"Wanton" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this still would be! But probably most people are attracted to Prato chiefly by Donatello and Michelozzo's outdoor pulpit, the frieze of which is a kind of prentice work for the famous cantoria in the museum of the cathedral at Florence, with just such wanton ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... felt himself thus relieved, he began to testify his joy and gratitude by every expression within his power. He jumped about like a wanton spaniel, wagged his enormous tail, and licked the feet and hands of his physician. Nor was he contented with these demonstrations of kindness; from this moment Androcles became his guest; nor did the lion ever sally forth in quest of prey without bringing ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... Eve, sad mother Of all who must live, I, not another, Plucked bitterest fruit to give My friend, husband, lover. O wanton eyes run over! Who but I should grieve?— Cain hath slain his brother: Of all who ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... glory? whereas Thou alone art to be honoured above all, and glorious for evermore. The cruelty of the great would fain be feared; but who is to be feared but God alone, out of whose power what can be wrested or withdrawn? when, or where, or whither, or by whom? The tendernesses of the wanton would fain be counted love: yet is nothing more tender than Thy charity; nor is aught loved more healthfully than that Thy truth, bright and beautiful above all. Curiosity makes semblance of a desire of knowledge; whereas Thou supremely knowest all. Yea, ignorance ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... the monk did say, (The Abbot of Saint Mary's gray,) The leman of a wanton youth Perhaps may gain her father's ruth, But never on his injured breast May lie, caressing and caressed. Bethink you of the vow you made When your light daughter, all distraught, From yonder slaughter-plain was brought, That if in some secluded cell She might ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... them? I must confess, I could never before entertain any other Opinion about them, but that the whole was a Fiction: and as the first Account we have of them, was from a Poet, so that they were only a Creature of the Brain, produced by a warm and wanton Imagination, and that they never had any ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson
... valley The crisped waters whisper musically, And all the haunted place is dark and holy. The nightingale, with long and low preamble, Warbled from yonder knoll of solemn larches, And in and out the woodbine's flowery arches The summer midges wove their wanton gambol, And all the white-stemmed pinewood slept above— When in this valley first ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... destroy, what I live by. And as soon as an important moment of life comes, like the children when they are cold and hungry, I turn to Him, and even less than the children when their mother scolds them for their childish mischief, do I feel that my childish efforts at wanton madness are reckoned ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... at a 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 us yawn, we should be besotted by oratory. ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... story approaches the end, Which do you pity the most of us three? My friend, or the mistress of my friend With her wanton eyes, ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... endeavor, E'er understood by such as thou? Yet, hast thou food which never satiates, now,— The restless, ruddy gold hast thou, That runs, quicksilver-like, one's fingers through,— A game whose winnings no man ever knew,— A maid that, even from my breast, Beckons my neighbor with her wanton glances, And Honor's godlike zest, The meteor that a moment dances,— Show me the fruits that, ere they're gathered, rot, And trees that daily with new leafage ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... of Icentum, in Warwickshire. In his youth, perceiving himself somewhat touched with wanton love on seeing a woman dance, he withdrew into a thicket hard by, and, lying prostrate, bewailed his fault before God, with very great contrition. And he was endowed from that time, by Almighty God, with the gift of such a constant watchfulness over his senses, as prevented his being ever more ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... lord. The barbarism of the times is most shockingly displayed in the brutal manner in which he treats the dead body; but for the honour of the Danish prince, we must suppose that it was not merely a wanton act, but done the more decidedly to convince the king, when the strange situation of the corpse was seen, how absolutely he must be divested of reason. Being assured he was now alone with his mother, in a most awful manner ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various
... with the Germans. This is an army in which every man has fought. Most of them have been in hand-to-hand conflict with the Germans. They have approached the front through a country which the enemy has devastated. There is no village which does not bear the mark of wanton destruction. I have seen these things for myself. Houses have been burned, others pillaged and the contents dragged into the streets and there smashed. Churches have been invariably gutted ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... good and sweet she was to that irritatingly silly old frump her mother, and wondered if it really were her mother, or only hired. I pictured her crown of gold-brown hair as I had last seen it with the sunlight kissing its wanton waves, and felt I would like to be quite sure that ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... utterly to be destroyed." But Publius Scipio Nasica would always declare his opinion to the contrary, in these words, "It seems requisite to me that Carthage should still stand." For seeing his countrymen to be grown wanton and insolent, and the people made, by their prosperity, obstinate and disobedient to the senate, and drawing the whole city, whither they would, after them, he would have had the fear of Carthage to serve as a bit to hold in the contumacy of the multitude; and he looked ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... chafed his pride, also thwarted the satisfaction of his affections and his criminal ambition was stimulated by that less guilty passion which shared with it the mastery of a singularly turbulent and impetuous soul. Not his the love of sleek, gallant, and wanton youth; it was the love of man in his mature years, but of man to whom love till then had been unknown. In that large and dark and stormy nature all passions once admitted took the growth of Titans. He loved as those long lonely at heart alone can love; he ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... 