"Ruthless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the ruthless predatory instinct of certain bold and unscrupulous persons may, and almost certainly will, place at their disposal the goods, the honours, and the preferment justly the due of others; and in those more numerous ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... nearer tree-tops. They were wonderfully contrasted: she, light, delicate, spare, quick, a little witch-like, with a touch of motherly fussiness in her repose; he, facing her, immense and heavy, like a figure of a man roughly fashioned of stone, with something magnanimous and ruthless in his immobility. The son of these old people was ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... counsels and intemperate speech were remarkable," writes Dr. Robertson, "even in his own ruthless age," and he gives fourteen examples. {0a} "Lord Hailes has shown," he adds, "how little Knox's statements" (in his "History") "are to be relied on even in matters which were within the Reformer's own knowledge." In Scotland there has always been ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... and his ruthless destruction of Chambersburg led to many recommendations on the part of General Grant looking to a speedy elimination of the confusion then existing among the Union forces along the upper Potomac, but for a time the authorities ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... an enduring peace through justice receded and grew dim. We knew that it could not be rekindled until the ruthless military power of Germany, that had denied and rejected it, was defeated and brought ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... Ghiberti of Verona, and Carlo Borromeo of Milan. Devout and self-denying as a saint, fierce and inflexible against abuses as a puritan, resolute and uncompromising as a Jacobin idealist or an Asiatic despot, ruthless and inexorable as an executioner, his soul was bent on re-establishing, not only by preaching and martyrdom, but by the sword and by the stake, the unity of Christendom and of its belief. Eastwards and westwards, he beheld two formidable foes and two serious dangers; and he ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... burning everything in his way. Hasty preparations for defence were made; a certain Renzo da Ceri armed such men as he could enlist with such weapons as he could find, and sent out a little force of grooms and artificers to face the Constable's ruthless Spaniards and the fierce Germans of his companion freebooter, George of Fransperg, or Franzberg, who carried about a silken cord by which he swore to strangle the Pope with his own hands. The enemy reached the walls of Rome on the night of the fifth of May; devastation and famine ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... his kingdom. To which Jesus replies, "This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise," implying that he will spend the three days of his death there. In short, every device is used to get rid of the ruthless horror of the Matthew chronicle, and to relieve the strain of the Passion by touching episodes, and by representing Christ as superior to human suffering. It is Luke's Jesus ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... no fewer than five large and heavily-armed junks, crowded with men. Before the crew could even place themselves in a position for defence, the junk had been seized and the men cut to pieces by the ruthless pirates. The two men standing on the Su-chen's deck had escaped as by a miracle, for, after taking all her cargo out of the junk and throwing dead and wounded overboard, the leader of the pirates had indulged his humour by binding the two survivors ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... sight, suggesting the world's morning, before Eve had bitten any white-fleshed apple, whilst she was still dusky, dark-eyed, and still. And then her stealthy sympathy with the white prisoner! Now indeed she was the dusky Eve tempted into knowledge. Her fascination was ruthless. She kneeled by the dead brave, her husband, as she had knelt by the bear: in fear and admiration and doubt and exultation. She gave him the least little push with her foot. Dead meat like the bear! And a flash of delight went over her, that changed into a sob of mortal anguish. And ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... and is conserving the productive qualities of the hillside soil which was drained away by ruthless cutting of timber a quarter century ago. Today the farmer is taught to treat his farm and pasture land with lime and phosphate, a thing unheard of in the early days. And the greatest of all his blessings today, the mountain farmer will tell you, ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... stablish all the man in him, and stint the beast. Mr. Bart, though he hated hard fighting, admitted that for weak people it was needful; and was only too happy so to cut the knot of his own home entanglements with the ruthless sword. For a man of liberal education, and much experience in spending money, who can put a new bottom to his own saucepan, is not the one to feel any despair of ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... before been seen together upon any world. There was Fodan, the ancient Chief of the Five of Norlamin, huge-headed, with his leonine mane and flowing beard of white. There were Dunark and Tarnan of Osnome and Urvan of Urvania—smooth-faced and keen, utterly implacable and ruthless in war. There was Sacner Carfon Twenty Three Forty Six, the immense, porpoise-like, hairless Dasorian. There were Seaton and Crane, representatives of our own ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... very picturesquely placed, and before ruthless 'improvements' swept away the old gates and many ancient buildings, the general effect must have been particularly delightful. 'This City is pleasantly seated upon a Hill among Hills, saving towards the sea, where 'tis pendant in such sort as that the streets (be they ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... loth to obey the mandates of Jove, but urged on by Strength and Force and the fear of the consequences which disobedience will entail, with mighty force drives the wedges into the adamantine rocks and rivets the captive with galling shackles to the ruthless crags. ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... and down precipice is alike to him, provided he gratifies the malevolence that seems to inspire him. He bounds and flies over and beyond them, gratified by the distress, and utterly reckless and ruthless of the cries, and danger, and suffering of the luckless wight who ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... and garlic; —One, by his soul's too-much presuming To turn the frankincense's fuming And vapours of the candle starlike Into the cloud her wings she buoys on. Each, that thus sets the pure air seething, May poison it for healthy breathing— But the Critic leaves no air to poison; Pumps out with ruthless ingenuity Atom by atom, and leaves you—vacuity. Thus much of Christ does he reject? And what retain? His intellect? What is it I must reverence duly? Poor intellect for worship, truly, Which tells me simply what was told (If mere morality, bereft Of the God in Christ, be all that's ...
— Christmas Eve • Robert Browning
... to-night it appealed to him as it had never done before. He hardly noticed the other actors. His whole interest centred in the awful figure of Cassius, splendid in its unswerving deathless passion of a great hate and a great love. His eyes never left the ruthless figure as it stood in silence with its unflinching eyes upon its victim. Had not Lord Newhaven thus watched him, Hugh, ready to strike when ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... give you those too?" the other answered, with a ruthless laugh. "You have alighted on it, most grave and reverend sage. You have alighted on the exact fact, so clever are you! That was precisely what I did some months back, after I heard that you, being fearful as ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... had already met an enviable death. The avarice of the officers had saved 400 of the richest citizens, in the hope of extorting from them an exorbitant ransom. But this humanity was confined to the officers of the League, whom the ruthless barbarity of the Imperialists caused to be ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... get right with reality or, in the time-honoured evangelical phrase, with God, it must be by a ruthless determination to get the truth in religion, even if we have to break down Church walls ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... looked for, it is strange that one we would venture to call the greatest Australian writer should be practically unknown in England. Short stories, but biting into the very heart of the bushman's life, ruthless in truth, extraordinarily dramatic, ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... birthright of successive generations; our ignorance of the origin and purport of all existence; of the outcome of life on this earth; of the conditions of consciousness; slow progress of evolution and its system of ruthless routine; man is the heir of long bygone ages; has great power in expediting the course of evolution; he might render its progress less slow and painful; does not yet understand that it may be his part ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... made some further remonstrances; he described the ruthless character of the Italian brigands, told Obed about the dangerous condition of the country, hinted that the old man and his wife were themselves possibly in alliance with the brigands, and again urged him to change his plans. ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... the "courts spiritual" became as thoroughly the King's courts as the temporal courts at Westminster. The enslavement of the clergy, the dissolution of the monasteries, and the gagging of the pulpits followed, the years of Cromwell's administration being an English reign of terror. But the ruthless manner in which he struck down his victims sickened the English people, and they exhibited their disapprobation in a manner which arrested the attention of the King. The time of Cromwell himself was coming, for the block was the goal ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... why should it be shocking that the female should equal the male in callousness? Why should it be shocking should she even surpass the male? It is quite possible that, since for physiological reasons she is nearer to instinctive motivation than the male, she cannot help being more ruthless once deterrent inhibition has been sloughed. But is she in fact more dangerous, more deadly as ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... against a whelming foe Than when bonfire and beacon flared mere flame of wood and pitch, From Surrey hills to Skiddaw! Science-dowered, serenely rich, Safe in its snugly sheltered homes, our England lies at ease, Whilst round her cliffs gale-scourged to wrath the tiger-throated seas Thunder in ruthless ravening rage, with rending crash and shock, Through the dull night and blinding drift on leagues of reef and rock. More furious than the Spaniards they, more fierce, persistent foes, These deep-gorged, pallid, foaming waves. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various
... "Unfortunately, that, together with many other valued possessions, has been ravaged from me by the ruthless maw of ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... go under canvas at C. Married officers hurriedly despatch advance parties, composed of their wives, to secure houses or lodgings in the bleak and inhospitable environs of their new station; while a rapidly ageing Mess President concludes yet another demoralising bargain with a ruthless and omnipotent caterer. Then—this is the cream of the joke—the day before we expect to move, the Practical Joke Department puts out a playful hand and sweeps us all into some half-completed huts at D, somewhere ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... the contrary, was absolutely merciless in warfare. He was not cruel for the sake of cruelty, but where he deemed that the policy demanded it, he was ruthless, and spared neither age nor sex. He was lavish to the church, but it was rather because he needed and obtained its aid than from any feeling ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... stones and darts, which fell but as hailstones against the thick mail of the horsemen, they closed in, and, by their number, obstructed the movements of the steeds, while the spear, sword, and battle-axe of their opponents made ruthless havoc amongst their undisciplined ranks. And Martino, who cared little how many of his mere mob were butchered, seeing that his foes were for the moment embarrassed by the wild rush and gathering circle ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... His justice, Jeremiah brings home to the hearts of his people the truths and judgments, with which he was charged, in the hard, hot realism of their austere world. Through his verse we see the barer landscapes of Benjamin and Judah without shadow or other relief, every ugly detail exposed by the ruthless noon, and beyond them the desert hills shimmering through the heat. Drought, famine, pestilence and especially war sweep over the land and the ghastly prostrate things, human as well as animal, which their skirts leave behind are rendered with vividness, poignancy ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... a thing we learned, but we learned not how to prevail O'er the brutal war-machine, the ruthless grinder of bale; By the bourgeois world it was made, for the bourgeois world; and we, We were e'en as the village weaver 'gainst the power-loom, maybe. It drew on nearer and nearer, and we 'gan to look ...
— The Pilgrims of Hope • William Morris
... expressive dark eyes have lost not their usual brilliancy, save a mournful tenderness that is more often betrayed than formerly; the lustrous black hair is wantonly revelling in all the luxuriance of its former beauty. Time nor experience has not the ruthless power to desecrate such sacred charms. Lady Rosamond has yet to rejoice in these; she has yet to pluck the blossoms of happiness springing up from the soil of buried hope where seeds had been scattered by the unseen ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... the floor, she began, with dreadful earnestness and solemnity, to call upon Almighty God, imploring him to avenge the death of her children, and invoking the bitterest curses upon the head of their ruthless murderer. ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Richmond stands on a slight eminence in a grassy square, hiding its gray walls behind a stretch of elms and sycamores, as if it had retreated into historic shadow before the ruthless advance of the spirit of modernism. In the centre of the square, whose brilliant green slopes are intersected by gravelled walks that shine silver in the sunlight, the grave old building remains the one distinctive feature of a city where Iconoclasm ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... a flood-tide of love flush the channelways of your life like that? It would clean out something you have preferred keeping. It would with quiet, ruthless strength, tear some prized possessions from their moorings and send them adrift down stream and out. Its high waters would put out some of the fires on the lower levels. Better think a bit before opening the sluice-ways for ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... disastrous effect on such noble structures raised by these monastic architects, as well as on many a rustic village church, which fell a prey to the ruthless invading bands of pagan warriors. But frequently, as we study the history written in the stonework of our churches, we find amid the massive Norman walls traces of the work of Saxon builders, an arch here, a column ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... extra-illustrator is nearly always the person responsible for the decrepit condition of many of the books which 'unfortunately lack the rare portrait,' or have, 'as usual,' some valuable plate or map lacking. Were this professional despoiler, or his minions, the ruthless booksellers, to destroy the sad wrecks which result from their piratical depredations, all would be well. But they set these poor maimed hulks adrift again, to seek salvage from some deluded collector, or ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... is folded in the arms of the night, as the sunset dies behind the hill. Beauty may be a terrible thing, as in the sheeted cataract, with all its boiling eddies, or in the falling of the lightning from the womb of the cloud. There is desolation behind that, gigantic movement, ruthless force; but charm comes like a signal of security and good-will, and even its inevitable end is lit with something of mercy and quietness. The danger of charm is that it is the mother of sentiment; and the danger of sentiment ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... for now loving her without reality, in a wild hope, when he had been cold and indifferent at her departure, with his thoughts on another woman, hoping for her death with criminal craving. Wretch! And he was still alive! And she, so kind, so sweet, buried forever, lost in the depths of eternal, ruthless death! ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Artemisia, at Halicarnassus, upon the AEgean's eastern shore, and that became at once one of the few great wonders of the ancient world. This was intended to do honor to the loved and illustrious dead, and this it did as no grave or pyre could do. This was also intended to protect the lifeless form from ruthless robbery and reckless profanation, and it performed this task so well that for near two thousand years no human eye beheld the mortal part of Mausolus, and no human hand disturbed its rest. At a far earlier time, Abraham, the Father of the Faithful, while he illustrated this tendency ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... was speaking, the Earl held his hand fast, compressed his lips hard, and frowned, as if he laboured to catch from Varney a portion of the cold, ruthless, and dispassionate firmness which he recommended. When he was silent, the Earl still continued to rasp his hand, until, with an effort at calm decision, he was able to articulate, "Be it so—she dies! But one tear might ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... enough, saith wisdom; for he feareth to ask for more; And that by the sweat of my brow, addeth stout-hearted independence; Give me enough, and not less; for want is leagued with the tempter; Poverty shall make a man desperate, and hurry him ruthless into crime; Give me enough, and not more, saving for the children of distress; Wealth oftentimes killeth, where want but hindereth ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... love still, but she would never again be tender till her daughter should have repudiated her base,—her monstrous engagement. She bound up all her faculties to harshness, and a stern resolution. Her daughter had been deceitful, and she would now be ruthless. There might be suffering, but had not she suffered? There might be sorrow, but had not she sorrowed? There might be a contest, but had not she ever been contesting? Sooner than that the tailor should reap the fruit of her labours,—labours which had been commenced when she first ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... tenderness and romance, and so forth. Very likely; but the actual child does just the reverse of this. Is there a trivial weakness, a venial shortcoming, a microscopic spot of imperfection anywhere? The ruthless little imp has marked it for his own, and will infallibly reproduce it, certainly before your servants, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... as the waters swam past and the sense of his desolation still made him shiver. He had not recovered in the least from that depression. Here was an opportunity for making himself face it, as he felt that he ought to; for, by this time, no doubt, it was only a sentimental ghost, better exorcised by ruthless exposure to such an eye as Mary's, than allowed to underlie all his actions and thoughts as had been the case ever since he first saw Katharine Hilbery pouring out tea. He must begin, however, by mentioning her name, and this he ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... breasts. The mocking-bird lay on his back, kicking spasmodically, in the last agonies, with a tiny sword-thrust cleaving his melodious throat in twain, so that from the instrument which used to gush with wondrous music only scarlet drops of blood now trickled. The manikins were ruthless. Their faces were ten times wickeder than ever, as they roamed from cage to cage, slaughtering with a fury that seemed entirely unappeasable. Presently the feathery rustlings became fewer and fainter, and the little pipings of despair died away; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... either the "institution" or "Abolitionism" should be utterly defeated and forever exterminated. It was said to be a "doctrine" which was "revolutionary and destructive of this government," and which "invited a warfare between the North and the South, to be carried on with ruthless vengeance, until the one section or the other shall be driven to the wall and become the victim of the rapacity of the other." Such misrepresentation annoyed Lincoln all the more because it was undeserved. The history ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... the direction of Siberia. They were learning by degrees that the semblance of freedom which offered a pathway to escape was nothing but a strategem employed by pretended friends to entrap them into more cruel and ruthless hands. On every side loomed the evidence of their danger. The villainous stares of foreign interlopers, the ribald jests of guards, the furtive glances of the envious, the scowls of the emancipated underling, the profanity ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... too frank, may be; and dared Too boldly. Those whose faults he bared, Writhed in the ruthless grasp that brought Into the light their secret thought. Therefore the TARTUFFE-throng who say "Couvrez ce sein," and look that way,— Therefore the Priests of Sentiment Rose on him with their garments rent. Therefore the gadfly swarm whose sting Plies ever round some generous ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... bird-of-paradise plumes, she said, would be like visiting Japan without buying a kimono. The bird is usually sold entire, the prices ranging from twenty-five to thirty dollars, according to size and condition, though, owing to the ruthless slaughter of the birds to meet the demands of the European market, prices are steadily advancing. The Winsome Widow bought four of the finest birds I have ever seen—gorgeous, flame-colored things with plumes nearly two feet long. How she proposed ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... In a spirit of ruthless improvement the beautiful old stone screen between nave and choir was removed in 1859, and replaced by the present rood-screen in memory of Archdeacon Walker. The finely carved throne and stalls in the choir are also modern but are in excellent taste and keeping ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... how inexorable was that strength which controlled the world; how ruthless, in spite of smooth and compassionate words, towards those who resisted it. The Socialists were to be "repressed"; the heretic was to be tried for his life; and in all that wide world in which he lived it seemed that there was not one Christian ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... possess the doubtful honour of his acquaintance as King Plenty. And, if my informant is to be depended upon, this potentate, whose chief characteristics are avarice and brutal ferocity, has discovered a very simple method of combining business with pleasure by making ruthless war upon his neighbours, and, after his lust for slaughter is satisfied, disposing of his prisoners to certain slave-dealers, who have established themselves on the southern bank of the creek, where they have erected barracoons, factories, and every convenience ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... this side that symbolism discloses its kinship with the Russian novel,—with the mystic quietism of Tolstoy and the religion of self-sacrifice in Dostoievsky; and its sharp antagonism to the Nietzschean gospel of daemonic will and ruthless self-assertion, just then being preached in Germany. The two faiths were both alive and both responded to deep though diverse needs of the time; but the immediate future, as we shall see, belonged to the second. They had their first resounding encounter when Nietzsche ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... me for the fatal plain, Where, fierce with vengeance for Patroclus slain, Stalks Peleus' ruthless son? Who, when thou glid'st amid the dark abodes, To hurl the spear and to revere the gods, ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various
... the roaring water, Whose voice she heard in music grand When she was but the old chief's daughter, When love such wondrous fortunes planned; And ruthless phantoms of the past Across her mind are flitting fast, Each with a keen, envenomed dart That poisons brain and tortures heart. With breath too quick to lift a sigh, With marble firmness on her brow, With glassy ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... on thy pain; Senseless trees, they cannot hear thee; Ruthless bears, they will not cheer thee; King Pandion he is dead; All thy friends are ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... points, and might be esteemed a model of symmetry and breeding by the fancy, or even pronounced a beauty and exquisitely proportioned by connoisseurs; but sweetly pretty—never! I could not stomach that, especially when Albert growled and laid bare his ruthless ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... as a hard despot, ruthless as a tiger who strikes his fellow-workers numb and dumb with fear. "But he is under no illusions as to the real sentiments of the members of the Soviet who back him, nor does he deign to conceal those which he entertains toward them.... Whenever Lenin himself is concerned justice is expeditious. ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... which had given colour to the scene. But the laughter, the praise, the very tones of enjoyment had to her a heartless ring. She watched the pageantry of the great Indian Administration dissolve, and was blind to its glitter and conscious only of its ruthlessness. For ruthless she found it to-night. She had been face to face with a victim of the system—a youth broken by it, needlessly broken, and as helpless to recover from his hurt as a wounded animal. The harm had been done no doubt with the very best intention, but the harm had been ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... gusts of the popular tempest, currents of the great popular tide. But the mighty mover of all was the sudden change from the disgusts and depressions of serfdom, into a sense that all the world of possession lay before the bold heart and the ruthless hand. Every form of wealth and enjoyment was offered to the man who had begun life in the condition of one chained to the ground, and who could never have hoped to change his toil but for the grave. But the barrier was now cast down, and all were free to rush in. The treasury of national honours ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... Brotherlin, Bryan, Irv. Withington, and the mighty McNair. The scrub team player at that time was pretty nearly any chap that was willing to take his life in his hands by going down to the field and letting those ruthless giants step on his face and generally muss up ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... a nature so malign and ruthless, That never doth she glut her greedy will, And after food is ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... censor, so much so, that the most harmless communications failed to reach their destination, and when by chance anything was allowed to pass through it was mutilated beyond recognition, whole sentences being smirched with printer's ink or pages cut away by the ruthless hand of the censor. ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... The historical explanation of the Trojan Pallas and the Greek Pallas is simple enough; but as soon as the two are mythologically personified and made one, there emerges just such a bitter and ruthless goddess as Euripides, in his revolt against the current mythology, loved to depict. But it is not only the mythology that he is attacking. He seems really to feel that if there are conscious gods ruling the world, they are ...
— The Trojan women of Euripides • Euripides
... of being interfered with, the former proceed upon their ruthless expedition; while the latter have no alternative but await its issue. They do so with spirits impatiently ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... wanted to repay my friends and to marry; I wanted work; I went in search of it; and before long I had more on my hands than anybody else. Bah! I had every soul in Mantes against me—attorneys, notaries, and even the bailiffs. They tried to fasten a quarrel on me. In our ruthless profession, as you know, madame, if you wish to ruin a man, it is soon done. I was concerned for both parties in a case, and they found it out. It was a trifle irregular; but it is sometimes done in Paris, attorneys in ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... the Indians were a constant terror to the settlers in Canada: several Frenchmen had been assassinated by the ruthless savages, and their countrymen were too feeble in numbers to demand the punishment of the murderers. Conscious of their strength, the natives became daily more insolent; no white man could venture beyond the settlement without incurring great danger. Building ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... power and influence were dead. Never again would she lift her head in England. Furthermore, Dunstan was growing old; and albeit his zeal for religion, pure and undefiled as he understood it, was not abated, the cruel, ruthless instincts and temper, which had accompanied and made it effective in the great day of conflict when he was engaged in sweeping from England the sin and scandal of a married clergy, had by now burnt themselves ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... low by the well of Barrackpore to the maddened Rajpoot, to the dreaming Moor, was fiercely shouted by the well of Cawnpore to a chorus of shrieking women, English wives and mothers, and spluttering of blood-choked babes, and clash of red knives, and drunken shouts of slayers, ruthless ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... fancy to attempt to rest among such unquiet companions. It took us more than another half-hour to get clear of them; and we calculated that they covered a space four to five miles broad at the place we found them. We then came upon the ground which they had occupied, and the most ruthless of invaders could not have destroyed a country more completely than they had done. Not a blade of grass remained; every tree and shrub was leafless, and their branches were stripped of their bark. We could not help looking ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... conspicuous and trusted of these Divisional Magistrates, I find, is Colonel Turner, who was Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant, under Lord Aberdeen. He is now denounced by the Irish Nationalists as a ruthless tyrant. He was then denounced by the Irish Tories as a sympathiser with Home Rule. It is probable, therefore, that he must be a conscientious and loyal executive officer, who understands and acts upon the plain lines of ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... as it was very likely to be at the time our neighborhood was overrun by a ruthless foe. It happened so, poor Fanny! You did not know the future, any more than I did—no one on earth knows the mysteries of the future, 'not the angels in heaven, nor the Son, ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... one family, however, was not only sad but alarming. Death knows no hatred: death is deaf and blind, nothing more, and astonishment was felt at this ruthless destruction of all who bore one name. Still nobody suspected the true culprits, search was fruitless, inquiries led nowhere: the marquise put on mourning for her brothers, Sainte-Croix continued in his path of folly, and all things went on as before. Meanwhile Sainte-Croix had made ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... within the Socialist Party. A bitter critic of Jaures and also of the orthodox "center" of the party on the ground that their methods are too timid to achieve anything for Socialism in view of the ruthless aggressions of the capitalists, Herve nevertheless said that it was only very exceptional circumstances that could justify revolutionary Socialists acting against the party organization, even though it seemed to be doing so little effective ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... past us in the clouds, penetrating the interstices of our clothes, and the pieces of ice which flew from the blows of Peter's ax were whisked into the air, and then dashed over the precipice. We had quite enough to do to prevent ourselves from being served in the same ruthless fashion, and now and then, in the more violent gusts of wind, were glad to stick our alpenstocks into the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... earth by the Martians should go without record, and circumstances having placed the facts at my disposal, I deem it a duty, both to posterity and to those who were witnesses of and participants in the avenging counterstroke that the earth dealt back at its ruthless enemy in the heavens, to write down the story ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... were fearful times. As long as William lived, ruthless as he was to all rebels, he kept order and did justice with a strong and steady hand; for he brought with him from Normandy the instincts of a truly great statesman. And in his sons' time matters grew worse and worse. ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... ever know how many victims dropped out of the ruthless caravan, exhausted by thirst and forced marches, on the routes sometimes of three hundred leagues from the interior to the sea. They were usually divided into files containing each thirty or forty slaves, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... drowning appear to have been the methods most often used, and they are perhaps merciful ways of death. The great London clubs became sepulchres. All people who had received the highest distinctions and honours, whose names were household words, were removed with ruthless determination. Scarcely a single well-known man or woman of the older generation, whose name was honoured in science, literature, art, business or politics, was spared. All aged and wealthy people perished. A clean sweep was made, and made with a decision and unanimity ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... Rejoice that thou art king no longer! that All ways are closed against thee! There is none For innocent action, and there but remains To do wrong or to suffer wrong. A power Fierce, pitiless, grasps the world, and calls itself The right. The ruthless hands of our forefathers Did sow injustice, and our fathers then Did water it with blood; and now the earth No other harvest bears. It is not meet To uphold crime, thou'st proved it, and if 't were, Must ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... many enterprises trampled to earth by those ruthless feet was the Countryman, which survived the desolating raid but a short time. It was years before the young journalist knew another home. For some months he set type on the Macon Daily Telegraph, going from there to New Orleans as private secretary of the editor of the Crescent ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... freedom and a new life together. Are we to shed our old mates, like Nautilus shells? My new coming into love makes me pitiful. Must we be ruthless? ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... indeed form a powerful aristocracy, nor is it possible to conceive one apparently more oppressive. They are ruthless tyrants; they habitually inflict upon their subjects punishments more grievous than the slave population of our colonies were ever visited with; not content with beating them with sticks or flogging them with ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... 12, 1683. Had the Poles and Austrians been defeated there, the Turkish general might readily have fulfilled his threat "to stable his horses in the Church of St. Peter's at Rome," and all Western Europe would, no doubt, have been devastated by the ruthless and bloodthirsty Ottomans. Of important and decisive battles since that of Waterloo we may mention in our own Civil War those of Gettysburg, by which the invasion of the North was checked, and at Chattanooga, Nov. 23 and 25, ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... for many charities and a scrupulous performance of pious practices, and who also had no father who had achieved a local saintship. But Belarab, with his glamour of asceticism and melancholy together with a reputation for severity (for a man so pious would be naturally ruthless), was not on the spot. The only favourable point in his absence was the fact that he had taken with him his latest wife, the same lady whom Jorgenson had mentioned in his letter to Lingard as anxious to bring about battle, murder, and the looting of the ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... Quire also. And it would be very wrong of me to save Mr. Carrel Quire, for to save him would be to jeopardise the future of the British Empire, because unless he is scotched, that man's frantic egotism and ruthless ambition will achieve political disaster for four hundred million human beings. I should like to save you. But can I weigh you in the balance against an Empire? ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... and crowed. And the barber, approaching Frank with his red-hot sword, made him lie on his back to be shaved. Then followed an excruciating sense of having his hair pulled and his face scraped and burnt, which made him move and murmur in his sleep; until, a ruthless attempt being made to thrust the sword up ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... ornamented with miniatures invaluable to the student of men and manners of the Middle Ages, the missal of Louis XII., bearing his arms, the Recueil de Prieres of the eighth century—all these had been completely destroyed by the ruthless Prussian bombardment. The Museum, rich in chefs d'oeuvre of the French school, both of sculpture and painting, the handsome Protestant church, the theatre, the Palais de Justice, all shared the same fate, not to speak of buildings of lesser importance, including ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... graceful dives. And so, in May, as soon as it is dark, the pond becomes a deafening orchestra: it is impossible to talk at table, impossible to sleep. We had to remedy this by means perhaps a little too rigorous. What could we do? He who tries to sleep and cannot needs become ruthless. ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... potential resources but weak in available cash. Neither in New York nor in London could purse strings be loosened for the purpose of building a road through what the world considered a barren and Arctic wilderness. But in the faith and vision of the president, George Stephen, and the ruthless energy of the general manager, William Van Horne, American born and trained, the Canadian Pacific had priceless assets. Aided in critical times by further government loans, they carried the project through, and by 1886, five years before the time fixed by their contract, trains were ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... lingering miserably through the year. Goitre, too, was increasing in frequency. It was rarely that a group gathered to see us some of whose members were not suffering from this horrible deformity. And everywhere in the pretty country were signs of the ruthless devastation of religious war. That was a war of extermination. "A storm of universal fire blasted every field, consumed every house, destroyed ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... would have felt more sympathy than he did with the beginning of the great movement, with the strivings after reform which preceded it; he had, on the contrary, the sort of cold continuous rage, the ruthless self-righteousness and cut-and-dryness which would have made him, had he been a Frenchman, a terrorist of the most dreadful type; a regular routinist in extermination of corrupt people. Hence I cannot believe that, much as he may have ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... more, if you tried to see. Did a soul present think of such minute investigation? Not one. In the actor's hand that trumpery became at once the glorious thing by which Napoleon had planted the sentiment of knightly heroism in the men whom Danton would have launched upon earth ruthless and bestial, as galley-slaves that had ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... into contact—tall, dark, and handsome, she gave the impression of much strength of will, keen wits, and great abilities. She was a very clever teacher, who liked to push on quick pupils, but was a little ruthless towards stupid girls. She knew how to make the dullest subject entertaining, and expected a high average of work, having no toleration for laziness, and a contempt for incompetence. No girl ever dreamt of whispering or idling during Miss Harper's classes. As a rule, a word ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... no trace of his usual shuffling uncertain gait, but with a balanced cadenced step, and as he turned his head calmly from side to side his face seemed transfigured. It was the face of a genius, an evil genius, unjust and ruthless—a brutal god. I felt, and no doubt everyone in the crowd felt, that between us and that lonely man there was some immense difference and distance of outlook and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... with raving maniacs, of men who have become like little children again. And yet when you hear, "The Germans are advancing! They are coming!" the German army seems to take on a supernatural aspect, to become a ruthless machine that drives everything before it in its advance, and in its wake leaves a country stripped of life—all the people and cottages rubbed off the face of ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... in the sky. Very soon, he said, the hills will be folded in a dim blue veil, and sleep will perchance blot out the misery that has brooded in me all this livelong day, he muttered. May I never see another, but close my eyes for ever on the broad ruthless light. Of what avail to witness another day? All days are ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... carved by that celebrated statesman on one of its benches about the middle of the last century—probably in 1854. And why is it to be removed? Simply because it is said to impede the traffic! Could anything be more absurd? Do, pray, save it from the hand of the ruthless "improver." Yours truly, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various
... have a keen remembrance of the degradation from which his uncle had restored the empire. None knew better than he how the ignoble reigns of the usurper Basiliscus, of Zeno, and of Anastasius, by perpetual tampering with heresy and ruthless persecution of the orthodox, had well-nigh broken that empire to pieces. Had he not thrown all his energy, as the leading spirit of his uncle's realm, into that great submission to Pope Hormisdas ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... and spears and several large, two-bladed battle-axes, the heads of which bore a striking resemblance to the propellor of a small flier. Seizing one of these he attacked the door once more with great fury. He expected to hear something from I-Gos at this ruthless destruction, but no sound came to him from beyond the door, which was, he thought, too thick for the human voice to penetrate; but he would have wagered much that I-Gos heard him. Bits of the hard wood splintered at each impact ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... thus be rid of him quickly and without trouble? No! She had longed for him, had risked her life to gain possession of him, and she would keep him against all odds. He did not fill the void left in her heart by the inroad of the ruthless eagle; he did drive her to the point of distraction; but he was new and interesting just as a doll or a mirror or a rubber ball ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... metals, blest with power t' appease The ruthless rage of merciless disease, O'er the frail part a subtle fluid pour, Drenched with invisible Galvanic shower, Till the arthritic staff and crutch forego, And leap exulting ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... will have to be very full and complete to be wholly convincing, for, rightly or wrongly, I have been very strongly impressed with the conviction that the queen is the victim of a powerful band of thoroughly ruthless, unscrupulous conspirators." ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... out with ruthless vigour—naturally raised up adversaries on every side. In the court itself Maachah and her party were implacable. Outside it the idolatrous priests, and all their hangers-on, whose vested interests ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... in a way that made doubt impossible; Sloane, even, bewildered as he was, got the impression of his ruthless certainty. ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... are concerned, it is not the occasional hunter that does the real damage. The islands are becoming widely known to students of birds, and it is the bird student, the member of the Audubon Society, (in most instances, I regret to say, men of my own country) who are guilty of ruthless slaughter of the shore birds for their skins, and particularly for their eggs; all this in ...
— Supplement to Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood
... the nature and character of the Republic itself. But in the short and common-sense cut that Sherman had made to a solution, he left the politicians out in the cold, and they cried out against it as a hideous and ruthless piece of assumption on the part of a military man to attempt to have any opinions after the war was over. Any settlement that left the politicians out in the cold was not to be tolerated. Some of these gentlemen had a very big and black crow to pick with the South. Some of them, in the course ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... said. "I would distrust every statement of his. I can't determine what was in his mind or what he is aiming at. But this I know, that to make a compact with him would be to be at his mercy. He is ruthless; he would not consider what blood he shed; and, besides, he has committed himself too deeply, and is no fool to ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... days of luxury and rapacity and of wild passions and ruthless bloodshed, it was strange to see these men stripping themselves of wealth and power—for many of the brethren had been rich and noble—and proclaiming the Gospel of the love and gentleness and purity and poverty of Christ. ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... lying stretched before their own wigwams, which they had defended so bravely. A scene of smiling peace had indeed been turned into one of deepest mourning. Content and happiness had fled before the ruthless destroyer, and he had gone forward to the next Indian village ...
— Tecumseh - A Chronicle of the Last Great Leader of His People; Vol. - 17 of Chronicles of Canada • Ethel T. Raymond
... letter—an important letter, describing the lair of the illicit distillers to a deputy marshal of the revenue force, who was known to be in a neighboring town. He had good reason to withhold his signature, for the name of the informer in the ruthless vengeance of the region would be as much as his life was worth. The moth had not spoiled the letter—the laborious letter; he was so glad of that! He saw no analogies, he received not even a subtle warning, as he sealed and addressed the envelope and affixed ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... been frequently visited by the Aborigines, and the intercourse between them had in some instances at least been of a friendly character. What then could have been the inducement to commit so cold and ruthless an act? or what was the object to be attained by it? Without pausing to seek for answers to these questions which, in the present case, it must be difficult, if not impossible, to solve, it may be worth while to take a view of the conduct of the ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... piece of writing shows Lord Shelburne to have had in him the making of a successful memoirist. Gossip, anecdote, passages of sarcasm and epigram are mingled in skillful proportions; and there is certainly no waste of the milk of human kindness. Pitt (Lord Chatham) is dissected with ruthless elaboration: half a dozen minor statesmen are scarified with a single sentence apiece. Horace Walpole himself, with all his sinister acidity, nowhere hits harder—we had almost said more bitterly—than does Lord Shelburne in this short sketch of his. But just as an English House of Commons ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... is the concept of the ultimately Real which these stricter mystics have evolved and are prepared to defend? It is that of pure and unconditioned Being—the One—the Absolute. By a ruthless process of abstraction they have abjured the world of sense to vow allegiance to a mode of being of which nothing can be said without denying it. For even to allow a shadow of finiteness in the Absolute is to negate it; to define it is to annihilate it! It swallows up all conditions ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... so significant," he said, completing her sentence meaningly, "as to remove the least shadow of doubt. I can feel absolutely certain of the immediate intervention of my most ruthless and daring enemy. His presence here is proved. He is ready to act at any moment. His object is plain," explained Don Luis. "By means of the anonymous article, by means of that half of the walking-stick, he meant to compromise me and have me arrested. By the fall of the ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... attack of pleurisy after a few days, during which, as Plutarch tells us, he was terrified by dreams and by the anticipated return of Sulla. The people rejoiced that they were freed from the cruelty of his ruthless tyranny, little knowing what new horrors the grim future ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... have appeared like assailing Christianity. It is true, that many an unfortunate fellow-citizen in Suffolk had been made to feel how close was the gripe of his hand, when he found himself in its grasp; but there is a way of practising the most ruthless extortion, that serves not only to deceive the world, but which would really seem to mislead the extortioner himself. Phrases take the place of deeds, sentiments those of facts, and grimaces those of benevolent ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... LUCIO. Why, what a ruthless thing is this in him, for the rebellion of a codpiece to take away the life of a man! Would the duke that is absent have done this? Ere he would have hanged a man for the getting a hundred bastards, he would have paid for the nursing a thousand. He had some feeling of the ...
— Measure for Measure • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... pale flowers, Gathered with hope to please, Along the mountain towers,— Lose courage, and despair. He will never be gainsaid,— Pitiless, will not be stayed; His hot tyranny Burns up every other tie. Therefore comes an hour from Jove Which his ruthless will defies, And the dogs of Fate unties. Shiver the palaces of glass; Shrivel the rainbow-colored walls, Where in bright Art each god and sibyl dwelt Secure as in the zodiac's belt; And the galleries and halls, Wherein every siren sung, Like a meteor pass. For this fortune wanted root In ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... all that had happened up to the moment of my being struck down by a grape-shot. But what a terrible disaster was this that had befallen us—five killed and six wounded out of our little party of fifteen! And, in addition to that, we were in the power of a band of ruthless ruffians who were quite capable of throwing the quick and the dead alike over the side when they could find time ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... with the most ruthless disregard to the narrative which she mangled by these interruptions, "if that should be the case, it should cost Sir George but the asking a pair of colours for one of them at the War-Office, since we have ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... he and his companions came across a family of Indians in a canoe by the river bank. The white wood rangers were as ruthless as their red foes, sparing neither sex nor age; and the scouts were cocking rifles when Wells recognized the Indians as being the family into which he had been adopted, and by which he had been treated as a son and brother. ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... short space, to be relieved from his burdens. For them both, so young, so helpless against powers that were ruthless in the accomplishment of wider destinies, they were allowed to find in these ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... inexcusable oversights which will sometimes afflict the best of players, placed his rook in the arms of one of her pawns. It was her first advantage. She looked triumphant—even ruthless. ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... her was touching. However, he could not have dared to hint at these sentiments. He had to pretend that her exposure to the stresses of the labour-market was quite natural and right. Always he was careful in his speech with her. When he got to know people he was apt to be impatient and ruthless; for example, to John Orgreave and his wife, and to his mother and stepfather, and sometimes even to Everard Lucas. He would bear them down. But he was restrained from such freedoms with Enwright, and equally with Marguerite ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... was gone, the Master called Bohannan and Leclair, outlined the next coup in this strange campaign, and assigned crews to them for the implacable carrying-out of the plan determined on—surely the most dare-devil, ruthless, and astonishing plan ever conceived by the brain of ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... change. If William had desired any evidence of the overwhelming triumph which he had achieved, the deportment of these disappointed men toward him would have fully satisfied him. No longer regarded as a ruthless invader of the privacy of honest homes, and guilty of outraging the finer feelings of humanity, he was everywhere received with the utmost respect and deference, and many apologies were offered for their inconsiderate conduct of a few ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... implacable hostility of the military clans, jealous of any religious power capable of interfering, either directly or indirectly, with their policy. So soon as the foreign religion began to prove itself formidable in the world of action, ruthless measures were decided; and the frightful massacres of priests by Nobunaga, in the sixteenth century, ended the political aspirations ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... prisoner. Nothing could exceed the excitement and exultation in the city when they saw Regulus and five hundred other Roman soldiers, brought captive in. A few days before, they had been in consternation at the imminent danger of his coming in as a ruthless and vindictive conqueror. ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... make a blue week to his Lordship's honor; and how many would find themselves in the House of Correction to his disgrace—how many employers would be annoyed,—how many customers would be disappointed—and how many wives would get broken heads; when suddenly a crowd of filthy, dejected, and ruthless beings swept along in mass, heedless of whatever came in their way, and threatening life and limb in the onset. Then there came such a smashing of maids' bonnets, squeezing of milliners, and frightening of old maids, as never was seen before; indeed, this, added to the many well-jammed ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... displayed the whole of his character. Savage revenge and ruthless cruelty were yet to become apparent in his conduct as an officer in the British service. It seems to have been the design of Providence that Americans, in all ages, should learn to detest treason by seeing it exhibited in all its hideous deformity, ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... happy land, Together held their mighty charge, And Truth walk'd all about at large; Health for the royal troop the feast Prepared, and Virtue was high-priest. Such was the fame our Goddess bore Her Temple such, in days of yore. What changes ruthless Time presents! Behold her ruin'd battlements, Her walls decay'd, her nodding spires, Her altars broke, her dying fires, 240 Her name despised, her priests destroy'd, Her friends disgraced, her foes employ'd, Herself (by ministerial arts Deprived e'en of the people's hearts, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... terrible indeed; but what we, who were behind the scenes, felt most keenly was the fact that the real catastrophe in the Congo was the desolation and murder in the larger sense. The invasion of family life, the ruthless destruction of every social barrier, the shattering of every tribal law, the introduction of criminal practices which struck the chiefs of the people dumb with horror—in a word, a veritable avalanche of filth and immorality overwhelmed ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... eye, a falcon gaze, roving and keen. His jaw was prominent and set, mastiff-like; his lips were stern. It was youth with its softness not yet quite burned and hardened away that kept the whole cast of his face from being ruthless. ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... year. But let no one mistake him for a mere HORNE of Plenty, pouring out benefits indiscriminately upon the genuine unemployed and the work-shy. He has already deprived some seventeen thousand potential domestics of their unearned increment, and he promises ruthless prosecution of all who try to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... filled with the stench of dead bodies, shaken by the impact of the shells, stood two men, each himself a stake in the game, and while the dice were still being tossed for their very bones, they talked of—human material! They uttered those ruthless, shameful words without a shadow of indignation, as though it were natural for their living bodies to be no more than a gambler's chips in the hands of men who arrogated to themselves the right to play the game of gods. Without hesitating they laid their one, ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... affair, the news did not thrill. In America one's withers are unwrung by such scares. The "exclusiveness" of Lord Cholme's information, indeed, defeated his object. Lord Cholme, I knew, was loved neither in Fleet Street nor in Park Place. His ruthless competition with the news agencies, his capture of numerous cable-routes, had gradually divided England into two classes: those who read The Morning and those who didn't. Everyone remembers the exclusive description of the destruction ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... translation of Chamberlain's torrent of folly, hinted not obscurely that the real father of Christ was not the Jew, Joseph, but a much more Germanic person. Neither Clausewitz, who first impressed upon the German mind the theory of ruthless warfare, nor Bernhardi, nor Treitschke, who did as much to build up the Emperor's political imagination, strike one as bearing particularly German names. There are indeed very grave grounds for the German ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... selection is nature's way. It works well—give it a chance; but it has to be accompanied by a ruthless slaughter of the unfit, and takes thousands upon thousands of years. We have a ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... prepared; the pangs, The internal pangs, were ready, the dread strife Of poor humanity's afflicted will, Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny." ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... cliff. The scenery here seems rich in legendary association. At one tack we bore into Bloody Bay, on the Mull coast,—the scene of a naval battle between two island chiefs; at another, we approached, on the mainland, a cave inaccessible save from the sea, long the haunt of a ruthless Highland pirate. Ere we rounded the headland of Ardnamurchan, the slant light of evening was gleaming athwart the green acclivities of Mull, barring them with long horizontal lines of shadow, where the trap terraces rise step beyond step, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... fierce, savage, barbarous, truculent, merciless, unmerciful, pitiless, ruthless, fell>. (With this group ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... habit of ruthless criticism is to concentrate the Frenchman's attention, even to excess, on the motives of conduct, and to bring him more and more inevitably to regard self-love, self-preservation, personal vanity in its various forms, as the source of all our apparent virtues. Even when we appear to be most ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... in a really touching manner, and speaks of him always with enthusiastic praise of his heart and his intellect. Were it not for these two traits I should not know what to think of this young man, who speaks of God and the world in the most ruthless manner. Curiously enough, your reproach hit him in this particular point, and when he showed me your letter there was a peculiar desperate question in his glance. With such experiences the boy will become quickly, almost too ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... feel the cold a little less than the labourer who passes by, that we should be better fed or clad than he, that we should buy any object that is not strictly indispensable, and we have unconsciously returned, through a thousand byways, to the ruthless act of primitive man despoiling his weaker brother. There is no single privilege we enjoy but close investigation will prove it to be the result of a perhaps very remote abuse of power, of an unknown violence or ruse of long ago; and all these we ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... the carnage, and the strong arm of De Soto which led in the bloody fray. And we must not forget that these Peruvians were fighting for their lives, their liberty, their all; and that these Spaniards were ruthless invaders. Neither can we greatly admire the heroism displayed by the assailants. The man who is carefully gloved and masked can with impunity rob the bees of their honey. The wolf does not need much courage to induce him to leap into the ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... under the wheels of his carriage by Sazanov, a member of the Fighting Force. The death of this cruel tyrant thrilled the world. In February, 1905, Ivan Kaliaiev executed the death sentence which had been passed upon the ruthless Governor-General of Moscow, the ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... which is now the bane of my existence. Not so with Christine; she has always warmly returned the affection of our parents, as a daughter should love the authors of her being, while I fear I have been repining when I should have loved. Our origin is a curse entailed by the ruthless laws of the land, and it is not to be attributed to any, at least to none of these later days, as a fault; and such has ever been the language of my poor sister when she has seen a merit in their wishes to benefit us at the expense of their ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... internal commotion and civil strife; that it shall regard the burdensome and far-reaching consequences of such struggles, the legacies of exhausted finances, of oppressive debt, of onerous taxation, of ruined cities, of paralyzed industries, of devastated fields, of ruthless conscription, of the slaughter of men, of the grief of the widow and the orphan, of imbittered resentments that long survive those who provoked them and heavily afflict the innocent generations ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... God's assistance in a land flowing with milk and honey; this very generation proved worse than their fathers. The original inhabitants of Canaan, whom they dispossessed, could hardly have surpassed them in sin against Jehovah; and therefore the ruthless slaughter of their conquest was as unreasonable as it was inhuman. So much ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... things as these troubled thou wert? How wilt thou now endure, or how Not now be strangely hurt?— When utter beauty must come closer to thee Than even anger or fear could be; When thou, like metal in a kiln, must lie Seized by beauty's mightily able flame; Enjoyed by beauty as by the ruthless glee Of an unescapable power; Obeying beauty as air obeys a cry; Yea, one thing made of beauty and thee, As steel and a white heat are made the same! —Ah, but I know how this infirmity Will fail ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... lay in the word, and he was that sort of lover who has seen one woman, and can never see another—not the product of the most modern civilisation. Before Laura had had Playmates he had given all he had to give; he had waited and hoped ever since; and when the ruthless gossips had said to him before Mary Jewell's house that she was in love with the Faith Healer, nothing changed in him. For the man, for Ingles, Tim belonged to a primitive breed, and love was not in his heart. As he rode out to Sloly's ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... not only a regenerated Spain and Portugal, but their mighty dominions in Southern and Central America, to renew with these fresh forces the struggle with Britain for her empire of the seas, these were the designs by which Napoleon was driven to the most ruthless of his enterprises. He acted with his usual subtlety. In October 1807 France and Spain agreed to divide Portugal between them; and on the advance of their forces the reigning House of Braganza ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... was swimming in a hot maelstrom of pain, but it was quieting as his breathing returned to normal. As long as his opponents were slower or less ruthless, he could ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... from the harem of some palace, probably from the royal seraglio itself, off which we had been lying. And the horror depicted on her face, as well as the stains of blood on her abductor, told with what ruthless violence. Here then, I thought, in all human probability, was the royal maiden I had summoned; here was the wildest vagary of my imagination realized. But how different from the bright fancy ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... congeniality between the two girls, but her heart ached for the other's evident suffering. Her own conscience was not quite clear for she had permitted Wiley to show his hand without stopping to think of Angie, so determined had she been to learn the depths to which this man would descend in his ruthless self-seeking. She had weighed her cousin shrewdly and she did not believe her capable of deep and lasting affection, yet she shuddered at the thought of any girl's heart in Starr ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... love for man. A god thyself, thou gav'st, despite the gods, To mortals more than is a mortal's due. And therefore must thou keep this dreary rock, Erect, with frame unbending, reft of sleep, And many a bootless wail of agony Shalt utter. Change of mind in Zeus is none, Ruthless the rule when power is ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith |
