"Heartlessness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... de Stael felt the egotism and heartlessness of Napoleon. Her salon became more crowded than ever with those who had their fears for the future. "The most eloquent of the Republican orators were those who borrowed from her most of their ideas and telling phrases. Most of them went forth ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... full of kindly feeling is the greatest gift which Heaven can bestow; on the other hand, the itching to keep scribbling about it, and to fancy oneself great in this scribbling is one of the greatest punishments which can be inflicted upon one who writes."[13] He exposes the heartlessness of Sterne's pretended sympathy: "Athree groschen piece is ever better than a tear,"[14] and "sympathy is a poor kind of alms-giving,"[15] are obviously ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... of the sensuality of many rich, the brutality of many poor, the shallowness of many fashionable, the coldness and deadness of religion, the absence anywhere of any deep, true spiritual impulse. Think, above all, of the organised materialism of Germany, the arrogance, the heartlessness, the negation of everything which one could possibly associate with the living spirit of Christ as evident in the utterances of Catholic Bishops, like Hartmann of Cologne, as in those of Lutheran Pastors. Put all this together and ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of a school, as in the bigger world outside, it is not for long that the circles in the waters of daily life mark the spot of any disappearance; it has to be so, and does not necessarily imply either heartlessness or caprice. We are limited as to our powers in all directions—the more marvellous that somewhere, invisible, unsuspected, our innermost self lives on. And far down, below the surface restlessness and change, may we not hope ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... every stage of a child's education, the neglect of this principle is seriously and painfully felt. It is the cause of acute mental suffering to well affected and zealous pupils; and it is the chief origin of all the heartlessness, and idleness, and apathy, which are found to pervade and regulate the conduct of those that are less active. A careful appliance of this principle of individuation, therefore, is always of importance in education; but it ought never to ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... "She's taking care of a child whose mother has deserted him. He is a good big boy now, but Cyclona's taken care of that child ever since he come into the world putty near," and he recited the story of Celia's heartlessness. ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... there ever such callous heartlessness in human creature? Was there ever such madness in sane woman? You ask me to prove my convictions, you ask me for the one method by which even you can be convinced, and when I show you how far my new faith has carried me you taunt me by asking who is my—victim. Oh, aunt, ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... much to struggle with; for if indulgence and over-weening affection ruin their thousands, neglect and heartlessness ruin tens of thousands. The heart not used to exercise the affection, becomes as it were paralyzed, and so he found it. He could not love as he ought, he could not be grateful as he knew he ought to be, and he found himself continually receiving acts of kindness, as matters ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... the four hundred pairs of eyes noted this evidence of heartlessness with varied emotions. But, unmindful of them, Ranson now leaned forward, the eager, searching look coming back into his black eyes. They were so close to Mary Cahill's that she drew away. He dropped his voice to a ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... ever a woman gave a man reason to think himself as good as engaged, she had given him that reason, and yet she refused him as coolly as she would have declined a second plate of soup. There must be some truth, after all, in the rant of the poets about the heartlessness and fickleness of women, although he had always been used to consider it the merest bosh. Suddenly he heard the train moving. He was perhaps fifty yards off, and, grumbling anathemas at the stupidity of the conductor, started to run ...
— Deserted - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... unworthy of being considered a soldier. There was no bravery in his action. He ran no risk. He shot without the slightest opposition and without warning. This is not an 'error of judgement.' It is paralysis of it in the face of fancied danger. It is proof of criminal incapacity and heartlessness. But the fury that has been spent upon General Dyer is, I am sure, largely misdirected. No doubt the shooting was 'frightful,' the loss of innocent life deplorable. But the slow torture, degradation and emasculation that followed was much worse, more calculated, malicious and soul-killing, ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... of his false friend—she whom he had long believed dead. She had settled, several years before, in this place, whither he had unawares followed her. In an interview—the first for nearly half a lifetime—all the old errors and falsehoods were cleared up. She told him how her husband's heartlessness and insolent indifference had made her leave him; and how, for the sake of her son, and partly also out of pride, she had made no attempt to repossess herself of the fortune with which she had endowed her husband ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... his lean sunburnt cheeks. Ethel clung always to his affection. She wanted that man, rather than any other in the whole world, to think well of her. When she was with him, she was the amiable and simple, the loving impetuous creature of old times. She chose to think of no other. Worldliness, heartlessness, eager scheming, cold flirtations, marquis-hunting and the like, disappeared for a while—and were not, as she sate at that honest man's side. O me! that we should have to record ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... never gave a thought to it until I saw Mr. Fielding. The illness isn't serious,' and Mrs. Willoughby laughed, with peculiar heartlessness thought Clarice. They were, however, not thinking ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... herself an agent for the sale of the book, and traversed hill and