... render vice attractive. The injured husband, for example, is invariably ridiculed, the adulterer glorified. The Hindu books, on the other hand, were written by professedly religious men whose aim was "not to encourage chambering and wantonness, but simply and in all sincerity to prevent the separation of husband and wife"—not to make them a married couple look afield, but "to lead them to love each other more by understanding each other better." Vatsyayan ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... personal, which may be necessary or convenient for their several commands, for supplies, or for other military purposes; and that while property may be all stored for proper military objects, none shall be destroyed in wantonness or malice. ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... Laconian, and Amazonian maidens, besides their not being betrothed to him, were no worthier mothers for his children than the Athenian daughters of Erechtheus and Kekrops would have been, so we must suspect that these acts were done out of mere riotous wantonness. ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... they were, but not coldly cruel like the ancients. The condition of the lower classes certainly became no worse for their invasion; it probably improved. Much the new-comers undoubtedly destroyed in pure wantonness. But there was much more that they admired, half ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... or harm for the possibility of benefit; danger may have no compensating alternative. In hazard the possibilities of gain or loss are nearly balanced; in risk the possibility of loss is the chief thought; the foolhardy take great risks in mere wantonness; in chance and venture the hope of good predominates; we speak of a merchant's venture, but of an insurance company's risk; one may be driven by circumstances to run a risk; he freely seeks a venture; we speak of the chance of winning, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... of wantonness this arrogance of royalty may lead me, I do not know: I will watch, and see. It is written: 'It is not good for man to be alone!' But good or no, the arrangement of One planet, One inhabitant, already seems to me, not merely a natural and proper, but ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... a low block of gneiss to rest themselves, and then and there did the King of Borva recite his grievances and rage against the English smacks. Was it not enough that they should in passing steal the sheep, but that they should also, in mere wantonness, stalk them as deer, wounding them with rifle-bullets, and leaving them to die among the rocks? Sheila said bravely that no one could tell that it was the English fishermen who did that. Why not the crews of merchant-vessels, who might be of any nation? It was unfair ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... the chests, which she locked down, one by one, till all were shut. When all was done the eunuchs embarked the chests in the boat and made for the Lady Zubaydah's palace. With this, thought began to beset me and I said to myself, "Verily thy lust and wantonness will be the death of thee; and the question is after all shalt thou win to thy wish or not?" And I began to weep, boxed up as I was in the box and suffering from cramp; and I prayed Allah that He deliver me from the dangerous ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... So quickly I returned to the place where Alypius was sitting; for there had I put down the volume of the Apostles, when I rose thence. I seized, I opened, and in silence I read that paragraph on which my eye first fell: "Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof" [Rom. 13:13, 14]. No further would I read; there was no need; for instantly, as the sentence ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... to equality and frugality. While republics are destroyed by extravagance, lust, and self-seeking, a monarchy can dispense with civil virtue, patriotism, and moral disinterestedness, since in it false honor, luxury, and wantonness subserve the public good. Great states tend toward despotism; smaller ones toward aristocracy, or a democratic republicanism; for those of medium size monarchy, which is intermediate between the two former, is the best form of constitution. Although ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... first began to be inscribed upon glasses, I was honoured with the amorous professions of the gay Venustulus, a gentleman, who, being the only son of a wealthy family, had been educated in all the wantonness of expense, and softness of effeminacy. He was beautiful in his person, and easy in his address, and, therefore, soon gained upon my eye at an age when the sight is very little over-ruled by the understanding. He had not any power in himself of gladdening or amusing; but ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... comrade win. In fullness of young life he climbed the cliffs Where human foot had never trod before. He led the chase, but when soft-eyed gazelles Or bounding deer, or any harmless thing, Came in the range of his unerring dart, He let them pass; for why, thought he, should men In wantonness make ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... writ: if it should be established, I insist upon it every person, by the 14th Charles Second, has this power as well as the custom-house officers. The words are: "it shall be lawful for any person or persons authorized," etc. What a scene does this open! Every man prompted by revenge, ill-humor, or wantonness to inspect the inside of his neighbor's house, may get a writ of assistance. Others will ask it from self-defence; one arbitrary exertion will provoke another, until society be involved in ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... an enemy's head,' and forgiving me too readily to permit me to forgive myself. The part applied to you is pert, and petulant, and shallow enough; but, although I have long done every thing in my power to suppress the circulation of the whole thing, I shall always regret the wantonness or generality of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... an hour and a half since Bessie had left, but the bushrangers were still round the table. The dainty china was all smashed and broken, and the men were throwing cups and glasses at one another in very wantonness. There was no one on guard now, and the women were huddled together terrified in one corner, while still against the wall leaned Hollis, exactly where Bessie ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... benefactress, he was no longer Rousseau, he was a poor madman. Who knows if his morbid and disordered imagination, which made him at that time see an insult in every benefit and hatred in all friendship, did not show him likewise the courtesan in the loving woman, and wantonness instead of love? I have always suspected it. I defy any rational man to recompose, with a semblance of probability, the character Rousseau gives to the woman he loved, from the contradictory elements which he describes in her. Those elements exclude each other: if ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... of those who preyed upon the commonwealth. Thieves and robbers were now become more desperate and savage than ever they had appeared since mankind was civilized. In the exercise of their rapine, they wounded, maimed, and even murdered the unhappy sufferers, through a wantonness of barbarity. They circulated letters demanding sums of money from certain individuals, on pain of reducing their houses to ashes, and their families to ruin; and even set fire to the house of a rich merchant in Bristol, who had refused to comply ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... the shock of this sudden misfortune had abated, Duncan began to make his observations on the appearance and proceedings of their captors. Contrary to the usages of the natives in the wantonness of their success they had respected, not only the persons of the trembling sisters, but his own. The rich ornaments of his military attire had indeed been repeatedly handled by different individuals of the tribes with eyes expressing a savage ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... Longmore, provoked by what seemed the very wantonness of her patience, "the reality YOU 'happen to be in for' has, if I'm not in error, very recently taken a shape ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... another wave, riding triumphantly through its fellows, caught the great steamer in its tremendous grasp, carried her onward for half her length and smashed her down on the rocks. Her back was broken. She parted in two halves. Both sections turned completely over in the utter wantonness of destruction, and everything—masts, funnels, boats, hull, with every living soul on board—was at once engulfed in a maelstrom of ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... Accius was so when he wrote? Those men, indeed, act very well, but the orator acts better than the player, provided he be really an orator; but then they carry it on without passion, and with a composed mind. But what wantonness is it to commend lust? You produce Themistocles and Demosthenes; to these you add Pythagoras, Democritus, and Plato. What, do you then call studies lust? But these studies of the most excellent ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... Thou righteous Judge, give righteous judgment; judge him to be mine who refused to be Thine, even after he had renounced me in his baptism; what had he to do to wear my livery? What had he to do with gluttony, drunkenness, pride, wantonness, incontinency, and the rest of my ware? All these things he hath practised, since he renounced the devil and all his works. Mine he is, judge righteous judgment; for he whom Thou hast not disdained to die for, hath obliged himself ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... course, be said that there is method in this madness; since man's twofold blindness, his dogmatism and his scepticism, his immobility and his wantonness, tend in the long run to neutralize one another. But with the perspective required for such consolation, neither the agencies of destruction nor those of obstruction preserve the same heroic proportions which they are wont to assume ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... red lids, and the piteous looks, of deprecating tenderness which from time to time she bent on him, left room for nothing in his heart but a great love and compassion. Whatever might be the secret of this strange caprice it was evidently no mere piece of wantonness. She was suffering from it ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... of Marpurg, by the liberality of his friends; but when he returned home, in the midst of the ravages caused by the Spanish arms, instead of being received by his mother, he found that she, as well as her daughters, and all her family, had been sacrificed to the wantonness of the ferocious enemy. His distress was for a while inconsolable; but the thirst after distinction called him to the newly-founded university of Leyden, where his industry acquired him the protection of ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... out your plan; but you must run no unnecessary risk. I should think that Hendricks is sure to search for us, when he finds that we do not return; whereas, should they find you trying to run away, they might, in very wantonness, ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... carriers, who, not satisfied at seeing me ride past, want to stop me; one of them rushes up behind, grabs my package attached to the rear baggage-carrier, and nearly causes an overthrow; frightening him off, I spurt ahead, barely escaping two or three donkey cudgels hurled at me in pure wantonness, born of the courage inspired by a majority of twenty to one. There is no remedy for these unpleasant occurrences except travelling under escort, and the avoiding serious trouble or accident becomes a matter for every-day congratulation. At eighteen miles from the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... in a fear that never died, fretted by a law they could not understand; their mock-human existence, begun in an agony, was one long internal struggle, one long dread of Moreau—and for what? It was the wantonness of it ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... nature, which was kind, has grown fierce; and his pale cheek has grown paler still. You have never loved him? and yet you have made him forget every duty and every tie. You have taken his heart from me, from his child, from his home, and you value it not. In wantonness you have taken his love and my happiness away—you have played with it and destroyed it. Oh, Ellen, God have mercy upon you, ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... historian Douris tells us that Timaea was not altogether displeased at this imputation, and that when nursing the child among her attendants she was wont to call it Alkibiades instead of Leotychides. The same authority states that Alkibiades himself declared that he seduced Timaea, not out of wantonness, but with the ambitious design of placing his own family upon the throne of Sparta. In consequence of this, Alkibiades, fearing the wrath of Agis, left Sparta, and the child was always viewed with suspicion by Agis, and never treated as his ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... transferring certain imposing red-sealed documents to a green baize satchel which he held between his knees. He had regained his equanimity; his features wore their usual expression of judicial severity; nothing denoted his recent discomposure, except perhaps an additional wantonness in the stringy black hair falling over the high forehead,—that pallid high forehead which always wore the look of ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... is marriage than mere desert sands, in which life's current is lost until it reappears in a parcel of bubbles called babies. What is it but the fool's end, the knave's means; a warning to the wise, a snare to the simple; the wantonness of youth, the weakness of years; a pillory wherein to exercise patience; what is it but the Church's stocks for the wayward feet of women. Marry you! To marry is to commit two souls to the prison of one body; to put two pigs into one poke; two legs into ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... the doing the deeds not only of the brave man (as not leaving the ranks, nor flying, nor throwing away one's arms), but those also of the perfectly self-mastering man, as abstinence from adultery and wantonness; and those of the meek man, as refraining from striking others or using abusive language: and in like manner in respect of the other virtues and vices commanding some things and forbidding others, rightly if it is a good ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... every window in it was broken. The door hung forlornly on one hinge, glaring cracks in its surface showing where the axe had splintered it. Fragments of glass and ware, hung out and shattered in sheer wantonness, strewed the steps: and down one corner of the latter a dark red stream trickled—to curdle by and by in the gutter. Whence came the stream? Alas! there was something more to be seen yet, something our eyes instinctively sought last of all. The ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... that. I always, you see, think of Germany as the grabber, the attacker. Anything else, now that I've lived here, is simply inconceivable. A defensive war in which she should have to defend her homes from wanton attack is inconceivable. There is no wantonness now in the civilized nations. We have outgrown the blood stage. We are sober peoples, sober and civilian,—grown up, in fact. And the semi-civilized peoples would be afraid to attack a nation so strong as Germany. She is ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... danger. If, with a little too much self-confidence, I let myself be induced to assume a less haughty and reserved manner, if I associated a little more familiarly with the bold tribe, I soon repented, for I was carried along by their wantonness and folly, I could no longer subdue the laughter and extravagances, nor could I, to my own disgrace and sorrow, restrain myself ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... trapped and could not get away; and it seemed to him when he rose from the table that there was nothing left clean in all God's universe. These boys appeared to vie with each other in blasphemous abandonment; and it was not simply wantonness—it was ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... "Wilt speak before me in verse, O whore, and seek to excuse thyself for the mortal sins thou hast sinned? 'Twas my desire that thou shouldst return to thy husband, that I might witness thy wickedness and matchless brazenfacedness; for thou gloriest in thy lewdness and wantonness and mortal heinousness." Then she called for a palm-stick and, whenas they brought the Jarid, she arose and baring arms to elbows, beat her sister from head to foot; after which she called for a whip of plaited thongs, wherewith ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... opposite of all this; it is the dread of the unknown, the ghastly doubt as to whether there is any goal before us or not; when we fear, we are like the butterfly that flutters anxiously away from the boy who pursues it, who means out of mere wantonness to strike it down tattered ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to throw him away for a penny whistle that I do not want." Then she grew earnest, with a touch of anger: "Leicester! What reason, suppose you, Malcolm, have I for treating him as I do? Think you I act from sheer wantonness? If there were one little spot of that fault upon my soul, I would tear myself from John, though I ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... I am afraid you are rather thrown away, and that with every disposition to bear, there will be nothing to be borne. We will not despair, however. Weston may grow cross from the wantonness of comfort, or his ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... cairn whence she and Courtier had looked down at the herds of ponies. It was the merest memory now, vague and a little sweet, like the remembrance of some exceptional Spring day, when trees seem to flower before your eyes, and in sheer wantonness exhale a scent of lemons. The ponies were there still, and in distance the shining sea. She sat thinking of nothing, but how good it was to be alive. The fullness and sweetness of it all, the freedom and strength! Away to the West over a lonely ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... weeping. At times when the obligate goat's laugh bleated in among the melodious pangs, I caught a glimpse in the background of a crowd of small women-figures who nodded their odious heads with wicked wantonness. Then a rush of agonizing sounds came from the violin, and a fearful groan and a sob, such as was never heard upon earth before, nor will be perhaps heard upon earth again, unless in the valley of Jehoshaphat, when the colossal trumpets of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... Others appropriated the eatables which hucksters carried about in baskets. But in all this wild tumult, nobody was killed; and only at Oranienbaum a few Holstein soldiers got wounded by some low Russians, in their wantonness. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... form is all that could be desired, but the head and features are positively insipid, and a phrenologist would tell you by the development of the cranium that female education was not a part of the Grecian policy. There is in this statue a certain air of wantonness, a perceptible consciousness of being valued and admired solely for physical beauty, which just as plainly tells the estimate placed upon woman in those times as we can read the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... is quite shut out from our lives, all the sins of wantonness, softness, and effeminacy are prevented; and there is but little room for ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... roughened; with a swimmer's stroke Flinging the billows back from my drenched hair, And laughing from my lip the audacious brine, Which kissed it like a wine-cup, rising o'er The waves as they arose, and prouder still 110 The loftier they uplifted me; and oft, In wantonness of spirit, plunging down Into their green and glassy gulfs, and making My way to shells and sea-weed, all unseen By those above, till they waxed fearful; then Returning with my grasp full of such tokens As showed that ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... that she was badly hurt over the dog's death. Certainly, despite her cold composure, she must be filled with rage against him for killing the animal. He might now have exhibited his arm, to confound her with the evidence of his innocence of wantonness, and very probably she would have been instantly remorseful. But he had no such intention; he was keenly alive to his opportunity to show her that he was answerable to no one for his conduct. He enjoyed her chagrin; he was moved ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... embodiment. The personality that she presented was typical and unusual. It embodied virtue, neither hardened by austerity nor vapid with excess of goodness, and it embodied seductive womanhood, without one touch of wantonness or guile. It presented a woman innately good and radiantly lovely, who amid severest trials spontaneously and unconsciously acted with the ingenuous grace of childhood, the grandest generosity, the ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... whilst a slave Even to the basest appetites—that man Heeds not the shriek of penury; he smiles At the deep curses which the destitute 35 Mutter in secret, and a sullen joy Pervades his bloodless heart when thousands groan But for those morsels which his wantonness Wastes in unjoyous revelry, to save All that they love from famine: when he hears 40 The tale of horror, to some ready-made face Of hypocritical assent he turns, Smothering the glow of shame, that, spite ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... thing of which Euripides has never spoken. And when we bestow our favours on slaves and muleteers for want of better, does he mention this? And when we eat garlic early in the morning after a night of wantonness, so that our husband, who has been keeping guard upon the city wall, may be reassured by the smell and suspect nothing,[590] has Euripides ever breathed a word of this? Tell me. Neither has he spoken of the woman ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... cork down sink, With eager bite of pike, or bass, or dace, And on the world and my Creator think: While some men strive ill-gotten goods t'embrace: And others spend their time in base excess Of wine, or worse, in war or wantonness. Let them that will, these pastimes still pursue, And on such pleasing fancies feed their fill, So I the fields and meadows green may view, And daily by ...
— Black Bass - Where to catch them in quantity within an hour's ride from New York • Charles Barker Bradford
... the wantonness of her despair, Miriam made one more step towards the friend whom she had lost. "Do not come nearer, Miriam!" said Hilda. Her look and tone were those of sorrowful entreaty, and yet they expressed a kind of confidence, as if the girl were conscious of a safeguard ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... back home. Herr Elias Roos got in his way; Traugott laid hold of him and carried him along with him into the room. "I shall never marry Christina, never!" he screamed. "She looks like Voluptas (Pleasure) and Luxuries (Wantonness), and her hair is like that of Ira (Wrath), in the picture in Arthur's Hall. O Felicia! Felicia! My beautiful darling! Why do you stretch out your arms so longingly towards me? I am coming, I am coming. And now let me tell you, Herr Elias," he continued, ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... ill-tempered and restless by its sameness and indecision. But the wind is a worse trial. It blows hot, as if it issued from the infernal cavern. It sets the nerves altogether wrong, and disposes one to commit evil deeds from mere wantonness and the feeling that some violent reaction from this influence is what nature insists upon. It is a wind that does not blow a steady honest gale, but goes to work in a treacherously intermittent fashion—now lulled to a complete calm, now springing at you like a tiger from ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... or severe distress. The war of classes, which was beginning, sprang not so much from material discomfort of the poor, as from what unsympathetic annalists called their greediness, their pride, and their wantonness. The wage-earner was master of the situation and did not hesitate to make his power felt. While the spread of manufactures, the rise of prices, and the opening out of wider markets still secured the prosperity of the shopkeeper, the merchant, or ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... after man's desolating hand passed over it; a scene of violence, of dead and dying scattered over the trampled and torn-up sod; "murder most foul" in the eyes of a Nature-lover. I could not bear to look upon it. I shunned it, lest I should hate my fellow-man, who can, unnecessarily and in pure wantonness, destroy in one hour what he cannot ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... versions, must have had their due share in the evil work. The result has been found in constant slurs upon the sacred pages, lessening the beauty and often perverting the sense,—a source of sorrow to the keen scholar and reverent Christian, and reiterated indignity done in wantonness or heedlessness to the pure and easy flow of ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... shock it caused did not so immediately pass away. Dr. Cooper determined to punish his son, and he therefore confined him, according to his usual mode of correction, in his own house. Astley was, however, but little disposed to remain passive in his imprisonment, and in the wantonness of his ever-active disposition amused himself by climbing up the chimney, and having at length reached the summit, endeavoured, by imitating the well-known tone of the chimney-sweeper, and calling out as lustily ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... degree of reverence that these places were now exhibited; for some Protestants who had been permitted there had stolen handfuls of the precious ashes, merely to throw away. I assured him that I thought them beasts to do it; and I was afterwards puzzled to know what should attract their wantonness in the remnants of mortality, hardly to be distinguished from the common earth out of which the catacombs ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... dwelling-place Where I may see my quill, or cork, down sink With eager bite of Perch, or Bleak, or Dace; And on the world and my Creator think: Whilst some men strive ill-gotten goods t' embrace; And others spend their time in base excess Of wine. or worse. in war and wantonness ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... hands together—"O my good lady, you know not our happiness; no, not one half of it. We were before blessed with plenty, and a bountiful indulgence, by our good master; but our plenty brought on wantonness and wranglings: but now we have peace as well as plenty; and peace of mind, my dear lady, in doing all in our respective powers, to shew ourselves thankful creatures to God, and to the ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... slumber, tried to smoke an unlighted cigarette, which he held between his lips. I found none of the shops open as I passed through the Merceria, and but for myself, and here and there a laborer going to work, the busy thoroughfare seemed deserted. In the mere wantonness of power, and the security of solitude, I indulged myself in snapping several door-latches, which gave me a pleasure as keen as that enjoyed in boyhood from passing a stick along the pickets of a fence. I was in nowise abashed to be discovered in this amusement by an old peasant-woman, bearing ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... family has been stained. It now remains for you to make all the reparation in your power; and that must be done immediately; for I will not leave this place, nor shall you leave my presence, till I see the victim of your wantonness and cruelty restored to that honor and happiness of which she has ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... observation, for 'although these people are kindly towards each other and their children, they have no sympathy for the suffering of animals, and little sympathy for pain when the person who feels it is not in danger.' I had thought it was in the wantonness of fancy Martin Dhoul accused the smith of plucking his living ducks, but a few lines further on, in this book where moral indignation is unknown, I read, 'Sometimes when I go into a cottage, I find all the women of the place down on their knees ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats
... full of flattery, As hath too oft been tried, High trolollie, lollie, lol; high trolollie, lee; The city full of wantonness, And both are full of pride; Then care away, and ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... grief and deadness: hence bruises and distortion follow. When we view humanity, we behold not the true and natural man, but a deformed and pitiable product, undone by the vices of those who have sought to improve on Nature by shaping his life to feed the vanity of a few and minister to their wantonness. In our plans for social betterment, let us hold in mind the healthy and unfettered man, and not the cripple that interference ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... groves Of yellow ragwort; or when rock and hill, The woods, and distant Skiddaw's lofty height, 295 Were bronzed with deepest radiance, stood alone Beneath the sky, as if I had been born On Indian plains, and from my mother's hut Had run abroad in wantonness, to sport A naked savage, in ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... associates. But to the end of his long life the wives and daughters of his nearest friends were not safe from his licentious plots. The ribaldry of his conversation moved astonishment even in that age. To the religion of his country he offered, in the mere wantonness of impiety, insults too foul to be described. His mendacity and his effrontery passed into proverbs. Of all the liars of his time he was the most deliberate, the most inventive and the most circumstantial. What shame meant he did not ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... In wantonness a shepherd's boy Alarm'd the neighbor's with his cry; "The wolf! the wolf!" And when they came, Of their lost labor made his game. At last the wolf when there indeed, His real cries they did not heed; He and his flock a prey were made, And for ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... shows you the head only of one of the larger figures in the center. Yet just observe how much design, how much wonderful composition, there is in this mere fragment of a building of the great times; a fragment, literally no larger than a school-boy could strike off in wantonness with a stick: and yet I cannot tell you how much care has been spent—not so much on the execution, for it does not take much trouble to execute well on so small a scale—but on the design, of this minute fragment. You see it is composed of a branch of wild roses, ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... should figure in her domestic accounts, seemed to Miss Joliffe so great a violation of the rules which govern prudent housekeeping, that all the urgency of the situation was needed to free her conscience from the guilt of extravagance—from that luxuria or wantonness, which leads the van among ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... proceeded to take liberties which astonished and disgusted me: and my mother not only permitted the revered scoundrel to do this, but actually seemed to encourage him. Soon they placed themselves upon a sofa, in full view of my gaze; and I was both mortified and enraged to observe the wantonness of my mother, and the lasciviousness of her pious friend. After indulging in the most obscene and lecherous preliminaries, the full measure of their iniquity was consummated, I being a witness to the whole ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... dim in the dawn, were thickly carpeted with dead. The mob kicked and befouled the bodies, and the bravos in sheer wantonness spiked them with their swords. There were women there, and children, lying twisted on the causeway. Once a fugitive darted out of an entry, to be brought down by a ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... foul idols were lighted on high, And wantonness tempted the lust of the eye; Midst rites of obsceneness, strange, loathsome, abhorred, The blasphemer scoffed at the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the people on board outrageous; they fell to beating every thing to pieces that fell in the way; and, carrying their intemperance to the greatest excess, broke open chests and cabins for plunder that could be of no use to them; and so earnest were they in this wantonness of theft, that one man had evidently been murdered on account of some division of the spoil, or for the sake of the share that fell to him, having all the marks of a strangled corpse. One thing in this outrage they seemed particularly ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... out, alas! That it should come to this pass, And thou be even as I was In green youth, Whenas delight and solace Served I with wantonness, And burned anon like the grass ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... all round and will assuredly fail to make his way unless he does this; if, then, he betrays his trust he does so under temptation. Whereas the amateur who works with no higher aim than that of immediate recognition betrays it from the vanity and wantonness of his spirit. The one is naughty because he is needy, the other from natural depravity. Besides, the amateur can keep his work to himself, whereas the professional ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... and saw the weird spectacle they became frenzied with delight, danced and capered, and started on a course of drinking and wantonness. ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... that I have done ill by one who did well by me. Who is this who hath guarded my honour while I garred his become dishonour? Who protected my Harim and whose Harim I wrecked?" "He is Ghanim son of Ayyub," replied she, "for he never approached me in wantonness or with lewd intent, I swear by thy munificence, O Commander of the Faithful!" Then said the Caliph, "There is no Majesty and there is no Might save in Allah! Ask what thou wilt of me, O Kut al-Kulub." "O Prince of the Faithful!", answered ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... no person was to be pressed to write verse. There were to be in this little Elysium of an evening no vain disputes, and no lovers were to mope about unsocially in corners. No fighting or brawling was to be tolerated, and no glasses or windows broken, or was tapestry to be torn down in wantonness. The rooms were to be kept warm; and, above all, any one who betrayed what the club chose to do or say was to be, nolens volens, banished. Over the clock in the kitchen some wit had inscribed in ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... her family, where she was much pitied, as she deserved to be. Yet there were some severe enough to say—and these not unjust persons in other respects—that though unquestionably innocent of the crime imputed to her, she had shown an unseemly wantonness in contracting three marriages in such rapid succession; that the untrue suspicion might have been ordered by Providence (who often works indirectly) as a punishment for her self-indulgence. Upon that point I have no ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... calm. I will live on; and though these simple folk Who call me sister understand me not, It matters little. There is one who does; And he shall have no liberty of love By any word of mine. 'Tis woman's lot, And man's most weak and wicked wantonness. Mine is like other husbands, I suppose; No ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... was the miscreant? Some man in the village? Impossible! In the village each man knows the other far too well, learns too well from his daily toil how hard it is to scrape together his little livelihood, for him out of sheer wantonness to afflict his neighbor. No, it must be somebody from a distance; somebody, perhaps, who had been a-roving in the world. To be sure, journeymen, beggars who—how can one tell?—already have one foot in the lock-up, did not pass through the village, which is situated apart ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... a dwelling place, Where I may see my quil or cork down sink, With eager bit of Pearch, or Bleak, or Dace; And on the world and my Creator think, Whilst some men strive, ill gotten goods t'imbrace; And others spend their time in base excess Of wine or worse, in war and wantonness. ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton
... engaged you, they are nothing to him. Shall an ass affect the lyre? Remove from these men's minds the gold and the silver, with the cares that these involve, and what remains? Pride, luxury, sensuality, insolence, wantonness, ignorance. Consuming must be their desire, doubt it not, for the wisdom of Homer, the eloquence of Demosthenes, the sublimity ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... within the narrow limits of his stable, and being obliged to conduct himself in a staid manner, on being released, runs, whisks his tail, kicks up his heels, lays back his ears, opens his mouth, and rushes with mock vicious-looking eyes at whomsoever he meets, and all this from mere wantonness, to enjoy his freedom; so the devil in the man, not perchance the theological one, but still the devil no less actually, as seen every day in the activity of the baser passions, on being released, by the abdication ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... up a heart, and declared that all my daughter had said was true, and that the evening before I myself had heard, through the door, how his lordship had made offers to her, and would have done wantonness with her; item, that he had already sought to kiss her once at Coserow; item, the troubles which his lordship had formerly brought upon me in the matter of ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... wouldest thou pluck me up to thy bed's head, And embrace me hard unto thy belly! And for thou smelled'st oldly, I ran from thee. CEL. A shameful whoreson! fie upon thee, fie, fie! Come hither, and now shortly I charge thee, That all this foolish speaking thou let be. Leave wantonness of youth; then shalt thou do well; Follow the doctrine of thy elders and counsel. To whom thy parents (on whose souls God have mercy!) In pain of cursing bade thee be obedient. In pain whereof, I command thee straitly, Too much in mastership ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... which never left the miser!—he never read in any other. Of what a treasure were yonder keys and purse the keepers! not a shilling they guarded but was picked from the pocket of necessity, plundered from needy wantonness, or pitilessly squeezed from starvation. "A fool, a miser, and a coward! Why was I bound to this wretch?" thought Catherine: "I, who am high-spirited and beautiful (did not HE tell me so?); I who, born a beggar, have raised myself to competence, and might have mounted—who knows whither?—if ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "I think so all the more because these men fare with laughter and wantonness; but such kinsmen of Njal as Thorgeir is would not smile before some vengeance is taken for the Burning, and I will make another guess, and maybe ye will think that unlikely. My meaning is, that it must be Flosi and the Burners with him, and they must mean to humble us with insults, and we will ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... came, this time from the right and quite close at hand. His horse was staggering, swaying—then down he crashed, Hobbs swinging clear barely in time to escape being pinioned to the ground. A stream of blood was pouring from the side of the poor beast. Aghast at this unheard of wantonness, the little interpreter knew not which way to turn, but stood there dazed until a third shot brought him to his senses. The bullet kicked up the dust near his feet. He scrambled for the heavy underbrush at the roadside and darted off into the forest, his revolver in ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... great waste of good things that these hundreds and hundreds of great watermelons should decay on the ground for lack of somebody to eat them. In the very wantonness of their plenty the settlers had been accustomed to break open two or three of the finest of the fruit before they could satisfy themselves that they had got one of the best. Even then they only took the choicest parts, leaving ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... inflict punishment on these occasions, or, indeed, on any occasion. But, if punishment is to be avoided, it is still more necessary that all kinds of indulgences and flattery be equally forbidden. Yielding to all the whims of a child,—picking up its toys when thrown away in mere wantonness, would be intolerable. A child should never be led to think others inferior to it, to beat a dog, or even the stone against which it falls, as some children are taught to do by silly nurses. Neither should the nurse affect or show alarm at any of the little accidents which must ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... the sky, with bright and troubled gaze; And then, glanced forward with so still a look, It seemed that it, perforce, would vanish space, And bring our secret world within its ken; Yet, with no cruelty or wantonness, Such as we hear gleamed from the cunning eyes Of those fierce hordes who, centuries ago, Came in their boats and strove to conquer us. Knowledge was what it craved, with truth it burned; A majesty we ...
— The Arctic Queen • Unknown
... how the high nobility on these occasions treated the learned, and how the learned demeaned themselves toward the nobility. It appears, therefore, that Rousseau was not in error when he alleged that emptiness and wantonness only were cherished in these societies, and that the literature which was then current was ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... blood with every blow, and leaves a scar on their naked back which they carry with them to their grave. At the arbitrary will of such managers, many of them with hearts of adamant, this unfortunate race are brought to the post of correction, often no doubt through malice and wantonness, often for the most trifling offences, and sometimes, O horrid! when entirely innocent. Can it be deemed wonderful, that such unhappy creatures should now and then be tempted to assert the rights of nature? ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... action was granted by the statute of the Twelve Tables in cases of mischief done through wantonness, passion, or ferocity, by irrational animals; it being by an enactment of that statute provided, that if the owner of such an animal is ready to surrender it as compensation for the damage, he ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... river, the Tigris, which flowing by the city of Opis runs out into the Erythraian Sea,—when Cyrus, I say, was endeavouring to cross this river Gyndes, which is a navigable stream, then one of his sacred white horses in high spirit and wantonness went into the river and endeavoured to cross, but the stream swept it under water and carried it off forthwith. And Cyrus was greatly moved with anger against the river for having done thus insolently, and he threatened to make it so feeble that for the future even women could cross it easily ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... furnished an excuse for her fault, at least with those to whom it was of no consequence whether she was good or bad; but those who knew her shrewdness and intelligence did not attribute her misdemeanour to ignorance but to wantonness and the natural disposition of women, which is for the most part flighty ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... content to describe him with this Mountain upon his Shoulders, tells us that the River flow'd down his Back, as he held it up in that Posture. It is visible to every judicious Reader, that such Ideas savour more of Burlesque, than of the Sublime. They proceed from a Wantonness of Imagination, and rather divert the Mind than astonish it. Milton has taken every thing that is sublime in these several Passages, and composes out of them ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... occurrence of the night before had become known to him, and she said: "Be it not that I see the king angry." He said: "How should I not be angry? Thou, by craft, and trickery, and intrigue, and plotting, hast brought thy desire from Rome—what wantonness is this that thou hast done?" Then he thought to slay her, but he forbore, because of his great love for her. But he ordered the chamberlain to carry the youth to some obscure place, and straightway sever his head from his body. When the poor mother saw this she well-nigh ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... so}? To check his feelings, which are now hurried away by luxury and wantonness, and to bring him down so as not to know which way ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... philosopher; there is no longer any estrangement between Ethics and Medical Practice. Medicine, sent from Heaven to be an angel of mercy to man, is now ever faithful to its beneficent mission; it never more performs the task of a destroying spirit, as—not in wantonness, but in ignorance—it did ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... Each of the four pieces of which the sonata consists is full of vigour, originality, and interest. But whether they can be called a sonata is another question. Schumann, in his playful manner, speaks of caprice and wantonness, and insinuates that Chopin bound together four of his maddest children, and entitled them sonata, in order that he might perhaps under this name smuggle them in where otherwise they would not penetrate. Of ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... his children:—To love one another, to perpetrate robbery, to practice wantonness, to hate their masters, and not to ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... in a thievish vein That up fire-ladders tall and steep And round the walls doth slyly creep; Virtuous withal I feel, with, I confess. A touch of thievish joy and wantonness. Thus through my limbs already burns The glorious Walpurgis night! After tomorrow it returns; Then why one wakes, one ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... who hear thee to mourn that thy career has not been more profitable to thyself and the public," answered the judge; "one who can reason so-well, and who hath this clear insight into his own disposition, must err less from ignorance than wantonness!" ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... appearance in London was at a time when all Europe was in a state of the most feverish excitement. Robespierre and his bloody companions were revelling in all the wantonness of irresponsible power. The Reign of Terror was at its height, and the resentment against France by all true friends of freedom in Europe, and especially the British nation, was hot and uncompromising. ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... alternately very enviable and very helpless. It was not the first time he had had a sense of Roderick's standing helpless in the grasp of his temperament. It had shaken him, as yet, but with a half good-humored wantonness; but, henceforth, possibly, it meant to handle him more roughly. These were not times, therefore, for a friend to ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... which Montaigne wanted, and which defends him from wantonness; and though Plutarch is as plain spoken, his moral sentiment is ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... out of the strange duality of nature that besets us, he yields to these things, then he is living by the light of conventional morality and quenching his inner light, as deliberately as if he blew out for mere wantonness a lantern in a ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... down, and breaking the companionship they had so long held with the pleasant drawing-room, and the tasteful arrangements among which Fleda was so much at home; the easy chairs in whose comfortable arms she had had so many an hour of nice reading; the soft rug, where, in the very wantonness of frolic, she had stretched herself to play with King; that very luxurious bright grateful of fire, which had given her so often the same warm welcome home an apt introduction to the other stores of comfort which awaited her above and below stairs; the ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... many of the old patriarchs traveling on donkeys, shows that the influence of Christians will be thrown against you in your selfish wantonness, causing you to ponder over the rights and duties of man ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... his fancies; to raise the man too high in his courage and conceit; to make his pretences seem worthy the considering and canvassing. Briefly, perverse obstinacy is more easily quelled, petulant impudence is sooner dashed, sophistical captiousness is more safely eluded, sceptical wantonness is more surely confounded in this than in the ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... boasted that his favours in jewelry given in sheer wantonness of pride to rich guests would be worth twenty-five thousand dollars. ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... is unnecessary. A degree of caution was used which was remarkable. Henry Pickering, a relative, and some of his fellow scholars at Cambridge made an investigation into the case, but decided with the others that the woman was guilty. Mother Samuel herself laid the whole trouble to the children's "wantonness." Again and again she was urged by the children to confess. "Such were the heavenly and divine speeches of the children in their fits to this old woman ... as that if a man had heard it he would not have thought ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... Of deed of mine, my Lord. I did but think That in the sunlit tropics I had known The wantonness of cruelty; and seen Aged men grown grey in crime, whose hair thus blanch'd Show'd white, like sugar ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... abounded with game, and it was killed from mere wantonness, such was their improvidence, that they were obliged to resort to their salt pork and other provisions; and as, in thirty days, forty large casks of whisky were consumed, it is easy to suppose, which was indeed the fact, ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... find out him who is destined to eternal torture, and before the cock crows he must be found!" As quickly as if carried by the winged thoughts they were in the great city, and from the walls the names of the deadly sins shone in flaming letters: pride, avarice, drunkenness, wantonness—in short, the whole seven-coloured ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen |
