"Wanton" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wanton or other!" sneered Marlanx. "But a pretty one, by the gods. Baldos has always shown ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... possible, is preferable to revolution, whether in things secular or in things religious. It is always easier to tear down than it is to build up. Nor does anyone, save the anarchist, tear down through wanton love of destruction. Even he is apt to feel called upon to give some sort of a ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... Effingham, you have heard this wanton insult," continued Captain Truck, suppressing his wrath as well as he could: "in what mariner ought ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... point out any defects and excesses of which Byron was guilty at this period beyond what were common to other fashionable young men of rank and leisure, except a spirit of religious scepticism and impiety, and a wanton and inexcusable recklessness in regard to women, which made him a slave to his passions. The first alienated him, so far as he was known, from the higher respectable classes, who generally were punctilious ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... February 5 to the effect that stringent instructions had been given to the British troops to respect private property. 'All wanton destruction or injury to peaceful inhabitants is contrary to British practice and tradition, and will, if necessary, be rigorously repressed by me.' He added that it was an untrue statement that ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... might have been justified in burning Newark, under more humane conditions, because this village undoubtedly interfered with the defensive fire of Fort George. But, as he was giving up Fort George, his act was an entirely wanton deed ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... fallen leaves. The lake shone blue and smooth as a mirror, reflecting in its shining surface the white landing-stage and its boat, the swans and the statues. The fruit was already plucked in the garden and the leaves were falling. What a foolish wanton waste this stripping of the trees ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... know well, that when divers men and women will go thus after their own wills, and finding out one pilgrimage, they will ordain with them before[hand] to have with them both men and women that can well sing wanton songs; and some other pilgrims will have with them bagpipes: so that every town that they come through, what with the noise of their singing, and with the sound of their piping, and with the jangling of their Canterbury bells, and ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... you against insults. He told me, that to move you to compliance, he forged that letter, pretending I was ruined; ruined by Him too. The fraud succeeded; and what a trusting wife bestowed in pity, was lavished on a wanton. ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore
... thou'rt my soul itself; wealth, friendship, honour, All present joys, and earnest of all future, Are summ'd in thee. Come, lead me forward, now, like a tame lamb To sacrifice. Thus, in his fatal garlands Deck'd fine and pleas'd, the wanton skips and plays, Trots by th' enticing, flatt'ring, priestess' side, And, much transported with its little pride, Forgets his dear companions of the plain; Till, by her bound, he's on the altar lain, Yet then too hardly bleats, such ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway
... that the movement is a plea for justice, and I assert that the equal rights of women, not as citizens, but as human beings, have never been acknowledged. There is no audacity so insolent, no tyranny so wanton, no inhumanity so revolting, as the spirit which says to any human being, or to any class of human beings, "You shall be developed just as far as we choose, and as fast as we choose, and your mental and moral life shall be subject ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... smelt, when numbers were dropping down dead beat, so acute was the suffering, with the enemy close on our heels; certainly, if at such a season as that I was guilty of outrage, I plead guilty to being a more outrageous brute than the ass, which is too wanton, they say, to feel fatigue. Still, I wish you would tell us," said he, "what led to my striking you. Did I ask you for something and, on your refusing it to me, did I proceed to beat you? Was it a debt, for which I demanded payment? or a quarrel about some ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... Darwin," I said. "But you read him misunderstandingly when you conclude that the struggle for existence sanctions your wanton destruction of life." ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... alternately choking him or whirling round him, while "Swiffy" yelled for him to kneel upon the tent bottom to keep it fast, and expected him to fetch a servant at the same time. The doctor, enfolded by the wanton canvas in another state compartment of the blown-about tent, was cut off from communication with the other two, and fought ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... say,—You shall obey my laws, for they are for your good. You shall use my gifts, for they are for your good. And if you do not, I will punish you. You shall respect my authority. And if you do not—if you go too far, if you become wanton and cruel, and destroy your fellow-subjects unjustly off the face of the earth; then I will destroy you off the face of he earth, and burn up your city. I will destroy any government or system of society which you set up in opposition to my good and just laws. And if you ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... magnificent herds of game which wandered over South Africa sixty years ago tempted him to become a keen sportsman, but he has never shown much 'sporting instinct,' and the Boer is responsible for the wanton destruction of the African fauna. The unsophisticated Boer is a curious blend of hospitality and avarice; he would welcome the passing stranger, and entertain him to the best of his ability, but he seized any opportunity ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... repulse (in women Unsufferable) invited me to practise A means to be reveng'd: and from this grew His Accusation, and the abuse Of your still equall justice: My rage ever Thanks heaven, though wanton, I found not my self So far engag'd to Hell, to prosecute To the death what I had plotted, for that love That made me first desire him, then accuse him, Commands me with the hazard of my self First to entreat his ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (1 of 10) - The Custom of the Country • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... heere, Praise God in his holinesse: now God is holy formaliter & effectiue, holy in himselfe, and making other holy; the Lord is glorious in holinesse Exod. 15. 11. Wheras other Gods are famous for their vnholinesse, Venus was a wanton, Mercurius a theefe, Iupiter a monsterous adulterer, an ingenious man (as[bd] Basile writes) would blush to report that of beastes, which the Gentiles haue recorded of their Gods. If such imputations ...