dale, walking miles daily to accomplish her purpose. She thus succeeded in placing more than one hundred and fifty copies in the hands of the women of Hyde Park and the vicinity, in spite of the ignorance, narrowness, heartlessness, and slavery which, she says, she had ample opportunity to deplore. The profits of her sales were given to ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... their new client was shown. One of them was a very little, round, rosy, middle-aged man, with an expression of countenance so cherubic that no one would have suspected him of being a lawyer; and the other was a tall, large-boned, parchment-faced personage, of whom almost any degree of heartlessness might have been believed. The two lawyers rose and bowed as ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... a word. Women had never come much my way, but I had a boy's distrust of the sex; and as I plodded along the highroad, with every now and then a cuff from a trooper's fist to cheer me, I had hard thoughts of their heartlessness. ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... seems a generous fever In a noble heart to give, Still an equal fire may live In the heart of the receiver. Heartlessness is something hateful, I would boast a liberal name; Thus I put my highest claim In the fact of being grateful. Then to me that title leave,— Gentle birth breeds gentleness; For the honour is no less To ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... Disgusted with the selfish heartlessness of society, Joab shambled off and was passing the scratching-post without noticing her. (Her name was Arabella Cliftonbury Howard.) Suddenly she kicked away a multitude of pigs who were at her feet, and called to the rolling beef ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... announcement the poor girl herself gave a hysteric giggle, which I at first thought proceeded from heartlessness, but I was told afterwards, by the person under whose immediate protection she came out, and who was a sister of her betrothed, that the tender woman's heart received such a fearful shock at the sudden death of her lover, that for several weeks ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... past. My grandfather brought her up in harshness and austerity, holding always before her the wickedness to which she was born. Yet it was no use. She fled from his house with a man no one knew, and died in Paris after a life of great splendor and heartlessness. Everyone who loved the Desires suffered. That is why I—covered ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... cried Miss Salome, at last finding her tongue. Her gentle nature was grievously stirred by the heartlessness shown in the face and voice of Mrs. Elwell. "That he shall not!" she cried again. "But he shall not want for a home as long as I have one to give him. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... this opportunity to get rid of her child for ever.(1). At this his bowels yearned so over the poor deserted cherub, that the tears of pure tenderness stood in his eyes, and still, beneath the crime of the mother, he saw the divine goodness, which had so directed her heartlessness as to comfort ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... desired to get Verena into training, she could flatter herself that the process had already begun, and that her colleague enjoyed it almost as much as she. Therefore she could say to herself, without the imputation of heartlessness, that when she left her mother it was for a noble, a sacred use. In point of fact, she left her very little, and she spent hours in jingling, aching, jostled journeys between Charles Street and the stale suburban cottage. Mrs. Tarrant sighed and grimaced, wrapped herself more than ever in her ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... house (and a good many outside) made covert, stealthy, and indirect steps in the same direction; for Trix (as her friends called her) was, if not wise, at least pretty and witty, displaying to the material eye a charming figure, and to the mental a delicate heartlessness—both attributes which challenge a self-respecting man's best efforts. But then came the fatal obstacle. From heiresses in reason a gentleman need neither shrink nor let himself be driven; but when it comes to something like twenty thousand a year—the reported amount of ...
— Frivolous Cupid • Anthony Hope
... Mannering, the murder, though unpremeditated, of a single person, (himself not entirely innocent, but at least by heartlessness in a cruel function earning his fate,) is avenged to the uttermost on all the men conscious of the crime; Mr. Bertram's death, like that of his wife, brief in pain, and each told in the space of half-a-dozen lines; and that of the heroine of the tale, self-devoted, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... away and was married to the young man, whom her father had never allowed her to bring to see him, and the proud old man was left alone in his dreary mansion, brooding over what he called the heartlessness of his only child. ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... inclined to curse the country which could allow of such a system. Happily, I did not. I knew that it arose from the ignorance of those in authority as to how to get seamen for the king's ships, and not from cruelty or heartlessness. It may seem surprising to those who live in happier times that no better plan could ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... for his death? Heaven forbid! Did I wish it! Ah no!" then she thought of Cousin Jennie's prophetic speech and a chill seized her as of ague. "It is indeed hard to decide between right and wrong. Will I ever feel real happiness again! Will not the bitter past come up and taunt me with cruel heartlessness. Would it not have been better if he had lived! then I would have had an opportunity to ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... the kid that is slain has no perception of the manner in which its flesh is cooked, yet it would seem to savor of heartlessness if the dam's milk, which was intended for the nourishment of her offspring, were served up on the same dish. It might also be said that the Gentiles in celebrating the feasts of their idols prepared ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... Pickwick I will say little; the subject presents but few attractions; and I, gentlemen, am not the man, nor are you, gentlemen, the men, to delight in the contemplation of revolting heartlessness and of ...
— The Law and Lawyers of Pickwick - A Lecture • Frank Lockwood
... withdrew from the world of fashion. At some other time it shall be given you; enough for the present, that I became world-weary, and, possessing what is called second-sight, drifted through life, caring naught for the heartlessness around me. The life which makes up three-fourths of the so called happiness of humanity I could not adopt as my own; therefore I was alone, and a wanderer. I was, of course, called strange and weird. What cared I, when every-day glimpses of the larger life were given me,—that life ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... continually, that he was dismissed, and I was persuaded to go to school again. Once more I ran away; but this time I did not run home. I wanted to see the world, and I was resolved to become a sailor. I cannot bear to dwell on my ingratitude and heartlessness. I knew that my disappearance would almost break my mother's heart, and that my father would suffer equally; yet I persevered. I little thought what I was to go through. A fine brig was on the point of sailing for the coast of Africa. I fell in with the master, and offered to go with him. He asked ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... had then considered her utter fickleness. Shortly after this he had been sent East to college and had borne the separation with a fortitude that had rather surprised him when he recalled how bitter a thing her heartlessness had seemed. ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... act on that principle prior to (as you say I do), than after marriage, as I know you all do; better not put the shackles on until one meets a woman who will cause one not to feel them. As to your charge of heartlessness against me, trust me; you say I know them; under the amiable exterior of some of the most gentle-voiced and loveliest, there throbs ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... have shown their selfishness, heartlessness, and greed by opposing the greatest boon to workers, the Factory Acts. "Was it the Liberal party which initiated the Factory Acts, which were certainly the greatest step towards the elevation of the working class that was ever ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... this speech; yet she knew that its apparent heartlessness did not really denote the state of her aunt's mind. It was merely bred of the lady's shallowness, and of her ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... that has come to rescue her. All they did was to cheat him and desert him. And safe in that wonderful self-complacency with which the fools of this earth are endowed, they have not a single pang of conscience for their villany towards him, consider their heartlessness as a proof and consequence of ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... There was an utter heartlessness about the defense of the Han authorities, who considered nothing but the good of the community as a whole; for when they established these quarantines, they did not hesitate to seal up thousands of the city's inhabitants behind hermetic barriers enclosing ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... this typically modern tale are very well drawn, and the author has distanced all her fellow-novelists of her own sex in the delineation of a woman whose heartlessness may be truly called devilish. The strength of this portrait is remarkable. The other woman is effective too, and the tangle of the relations of the three is put right by ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter
... finds him in the seventh heaven of rapture and vainly endeavours to enlighten him as to the reason of the beauty's stiffness and heartlessness. ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... moment he begged her to accompany him. "Together, we can bring the man to his senses," he pleaded, and he secretly thought that not even the hardness and heartlessness of John Ward could withstand the sorrow in her face. But she refused to ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... although both worldly in his judgment, and hasty in his temper, was not a heartless man. Keen feelings are not always dissociated from brutality even. One thing will reach the heart that another will not; and much that looks like heartlessness, may be mainly stupidity. He had never ceased, after the first rush of passion, to regret he had used the word that incensed the boy; and although he had never to his own heart confessed himself wrong in knocking down the violator ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... Cambridge student, declare that, Glenroy and M'Dow are exquisite originals.' My own favourite, 'Molly Macaulay,' preserves her good-humour to the last, though I thought you rather unmerciful in shutting her up so long in Johnnie's nursery. The fashionable heartlessness of Lady Elizabeth and her daughter is coloured to the life, and the refreshment of returning to nature, truth, affection, and happiness at Inch Orran is admirably managed. Mary tells me you have returned from Fife with fresh materials for future volumes. Go on, dear Miss Ferrier, you ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... impulse to suicide doubled, trebled, and must have killed himself, if he had his father's murder on his conscience. Oh, no! he would not have forgotten where his pistols lay! I know the prisoner: the savage, stony heartlessness ascribed to him by the prosecutor is inconsistent with his character. He would have killed himself, that's certain. He did not kill himself just because 'his mother's prayers had saved him,' and he was innocent of his father's blood. He was troubled, he was grieving that night at Mokroe only about ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... heartlessness of society, and is besides a full and fearful picture of the system of imprisonment for debt. For variety, power, and pathos, it is ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... made so bad that one cannot in the least degree sympathise with any of those who love her; one can only despise them. She is a fiend, and therefore not like Mr. Thackeray's Rebecca, where neither vanity, heartlessness, nor falsehood have been spared by the vigorous and skilful hand which portrays them, but where the human being has been preserved nevertheless, and where, consequently, the lesson given is infinitely more impressive. We can learn little from the strange fantasies of demons—we are not of their kind; ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... was characterized by many instances of cruelty and heartlessness, in marked contrast with the boasted clemency and culture of the age, of which two prominent illustrations may be given. The first occurred at Plataea in the year 427, soon after the execution by the Athenians of the Mitylene'an prisoners. ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... rather for the servants than for him, to moderate his anger, lest he should set a bad example. She will then weep silently into her tumbler, and her friends, after expressing a muttered indignation at the heartlessness of men, will support her tottering steps from the room. If her husband should invite one or two of his friends to dinner on a subsequent occasion, she will amuse herself and madden him by recounting to them this incident, in which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, May 3, 1890. • Various
... of fact and law to human feeling which creates drama. It is the deus ex machina who, by suspending that resistance, makes the fall of the curtain an immediate necessity, since drama ends exactly where resistance ends. Yet the introduction of this resistance produces so strong an impression of heartlessness nowadays that a distinguished critic has summed up the impression made on him by Mrs Warren's Profession, by declaring that "the difference between the spirit of Tolstoy and the spirit of Mr Shaw is the difference ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... forgiveness at last. I'm not a religious man, Collins; I don't know what will become of me after death; but God does, and that's sufficient for me. I never believed on Him so devoutly as I do now that He has vindicated His justice upon me. I praise him for avenging an act of the blindest folly and heartlessness; and I thank Him that my punishment is over at last. There! Listen! No, it's nothing. But it was a favourite song of hers; and while you were away I heard her sing it, with new meaning in every syllable. ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... thought whizzed through her mind. She was horrified at the thought, she could not forgive herself for having had it, but she could not get rid of it again. She stood with shaking knees, terrified at her own heartlessness, and still the thought came: if only he had died at the time, it would have been better. This—this was also the room in which she had tried on the suit the boy, who was growing so fast, was to wear at his confirmation. Now ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... of so much sadness and suffering, to put side by side the absolutely contradictory criticisms, all equally vehement, to which our action is subjected. On the one hand is the outcry against the cruelty and heartlessness manifested in not making better provision for the people in the concentration camps: on the other, the equally loud outcry against our injustice in leaving the British refugees in idleness and poverty at the ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... crowing with laughter and beating an accompaniment to his own mirth with a tin spoon upon a tin cup, was to meet a little triumph of the human species. Even when his mother and the rest of his family lay sick and prostrate around him, he sat upright in their midst and sang aloud in the pleasant heartlessness ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of their pain. And what was she, standing there? A negatively virtuous young woman, without enough desire of any kind to impel her to trample over feelings, creeds and codes. If she died that moment, it would be said of her that she was beautiful, and that was all. Reginald, with his greed, his heartlessness, his indifference to all that did not serve him, would not be forgotten: people would sigh and smile at the mention of his name, hate him and wish him back. She envied him; she wished she could feel in swift, passionate ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... all take up false notions in youth, and this was one of mine; but, of the two, I should prefer the cold, dogged domination of English law, with its fruits, the heartlessness of a sophistication without parallel, to being trampled on by every arrant blackguard that may happen to traverse this valley, in his wanderings after dollars. There is one thing you yourself must admit; the public is a little too apt to neglect the duties ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... of course there are the same distinctions among clergymen as among other people. Some of them are quite respectable gentlemen, especially those with whom I am not acquainted. I think that since the loss of my brother nothing could exceed the heartlessness of the remarks made by the average clergyman. There have been some noble exceptions, to whom I feel not only thankful but grateful; but a very large majority have taken this occasion to say most unfeeling and brutal things. I do not ask the clergy to forgive me, but I do ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... expression that set her to wondering whether he were the same man that she had seen that day with the pistol in hand, shooting the life out of a fellow being. There were times when she wavered in her conviction of his heartlessness. ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... viz., Dussasana, wedded to unrighteousness, always quarrelsome, of wicked understanding, and cruel in behaviour. Thou shalt soon see the terrible effects of vanity and pride, of wrath and arrogance, of bragging and heartlessness, cutting words and acts, of aversion from righteousness, and sinfulness and speaking ill of others, of transgressing the counsels of the aged, of oblique sight, and of all kinds of vices! O scum of humanity, how canst thou, O ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... than this in his preface, indeed, a marvellous piece of reality and irony which tells how a courtesan in Gibraltar fell madly in love with a gentleman-sponger who lived on her money while he could, and then took the first boat home with discreet heartlessness on coming into a bequest from a far-off cousin. "Good God, a pretty sight I should have looked...." he explained to a kindred spirit as they paced the deck of the boat to get an appetite. "I like her well enough, but what I say ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... "where women are honored there the gods are pleased," he was one of the hundreds of Sanscrit writers, who, as Ramabai Sarasvati relates, "have done their best to make woman a hateful being in the world's eye." Manu speaks of their "natural heartlessness," their "impure desires, wrath, dishonesty, malice, and bad conduct." Though mothers are more honored than other women, yet even they are declared to be "as ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... that a neglectful father, who takes not the trouble to study the nature and character of his son, who shuts his eyes to sinful tendencies, and rests in careless indifference as to the probable future, will by his very heartlessness be benefitting his child, because his lack of forethought cannot operate as ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... from her thoughts as though she had never cared for him. But a new feeling had sprung up in her heart which the realization of this indifference had brought. And this feeling filled her with an utter self-loathing. She shuddered as she thought of her own heartlessness, the shallow nature which was hers. She remembered her feelings at that bedside as she listened to the dying man's last words. Worst of all, she remembered how, in the paroxysm of her grief, she had sworn to discover the murderer of Leslie Grey and see justice administered. ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... word, and spared his guests no detail of the vast stronghold, until at last poor Sister Gabrielle could go no farther. Giovanni had anticipated that she would be tired, and with the heartlessness of a lover seeking his opportunity, he had secretly longed for the moment when she should, be obliged ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... plainly as words that he felt it was all up with me, that my usefulness to him was at an end, and that without a thought for my interests or a scintilla of regret, he was calculating how to turn my death to his advantage. An amused conviction of the man's heartlessness crept over me, and then I passed out into the ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... There was a vague heartlessness, more in her voice than in her words, that touched him as her cold indifference to himself had never done, and for an instant stung his crushed spirit to revolt. "No" he said, sternly, "but I am her father's FRIEND, and I shall not allow his daughter ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... and you may take my word respecting a woman's heart. No wife could love her husband more truly than Feemy loved that man: unworthy as he was, he was all in all to her. Would it not, therefore, show more heartlessness in her to forget him that is now dead, than the brother who killed him? Of course she loved him better than her brother, as every woman loves the man she does love better than all the world. How can she forget him? Be gentle to her, Father John, and I think ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... it. They even use their friends for their own selfish purposes, and so never have true friends. Some men shed friends at every step they rise in the social scale. It is mean and contemptible to merely use men, so long as they further one's personal interests. But there is a nemesis on such heartlessness. To such can never come the ecstasy and comfort of mutual trust. This worldly policy can never truly succeed. It stands to reason that they cannot have brothers born for adversity, and cannot count on the joy of the ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... missed my loving friend. How gloriously he would have filled the tribune of the day, I sadly mused.... O Khalid, I can never forgive this crime of thine against the sacred rites of Friendship. Such heartlessness, such inexorable cruelty, I have never before observed in thee. No matter how much thou hast profited by thy retirement to the mountains, no matter how much thy solitude hath given thee of health and power ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... her. I've watched them—heard them. She toys with it, testing it in a hundred ways. It's like nothing she has ever known before. But she isn't the kind you think she is. I doubt even if Jerry has kissed her. To Marcia men are merely so much material for experimentation. She has a reputation for heartlessness. I'm not sure that she isn't heartless. It's a great pity. She's very young, but she's already devoured with hypercriticism. She's cynical, a philanderer. You can't tamper with a passion the way Marcia has done ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... chanced to be in a most unfortunate humor. She criticized Jim; she declined to be amused or entertained; rebuffed his advances, ridiculed his pretensions of love. She even chose to denounce his mother for her heartlessness, his sister for her neglect, his father for his snobbery. That is always bad business. It puts a husband at bay with his back against the foundation walls of loyalty. They quarreled wonderfully and slept dos-a-dos. They did ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... the enemy, his weapons still tightly grasped in his clenched hands, and his sightless eyes still glaring defiance at the foe, I could pause to gaze upon the beauty of a South African moonrise! I could not understand it then; I was surprised and horrified at what I stigmatised as my callous heartlessness: but I know now that a merciful Providence has so ordered matters that when human suffering, whether mental or physical, reaches a certain degree of acuteness, partial insensibility sets in—I have known cases where men have slept while being subjected to the most awful tortures—and such ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... been beautiful, with pleasing and gracious manners, a great fondness for society and music and poetry and art,—the most accomplished woman of her day, and so attractive as to be compared by the poets of her court to Aurora and Venus. Her life only shows how much heartlessness, cruelty, malignity, envy, and selfishness may be concealed by the mask of beauty and agreeable manners ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... heartlessness, the widow scattered emphasis over her concluding remarks. "First, his best hat, he wants; and his coat and clean shirt; and they mend the looks of a man, Mr. Eccles; and it's to look well is his object: for he's not one to make a moan of himself, and doctors ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... responsibility to desert this creature, the only one from whom he had experienced devotion. To conclude: a season of extraordinary dissipation, to use no harsher phrase, had somewhat exhausted the nervous powers of our hero; his energies were deserting him; he had not heart or heartlessness enough to extricate himself from this dilemma. It seemed that if this being to whom he was indebted for so much joy were miserable, he must be unhappy; that if she died, life ought to have, could have, no charms for him. He kissed away her tears, ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... clothes-horse; that he wore livery; that, in a word, he was his wife's wife. They reversed the parts indeed, down to the least particular; it was the husband who showed himself the ministering angel in the hour of pain, while the wife displayed the apathy and heartlessness of the ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... feelings on the part of those who were anything but unsophisticated, and from knowledge of the world could gauge him at his true worth? Not even a sentimental girl would show her heart to such a man. And yet with the blind egotism of selfishness he smiled grimly at their apparent heartlessness and said, "Such ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... which people endured during the Confederacy have passed into familiar tradition. They are to be traced mainly to three causes: to the blockade, to the inadequate system of transportation, and to the heartlessness of speculators. The blockade was the real destroyer of the South. Besides ruining the whole policy based on King Cotton, besides impeding to a vast extent the inflow of munitions from Europe, it also deprived Southern ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... somewhat overawed by the Italian's determined eye, gave up what she saw was a vain attempt. She shut the door after them with expressive force, and then went up-stairs to discourse to her daughter on the incredible ingratitude and heartlessness of such creatures. ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... her plaintive cry may be heard among the hills answering back again the voices of those who laugh and sing. But now the nymphs were angry with the loveless youth, and prayed the gods to punish him for his heartlessness. ...
— The Enchanted Castle - A Book of Fairy Tales from Flowerland • Hartwell James
... if they will; for her part she calls them butchers. We might turn on our fair accuser, it is true, with some inquiry about the two or three bird-skins which adorn her bonnet. But that would be only giving one more proof of our heartlessness; and, besides, unless a man is downright angry he can scarcely feel that he has really cleared himself when he has done nothing more than to point the finger and say, You're another. However, I am not set for the defence of ornithologists. They are abundantly able ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... the trouble I had with this Christian religion—its infinite heartlessness; and I cannot tell them too often that during our last war Christians who knew that if they were shot they would go right to heaven, went and hired wicked men to take their places, perfectly willing the ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... have been more and more impressed with my heartlessness in allowing you to undertake such a journey as you have before you. I ought to have been braver. I ought to have refused absolutely to allow you to go. The prospect of your being able to overcome my ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... drawing-room door open again, and some one descend the stairs into the hall. She felt guilty and sorry at the same time. She wished she could do something by way of compensation. He would not think it was mere heartlessness? For indeed she had tried. And would she not have done him a far greater wrong if she had married him without being able to give him ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... the letters she received from home, Lilla's was the most irritating to her, for it was written in all the bitter indignation, the unchecked reproaches of a young and ardent spirit, in whose eyes the heartlessness of her letter was inexcusable, and she wrote as she thought. Annie, as might have been expected, deigned her no reply. A few languidly written letters her mother received from her during her tour; but the chief of her correspondence was reserved for Miss Malison and the lady who had so ably ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... hear of one convert to the gospel of mercy," said Mrs. Brown heartily. "The apathy of our women on this subject is heart-sickening. Men are denouncing us; the newspapers are full of our cruelty; the pulpit makes our heartlessness its theme; and yet we keep on with our barbarous work with an indifference that ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... narrative, unfolded her sorrows, appealed to him with tears in her eyes to procure her freedom and restore her to her rights. Her story enlisted the better feelings of a man, while her self-respect, the earnestness with which she pleaded her deliverance, and the heartlessness of the act, strongly rebuked the levity of those who had made her an orphan outcast in her own village. She was then in the theatre of vice, surrounded by its allurements, consigned to its degradation, a prey to libertinism-yet respecting herself. ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... of her husband's death, I swore that her only child should be as dear to me as a son. I have kept that promise. Few parents can find patience to forgive such follies as I have forgiven. But my endurance is exhausted; my affection has been worn out by your heartlessness: henceforward we ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Kipling. Take The Vampire, for instance. It has been complained that there is no touch of pity in it for the man and his ruin, no sermon on the lesson of it, no compassion for the human weakness, no indignation at the heartlessness. But are we kindergarten children that the tale be told to us in words of one syllable? Or are we men and women, able to read between the lines what Kipling intended we should read between the ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... evening, he seemed to see, for the first time, the unhappiness in the eyes of the little woman who had borne herself so bravely. In a sudden moment of illumination he realized all that she must have been feeling. Perhaps it had not been heartlessness; perhaps ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... fitted to hide blemishes which repelled. On the one hand his expressive features and shapely figure went far towards creating a charm which his personal grace and courtesy of manner completed; on the other, his delicate tact screened the heartlessness of his sensualism, whilst his surface sympathies hid the ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... have been flattered at this. But her speech seemed to him only an echo of the general heartlessness. "I found Miss Eversleigh very sympathetic over the fate of the unfortunate man, whom nobody else here seems to ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... something more tender, more devoted, than he had ever felt for any human being. His mind flew back fiercely to that night of his first quarrel when she had told him. Now he was to be punished for his heartlessness and cruelty ... ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... characteristic of the Stanhopes might probably be said to be heartlessness; but the want of feeling was, in most of them, accompanied by so great an amount of good nature that their neighbours failed to perceive how indifferent to them was the happiness and well-being of ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... the day in cold, heartless language that plainly spoke the indifference of the public to the trade and its awful consequences. I have never seen in any Southern newspapers advertisements of negro sales that surpass in heartlessness and viciousness the advertisements of our New England newspapers of the eighteenth century. Negro children were advertised to be given away in Boston, and were sold by the pound as was other merchandise. Samuel Pewter advertised in the Weekly Rehearsal ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... he waited—but Lawless asked her if she cared for him at all, if she wished or intended to marry him? She replied lightly, 'Perhaps, when you become Sir Duke Lawless.' Then Lawless accused her of heartlessness, and of encouraging both his uncle and Just Trafford. She amusingly said, 'Perhaps she had, but it really didn't matter, did it?' For reply, Lawless said her interest in the whole family seemed active and impartial. He bade her not vex herself ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... town councillors waited on Colonel Ward to-day. The petitioners humbly prayed that the bathing parties of soldiers below the town on Sundays might be stopped, because they shocked the feelings of the women. For a mixture of hypocrisy and heartlessness I take that deputation to be unequalled. The soldiers are exposed all the week long, day and night, to sun and cold and dirt, on rocks and hill-tops where it is impossible even to dip their hands in water. On Sunday the Boers seldom fire. The men are marched down ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... later a number of men were in the kitchen of Cap'n Jack's house, and from the way they talked I knew they meant that the vessel which they had been watching should that night be destroyed. Never until then did I realise the utter heartlessness of the gang. They seemed to care nothing for the lives of those on the ship which they had decided to wreck. In their lust for gain nothing was sacred to them. As far as I could gather, their plan was that I should lead Cap'n Jack's horse along the ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... readily related the history of Madelon's birth and Madame Linders' death. It was a story she was fond of telling; it had been a little romance in the ordinary routine of hotel life, and one in which, when she had duly set forth M. Linders' heartlessness and her own exertions, she felt that she must shine in an exceptionally favourable light; and indeed it was so pitiful a tale the her hearers could not but share the indignation and compassion she felt and expressed when she spoke of cette ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... Monsieur, I am so torn by these conflicting states of mind that what wonder my guardians think me changed! They believe the chevalier's tales have spoiled me for my life in St. Louis, and that I would gladly leave them. When I see them sad over what they believe to be my heartlessness my own heart is like to break, but I say nothing, and they believe me to ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... be said for Warrender that he meant no harm whatever by this. He meant, perhaps, to punish them a little for their heartlessness. He meant them to see that their position was changed,—that they were not as of old, in assured possession; and he reckoned upon that slowness of apprehension which probably would altogether preserve them from any painful consciousness. But it is astonishing how the mind and the senses ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... at intervals, across certain horizons, and never without bringing to bear some momentary, powerful influence upon the life she illumined. She was not, like some of her class, led by principles more or less consistent and dependable: sordid greed for money; complete selfishness; experienced heartlessness. To her own detriment, Bohemia and penury could attract her as surely and as frequently as heavily paid-for luxury. Contrast, indeed, constituted the one law of her lawlessness. Without this, how had it been possible for that first contact with the young painter to have filled her, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... was called "the King of the King." After having long tormented himself and France, he left a great name and a great empire—both alike the victims of splendid ambition! Neither this great minister nor this great nation tasted of happiness under his mighty administration. He had, indeed, a heartlessness in his conduct which obstructed by no relentings those remorseless decisions which made him terrible. But, while he trode down the princes of the blood and the nobles, and drove his patroness, the queen-mother, into a miserable exile, and contrived that ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... fresh and full; the weariness was of the spirit only. The piece was good, nay, very good; there were feeling and passion in the music. I looked at Struboff. His fingers moved tenderly, tears stood in his little eyes. Coralie shouted perfect notes in perfect heartlessness. ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... The seeming heartlessness with which she envisaged the non-existence of her babies contrasted strangely with her patient tenderness to the querulous boy ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... proposal. There is no need to be rude, and even if she has to appear unsympathetic, that is better than to humiliate him by a rejection. Some women glory over their hapless suitors as an Indian counts his scalps. This is the height of bad taste and heartlessness. We may be forgiven for hoping that they get left in the ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... heartlessness are criticised to-day, and the criticism is just. Yet, MORALLY, the human race has improved more than in ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... by hard labor, spreads and cracks, and sprouts bunches at the joints, and becomes tuberous at the ends of the fingers, but you can see that it is a deformity and not nature. It tells a sad story of neglect, of labor, perhaps of heartlessness, cruelty, suffering. But this man's hand was born so. You would not think of pitying him any more than you would pity an elephant for being an elephant instead of an antelope. A woman's hair is silky and soft, and, if not always smooth, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... and glutton, to whose wishes little deference was owing, and whose intellect he despised: but he took care not to refuse the bounties or the honors bestowed upon him by his royal master—nor can we repress a smile when we find such a man gravely rebuking that prince for utter heartlessness and selfishness. It might be, and probably was so, but assuredly Talleyrand was not the person to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... merely pride in his own superiority. It was contempt for the nature of the man, for his low contemptible plots and tricks, and cunning ways, for his entire lack of principle, and his utter selfishness and heartlessness, that made Cameron feel justified in his attitude toward Wainwright. "He is nothing but a Hun at heart," he told ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... kindly inquired for my old friend Peter Poplar. How ashamed I felt of my own ingratitude, my heartlessness, when I could not tell him! No one I had met could tell me whether he still survived, or whether he had fallen among the thousands of brave men who had died that England might be free. I promised to make further inquiries before I sailed, and, should I fail ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... forget the affair, and that she cannot. He has many things of which to think; whereas she, perhaps, has only that one. She may have made that thing so vital to her that it cannot be got under and conquered; whereas, without any fault or heartlessness on his part, occupation has conquered it for him. In this case I fear that the engagement, if made, could not but be long. I should be sorry that he should not take his degree. And I do not think it wise to send a lad up to the University ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... further communication. The more I consider the matter the more I am convinced that there must be an end to our acquaintance. Had you been uniformly faithful to me throughout these two years you might now have some ground for accusing me of heartlessness; but if you calmly consider what I bore during the period of your desertion, and how I passively put up with your courtship of another without once interfering, you will, I think, own that I have a right to consult my own feelings when you ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... hunger. Crouching, hands round knees, she turned her face to get the warmth of the sun, and see the white clouds go slowly by, and catch all the songs that the birds sang. And every now and then she drew a deep breath. It was true what Dad had said: There was no real heartlessness in nature. It was warm, beating, breathing. And if things ate each other, what did it matter? They had lived and died quickly, helping to make others live. The sacred swing and circle of it went on forever, full and harmonious under the lighted ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... out her arms to him, pleading with him, begging him for love and tenderness. And she had suffered—so cruelly she had suffered, such agonies, such infamies—ah, God, the memory of them was not to be borne. What a monster of wickedness, of heartlessness, he had been! Every angry word that he had ever spoken came back to him and cut him like a knife; every selfish act that he had done—with what torments he paid for them now! And such devotion and awe as welled up in his soul—now that it could never be ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... God as they did,—not that we have not miracles; for they actually had them, and it made no difference. We act as they did, though they had miracles, and we have not; because there is one cause of it common both to them and us—heartlessness in religious matters, an evil heart of unbelief, both they and we disobey and disbelieve, ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... world through the medium of the newspapers, that first attracted the attention of Tretherick. Several poems descriptive of the effects of California scenery upon a too sensitive soul, and of the vague yearnings for the infinite, which an enforced study of the heartlessness of California society produced in the poetic breast, impressed Mr. Tretherick, who was then driving a six-mule freight-wagon between Knight's Ferry and Stockton, to seek out the unknown poetess. Mr. Tretherick was himself dimly conscious of a certain hidden sentiment in his own nature; and ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... spreads that the host is ruined, and has committed suicide in a room above; whereupon the guests, after a moment of flustered consternation, go on supping and dancing![4] We are not at all deeply interested in the host or his fortunes. The author's purpose is to illustrate, rather crudely, the heartlessness of plutocratic Bohemia; and by means of the bankruptcy and suicide he brings about what may be called a ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... I see it all now: your constant self-denial, your untiring efforts to please, until, wearied and discouraged, your very heart's-blood seemed chilled within you, and you became the living image of that cold heartlessness which had caused ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... heritage of dreaming pleasantly, and Keok was very real, with her swift smile and mischievous face, and Nawadlook's big, soft eyes were brighter than when he had gone away. He saw Tautuk, gloomy as usual over the heartlessness of Keok. He was beating a tom-tom that gave out the peculiar sound of bells, and to this Amuk Toolik was dancing the Bear Dance, while Keok clapped her hands in exaggerated admiration. Even in his dreams Alan chuckled. He ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... have: I don't know. I have not ventured to intrude on my poor insulted friend. Papa, I hear her distress is fearful; they fear for her reason. Oh, if harm comes to her, God will assuredly punish him whose heartlessness and treachery has brought her to it. Mark my words," she continued with great emotion, "this cruel act will not go ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... the widow burst into tears. The boy, at sight of his mother's distress, sets up a wailing that echoes through the whole Court House. In the hallway, the bunch of miners from Shaft Fifteen gather about the weeping woman as she comes out. One more instance of the heartlessness of the law which is made by the men elected by the Coal Barons, is brought home ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... comfort in it. I would mutely complain of the world to her. It would give me satisfaction to denounce the whole town to her. "Ah, I have got you!" I seemed to say to the people of Antomir. "The ghost of my mother and the whole Other World see you in all your heartlessness. You can't wriggle out of it." This was my revenge. I reveled ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... risen the memory of her wrongs, of her saddened youth, her darkened womanhood—of the selfishness with which he had wedded her; of the heartlessness with which he had deserted her; of her long years of trial and contempt. And her eye might speak reproach, although the lips were closed and there was no voice. Should we not rejoice to believe that the patriarch whispered some regret for the past, and spoke ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... the plant, and a sense of fairness to Smith's memory caused her a pang of regret that Knight should have asked for that very one. It seemed exceeding a common heartlessness ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... nurse," said Jonathan. "She's taking care of a child whose mother has deserted him. He is a good big boy now, but Cyclona's taken care of that child ever since he come into the world putty near," and he recited the story of Celia's heartlessness. ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... I suppose, must put up with their wretchedness too,' said Mrs. Woodward; 'and their wives, also, and children, who have been looking forward for years to this vacancy as the period of their lives at which they are to begin to be comfortable. I hate such heartlessness. I hate the very name ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... Kate! If she gave her heart to Archibald, and then Archibald became somebody else, what shall we say became of her heart? Must it not have been irretrievably lost, and shall we be surprised if we hereafter detect in her a tendency to heartlessness? ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne |