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 ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... the free people of color, as unmerited, wanton and untrue. It would be absurd to pretend, that, as a class, they maintain a high character: it would be equally foolish to deny, that intemperance, indolence and crime prevail among them to a mournful extent. But I do not hesitate to assert, from an intimate ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... flye as unconfin'd As it's calme ravisher, the winde, Who hath left his darling, th' East, To wanton o're that spicie neast. ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... branches fell Blossoms and leaves that time in June; The wanton breezes wooed them well With soft caress and ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... question was addressed, straightened his stout form, and held up a number of flannel shirts, which he was taking to the mines on a venture. They had been cut with knives in the most wanton manner, and hardly a square ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... complaints of Iroquois cruelties have descended to us; but the same historians have not omitted to inform us that the first acquaintance of the Iroquois with triese colonists was through two most wanton and butcherly assaults which Champlain and his soldiers, in company with their Indian allies, made upon their unoffending neighbors. No milder epithets can justly describe these unprovoked invasions, in which the Iroquois bowmen, defending their homes, were shot down mercilessly with firearms, ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... feather, from thy wanton wing, Young God of dimples! in thy roguish flight; And let thy Poet catch it, now, to sing The beauty of the Dame who ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... said, "they want wars, so they have wars. Mars sees that the wars stay small and keep within the Martian Conventions, though, so any really widespread damage or destruction, or any wanton attacks on civilians, are a thing of the past. And it's not only wars, ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... "The wanton taste no flesh nor fowl can choose, For which the grape or melon it would lose, Though all th' inhabitants of earth and air Be listed in the glutton's bill ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... been wanton destruction, he was sure. It had an object, and that object had been to prevent the soldiers from getting anything to drink. Troops on an errand requiring such extraordinary secrecy as had been maintained ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Trail • George Durston
... of all! Can it be that Thou disdainest Only man? 'Gainst him, poor thrall, Wanton Fortune plays her vainest. Guilt's deserved punishment Falleth on the innocent; High uplifted, the profanest On ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... proposed by Dioneo are all apparently of a light, if not a wanton, character and "not fit to be ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... forward, 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
... to us," said the one with the dagger. "For it was the vengeance of Heaven we were about to execute. Know that this is our sister, whom we have discovered to be a wanton creature, that must bring shame upon our learned house and into our God-fearing town. Whereupon we and her husband held a secret Beth-Din, and resolved, according to the spirit of our ancient Law, that this plague-spot must be ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... praises which Funfeng, AEgir's servant, had won for the dexterity with which he waited upon his master's guests, Loki suddenly turned upon him and slew him. At this wanton crime, the gods in fierce wrath drove Loki away once more, threatening him with dire punishment should he ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... scarcely view a boat travelling this liquid road, without raising opposite sensations—pleased to think of its great benefit to the community, and grieved to behold wanton punishment. ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... passage I should hardly suppose to be necessary. Nothing could be more wanton than to assign this passage to an imaginary Gospel merely on the ground alleged. The hypothesis was less violent in regard to the Synoptic Gospels, which clearly contain a large amount of common matter ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... proud of having lately subdued the serpent, had seen him bending the bow and drawing the string, and had said, "What hast thou to do, wanton boy, with gallant arms? Such a burden as that {better} befits my shoulders; I, who am able to give unerring wounds to the wild beasts, {wounds} to the enemy, who lately slew with arrows innumerable the swelling Python, that covered so many ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... my leaving Nassau Hall were not, after all, the mischievous outbreaks in which college lads indulge. Indeed, I have never been guilty of any of those pieces of wanton wickedness which injure the feelings of others while they lead to no useful result. When I left to return home, I set myself seriously to reflect upon the necessity of greater care in following out my inclinations, and from that time forward I have steadily avoided, whenever ...
— The Autobiography of a Quack And The Case Of George Dedlow • S. Weir Mitchell
... Bettio, Lettera, p. 23.] I wish the reader especially to notice that a separate tower or range of apartments was built for this purpose, in order to clear the government of the accusations so constantly made against them, by ignorant or partial historians, of wanton cruelty to prisoners. The stories commonly told respecting the "piombi" of the Ducal Palace are utterly false. Instead of being, as usually reported, small furnaces under the leads of the palace, they were comfortable rooms, with good flat roofs of larch, and ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... forwarded to the wanderer, but brought back no response. Another was sent, and another, the third one, in the form of a letter, finding him far up the Red river, where in that sultry season the air was rife with pestilence, which held with death many a wanton revel, and would surely have claimed him for its victim, but for the timely note ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... to reside habitually at Hamlyn's Purlieu. He seemed to take no interest in it, and except now and then to shoot, never came near his native county. He lived much in Paris, which in the early years of the third republic had still something of the wanton gaiety of the Empire; and here he soon grew notorious for his prodigality and his adventures. He was an unlucky man, and everything he did led to disaster. But this never impaired his cheerfulness. He boasted that he ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... fortifications; who could fear our enemies only by sea, and there had their own force of galleys to protect them; who were independent and held in the highest honour by you—to act as these have done, this is not revolt—revolt implies oppression; it is deliberate and wanton aggression; an attempt to ruin us by siding with our bitterest enemies; a worse offence than a war undertaken on their own account in the acquisition of power. The fate of those of their neighbours who had already rebelled and had been subdued was no lesson to ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... when the wine could not even be 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 boy or other? Was I the worse for liquor, ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... cast on her brother a look so wanton that the young man blushed under it: but as at the moment he had to think of other things than his illicit loves, he ordered that four servants should be awakened; and while they were getting armed to accompany him, he drew up and signed the six deeds of gift which were to ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... a will, and, in a few moments, the strawberry-bed—which was Frank's pride, next to his museum, and on which he had expended a great amount of labor—was almost ruined; and so quietly did they proceed in their work of wanton destruction, that Brave, although a very vigilant dog, was not aroused, and the marauders retraced their steps, and reached the woods ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... crab" is to roast a wild apple in the fire in order to throw it hissing hot into a bowl of nutbrown ale, into which had been put a toast with some spice and sugar. Puck describes one of his wanton pranks: ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... damsels to lament his fate, In amorous ditties, all a summer day, While smooth Adonis, from his native rock Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood Of Thammuz, yearly wounded: the love tale Infected Zion's daughters with like heat; Whose wanton passions in the sacred porch Ezekiel saw, when, by the vision led, His eye surveyed the dark idolatries Of ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... should harm her, saying he had power to save her from the people; but that if she would not, she should go before the court next day, and she might guess herself how it would fare with her, seeing that he had many witnesses to prove that she had played the wanton with Satan, and had suffered him to kiss her. Hereupon she was silent, and only sobbed, which the arch rogue took as a good sign, and went on, "If you have had Satan himself for a sweetheart, you surely may love me." And he went to her and ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... He seems to beat the air sideways, as if against a wall, not downwards. This habit makes his course appear so uncertain; he may go there, or yonder, or in a third direction, more undecided than a startled snipe. Is there a little vanity in that wanton flight? Is there a little consciousness of the spring-freshened colours of his plumage, and pride in the dainty touch of his wings on the sweet wind? His love is watching his wayward course. He prolongs it. He has but a few yards to fly to reach the well-known ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... leading his royal captive in triumph to Samarkand. An 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 to the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... rendering Athens submissive to us, and then after having done this we delivered over the State to a thankless populace, which so soon as it had raised its head, having been freed by our means drove out us and our king with wanton outrage; and now exalted with pride 76 it is increasing in power, so that the neighbours of these men first of all, that is the Boeotians and Chalkidians, have already learnt, and perhaps some others also will afterwards learn, that they committed an error. 7601 As however we erred ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... exclaimed Catherine. "Too far!—Is to warn you that you are about to take a wanton to your bed—and that you will bitterly repent your folly when too late, going too far? It is my duty, Henry, no less than my desire, thus to warn you ere the ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... circle had no hand in these promiscuous destructions of life. Their own attempts were invariably well organised and directed towards some definite end. They did not destroy life for mere wanton cruelty, and their victims were marked out and hunted down ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... shrouded with thick darkness which might cover any pilfering approach, nevertheless every sunrise found the doubloon where the sunset left it last. For it was set apart and sanctified to one awe-striking end; and however wanton in their sailor ways, one and all, the mariners revered it as the white whale's talisman. Sometimes they talked it over in the weary watch by night, wondering whose it was to be at last, and whether he would ever live to spend it. Now those noble golden coins of South America are ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... degenerate peoples, the antagonistic, furious, implacable God—that was a ridiculous conception. A cheap, a vain one. "As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods." Wasn't that how Shakspere's blind king had uttered it? "They kill us for their sport." How strangely flattering—to believe that the Immensity that had conceived and ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... before Missy had got her hair "smoothed up"—no time, tonight, to try any rippling, wanton effects. She could hear the swelling sound of voices and laughter in the distance—oh, dreadful! Her fingers became all thumbs as she sought to get into the ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... light, we may justify God for many a heavy blow, and fearful judgment, which seems to the unbeliever a wanton cruelty of chance or fate; while at the same time we may feel deep sympathy with—often deep admiration for—many a noble spirit, who has been defeated, and justly defeated, by those irreversible laws of God's kingdom, of which ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... same time I felt that I had not yet reached the level of straight and simple relations with her. I asked myself despairingly, "What am I to do?" In foolish dreams I imagined her now as my mistress and now as my wife, but rejected both ideas with disgust. To make her a wanton woman would be dreadful. It would be murder. To turn her into a fine lady, the wife of Dmitri Andreich Olenin, like a Cossack woman here who is married to one of our officers, would be still worse. Now could I turn Cossack like Lukashka, and steal horses, get drunk on chikhir, sing rollicking ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... coldness and chastity, and in her statues or on her sacred pillars she was represented with the crescent or cow-horns of the Egyptian Hathor; but in her other aspect she appeared as the amorous and wanton goddess in whom the Greeks recognised the popular concept of Aphrodite. Tradition tells us how, one spring morning, she caught sight of and desired the youthful god known by the title of Adoni, or "My ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... time in social festivities and in exchanging compliments had they known that they were on the brink of war? It is inconceivable! It would be a gross libel on them, one and all, to charge such a wanton disregard of ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Adonis. In Lebanon the wild boar slew him, and yonder, flowing towards "holy Byblus," were "the sacred waters where the women of the ancient mysteries came to mingle their tears." [231] Of this primitive and picturesque but wanton worship they were reminded frequently both by relic and place name. To Palmer, viewing them in the light of the past, the Cedars of Lebanon were a poem, but to Burton—a curious mixture of the romantic and the prosaic—with his invariable habit of underrating famous objects, they were ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... the banquet hall intent On strictest search his steps he bent. He passed within the door, and found Fair women sleeping on the ground, Where wearied with the song, perchance, The merry game, the wanton dance, Each girl with wine and sleep oppressed Had sunk her drooping head to rest. That spacious hall from side to side With noblest fare was well supplied, There quarters of the boar, and here Roast of the buffalo and deer, There on gold plate, untouched as ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... 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 the altars with sticks, sprinkled ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... why. I said to myself, here are some fellow-creatures in distress, they have not a living soul to aid them; the whole power and weight of the Government are mustered against them; and although they are totally unknown to me, and although I cannot countenance or approve of their foolish and wanton proceedings; yet, as the law of England presumes every man to be innocent till he is convicted of guilt, and as they have appealed to ME in their distressing situation, as the only man to whom they can look up for assistance; shall I, because there appears to be personal ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... with hardly a shower to moisten the earth, has made flowers scarce, but on this long curving bend of coarse meadow the grass has kept something of its greenness, and the season of blossoming stays by the beautiful stream. There is a wanton tangling and mingling of the waste-loving flowers, such as the yellow toad-flax, the bristling viper's bugloss, the thorny ononis that spreads a hue of pink as it creeps along the ground, sky-blue chicory on wiry stems, large milk-white blooms of datura, ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... your house,(904) which is more comfortable; as I think she would not have written cheerfully if you had not been in a good way. I would answer it, but I am grown a dull old Tabby, and have no "Quips and cranks and wanton wiles" left; but I shall be glad to see her when she follows you to town, which I earnestly hope will not pass Saturday. My horses will be with you on ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... equinox, when victory declares for day and warmth in its long struggle with night and cold. Then Nature rises and shakes herself as Samson rose and shook himself and snapped the seven new cords that bound him, as tow is snapped when it smells the fire. Then "the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest," and then also the young Hindu's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love; and so it came about quite naturally that, looking around, among his plentiful gods, for a deity who might fitly ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... waiting. Ay! 'tis that, Give it to me; with care. It is most costly. Touch it with care. And now, my noble Lord - Nay, pardon, I have here a Lucca damask, The very web of silver and the roses So cunningly wrought that they lack perfume merely To cheat the wanton sense. Touch it, my Lord. Is it not soft as water, strong as steel? And then the roses! Are they not finely woven? I think the hillsides that best love the rose, At Bellosguardo or at Fiesole, Throw no such blossoms on the lap of spring, Or if they ...
— A Florentine Tragedy—A Fragment • Oscar Wilde
... directed the operations by which 800 prisoners of war were cruelly butchered and flung over the rocks. The sea upon that coast is deep and the tides swift; but it has not proved deep enough to hide that horrid crime, or to wash the stains of such wanton bloodshed from the memory of ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... of the desert Are born by the simoon's wrath, And in wanton and fleet confusion, Are strewn on its trackless path; So our lives with resistless fury, Insensibly and unknown, With a restless vacillation By the winds of fate are blown; But an All-Wise Hand May have changed the sand, For a purpose ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... this action seemed a wanton cruelty; it was rather the wanton recklessness which belongs to a wild boy accustomed to gratify the impulse of the moment—the recklessness which is not cruelty in the boy, but which prosperity may pamper into cruelty in the man. And scarce ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... he dealt with the occasional outbreaks in the college was very interesting. If it was a case of wanton defiance of the habitual order, there was a very slight probability of its being overlooked. A favorite prank of the stealing of the college bell was invariably punished, first by having a hand-bell rung a little ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... word. Before it was applied to a Londoner it meant a milksop. It is thus used by Chaucer. Cooper renders delicias facere, "to play the wanton, to dally, to play the cockney." In this sense it corresponds to Fr. acoquine, made into a coquin, "made tame, inward, familiar; also, growne as lazy, sloathful, ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... as wanton and unprovoked as Warrington's, and Bartholomew's foe was relatively to himself even less powerful; moreover, while the Peacock's crew showed great skill in handling their guns, the crew of the Erebus most ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... the character of a gentle mother correcting the idleness and faults of careless and thoughtless children with tenderness."—p. 95. I think the criticism which he makes upon this Life is one of the most wanton passages in his pamphlet. The Life is beautifully written, full of poetry, and, as I have said, bears on its very surface the profession of a legendary and ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... etiquette. An honoured guest was welcomed by the host rising to receive him and giving him a seat near himself, but less distinguished visitors were often victims to the rough horseplay of the baser sort, and of the wanton young gentleman at court. The food was simple, boiled beef and pork, and mutton without sauce, ale served in horns from the butt. Roast meat, game, sauces, mead, and flagons set on the table, are ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... most criminal, too," said Lucien, "because the least necessary. The other creatures were but following out their instincts to procure food, whereas Basil's only motive was one of wanton destruction." ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... were they in their hatred of Troy, and her king, and her people, Even as of old when they swore to avenge the presumption of Paris, Who at his shieling insulted majestical Hera and Pallas, Yielding the glory to her that had bribed him with wanton allurements. But when suspense had endured to the twelfth reappearance of morning, Thus, in the midst of the Gods, outspake to them Phoebus Apollo: "Cruel are ye and ungrateful, O Gods! was there sacrifice never Either of goats or of beeves on your altars devoted by ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... happiness. No one would believe or could be expected to believe the actual truth of the matter. Who would believe then as regards your uncle that I have gone off and escaped from him still a maid, but a maid to no purpose? Folk would hold me a light-of-love and a wanton, and you a madman. But it is meet to keep and observe the command of St. Paul, for St. Paul teaches him who does not wish to remain continent to act so wisely that he may never incur outcry nor blame nor reproach. It is well ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... of posies Cometh one to gather flowers, And he wanders through its bowers Toying with the wanton roses, Who, uprising from their beds, Hold on high their shameless heads With their pretty lips a-pouting, Never doubting—never doubting That for Cytherean posies He ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... to gain belief, as if they had been in danger of their lives. The argument is gratis dictum: and as Richard loved Hastings and had used his ministry, the probability lies on the other side: and it is more reasonable to believe that Richard acted in self-defence, than that he exercised a wanton, unnecessary, and disgusting cruelty. The collateral circumstances introduced by More do but weaken(17) his account, and take from its probability. I do not mean the silly recapitulation of silly omens which forewarned ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... very perverse turn. The misdemeanour commonly imputed to him and his associates was, that they had mutilated a Christ which stood on the Pont-neuf at Abbeville: but La Barre had accustomed himself to take all opportunities of insulting, with the most wanton malignity, these pious representations, and especially in the presence of people, with whom his particular connections led him to associate, and whose profession could not allow them entirely to overlook such affronts on what ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... and much-vituperated individual, who, if he has to answer for some acts savouring of a taste for wanton destruction—if he now and then lunches on some noble old abbey, which had remained a memorial of the deep piety and marvellous skill of our forefathers—if he crops, by way of salad, some wide-spreading beech or hoary ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... unhallowed Pleasure woo me now, Will to the wanton sorc'ress say, "Begone! Respect the cypress on my mournful brow, Lost Happiness hath left regret—but ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... God's justice is so rigorous toward the wanton, His mercy is never so great as toward those who need it most, who desire it and ask it. The most touching episodes in the Gospels are those in which Christ opened wide the arms of His charity to sinful but repentant creatures, and lifted them out of their iniquity. That same ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... the Pagans might thence seize a handle, however unfair, of retorting upon them that custom of the Church." Had a member of the Anglican Church thus spoken of the Fathers, and thus pleaded in their name guilty of subterfuge and duplicity, he would have been immediately charged with irreverence and wanton insult, and that with good reason. These sentiments of the Cardinal are in p. 982 of the Paris edition of ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... wanton folly," she said with a touch of sternness. "Listen, Holly. Thou art a good and honest man, and I fain would spare thee; but, oh! it is so hard for woman to be merciful. I have said I am not for thee, therefore let thy thoughts pass ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... 'Susanna,' Act III, Sc. 4: Having been menaced with death by the wanton judges, Susanna tells her father, mother, and sister ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... in Europe. Atlantic alliance 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. ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... to blacken her character; he would impute false motives to her or make a convincing case against her sanity, perhaps both. The very notion made him boil with rage. The cold-blooded infamy of the plot to do away with his father was as nothing compared with the wanton brutality of the attempt on Esther's life. To think of this fresh and lovely body, so near to him now that he could feel the throbbing of her heart, dismembered, defiled in the work of annihilation, filled ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... rest, the clamb'ring Ivy grew, Knitting his wanton arms with grasping hold, Lest that the poplar happely should rew Her brother's strokes, whose boughs she doth enfold With her lythe twigs, till they the top survew And paint with pallid green her ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... shake its head— Well may Clorinda's spouse be jealous, When the dear wanton takes to bed ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... on either side.... A lock that had stollen from its sweet prison, folded in cloudy curls, lay dallying with her breath, sometimes striving to get a kiss, and then repulsed flew back, sometimes obtaining its desired bliss, and then as rapt with joy, retreated in wanton caperings.... Her breasts at liberty displayed were of so pure a whiteness as if one's eye through the transparent skin, had viewed the milky ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... eye, and they disdained the perspective so much, that though they took the greatest pains with the circlet of a crown, or the rim of a crystal cup, in the heart of their picture, they would twist their capitals of columns and towers of churches about in the background in the most wanton way, wherever they liked the lines to go, provided only they left just perspective enough to ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... the remainder of the war, had it not been for one of those border outrages, which lawless and unprincipled white men but too often commit upon the Indians, under pretence of self defence or retaliation, often a mere pretext for wanton bloodshed and murder. Previous to joining Colonel Dixon, Black Hawk had visited the lodge of an old friend, whose son he had adopted and taught to hunt. He was anxious that this youth should go with him and his ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... his quaint and childish tastes, his restless endeavors, his partial and halting successes. The ante-room in which he had paused with Ferris was painted to look like a grape-arbor, where the vines sprang from the floor, and flourishing up the trellised walls, with many a wanton tendril and flaunting leaf, displayed their lavish clusters of white and purple all over the ceiling. It touched Ferris, when Don Ippolito confessed that this decoration had been the distraction of his own vacant moments, to find that it was ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... 'I love to see my lady's hair Coiled low like Clytie's—with no wanton curl.' But I, like any silly, wilful girl, Said, 'Donald likes it ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... enjoyed slowly and lingeringly, with many humorous after-thoughts and a certain Rabelaisian unction. A shrewd and ironical wisdom, gentle and light-fingered and redolent of evasive sentiment, is evoked from these digressive and wanton pages. ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... There can be no disputing that our present civilization does discourage much of the innate bestiality of man; that it helps people to a measure of continence, cleanliness and mutual toleration; that it does much to suppress brute violence, the spirit of lawlessness, cruelty and wanton destruction. But on the other hand it does also check and cripple generosity and frank truthfulness, any disinterested creative passion, the love of beauty, the passion for truth and research, and it stimulates avarice, ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... made a wanton attack on me, but I leave my countrymen to judge between us. There is no political act of mine that I in the least regret. I have laboured earnestly and sincerely in my country's cause, and I have been actuated throughout by a strong sense of duty. I believe that a man's ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... England, even among some people of fashion, against the French nation is illiberal, in the highest degree; nay, it is more, it is a national disgrace.—When I recollect with what ease and uninterruption I have passed through so many great and little towns, and extensive provinces, without a symptom of wanton rudeness being offered me, I blush to think how a Frenchman, if he made no better figure than I did, would have been treated in a tour through Britain.—My Monkey, with a pair of French jack boots, and his hair en queue, rode postillion upon my sturdy horse some hours every ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... a piece of wanton cruelty, Mr Capstick," exclaimed the captain. "I must prohibit the ship's muskets being made use of for such a purpose; they are intended to be used against our enemies, not ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... but in a second she became aware that it was a long 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 Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... hath my pen presumed to please my friend, Oh might'st thou likewise please Apollo's eye; No, honor brooks no such impietie, Yet Ovids Wanton Muse did not offend, He is the fountain whence my streams do flow, Forgive me if I speak as I ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... the extreme. The cynical dishonesties and the brutal spoliations which have come to light in the realm of high finance and big business are the natural fruit of such a manner of life as many of our recent novelists have vividly portrayed. And the wanton extravagance of the House of Mirth would not exist if the majority of the people did not admire it. The outcry against it is oftener the voice of envy than of moral revulsion. The cure for this evil, as of most others, is found in public opinion; and the church must educate public ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... dim consciousness that we are capable of an existence ineffably deeper and vaster than that which we lead in the visible world! Nought but this? Alas, poor human nature! do we leave the casket of Pandora open in wanton carelessness, and let all escape but the mere scent of the roses? Or does there not remain, behind an indefinable presence to comfort and console ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... 'The wanton! ay, I have; and if you can whisper in his ear that matter of Malcolm and the signet, it might lessen his inclination. But,' he sighed, 'I have little hope, James; I see nothing for Lancaster but that which the old man at York invoked ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had lost their wanton fire, and were hollow and glazing. The driver caught him in his arms, ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... of lords shall be abhorr'd, For every man's a brother; No reason why in Church and State One man should rule another; But when the change of government Shall set our fingers free, We'll make these wanton sisters stoop, And hey, then, ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... government more consistent, it would mean war. I think that he has committed himself more openly and more unjustifiably than could have been expected, in the relation of the affair of the Little Belt, by accusing that poor little sloop of a wanton act of aggression by attacking a huge American frigate, when Commodore Rodgers himself admits that he was for nearly eight ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... in quality, and of course the most wholesome, when nature has perfected her work, and prepared it for human sustenance. To anticipate her seasons, or to prolong them, is a misapplication of labour, and a perversion of the bounties of providence into secret poisons, to indulge the wanton cravings of a depraved appetite. The properties of animal food in general seem not to restrict the use of it to any particular season, but rather to admit its common use at all times. The only period in which it is less seasonable ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... sacred to hospitality; to disturb the quiet of your fellow-guests, some of them perhaps exhausted by fatigue, some of them invaded by distemper; to interrupt the king's lieges in their course of journeying upon their lawful occasions? Above all, what motive but wanton barbarity could prompt you to violate the apartment, and terrify the tender hearts of two helpless young ladies, travelling, no doubt, upon some cruel emergency, which compels them, unattended, to encounter in the night the ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... silence. Sadler went on to tell the old story.... I saw it all as he spoke; only gaunt, shiny-faced, yellow Nichols was chewing and hitching his trousers in place of my Tomas, with his sanguine oaths and jerked gestures. And there was Nichol's wanton, aimless ferocity. ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... aim it the door was slammed with a terrific crash that filled the whole room with a sort of hollow thunder. I jumped, like a frightened child. There seemed such a power behind the noise; as though a vast, wanton Force were 'out.' ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... our country down here is worth singing about like that!" continued the glazier, as the Scotchman again melodized with a dying fall, "My ain countree!" "When you take away from among us the fools and the rogues, and the lammigers, and the wanton hussies, and the slatterns, and such like, there's cust few left to ornament a song with in ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... and enjoined to collect all the beef cattle, corn and other necessary supplies on the line of march; but wanton destruction of property, taking of articles useless for military purposes, insulting citizens, going into and searching houses without proper orders from division commanders, are positively prohibited. All such irregularities must ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... idle boys, And wanton mirth fond youth employs, To fix the soul, and free from toys, That useful task ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... his knowledge of Push methods that sealed his tongue. No one would risk his skin by giving evidence. If the police had brought the offenders to book, the magistrates, who seemed to regard these outrages as the playful excesses of wanton blood, would have let them off with a light punishment, and the streets would never have been safe for him again. So he held his tongue, thankful to ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... their goods? The variety of the forms of privilege does not sanction injustice. The faith of Jupiter, the proprietor, [13] proves no more against the equality of citizens, than do the mysteries of Venus, the wanton, against conjugal chastity. ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... by 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 ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... character of every part of the country, so far as slavery or freedom was concerned, was now settled, either by law or nature, and that he should resist the insertion of the Wilmot Proviso in regard to New Mexico, because it would be merely a wanton taunt and reproach to the South. He then spoke of the change of feeling and opinion both at the North and the South in regard to slavery, and passed next to the question of mutual grievances. He depicted at length the grievances of the South, including ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... those tempting eyes, that faultless form, Those looks with feeling and with nature warm; The neck, the softly-swelling bosom hide, Nor, wanton gales, blow the light vest aside; For who, when beauties more than life excite Silent applause, can gaze without delight! But innocence, enchanting maid, is thine; Thine eyes in liquid light unconscious shine; And may ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... afterwards, when 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 ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... do not love him, and because I do have affection and comradeship for him, that I do not turn away when he commits even a lurid act. Love, you will remember, takes its rise in the emotions, and is unstable and wanton and capricious. But affection takes its rise in the intellect, is based upon judgment of the brain. Love is unyielding tyranny; affection is compromise. Love never compromises, no more than does the mad little mating ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... brother, too, whose soul, with the most deliberate vindictiveness, I sent before its Maker, without an instant's preparation! A guilty soul it was; for he hounded me down, one would almost think for the sport of it.... God! when I think that, but for him, for his wanton interference—but there, the devils are loose again! I must not think on him. Do I not deserve my fate, if the Bible law be right? 'He who sheds blood, his blood shall be shed.' Never was sentence more just. ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... doctor Hippocrates) for showing to delicate, sickly persons, the means whereby to prolong their valetudinary existence, as Herodicus himself (naturally a very rickety fellow) had contrived to do. Plato accuses this physician of having thereby inflicted a malignant and wanton injury on those poor persons;—nay, not only an injury on them, but on all society. "For," argues this stern, broad-shouldered Athenian, "how can people be virtuous who are always thinking of their own infirmities?" And therefore he opines, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... Confusion overtake and confound your modern descendants, the "metre ballad-mongers," who carry the shamelessness of the Middle Ages into the nineteenth century, and awake a sleeping neighborhood to the brazen knowledge of their loves and wanton fancies! Destruction and demoralization pursue these pitiable imitators of a barbarous age, when ladies' names and charms were shouted through the land, and modest maiden never lent presence to tilt or tourney without hearing a chronicle of her virtues go round the lists, ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... exalted 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 of ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... it necessary to discard me, like a cast-off garment, like a wanton who has lost the ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... all,' said he, 'this is wanton waste of time. Let the girl understand the fact. Let her take it from me, if you like, who have been run away from, myself. Here, what's your name! Your father has absconded - deserted you - and you mustn't expect to see him again as long as ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... on the gentlewomen, zealous and long continued—that she might dispose by will; and it was but a troubled comfort that, should he be living at the time of her death, the susceptible Henry would profit no less than the wanton Albert. Henry was at any cost to be kept in life that he might profit; the woeful question, the question of delicacy, for a woman devoutly conscientious, was how could anyone else, how, above all, could fifteen other ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... Giocomo Of Sant' Andrea!] Jacopo da Sant' Andrea, a Paduan, who, having wasted his property in the most wanton acts of profusion, killed himself in despair. v. 144. In that City.] "I was an inhabitant of Florence, that city which changed her first patron Mars for St. John the Baptist, for which reason the vengeance of the ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... prisoners, running about the yard, endeavoring to enter the prison by the door which the turnkey left open, according to their usual practice, does seem to have been without object or excuse, and to have been a wanton attack upon the lives of defenceless, and, at the same time, unoffending individuals." In answer to this paragraph, we shall only reply, that had the commissioners examined ALL the American evidence, and attached the same credit to it, which it appears they have done to ALL the English evidence, ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... Today the 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 ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... lover and so forth, from the faintest memory of kissing; she was indeed altogether disgraceful and human in her betrayal. She and her half-brother lied in perfect concord, and I was presented as a wanton assailant of my social betters. They were waiting about in the Warren, when I came up and spoke to ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... embarrassed by internal dissensions, all Europe —that Europe which upon the threatening of a Belgian fortress, or the invasion of a Swiss canton, or the loss of the key to a church in Jerusalem, would have written protocols, summoned conferences, and mustered armies—quietly acquiesced in as wanton, wicked, and foolish an aggression as ever Imperial folly devised. The same monarch who appealed with confidence to Heaven when he declared war to prevent a Hohenzollern from ascending the throne of ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... what would be the emperor's policy in matters of religion; but they no sooner heard of the death of Artemius than they took it as a sign that they had full leave to revenge themselves on the Christians. The mob rose first against the Bishop George, who had lately been careless or wanton enough publicly to declare his regret that any of their temples should be allowed to stand; and they seized him in the streets and trampled him to death. They next slew Dracontius, the prefect of the Alexandrian mint, whom they accused of overturning ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... suffer detraction and calumny at the hands of some sciolist or Halb-bildung sheltering his miserable individuality under the shadow (may it never be less!) of " King We," simply sins against himself as the Arabs say and offends good manners by holding out a premium to wanton aggression and injurious doing. The reading world has a right to hear the alteram partem before it shall deliver that judgment and shall pronounce that sentence wherefrom lies no appeal. To ignore and not to visit with represailles ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... with industrial dissensions. Labor was striking here, there, and everywhere; and where it was not striking, it was being turned out by the capitalists. The papers were filled with tales of violence and blood. And through it all the Black Hundreds played their part. Riot, arson, and wanton destruction of property was their function, and well they performed it. The whole regular army was in the field, called there by the actions of the Black Hundreds.* All cities and towns were like armed camps, and laborers were shot down like dogs. Out of the vast ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... unless he strive lawfully"; that is, unless he so run, and so strive, as to have God's approbation. What, do you think that every heavy-heeled professor will have heaven? What, every lazy one? every wanton and foolish professor, that will be stopt by anything, kept back by anything, that scarce runneth so fast heavenward as a snail creepeth on the ground? Nay, there are some professors that do not go on so fast in the way of God as a snail doth go on the wall; and yet these think ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... Kari at the saeter-hut, the same road and the same errand one generation after another. To Peer it seemed as if all those lads now bore him company—aye, as if he discovered in himself something of wanton youth that had managed to ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... done by slaves alone, they have not the simple convenience of a porter's knot, but carry their burden upon their heads. They appeared to be a miserable race, worn out by the united operation of excessive labour and ill usage; and Mr. Cook was sorry to observe, and to say, that instances of wanton cruelty were much more frequent among his countrymen at St. Helena, than among the Dutch, who are generally reproached with want of humanity, both at Batavia and the Cape of Good Hope. It is impossible for a feeling mind to avoid being concerned that such an account should be ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... solicitude for results, that lack of inner harmony and ease, in short, by which with us the work is so apt to be accompanied, and from which a European who should do the same work would nine times out of ten be free. These perfectly wanton and unnecessary tricks of inner attitude and outer manner in us, caught from the social atmosphere, kept up by tradition, and idealized by many as the admirable way of life, are the last straws that break the American camel's back, the final overflowers of our measure of wear and tear ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James |