— An Exposition of the Last Psalme • John Boys
... life that was, before, choosing the better part, we left the world, come back to haunt us, with a wanton sweetness. Such memories cannot change the state, fixed forever by our vows; but they may awaken in us vain regrets or worldly ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... seemed that I was enjoying my first revelation of some of the elements of the character of the gypsy as it had existed in the imagination of Prosper Mrime when he wrote his novel. To me she presented a woman thoroughly wanton and diabolically equipped with the wicked witcheries which explained, if they did not palliate, the conduct of Don Jos. Here we had a woman without conscience, but also without the capacity for even a wicked affection; a woman ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the buck was intended to withdraw attention from her, and thus save her from pursuit. I had no bullets with me, and my gun was only loaded with duck-shot. To discharge that at him, would have been a wanton act of cruelty, as at most it could only inflict upon him painful wounds. In this emergency, Jessie pointed to a stout half-inch rope that was coiled up in the bottom of the canoe, and I immediately ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... is it that I find myself? Surrounded by a thousand furies. Oh, gracious and immaculate providence, why hast thou opened so many doors to tremendous mischief? Innumerable accidents of nature may tear her from me for ever. All the wanton brutalities that history records, and that the minds of unworthy men can harbour, start up ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... possible mark of our disapprobation, I do not (entre nous) see, in the mere act of scalping, half the horrors usually attached to the practice. The motive must be considered. It is not the mere desire to inflict wanton torture, that influences the warrior, but an anxiety to possess himself of that which gives indisputable evidence of his courage and success in war. The prejudice of Europeans is strong against the ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... death. There are women's cells too; for this great and valiant government recognized women as belligerents, and locked them up close to a sentry's cartridge, so that, in the bitterness of solitude, they were unsexed, and railed, and blasphemed, like wanton things. On the pavements before the jail, were hidden numberless guards, who shot at every rag fluttering from the cages, and all this little circle of death and terror was enacted close to the bright river, and airy pediment of that high capitol, where bold men hoped by war to wring from a ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... offense which, of all offenses, is punished most severely; he had been overpraised; he had excited too warm an interest; and the public, with its usual justice, chastised him for its own folly. The attachments of the multitude bear no small resemblance to those of the wanton enchantress in the Arabian Tales, who, when the forty days of her fondness were over, was not content with dismissing her lovers, but condemned them to expiate, in loathsome shapes, and under cruel penances, the crime of having once pleased her ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... freight. No passenger-train ever moved thus with the veritable chu-chu of the children, the heavy panting of two engines. Then after that she started again, for she heard a train, but it was as if she had been let fall by some wanton hand from a cruel height, for that train was clearly a fast express which did not stop at Banbridge. Then she heard a faint rumble of another freight on the Lehigh Valley road. Then at last came the train for which she had been looking, ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... countries voted against the admission of People's China to the United Nations during the Dulles Era. The stalemated outcome of the Korean War (1950-3) called Washington anti-socialist policies into serious question. The stupidities, mendacities and wanton cruelties of the United States' undeclared Vietnam War, even before the advent of Johnson and Nixon, had so weakened Washington leadership that no major power would associate itself with the adventure. The ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... high temper was usually kept under firm control, and that he showed far less severity than most men would have done under similar provocation. Bartholomew was made of sterner stuff, but his whole career presents no instance of wanton cruelty; toward both white men and Indians his conduct was distinguished by clemency and moderation. Under the government of these brothers a few scoundrels were hanged in Hispaniola. Many more ought ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... you break up your life in this wanton way? Who, in God's name, is injured if you keep your living? It is the business of the thinker and the scholar to clear his mind of cobwebs. Granted. You have done it. But it is also the business of the practical man to live! If I had your altruist emotional ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... automatically took a small carved glass of orange-juice from a bed of ice, and her chilled fingers recalled a dim image of her mother. Arnaud was speaking, "I'm afraid this will cut through Pleydon's security, it was such a wanton destruction of his unique power. You see, he worked lovingly over the cast with little files and countless finite improvements. The mold, I think, was broken. What a piece of luck the thing's at ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... they feel the injustice done them; and, if such a man, when the grey hairs, and tottering knees, and piping voice come, look round him in vain for a prop, let him, at last, be just, and acknowledge that he has now the due reward of his own wanton cruelty to one whom he had solemnly sworn to love and to cherish to the last hour of ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... lodging of servants, forage of horses, and the like-which had accidentally stopped at Barneveld's door and was forthwith sent on to John Spronssen, superintendent of such affairs. Passing over this wanton bit of calumny with disgust, he solemnly asserted that he had never at any period of his life received one penny nor the value of one penny from the King of Spain, the Archdukes, Spinola, or any other person connected with the enemy, saving only the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... said Richard. "Strange, indeed! All this wasteful, wanton chess-playing IS very strange. To see that composed court yesterday jogging on so serenely and to think of the wretchedness of the pieces on the board gave me the headache and the heartache both together. ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... be holy, how readily, like Ahab in the case of Micaiah, he hates, he sends not for him! The complaisant chaplain, who almost never disturbed the family with the worship of God; who along with the children or others took off his cheerful glass; sung his wanton song; attended the licentious ball, or play-house; connived at, or swore a profane oath; took a hand at cards; or ridiculed the mysteries, the experiences, the circumspect professor of the Christian faith, is ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... tall and refined old clergyman to Miss Norah Hood, he found himself shaking hands with a grave young person of unassertive beauty. Hers was the loveliness of the violet, which is apt to pall in this modern day—to aggravate, and to suggest wanton waste. For feminine loveliness is on the wane— marred, like many other good things, by over-education. Norah Hood was a typical country parson's daughter, who knew the right and did it, ignored the wrong and ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... sofa, where my hat, My wanton Zephyr, rested on its rim; Its build, unlike my friend's, was rather slim, And when he rose, I ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray
... Devotion have not escaped the lash of wanton criticism. They have excited the pious horror of some modern Pharisees because they contain a table of sins for the use of those preparing for confession. The same flower that furnishes honey to the bee supplies poison to the wasp; and, in like manner, the same book that gives only the ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... eat. To be sure, they gave themselves a wide range; they were willing to eat almost anything that they could shoot, even blackbirds, which were so abundant and so easy to shoot. But there were some things which they would have thought it not only wanton but wicked to kill, like turtle-doves, which they somehow believed were sacred, nor robins either, because robins were hallowed by poetry, and they kept about the house, and were almost tame, so that it seemed a shame to ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... among whom the custom of sacrificing their own subjects prevailed. But, of all others, that which was afforded by Mr. Norris on this ground was the most frightful. The King of Dahomey, he said, sported with the lives of his people in the most wanton manner. He had seen at the gates of his palace two piles of heads, like those of shot in an arsenal. Within the palace, the heads of persons, newly put to death, were strewed at the distance of a few yards in the passage, which led to his apartment. This custom of human sacrifice by ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... wanton band, Deep in our hearts we guard from scathe Of last year's log a smouldering brand, To light at Yule the ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... imagine the beauty of the great hall at Ferrara when hung with this brilliant series, which was completed in 1523 by the "Bacchus and Ariadne" of the National Gallery. The whole company of bacchanals is given up to wanton merrymaking. Above them broods the deep blue sky and great white clouds of a summer day. The deep greens of the foliage throw the creamy-white and burning colour of the draperies and the fair forms of the nymphs into glowing ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... call for victuals between meals, use him to nothing but dry bread. If he be hungry more than wanton, bread will go down; and if he be not hungry, it is not fit that he should eat. By this you will obtain two good effects. First, that by custom he will come to be in love with bread; for, as I said, our palates and stomachs, too, are ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... catastrophe was instant and irrevocable. Architecture became in France a mere web of waving lines,—in England a mere grating of perpendicular ones. Redundance was substituted for invention, and geometry for passion; tho Gothic art became a mere expression of wanton expenditure, and vulgar mathematics; and was swept away, as it then deserved to be swept away, by the severer pride, and purer learning, of the schools founded ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... play with ocean in a summer mood. Hanging above the high, wide open door, It brings to us in quiet, firelit room, The freedom of the earth's vast solitudes, Where heaping, sunny waves tumble and roll, And seabirds scream in wanton happiness. ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... The rumour spread in spite of sturdy denials at odd corners, counting the red-hot proposal of Mr. Sullivan Smith to eat his head and boots for breakfast if it was proved correct. It filled a yawn of the Clubs for the afternoon. Soon this wanton rumour was met and stifled by another of more morbific density, heavily charged as that which led the sad Eliza ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... thrall at last thou art! Ere bud to rounded blossom change; Thou wilt for wanton lips and heart ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... On the defenceless: on the hapless man Who holds his breath but by another's will: Whose Life is only one long cruel Death! ... Hardly he fares, and hopelessly he toils; And when his driver's anger, or caprice, Or wanton cruelty, inflicts a blow, Not daring to look angry at the whip, Oh! see him meekly clasp his hands and bow To every stroke: no lurid deathful scene In Battle's rage, so racks the feeling heart; Not all the thunders of infuriate War, Disploding mines, and crafting, bursting bombs, Are ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... until I shivered and shook in my stocking soles. Often I longed to do something hysterically desperate, to rouse Raffles and bring the street about our ears; once I did bring him about mine by striking a single note on the piano, with the soft pedal down. His neglect of me seemed wanton at the time. I have long realized that he was only wise to maintain silence at the expense of perilous amenities, and as fully justified in those secret and solitary sorties which made bad blood in my veins. ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... the winter wild, While the Heaven-born child, All meanly wrapt, in the rude manger lies; Nature, in awe to him, Had doff'd her gaudy trim, With her great Master so to sympathize: It was no season then for her To wanton with ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... to the condition of a master, generally becomes a tyrant. These pirates, unexpectedly elevated to the dignity of petty princes, used their power with the most wanton barbarity. The punishment of the very least offence was to be tied to a tree, and instantly shot through the head. The negroes, at length, exasperated by continued oppression, formed the determination ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... every kind of such buffoonery in the church when men are gathered to hear and learn the Word of God. But the practice is common where many come together. Even where at first things of a serious nature are discussed, men soon pass to frivolous, wanton, foolish talk, resulting in a waste of time and the neglect of better things. For instance, on the festival of Easter, foolish, ridiculous stories have been introduced into the sermon to arouse the drowsy. And at the Christmas services, the absurd pantomime of rocking a babe, and silly declamations ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... debts, could not emerge without some common aid, which to restrain, by putting some into a better condition than others, would rather more inflame the discord than extinguish it; Appius Claudius (still upon the old haunt) would have it that the people were rather wanton than fierce; it was not oppression that necessitated, but their power that invited them to these freaks; the empire of the Consuls since the appeal to the people (whereby a plebeian might ask his ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... consciousness and self-respect of Keats would be to underrate the sensitiveness of his nature. He felt the insult, but more the injustice of the treatment he had received; he told me so, as we lay awake one night, when I slept in his brother's bed. They had injured him in the most wanton manner; but if they, or my Lord Byron, ever for one moment supposed that he was crushed or even cowed in spirit by the treatment he had received, never were they more deluded. "Snuffed out by an article," indeed! He had infinitely more magnanimity, in its fullest sense, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... called to account, often in a friendly way, and often in raillery, for a certain dignity which I had assumed. For, although good and chosen friends were certainly not wanting to me, we were always a minority against those who found pleasure in assailing us with wanton rudeness, and who indeed often awoke us in no gentle fashion from that legendary and self-complacent dreaming in which we—I by inventing, and my companions by sympathizing- -were too readily absorbed. Thus we learned once more, that, instead of sinking into effeminacy ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... I, too, feel in myself. I also am a child, just as old as that other was; I have never yet been beaten. Once my parents were compelled to rebuke me for wanton petulance; and from head to foot I was pervaded through and through by one raving idea: "If they beat me I should take my own life." So I am also infected with the hereditary disease—the awful spirit is holding out his hand over me; captured, ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... heard the whole, listened, with unmeasured indignation, to this wanton abuse on the part of Captain Haley. His eyes flashed, and his youthful ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... "nest" of three as into one box; but how, in the name of nature—or art—does the nautical gentleman get out of the double sack in which he is tied? I cannot bring myself to print what Dr. Sexton's theory of the box is, because it appears to be such a wanton cruelty to "expose" things when people go to the Egyptian Hall on purpose to be mystified. I remember how the fact of having seen Dr. Sexton do the trick of reading the names in the hat spoilt my enjoyment of Dr. Lynn's experiment. He really appeared quite bungling when I knew ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... said didn't matter—there was the man! What a force he might have been—was! What a Samson, when he pulled the whole Irish Party down—got them all on top of him to pull with him. What d'you think he was doing then? Trying to give his Irish nation a soul! It looked like pride, pique, mere wanton destruction; but it was a great idea. And if ever they rise to it—if ever the whole Irish nation puts its back to the wall as Parnell wanted it to do then—shakes off dependence, alliance, conciliation, compromise, it may beat us yet! They were afraid of defeat. That's why we won. ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... these things are no more written to a dull disposition, than rules of husbandry to a soil. No precepts will profit a fool, no more than beauty will the blind, or music the deaf. As we should take care that our style in writing be neither dry nor empty, we should look again it be not winding, or wanton with far-fetched descriptions; either is a vice. But that is worse which proceeds out of want, than that which riots out of plenty. The remedy of fruitfulness is easy, but no labour will help the contrary; I will like and praise some things in a young writer which yet, if he continue in, I ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... obliged to obey orders under penalty of death, defending (as they believe) their homes from wanton attack, are surely, in the mass, but little to blame. The blame rests elsewhere. A body of Russian prisoners was brought into a village in East Prussia. The sufferings of the inhabitants during the invasion had made them bitter, and from the crowd of onlookers there was a scornful outcry. ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... midday through the streets of London, from one end of the city to the other, almost entirely undressed. The intention of this severe exposure was to designate her to those who should assemble to witness the punishment as a wanton, and thus to put her to shame, and draw upon her the scorn and derision of the populace. They found some old and obsolete law which authorized such a punishment. The sentence was carried into effect on a Sunday. The ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... ill-humour. I did not allow that circumstance to grieve me: I only felt most keenly what I have often before observed. Persons who can claim a certain rank keep themselves coldly aloof from the common people, as though they feared to lose their importance by the contact; whilst wanton idlers, and such as are prone to bad joking, affect to descend to their level, only to make the poor people feel their ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... can reach there is nothing to be seen but decayed fangs, protruding from a swamp of filth, covered with a green slime where water has accumulated. This is not the unavoidable ruin of shell-fire. No battle was fought here. The demolition was the wanton spite of an enemy who, because he could not hold the place, was determined to leave nothing serviceable behind. With such masterly thoroughness has he done his work that the spot can never be re-peopled. The surrounding fields are too poisoned and churned up ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... inflicted by two instruments—a wounding and a cutting one. As yet, no other weapon but the stake has been discovered, and a strict search for the missing hand has also proved fruitless. No motive for this wanton outrage suggests itself, except that the unhappy gentleman was in the habit of wearing on his right hand a sapphire ring of great value." (An heirloom; it is on my finger as I write, dear Nell. Oh! my poor ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Croisette's sleeve, and he tore the fuse from his weapon, and flung the gun—too heavy to be of use to us longer—to the ground. It was done in a moment. While the mob swept over the barricade, and smashed the rich furniture of it in wanton malice, we filed aside, and nimbly slipped under it one by one. Then we hurried in single file to the end of the room, no one taking much notice of us. All were pressing on, intent on their prey. We gained the ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... crush the Brethren, but to wipe their memory from off the face of the earth. He regarded the Brethren as a noisome pest. Not a stone did he and his servants leave unturned to destroy them. They began with the churches. Instead of razing them to the ground, which would, of course, have been wanton waste, they turned them into Roman Catholic Chapels by the customary methods of purification and rededication. They rubbed out the inscriptions on the walls, and put new ones in their places, lashed the pulpits with whips, beat ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... and his father, as a Henry Clay Whig, had both been opposed to the annexation of Texas (which the boy heard talked of without knowing in the least what annexation meant), and they were both of the mind that the war growing out of it was wanton and wicked. His father wrote against it in every number of his paper, and made himself hated among its friends, who were the large majority in the Boy's Town. My boy could not help feeling that his father was little ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... Montreal. The utmost compassion and consideration should be felt for the families of the sufferers plunged into affliction by the reckless conduct of their relatives; every house injured or destroyed at St. Benoit was a wanton destruction, perpetrated in defiance of guards placed to protect property." Thus writes Lord Seaton. Colonel Hanson, after quoting the above, proceeds to state that the evidence before the commissioners ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... And call the vales, and bid them hither cast Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues. Ye vallies low, where the mild whispers use Of shades and wanton winds, and gushing brooks, On whose fresh lap the swart-star sparely looks; Throw hither all your quaint enamelled eyes, That on the green turf suck the honied showers. And purple all the ground with vernal flowers. Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies. The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... mind the story was ended, and he had only to retire with the dignity still possible to a dishonoured man. To touch the note of pathos would be unworthy; to exert what influence might be left to him, a wanton cruelty. But he had heard such unexpected things, that it was not easy for him to remember how complete had seemed the severance between him and Sidwell. The charm of her presence was reasserting itself, and when avowal of continued ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... all meaning, could man find a practicable route of philosophic progress. But our struggles will not have been in vain if they have left us with a willingness to try the pragmatist alternative, and convinced us that it is not a wanton innovation, but the only path of salvation ...
— Pragmatism • D.L. Murray
... representations to Fort William; but the Governor had made no conditions as to the mode in which the war was to be carried on. He had troubled himself about nothing, but his forty lacs; and, though he might disapprove of Sujah Dowlah's wanton barbarity, he did not think himself entitled to interfere, except by offering advice. This delicacy excites the admiration of the biographer. "Mr. Hastings," he says, "could not himself dictate to the Nabob, nor permit the commander of the Company's troops to dictate how the war was ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... wanton killing of a gull in Utah is an offense in law; but stronger than legal proscription, more powerful than fear of judicial penalties, is the popular sentiment in favor of these white-winged deliverers. Every year come these graceful creatures to spend the springtime in the fields and ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... the most wanton and arrogant onslaught on the honest convictions of other people, I could not have been more hardly dealt with. The pentecostal charism, I believe, exhausted itself amongst the earliest disciples. Yet any one who has had to attend, as I have done, to copious objurgations, strewn ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... the introduction to his Tibullus: "Verbal translations are always inelegant, because always destitute of beauty of idiom and language; for by their fidelity to an author's words, they become treacherous to his reputation; on the other hand, a too wanton departure from the letter often varies the sense and alters the manner. The translator chose the middle way, and meant neither to tread on the heels of Tibullus nor yet to lose sight of him."[430] The preface to Fawkes' Theocritus harks back to Dryden: "A too faithful translation, ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... thy distresses Mock those starts of wanton glee; And thy inmost soul confesses Chaste ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... being forbidden him in the religious times to act tragedies or comedies, because they contained some matter of scandal to those good people, who could more easily dispossess their lawful sovereign, than endure a wanton jest, he was forced to turn his thoughts another way, and to introduce the examples of moral virtue written in verse, and performed in recitative music. The original of this music, and of the scenes which adorned his works, he had from the Italian opera's; but ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... that thy heart is changed— That on thy lip there is another name; I'll not believe it—though for life estranged— I know thy love's lone worship is the same. The bee that wanders on the summer breath, May wanton safely among leaves and flowers, But by the honied jar it clings till death— There is no change for hearts that ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... such is by no means their object; but, as the weaker Power in North America, Great Britain considers itself entitled to claim the use of the lakes as a military barrier."[394] The declaration of war by the United States was regarded by most Englishmen as a wanton endeavor to overthrow their immemorial right to the services of their seamen, wherever found; and consequently the invasion of Canada had been an iniquitous attempt to effect annexation under cover of an indefensible pretext. To guard against the renewal of such, the ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... permitted indecorous familiarity from a man who made you no promise, who gave you no hope of becoming his wife, who professed nothing beyond those fervent, though slender, affections which attach the rake to the wanton; the first time you interpreted his kind looks and ardent prayers into tenderness and constancy; the first time you descended from the character of purity, you rushed imperceptibly on the blackest crimes. The more sincerely you loved, the more you plunged in danger: from one ungoverned ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... shot, and I found their stomachs full of the seeds of Grewia, which abounded in the open patches of forest ground. In crossing a plain we observed, under the shade of a patch of narrow-leaved tea trees, four bowers of the bowerbird, close together, as if one habitation was not sufficient for the wanton bird to sport in; and on the dry swamps I mentioned above, small companies of native companions were walking around us at some distance, but rose with their sonorous cu-r-r-r-ring cry, whenever ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... house, determined to deprive his oppressors of their expected perquisite; and so the dead Jew remained exposed his full time. Few excepting those of the true faith ventured to approach the spot, fearful that the Mohamedan authorities would, in their wanton propensities to heap insults upon the Giaours, oblige some one of them to carry the carcass to the place of burial; and thus the horrid and disgusting object was left abandoned to itself, and this had given an opportunity ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... gaze upon him. He was a tall, shambling fellow with a white cloth swathed about the top of his head; and Varney, in the act of passing, suddenly recognized him as the dog man, whom Peter had knocked out the night before. His gaze was a wanton challenge for the young man to stop, and Varney cheerfully ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... as women do, Wherewith they bring their babes to rest, And lullaby can I sing too As womanly as can the best. With lullaby they still the child; And if I be not much beguil'd, Full many wanton babes have I, Which must ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... unfortunate affair then," said he. "Yes, I have."—"It was greatly his own fault, sir—very little mine. I was young, hot-headed, foolish, very foolish; but never meditated the affair you allude to. The woman was a wanton—I never suspected that the kindnesses she showed me were to lead to guilt. His jealousy stimulated her, and his injustice and malice fired me to revenge, and supplied me with specious arguments of justification. I am sorry it so happened on ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... and be sure To die a virgin chaste, a maiden pure. It was my chance once, in my wanton days, To court a wench; hark, and I'll tell thee how: I came unto my love, and she look'd coy, I spake unto my love, she turn'd aside, I touch'd my love, and 'gan with her to toy, But she sat mute, for anger ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... other hand, the night before, when Woods's division was in camp in the open fields at Little Congaree, it was shelled all night by a rebel battery from the other aide of the river. This provoked me much at the time, for it was wanton mischief, as Generals Beauregard and Hampton must have been convinced that they could not prevent our entrance into Columbia. I have always contended that I would have been justified in retaliating for this ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... the commons on the one hand, and praises of the senators on the other, was become quite infuriated, said, "That these riots proceeded not from distress, but from licentiousness. That the people were rather wanton than violent. That this terrible mischief took its rise from the right of appeal; since threats, not authority, was all that belonged to the consuls, while permission was given to appeal to those who were accomplices in the crime. Come," added he, "let us create a dictator ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... I conjure you by all the sacred ties By which you're bound unto your families, Whatever faults, through weakness, you display, In this be faithful to your dying day! Why will you leave the wife you swore to love, Who should to you be as a precious dove, To wanton with a harlot void of shame, And bring disgrace upon a father's name? Why will you pierce yourselves with sorrow through, And ruin bring upon your children, too? Oh! let a broken-hearted wife's deep sighs, And children's woes, ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... of God, that his mercy towards repentant women who washed his feet with their tears might not be taken as softness towards sin, came back from heaven to say in the Book of Revelation, that he will "cast into great tribulation" and "kill with death" wanton women and the men who visit them. Of these iniquities the compassionate Redeemer says, "Which things I also hate." Rulers cannot claim any consent or condonement of their regulation of vice from the Head of all human government, ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... in his welfare. When he says, in addition, that there was no shred, no spice of malice in these assaults, he takes away the sole ground on which a plea of palliation can be brought. If not due to that they had not even the poor excuse of weak human nature. They were the wanton acts of a man who attacks another, not from (p. 197) indignation or wrath, but from the mere desire of inflicting ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... without a moment's warning, sometimes before they had even become aware that they were in the presence of an armed vessel of the enemy, and the lives of non-combatants, passengers and crew, have been sacrificed wholesale, in a manner which the Government of the United States cannot but regard as wanton and without the slightest color of justification. No limit of any kind has in fact been set to the indiscriminate pursuit and destruction of merchantmen of all kinds and nationalities within the waters, constantly extending in area, where these operations ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... upon the unhappy Wilson by forcing upon his wrists a pair of handcuffs that were much too small for the purpose. When Wilson remonstrated, and urged that the pain distracted his thoughts from those spiritual reflections which were now so peremptory, Porteous is said to have replied with wanton ruffianism that such reflections would matter very {61} little, since Wilson would so soon be dead. The prisoner is reported to have answered with a kind of prophetic dignity that his tormentor did not know how soon he might in his turn have ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... frolick light and wanton She hath her carriage borne: And given thee for a kingly crown To ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... but he suffered at seeing how perfectly Mamise footed it with a young officer who also knew how to compel her to his whim. Davidge wondered if Mamise could be responding to this fellow as keenly as she responded to himself. The thought was intolerable. She could not be so wanton. It would amount to a hideous infidelity. Moorish jealousy smoldered in his heart, and he cursed public dancing as an infamous, an unbelievable promiscuity. Yet when he had Polly Widdicombe for the next dance, her husband had no cause for jealousy. ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... extraordinarily jolly. They had two or three happy walks about the Chexington woods; that year the golden weather of October had flowed over into November, and except for a carpet of green and gold under the horse-chestnuts most of the leaves were still on the trees. Gleams of her old wanton humour shone on him. And then would come something else, something like a shadow across the world, something he had quite forgotten since his idea of heroic love had flooded him, something that reminded him of those long explanations with Mr. Rathbone-Sanders that had never ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... idolatry. I would otherwise have its ornaments subsist, unless as they are, or may be, a snare to the souls of men; and especially do I condemn those ravages which have been made by the heady fury of the people, stung into zeal against will-worship by bloody persecution. Against such wanton ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... shamefast sholdest [the] be in thy body yf thou woldest beholde thyself / [that] so in thyn arraye auacest thyself. And this blessyd Ierom sayth. I take them for no relygyous wymen [that] ben cladde in costlyous araye or in a wanton & pynched habytes but he calleth them in latyn. Pessimas meretrices et storta. Wherfore desyre ye to go in vyle & vnshapely vesture. that wanton & dissolute persones may rather be prouoked to scorne & laughe at you than to thynke euyl or desyre you / for they say not trouthe ...
— A Ryght Profytable Treatyse Compendiously Drawen Out Of Many and Dyvers Wrytynges Of Holy Men • Thomas Betson
... could there be found on record a murderer, whose cruel act might compare with his? What fiend more wanton in his mischief, what damned soul more worthy of perdition! But he was not reserved for this agony of self-reproach. He sent for medical assistance; the hours passed, spun by suspense into ages; the darkness of the long autumnal night yielded to day, before ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... captain! Farewell too my heart's content! Count not Spanish ladies wanton, Though to thee my love was bent: Joy and true prosperity goe still with thee! "The like fall ever to thy share, ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... children or non-combatant men to kill for the reason that all such persons had been sent away some time before. The town was burned, in part, but by the Insurgents themselves. They fired the church and a great orphan asylum, and did much other wanton damage. ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... it must have been beautiful before the luxuriant forest was felled for fuel, and the land was burnt for plantations which were never planted. A few noble trees linger beside and behind the lighthouse, filling one with regret for the wanton destruction of their kind. Lighthouse Hillock, which commands the approach to the port, and which would sweep the waters as far as the Sa Leone River, will be provided with powerful batteries before the next maritime war. ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... when, as I remember, we were at Balbec, I saw him one day make an almost tasteless preparation out of pure black nicotine, which in mere wanton lust he afterwards gave to some of the dwellers by the Caspian to drink. But the fiend would surely never dream of giving to me that browse of hell—to me an aged man, and a thinker, ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... time the manner of living was entirely altered between the brother whelps. Jowler was sent into a plentiful kitchen, where he quickly became the favourite of the servants, who diverted themselves with his little tricks and wanton gambols, and rewarded him with great quantities of pot-liquor and broken victuals; by which means, as he was stuffing from morning to night, he increased considerably in size, and grew sleek and comely; he was, indeed, rather unwieldy, and so cowardly that he would ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... with hatchets half through their stems at the distance of about two feet from the ground, and then pulled or pushed down. [PLATE CXI., Fig. 2.] Other trees were either treated similarly, or denuded of their branches. Occasionally the destruction was of a less wanton and vengeful character. Timber-trees were cut down for transport to Assyria, where they were used in the construction of the royal-palaces; and fruit-trees were occasionally taken up by the roots, removed carefully, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... caused a very strong sensation, both in the colony and at home. Opinions widely differ respecting its origin and its necessity. That it was illegal, it may be presumed, no one will deny: that it was wanton, is not so indisputable. The unfortunate termination of Bligh's first expedition to Tahiti, the imputations of harshness and cruelty for ever fastened to his name, and the disreputable agents he sometimes employed in his service, made the position of the officers extremely anxious, if not insecure. ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... plans for the escape of Marie Antoinette, they didn't know what the letter-case had contained, and yet they both vaguely felt that the beautiful girl, who stood up so calmly before the loathsome Terrorist, was not a wanton, as she tried to make out, but only misguided, mad perhaps—perhaps ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... undergraduates, and usually had had the worst of it. At present, in the service of the blindfold goddess, these equitable men were no doubt taking out their vengeance for past favors. But under all this wanton display of violence, the gownsmen practised the severest forbearance. The pressure from behind made it impossible to forbear pressing ahead; crushed, you were obliged to crush; but, beyond that, there was no movement or gesture on our part to give any ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... subjected, for we deprive them for ever of their caudal appendage, and the ridiculous stump sticking up where the tail ought to be, is as ungraceful as it is indecent, especially in the case of mares. Our friend, the late Dr. George Fleming, says in The Wanton Mutilation of Animals, "nothing can be more painful and disgusting to the real horseman and admirer of this most symmetrically formed and graceful animal than the existence of this most detestable and torturing fashion; and those who perform the operation or sanction it are ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... child that up to now she had clutched strenuously to her breast, growling over it as a dog growls over a bone. The child gave a sharp cry, and lay there moaning. There was a cold-bloodedness in the act which wrung a groan from Arthur. When she advanced to him with outstretched arms and a wanton smile he fell back and hid his face in ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... was soon solicited to violate the treaty, and to join his arms with the Venetians, the perpetual enemies of Genoa and her colonies. While he compared the reasons of peace and war, his moderation was provoked by a wanton insult of the inhabitants of Pera, who discharged from their rampart a large stone that fell in the midst of Constantinople. On his just complaint, they coldly blamed the imprudence of their engineer; but the next day the insult was repeated; and they exulted ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... Swallow, that thy brood is flown: Say to her, I do but wanton in the South, But in the North long since my nest ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... have now lost—I suppose irrevocably—the whipping boy and the court jester. What a pity that they cannot be revived! The whipping boy, a device to put princes on their honor to be neither negligent nor wanton in the fulfilment of their duties; and the jester to break us of our too self-conscious airs and exhibit to us our follies. See what we have done instead! When our growing sense of priggish decorum and our dishonest ceremoniousness of speech made the jester ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... British man-of-war in Norfolk Harbor. In revenge, the town of Norfolk, the largest and the most important in the Old Dominion, was, on New Year's Day, 1776, shelled and destroyed. This bombardment, and scores of other less wanton acts of the men-of-war, alarmed every coastwise town ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... but wanton mischief," answered the warrior. "It was a causeless murder, and we claim the ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... the desire of having more children wished to speak again unto his wedded wife (for invoking some other god). But Kunti addressed him, saying, 'The wise do not sanction a fourth delivery even in a season of distress. The woman having intercourse with four different men is called a Swairini (wanton), while she having intercourse with five becometh a harlot. Therefore, O learned one, as thou art well-acquainted with the scripture on this subject, why dost thou, beguiled by desire of offspring, tell me so in seeming forgetfulness ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... the barbarians, who were advancing slowly, because they feared an attack in the unfavourable ground which they were traversing, arrived within fifteen miles from the station of Nice, which was the aim of their march, the emperor, with wanton impetuosity, resolved on attacking them instantly, because those who had been sent forward to reconnoitre (what led to such a mistake is unknown) affirmed that their entire body did not exceed ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... it were woven, here and there, The golden threads of a maiden's hair, As the wanton wind with tosses and twirls Blew in and out of her floating curls, While her busy fingers swiftly drew The ivory ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... was o' the snaw-drap hue, Her lips like roses wet wi' dew; But O! her e'e, o' azure blue, Was past expression bonnie, O! Like threads o' gowd her flowin' hair, That lightly wanton'd wi' the air; But vain were a' my rhymin' ware To tell the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Act also inflicted penalties on persons removing or injuring any post, stone, or other mark made by the surveyors; but we believe there has been no occasion to enforce these clauses, the good sense and good feeling of the people being ample securities against such wanton crime. Such survey was not to affect the rights of owners; yet from it lay an appeal to ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... that their unwonted activity was due to my successful stratagem, the fact remains that the summary discharge of several attendants accused and proved guilty of brutality immediately followed and for a while put a stop to wanton assaults against which for a period of four months I had protested in vain. Patients who still lived in the violent ward told me that comparative peace reigned ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... an outlaw, hey?" shrieked Mr. Luce. The vast injury that had been done him, this ruthless assault on his house, his humiliation in public, and now these wanton taunts, whipped his weak nature into frenzy. Cowards at bay are the savagest foes. ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... ultimately measures our health and natural normality and the value of our morality. Nature shapes her aims according to her means. Would that every man might realize this simple lesson and maxim—there would be less call for a rank and wanton hankering for relapses into archaic but evidently not wholly outgrown tendencies to the assumption of "omnipotence of thought," revived again from time to time as "New Thought." Psychiatry restores to science and to the practical mind ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... from the base to the top of the head being about 70 feet and the length of the body about 150 feet. The paws and breast were originally covered with a limestone facing. The present dilapidated condition of the monument is due partly to the tooth of time, but still more to wanton mutilation at the hands of fanatical Mohammedans. The body is now almost shapeless. The nose, the beard, and the lower part of the head dress are gone. The face is seamed with scars. Yet the strange monster still preserves a mysterious dignity, as though ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... excited fancy; it has long since passed away with the myths of the past, and exists only in the nursery rhymes of our literature. Yet in its place a malignant spirit of evil revels in the ruin of the human race; it delights in the crowd; it loves the gaslight, the lascivious song and wanton dance; it presides over our convivial banquets with brow crowned with ivy and faded roses; whilst all the unholy delights of earth sacrifice to it, in return it scatters amongst its adorers all the ills ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... Powers of the grave, on you we cry! And unto Zeus the Saviour, guard Of mortals' holy purity! Receive ye us—keep watch and ward Above the suppliant maiden band! Chaste be the heart of this your land Towards the weak! but, ere the throng, The wanton swarm, from Egypt sprung, Leap forth upon the silted shore, Thrust back their swift-rowed bark again, Repel them, urge them to the main! And there, 'mid storm and lightning's shine, And scudding drift and thunder's roar, Deep death be theirs, in stormy brine! Before they foully grasp and ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... hazard," was the expression of a natural and reasonable frame of mind with which we are all familiar, and which, though admittedly unlovely, is in the nature of a safeguard. If we had no spiritual asbestos to protect our souls, we should be consumed to no purpose by every wanton flame. If our sincere and restful indifference to things which concern us not were shaken by every blast, we should have no available force for things which concern us deeply. If eloquence did not sometimes make ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... of the loss of property involved, immense and serious as that is, but only of the wanton and wholesale destruction of the lives of non-combatants, men, women and children engaged in pursuits which have always, even in the darkest periods of modern history, been ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson
... speak of she was still in the bloom of her beauty. The fame of that beauty was on every tongue, and had piqued the vanity of the wanton tyrant. For this reason I became the ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... at length so far carried away by the delirious whirl into which he had been caught as to engage in a piece of wanton folly that threw him back upon his career by some years, just as he was about to plant his foot securely upon the path leading to the summits of his profession. Beguiled by his striking talent for caricature, he ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... the couch in the library; he had thought of it too much since leaving Heliodora yesterday afternoon. It began to nettle him that his grief should be for her merely an amusement. Never having seen the Gothic maiden, whose beauty outshone hers as sunrise outdoes the lighting of a candle, this wanton Greek was capable of despising him in good earnest, and Basil had never been of those who sit easy under scorn. He felt something chafe and grow hot within him, and recalled the days when he, and not Heliodora, ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... assemblies. Instantly the distinction of "external" and "internal" taxation was abandoned; and from end to end of the Atlantic seaboard a cry went up that the duties were an insidious attack on the liberties of the Americans, an outrageous taking of their property without their consent, and a wanton interference with their {42} governments. Not merely agitators such as the shrewd Samuel Adams and the eloquent Patrick Henry uttered these views, but men of far more considerable property and station—such as John Jay and New York landowners and importers, John Dickinson ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... against the schemer; and, in the other tray of the balance she had done these things for love of him, out of a deep and all-powerful ambition to place him, Milo the slave, in the high place of the wanton ingrate who had deserted her people. And the thought hurt him now; he had not yet yielded her the kiss she craved. Even now the little gold-tinted one might be cold in death, denied that small consolation because ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... nothing but unforeseen accident could prevent the boats from making Ascension again in a matter of hours; that as long as the gig was supposed to be lost with all hands, nothing else mattered. So they promised, and that Harris meant to keep his promise I fully believe. That was not a wanton ruffian; but the other would spill blood like water, as I told you at the hall, and as no man now knows better than yourself. He was notorious even in Portuguese Africa on account of his atrocious treatment of the blacks. It was a favorite boast of his that he once poisoned ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... wanton and merry scoundrel, taking every license, kissing the wives and talking love-talk to the girls in his wanderings, as he begs for his Church and his order. His hood is stuffed with trinkets to give them; ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... snarling. He slashed Pop across the face with the barrel of his weapon. It drew blood. It was wanton, savage brutality. ...
— Scrimshaw • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... hidden depths, a small tissue paper parcel. This she opened carefully, and disclosed a tiny shoe, homely but neat, a little child's chemise, and an old, faded, pink print sun-bonnet, minus a string. In the upper leather of the shoe were several cuts, the work of some wanton hand. Sitting back upon her heels, she let the open parcel ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... ordered to be sold. But when these articles at such a sale did not fetch a sum equal to the amount of the duty chargeable, then the commodity was to be burnt. Great exertions were undoubtedly made by the soldiers for the suppression of smuggling, but care had to be taken to prevent wanton and improper seizures. The men of this branch of the service were awarded 40s. for every horse that was seized by them with ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... to the adoption of this peaceful policy which it will not be wise to overlook. If there be violent and wanton attacks upon the persons or the property of the citizens of the United States or of their government, I see not how demands for immediate redress can be avoided. If any interruptions should be attempted of the regular channels of trade on the great water-courses or on the ocean, they cannot ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... attempt to facilitate his escape, by digging a mine under the tent, provoked the Mongol Emperor to impose a harsher restraint; and in his perpetual marches, an iron cage on a wagon might be invented, not as a wanton insult, but as a rigorous precaution. But the strength of Bajazet's mind and body fainted under the trial, and his premature death might, without injustice, be ascribed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... of the daisies we are treading on," answered Buttar. "Do you know, Bracebridge, I never like treading on wild flowers; it seems such wanton destruction of some of the most beautiful works of nature. I feel all the time as a donkey who has got into a flower-bed ought to feel,—that I am a very mischievous animal. I would always rather go out of my way than injure them, especially such graceful gems as the wood anemone, ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... Israel could listen to, and he commanded the girl to hold her peace. "Silence, you young wanton!" he cried, in a voice of indignation. "Who are you, that you dare trample on the man ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... to be. Her hair is soft brown and sweeps back from a low white forehead. She has tried to make it straight and simple, as every woman should, but the angels seem to have curled it here and mussed it there, so that all her care cannot hide its wanton waves. Her face is full of life and health, so open, so candid, that there you read her heart, and you know that it is as ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... meeting. See with suasion firmly sweet That brisk trio, gaily greeting To that portal guide his feet. Neptune's hoarse hails his friend's approach declare, Probate, the winged sprite, about must play; With wanton wings that winnow the soft air In gliding state Lord Cupid leads the way To where grave Law must mark, assay, reprove Wanderings of young Desire, and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various
... to catch purport of his remarks completed depression under which Committee sinking. Went out to vote as if they were conducting CHAPLIN to a too early funeral. Then it was that an idea dawned on the mind of the wanton WIGGIN. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 21, 1892 • Various
... clambring yvie grew, Knitting his wanton armes with grasping hold, Least that the poplar happely should rew Her brothers strokes, whose boughes she doth enfold 220 With her lythe twigs, till they the top survew, And paint with pallid greene her buds of ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... the ruins of the cathedral, we did not need darkness and falling rain to depress us further, or to make the scene more desolate. One lacking in all reverence would have been shocked. The wanton waste, the senseless brutality in such destruction would have moved a statue. Walls as thick as the ramparts of a fort had been blown into powdered chalk. There were great breaches in them through which you could drive ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... honest. I own now to you, without any disguise of words, what last night I did not own to myself, because I hardly knew of it. I love Edward Springrove with all my strength, and heart, and soul. You call me a wanton for it, don't you? I don't care; I have gone beyond caring for anything!' She looked stonily into his face and ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... that much wanton cruelty has been abolished by the extended education of the people. Brutal sports among boys are much less indulged than formerly, and the worrying of domestic animals almost invariably denotes a bad boy, in the worst sense of the phrase, likely to make a bad man; "so true to nature is the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20. No. 568 - 29 Sept 1832 • Various
... no means impeach the general rule of man's being a social animal; especially when it appears (as is sufficiently and admirably proved by my friend the author of An Enquiry into Happiness) that these men live in a constant opposition to their own nature, and are no less monsters than the most wanton abortions ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... time, when Papistry as a standing pool covered and overflowed all England, few books were read in our tongue saving certain books of chivalry, as they said, for pastime and pleasure, which, as some say, were made in monasteries by idle monks or wanton canons: as one, for example, Morte Arthure, the whole pleasure of which book standeth in two special points, in open manslaughter and bold bawdry. This is good stuff for wise men to laugh at or honest men to take pleasure at. Yet I know when God's Bible was banished the Court, and Morte ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... enters, I will take leave to add the following from Beaumont and Fletcher's "Wife for a Month;" 'tis the conclusion of a description of a sea-fight: "The game of death was never played so nobly; the meagre thief grew wanton in his mischiefs, and his shrunk, hollow eyes smiled on his ruins." There is fancy in these of a lower order from "Bonduca": "Then did I see these valiant men of Britain, like boding owls creep into tods of ivy, and hoot their fears to one another nightly." Not that it is a personification, ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... of Quebec, Sir James Stuart, David Stuart, Andrew Stuart, Joseph Signay, Robert Symes, Jean Thomas Taschereau, John Peyfinch Thirlwall, Henry Truder, Joseph Remi Valieres de St. Real, Geo. Vanfelson, Norman Fitzgerald Umacke, George Usborne, George A Wanton, Gustavus Wicksteed, Daniel Wilkie, George Willing, Thomas William Willan, George Wurtele and Jonathan Wurtele. After half a century the survivors are Gen. Baddely, Gustavus Wicksteed, Revd Edmund Sewell, John Fraser, Admiral Bayfield and ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... rose-hued room; A wanton-hearted creature she, But beautiful and bright to see As some ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox |
