"Soft-hearted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Madam Lambert was a goose if she fancied the two Virginian lads were going to fall in love with the young women of the Lambert house. Little Het might have her fancy; little girls will; but they get it over: "and you know, Molly" (which dear, soft-hearted Mrs. Lambert could not deny), "you fancied somebody else before you fancied me," says the General; but Harry had evidently not been smitten by Hetty; and now he was superseded, as it were, by having an elder ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... on his heel and left her in his own room. He only turned once to look in at the door again. "If you're in any trouble, I'm real soft-hearted, Eliza; I'll be real good to you, though you've been ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... I heard talking and so I ventured to come up too," said a timid voice, and Miss Delano tiptoed softly in. "Phebe, my dear child, my dear child!" and the soft-hearted little old maid stooped to kiss Phebe's pale cheek, and ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... door upon their jibes and offered Andy a cigarette he had just rolled; not that Andy was too sick to roll his own, but because Pink was notably soft-hearted toward a sick man and was prone to indulge himself in ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... in silence. Racey had nothing to say. He was too busy speculating as to the true significance of the girl's presence. What did she want—money? These saloon floozies always did. He hoped she wouldn't want much. For he ruefully knew himself to be a soft-hearted fool that was never able to resist a woman's appeal. He glanced at her covertly. Her little chin was trembling. Poor kid. That's all she was. Just a kid. Helluva ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... Bradley nor Ben was willing to go to such extremes. Jake Bradley had had rough experiences, and he was no soft-hearted sentimentalist, but he had a natural repugnance to taking the life of ...
— Ben's Nugget - A Boy's Search For Fortune • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... there, wife; don't say a word," put in the parson. "Get her off to bed. Never mind, Dolly, don't you cry;" for Parson Cushing was a soft-hearted gentleman and couldn't bear the sight of Dolly's quivering under lip. So Dolly told her little story, how she had been promised a sugar dog by Nabby if she'd be a good girl and go to sleep, and how she couldn't go to sleep, and how she just went down ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... the train arrivals. He posted letters and called every day at the post office for mail. Whether he got any or not Phil was unable to say definitely. But he got a sneaking suspicion after a while, that the soft-hearted, simple, big fellow was either answering letters through the Seattle Matrimonial Times, or corresponding with some lady friend. He felt convinced that Sol was badly, or rather, madly ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... cause where it was tenable. Nevertheless, I must confess, that if all his grandfather of Navarre's morals have not descended to him, this poor King has somehow inherited a share of the specks that were thought to dim the lustre of that great Prince—that Charles is a little soft-hearted, or so, where beauty is concerned.—Do not blame him too severely, pretty Mistress Alice; when a man's hard fate has driven him among thorns, it were surely hard to prevent him from trifling with the few roses he may ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... all on sight, gladly, the damned spies," he responded. "That's the great trouble with this country, Miss Strong. We're too soft-hearted and chivalrous. The Germans realize that war and sentiment have no place together. If killing babies and destroying churches will in their opinion help them win the war they do it without compunction. The civilized world decided that poison gas ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... the rooms once before, during a brief passage of the Marquis, soon after his wife's death in Paris. But, as a rule, only Marie and Jean had access to the apartment. He looked round with an eye always ready with the tear of sympathy; for he was a soft-hearted man. Then he looked at Marie again, shamefacedly. But she, divining his thoughts, shrugged ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... suppose thy meaning is that we shall see the mountains from hence?" "Yea," said David; "so hold up thine heart when that sight first cometh before thine eyes. As for us, we are used to the sight, and that from a place much nigher to the mountains: yet they who are soft-hearted amongst us are overcome at whiles, when there is storm and tempest, and ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... so obviously happy in this breach of all nursery discipline that Anita had not the heart to send him home. Anita was a soft-hearted creature. Sergeant McGillicuddy, however, explained disgustedly to the waiting troopers and horses how the After-Clap was permitted to begin his career ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... The soft-hearted shore-going critics of conduct themselves would not dare, The trivial cocksure belittlers of dangers they have not to share, Claim much—oh so much, from rough manhood,—unflinching cool daring in fray, And selflessness ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, Feb. 13, 1892 • Various
... have chosen her before the other could she have come back; but that failing, this other would do, even Josephine's love being better than no love at all. Besides, she had her own charms, if of a sober kind. She was a sweet-tempered, soft-hearted creature, with the aroma of remembrance round her when she was young and pretty and unattainable: consequently, being unattainable, held as the moral pot of gold under the rainbow, which, could it have been caught, would have made all life ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... groaned. "Griswold, it would make my father turn over in his coffin if he could know that we've come to that! But I guess you're right. Everybody says I'm too soft-hearted to be a master of men. Well, I must be getting home. To-morrow morning, at the plant? All ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... soft-hearted fool or I'd ha'—" began Melissa, somewhat ominously, but checked herself after a quick glance at her mistress's face. "Try to go to sleep, Uncle Joe," she substituted. "I'll have some toast and tea for you when you wake up. You—you ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... doing. My life, your mother's, the existence of our family, hang upon your conduct. Yet, yet there is time to prevent this desolation. I am controlling my emotions; I wish you to save us, you, all! Throw yourself at your cousin's feet. She is soft-hearted; she may yet ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... scrofulous little man, with strangely flaxen mutton-chop whiskers of which he was very proud. He was a clerk and had almost always something wrong with his eyes. He was rather soft-hearted, but self-confident and sometimes extremely conceited in speech, which had an absurd effect, incongruous with his little figure. He was one of the lodgers most respected by Amalia Ivanovna, for he did not get drunk and paid regularly for his lodgings. Andrey Semyonovitch ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... decided not to birch boys in the future, but to fine their parents. Several soft-hearted boys have already indicated that it will hurt ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various
... and radiant moonlight, when toward twelve o'clock Graham came forth from his last visit for the night, and she lifted up her head and looked him dumbly in the face,—dumbly, yet imploring a word of hope or comfort,—and it was more than the soft-hearted Scot could bear. "Major," said he, as he gently laid a big hand upon the black and tangled wealth of hair, "that lad in yonder would have been beyond the ken of civilization days ago if it hadn't been for this little savage. I'm ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... report could be given by his masters and ushers of that thick-set, square-faced, black-eyed, soft-hearted little Irish boy. He was very idle. He was whipped deservedly a great number of times. Though he had very good parts of his own, he got other boys to do his lessons for him, and only took just as much trouble as should enable him to scuffle through his exercises, and by good fortune escape ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... pass. He would not join himself to the King, because the King was an evil man, and he liked not evil; yet he loved not rebellion, and feared for his safety if the King had the upper hand; but it was still more that he had grown idle and soft-hearted, and feared the hard faring and brisk jesting of the camp. Yet even so the thought of the war lay heavy on his heart, and he wondered how men, whose lives were so short upon the goodly earth, should find it in their hearts to slay and be slain for such shadowy things ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... damn tender, soft-hearted ways that will win in the end. My old Indian guide used to say, 'Much stick, good squaw.' Ann Penhallow has never in her whole life had any stick. Damn these sugar plum husbands! I'd like to know what Miss Leila Grey thinks of this ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... soft-hearted fellow, though you wouldn't think it now, and when that little girl asked me to keep her safe, I just did it. I took her to a good woman whom I knew, for I hadn't any women belonging to me, nor any place but that to put her in. She stayed there till spring working for ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... swung up into his saddle. "Now, Gaspar, we've started on what's like to prove the last trail for both of us, understand? By night we'll both be outlawed. They'll have a price on us, and long before night, Kern will be after us. For the first time in your soft-hearted life you've got to work, and ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... Dora Lee was soft-hearted. She named her girl-baby Daniel, and called her Danny, which was not, after all, so bad, and her old uncle loved the child as if she had been his own. Little Daniel—he always called her Daniel, or, rather, "Dan'l"—was the only reason for his descending into the village on summer ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... will do him justice: he is an honourable fighter, he has parts and graces of a rude order. But he will never go far in life; he has no instincts and habits common with you; it has been, so far, a compromise, founded upon the old-fashioned romance of ill-used captive and soft-hearted maid; the compassion, too, of the superior for the low, the free for ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... was traveling with him and a cortege of nurses, trying one change after another. It was duller than ever at the ranch. We sat down three at table in a dining-room forty feet long, Aunt Isabel Dwight, Fraeulein Henschel, and myself. Fraeulein was the resident governess. She was a great, soft-hearted, injudicious creature, a mass of German interjections, but she had the grand style on the piano. There had been weeks of such weather as we are having now. Exercise was impossible till after sundown. I had dreamed of a breath of freedom, ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... with whom she was a great favourite, shook his head reproachfully at her, as he paused to rest and wipe his heated countenance. He was a greasy and affable personage, whose temper was as easy as his morals. He was more soft-hearted than most of his compatriots, and he honestly liked ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... door they could just hear the long continuous drone of the Badger's voice, rising and falling in waves of oratory; and presently they noticed that the sermon began to be punctuated at intervals by long-drawn sobs, evidently proceeding from the bosom of Toad, who was a soft-hearted and affectionate fellow, very easily converted—for the time being—to any point ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... tournaments, of banquets and feasting, and all the lavish display of the rich Bavarian court, she was, as we learn from her chroniclers, the leader of adoring knights and vassals, the idol of her parents, the ruler of her soft-hearted boy husband, an expert falconer, a daring horsewoman, and a fearless descendant of those woman warriors of her race, Margaret the Empress, and Philippa the Queen, and of a house that traced its descent through the warlike Hohenstaufens ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... in the wrong," replied the old man, "to find fault with him for it yesterday. He acts in my name, and knows well that I am weak and soft-hearted: the particulars he was not aware of, and so only did his duty. Indeed I know not myself after all whether I have done rightly in following my torn and deeply agitated heart: for perhaps still she may have too little firmness to keep the ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... fundamentally nasty about Morris Mr. Brock would not be inclined to overrate him. Mr. Brock pardons no unpardonable horrors: there are none here to pardon. But he overrates, or rather overmarks, William Morris as a scrupulous but soft-hearted examiner might overmark a sympathetic pupil. He never gives marks when the answer is wrong, but he gives a great many when it is right: and he is a little blind to deficiencies. He does not make it clear that Morris, as an artist, ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... her pupils were not in their work, she declared; it would be a good thing if a rule could be made that no more photographs were to be taken until the Christmas holidays. She looked very fierce and formidable as she spoke, but soft-hearted Mrs Asplin put ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... These big, soft-hearted trappers were all crying now like women. No other thought occurred to them than that these ghastly remains were Bob's, for the toboggan and ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... the contemporary historian, Thomas Basin, "advised him to punish by at least the destruction of their walls the Bordelese who had recalled the English to their city; but Charles, more merciful and more soft-hearted, refused." He confined himself to withdrawing from Bordeaux her municipal privileges, which, however, she soon partially recovered, and to imposing upon her a fine of a hundred thousand gold crowns, afterwards reduced to thirty thousand; he caused to be built at the expense ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... opinion he's crazy, but he's got his own ideas. He has promised to give you a tip-top wedding. If it had been left to me," he went on, sternly, "I'd have let you have something very different, but he's a soft-hearted fellow, and is going to do a foolish thing. It's lucky for you though. You'd have had a precious hard time of it with me, I tell you. You've got to be grateful to him; so come up here, and give him a ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... hour Margaret was too soft-hearted to rouse Jean, who had lain down in her clothes, trembling for her father. She went instead into Gavin's room to look admiringly at him as he slept. Often Gavin woke to find that his mother had slipped in to save him the enormous ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... came for him to leave Huntsville; his house was closed, except one room where he still preferred to remain, and his friend was already gone. He came to take tea with us for the last time, and made himself as agreeable as ever, although it evidently required some effort to do so. Soft-hearted Cousin Mary broke down and went off crying when he bade her good-bye, after tea; but I was not of such stuff, and laughingly rallied him on the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... believing they were fighting for men who would keep their word. The war was to go on till victory was won.. They died happily, believing that those who had spoken for England would keep their word. You're very soft-hearted in that article, sir, about the living. Did you think, when you sat down to write it, about the dead?—about that wilderness of white crosses out in France? You're proposing in cold blood to let those devils stay ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... he may want to kill himself, and I dare say he will have leanings that way. Most of us do. He has wanted to a good many times before now, and he is likely to again, but he won't do it. He's too soft-hearted. He might get up steam enough as far as courage goes, but he'd never forget other people and their opinion. He couldn't bear to hurt others, and still less could he bear the idea of their blaming him. He is precisely the man who cannot take ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... bread, and butcher's bills are bills! The man and the father, and the successful possessor of some thousands a year, was too strong at last for the soft-hearted philanthropist. Therefore, having collected his thoughts, he thus expressed himself upon ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... is to be no light affair, no purely nominal force, but a relentless iron-hand rule. Lenine is afraid that the proletariat is too soft-hearted ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... adventure of the Falls, and invited the tribe to gather together to witness its performance. It is said that the heart of Leelinau, touched by so much constancy, was inclined to relent and excuse her lover the terrible ordeal, but this is probably the dream of some soft-hearted girl, and only indicates what she would have ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... brother) sailed in Sherman's expedition, it was a blue day enough: how his mother and the girls did carry on! (Nabbes and Will supported the family, by the way; and Nabbes, inside of his slang, billiards, etc., was a good, soft-hearted fellow.) However, the country was looking up now. There were our victories,—and his own salary was raised. Will was snug down at Port Royal,—sent the girls home some confoundedly pretty jewelry; they were as busy as bees, knitting socks, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... brethren! And NO "contract"! Destroy, I pray you, destroy that word of the soft-hearted ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... charities pained the soft-hearted Pamela not a little. To give to all who asked her had been the one unselfish pleasure of her narrow soul. She had been imposed upon, of course; had fed families whose fathers squandered their weekly wages in the cosy taproom of a village inn; had in some wise encouraged idleness and ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... Garry, his voice changing, "salting the old man's fireplace with your own money so that his niece could come down here and study French and music! You wonderful, soft-hearted Irish lunatic! I ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... Then let the earth be drunken with our blood: Ile kill my Horse, because I will not flye: Why stand we like soft-hearted women heere, Wayling our losses, whiles the Foe doth Rage, And looke vpon, as if the Tragedie Were plaid in iest, by counterfetting Actors. Heere on my knee, I vow to God aboue, Ile neuer pawse againe, neuer stand still, Till either death ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... observe, seriously. "Course it's goin' to be a hard blow to poor old Lu, after working his way up here all these months, and nearly coughing his head off at times, to find out that his only relation in the wide world ain't well off in this world's goods. But then Matilda she always was soft-hearted, and mebbe now she might find a hole in her humble home where her poor old brother could stay the short time he's got in this world of trouble and sorrow. I could do with less to eat if I had to, gents; and blood was always thicker'n water ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... Nor is the future alone insecure: even now the prophets hardly understand one another, or perhaps themselves; and some of them interlard their science with the most dubious metaphysics. Naturally the enemies of science have not been slow to seize this opportunity: the soft-hearted, the muddle-headed, the superstitious are all raising their voices, no longer in desperate resistance to science, but hopefully, and in its name. Science, they tell us, is no longer hostile to religion, or to divination of any sort. Indeed, divination is a science ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... brilliant antitheses of Lady Mary to obscure and blur the man as they might have found him in his work. Booth and Jones have been taken for definite and complete reflections of the author of their being: the parts for the whole, that is—a light-minded captain of foot and a hot-headed and soft-hearted young man about town for adequate presentments of the artist of a new departure and the writer of three or four books of singular solidity and finish. Whichever way you turn, you are confronted with appearances ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... time, with his stool tilted comfortably against the wall, reading the sporting news from a pink paper to a friend from the Outward Bills Department who lay luxuriously on the floor beside him, did not rank among Mr Waller's pleasantest memories. But Mr Waller was too soft-hearted to interfere with his assistants unless it was absolutely necessary. The truth of the matter was that the New Asiatic Bank was over-staffed. There were too many men for the work. The London branch of the bank was really only a nursery. New men were constantly wanted in ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... exclaimed. "The durned fool! Well, Appleton Brice didn't have the family brains, ands he was kind of soft-hearted. I've heard Mehitabel Dale say that." She paused to reflect. "So they're coming here?" ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the Rat, who was both soft-hearted and curious, 'what a dreadful noise to make! What ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... you, beyond this rollicking blackguard there stood a second Jack, a soft-hearted, self-sacrificing other-phase, chivalrous to quixotism, yet provokingly reticent touching any act or sentiment which reflected real credit on himself. Not that every blackguard is a Bayard, any more than every wife-beater is a coward; ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... punishment might be for six weeks or for two years, what should be done with the family? Where should they be housed? How should they be fed? What should be done with the poor man when he came out of prison? It was a case in which the generous, soft-hearted old Lady Lufton was almost beside herself. "As for Grace," said young Lady Lufton, "it will be a great deal better that we should keep her amongst us. Of course she will become Mrs Grantly, and it will be nicer for her that it should be so." In those ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... people to resist, because if you try to make excuses they pin you down in one way or another, so that you must either do what they want or hurt their feelings; and though Sir Lionel is supposed to have been so strict in Bengal, he is quite soft-hearted in England. I think he hates going about in motors that aren't his, because he enjoys being the man at the helm, which is perhaps characteristic of him; however, the Tyndals swept all of us, except Mrs. Norton, away to Delabole to see the slate quarries, ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... at your new lesson. After all, I liked you from the first moment I saw you, and asked the teraph about you, and I got an answer—such an answer! You shall know it some day. At all events, it set the poor old soft-hearted Jewess on throwing away her money. Did you ever guess from whom your ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... you're ruinin' your health," said this soft-hearted acquaintance; "dere's a man to die to-morrow, and you won't ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... in her eyes, and her voice trembled. I wished Bradbury had had this job instead of myself, for I am soft-hearted where feminine appeal is concerned, and I didn't know quite ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... "Oh, she is soft-hearted about him because he has lost his fortune. And Gilbert Vane is like to lose his in the general settling up. So she can administer the same ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... with his back to the boy, "'Three months after date I promise to pay George Cripps thirty-five pounds, value received. Signed, E. Loman.' That's about it, eh, young gentleman? Well, blessed if I ain't a soft-hearted chap after the doing you've given me over this here business. Look ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... soft-hearted old thing he is, he holds out his hands, and he says, 'God bless you, my boy, it was for your own ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit
... my idea of the man whom many call a cynic, but whom I regard as one of the most soft-hearted of human beings, sweet as Charity itself, who went about the world dropping pearls, doing good, and never wilfully inflicting ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... much soft-hearted sympathy for both Miss Bassett and her guest. She could not help wondering how Miss Belinda became responsible for the calamity which had fallen upon her. It really did not seem probable that she had been previously ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... we have that good-looking puppy, young Leighton, an underbred youth, spoiled by premature immersion in a dandy regiment, who goes about saying the same things to every body, and labouring to reward the inconsiderate benevolence of you soft-hearted patronesses, by talking as if London lay packed in Willis's rooms, and nobody existed but on Wednesday nights. Forgive my impertinence; you know how, in my heart, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 553, June 23, 1832 • Various
... he, a tobacco chewing, red-faced, red-whiskered stage driver who nagged at his four horses incessantly and never was known to beat one of them; a garrulous, soft-hearted stage driver who understood very well how lonely these two young folks must be, and who therefore had some moth-eaten joke ready for whoever might be waiting for him at the macaroni box. Whenever Helen May apologized for the favor she must ask of him—which was every ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... mountain, and were obliged to lie still on a sofa!" Pixie bounced in a characteristic fashion on her own sofa corner, and whisked a minute pocket-handkerchief to her eyes. "Excuse me, me dear, will you change the conversation? I was always soft-hearted, but red eyes at a dinner party are not a la mode. ... ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... it to him,—a sight so touching to the chambermaids who are peeping through the door, that one of them calls out, "It's a shame to part 'em!" But this chambermaid was always, as Boots informs me, a soft-hearted one. Not that there was any harm in ...
— The Holly-Tree • Charles Dickens
... Nottingham, Anna ran about happily enough, or unconcerned, for a long time. Then, as afternoon came on, there was only one cry—"I want my mother, I want my mother——" and a bitter, pathetic sobbing that soon had the soft-hearted Tilly sobbing too. The child's anguish was that her mother ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... daisy. So you're going to travel through the world with the human sweetness of the soft voice of courtesy? You're a fraud, Wilks, you're as soft-hearted as ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... usual with him, "now will Bill Hinkley beat about the bush without bouncing through it, until it's too late to do anything. He's mealy-mouthed with the woman, and mealy-mouthed with the man, and mealy-mouthed with everybody. —quite too soft-hearted and too easy to get on. Here's a stranger nobody knows, just like some crow from another corn-field, that'll pick up his provisions from under his very nose, and he doing nothing to hinder until there's ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... soft oval contour, the clear olive complexion. She had also lustrous brown eyes; but these were full of tears. She only turned them on him for a moment; then she resumed her apparently interrupted occupation of sobbing. Aristide was a soft-hearted man. He ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... poor Turkey; and Mr. Tennyson could not have written his "Charge of the Light Brigade," which would have been a great loss to elocutionists. There were in Parliament a few poor- spirited economists and soft-hearted humanitarians who would fain have prevented that mighty drain of treasure and of the best blood of England- holding, with John Bright, that this war was "neither just nor necessary"; but they were "whistling against the wind." There was ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... Ch'un proceeded laughingly, "we started a rhyming club; but the first meeting was not quite a success. Every one of us proved so soft-hearted! The rules therefore were set at naught. So I can't help thinking that we must enlist your services as president of the society and superintendent; for what is needed to make the thing turn out well is firmness ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... live," said one of the old men, "but it is necessary. We are of those who will be called upon to testify. The terms of peace will be written by soft-hearted statesmen; we who have suffered must be on hand. We must be on hand to see that ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... darling grandmother to my little ones? There, now, I did not mean to make you look sorrowful. I will come and see you every year, if it be only for an hour's talk at the grating; and my Lady, who is soft-hearted as she is rough-tongued, will never forbid ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... soft-hearted person might have affected not to understand, but that was not Tommy's way. "I know, Aaron," he admitted. "I have known all the time." It was said in the kindliest manner, but its effect on Aaron ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... said, and clasped her by the hand, for, though he loathed her wickedness, being soft-hearted and but young, it grieved him to hear her words and see the anguish of her mind. For it is so with men, that they are easily moved by the pleading of a fair woman who loves them, even though they ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... the old lady; 'but don't be soft-hearted and weak, Mary. It is not what I expect of you, as a sensible woman, to be harbouring a mere vagrant whom you know nothing about, ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... laugh at us for a couple o' soft-hearted fools," said Miss Vilda feebly, after a long pause. "We'll be a spectacle for ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and horses were few, and only a small flock of sheep kept just to provide the house with mutton. His poor relations living scattered about the district knew that he was not only an improvident but an exceedingly weak and soft-hearted man, in spite of his grand manner, and many of the poorest among them had been allowed to build their ranches on his land and to keep a few animals for their sustenance: most of these had built their hovels quite ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... turned her head a little, but even this feminine joy did not lessen her usual graciousness; she always succeeded in maintaining her rank, even when most deferential to those men and women who lent it a new lustre by their brilliant names." She was very kind, extremely soft-hearted, and always overwhelming her companions with attentions and regards. Mademoiselle Avrillon, her reader, says: "I do not believe that there ever lived a woman with a better character, or with a less changeable disposition." She never dared to utter a word of blame or reproach. "If one of her ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... Montfort to her husband, "says that they are in the mud, and he for one will not go back—but he will go. I know him. He is too soft-hearted to stand an appeal from colleagues in distress. But were I you, Endymion, I would not return. I think you want a little rest, or you have got a great deal of private business to attend to, or something of that kind. Nobody notices the ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... whom she hurts," runs another passage in this letter; "like an unloved child at bay she means, to smash and kill. The pity of it! Never was there a more generous, soft-hearted, kindly people. Germany, the land of the Christmas tree and folk songs, and hearthsides and gay childish laughter, turned into a relentless fighting machine! But each individual is a cog firmly fixed in the machine, which will go ever on as long as ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... very soft-hearted people and would let us down agreeably if the Social-Democrats overturned the House of Hohenzollern and stretched out the imploring hand of a ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... darkened room, breathing with difficulty; she had loved her aunt who used to come every other year from Bryansk; and before that, when she was at school, she had loved her French master. She was a gentle, soft-hearted, compassionate girl, with mild, tender eyes and very good health. At the sight of her full rosy cheeks, her soft white neck with a little dark mole on it, and the kind, naive smile, which came into her face when she listened to anything pleasant, men ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... used to congregate the largest number of the beggars of Rome, whose hideous deformities were made the excuse for extorting money from the soft-hearted forestieri. Happily this plague has now greatly abated, and one may ascend or descend the magnificent stair without being revolted by the sight of human degradation, or persecuted by the importunate outcries of those who are lost to shame. The Government has done a good thing ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... in a very amorous style, but the main subject of the letter was that he would have nothing to do with that actress for the future; that he had discarded all his love for her, and transferred it to his correspondent,) when she, I say, wept plentifully, this soft-hearted man could bear it no longer; he uncovered his head and threw himself on her neck. Oh the worthless man! (for what else can I call him? there is no more suitable expression for me to use,) was it for this that you disturbed the city by nocturnal alarms, and Italy with fears ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... erring mother?" General Darrington had struck his cane violently on the floor, and exclaimed: "Don't talk such infernal nonsense! Did you ever hear of my pardoning a wrong against my family name and honor? Does any man live, idiotic enough to consider me so soft-hearted? No, no. On the contrary, I was harsh to the girl; so harsh that she turned upon me, savage as a strong cub defending a crippled helpless dam. They know now that the last card has been played, and the game ended; for I gave her distinctly ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Welborne—who will trade if you'll stick to him long enough. He's got dead kin with no sort o' tags on 'em. You might have to talk to him all the evening, and even follow him home, but you'll sell him if you understand your business. He's powerful soft-hearted, for one thing, and if you'll tell him a tale or two in the eloquent tongue you was rolling off just now he'll place a dandy order. I'll give ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... hold on George and said slowly and painfully, "An' if I lose me job I'll be knowin' who was to blame for it. I always told Michael Finnerty that he was too soft-hearted to go ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... your big nature to put it that way. You'rn tu soft-hearted a man to dwell in a house all alone. Let the dead stones bide, Martin, an' look round for a wife. Theer's more gude advice. Blamed if I doan't advise everybody nowadays! Us must all come to it. Look round about an' try to love a woman. 'T will surprise ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... thus:—'Well, Mary, you do look uncommonly nice and pretty; but now'—most persuasively—'you'll be a good girl and not cry, will you?' and as Mary fluttered, tried to smile, and looked out through very moist eyes, he continued, 'I feel horribly soft-hearted to-day, and if you howl I must, you know; so mind, if I see you beginning, I shall come out with my father's old story of the spirit of the flood and the spirit of the fell, and that will ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "He's too soft-hearted," commented Jamieson, angrily. "A lad like that ought to be sent to the reformatory—proper ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the Farm - Or, Bessie King's New Chum • Jane L. Stewart
... Amy doubtfully. "Somehow I hate to see the 'varsity trampled on and defeated, Clint. Would you mind asking 'Boots' to be merciful today! Tell him you've got a friend with you who's soft-hearted and ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... fortunes. Educated in the sweet order, and amid the decorous virtues of the roof of Besso, Fakredeen, who, from his susceptibility, took the colour of his companions, even when he thought they were his tools, had figured for ten years as a soft-hearted and somewhat timid child, dependent on kind words, and returning kindness with a ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... other, his good genius might have counseled him to pitch himself into the water sooner than plunge into literature. After heart-searching hesitations, after a profound scrutiny of the various countenances, more or less encouraging, soft-hearted, churlish, cheerful, or melancholy, to be seen through the window panes, or in the doorways of the booksellers' establishments, he espied a house where the shopmen were busy packing books at a great rate. Goods were being despatched. The ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... fingers, and laughed good-naturedly when they did it. In a single day he could not change into a fire-eater and go merrily upon the man-hunt. What an utterly mad idea it was, too, to try to cast all people into the same mould! No one dreamed of making a soft-hearted philanthropist of Weixler; and he was supposed so lightly to turn straight into a blood-thirsty militarist. He was no longer twenty, like Weixler, and these sad, silent men who had been so cruelly uprooted ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... soft-hearted Mr. Fabian; "none of that nonsense. Place yourself in my hands, to be guided by me and to work for my interests, and none of these evils shall happen to you. You shall live and die in wealth and luxury, my father's honored ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... no carriage of note had passed, Edith ventured to get her transplanting trowel, doff her gloves, and commence dividing her flower roots, that she might put them elsewhere. She became so interested in her work that she was positively happy, and soft-hearted Malcom, with his eye for the beauties of nature, was getting his rows crooked, because of so many admiring glances toward her as she went to ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... urchins, springing forward, shouted affectionately, "Maman! Maman!" to the great astonishment and bewilderment of James Gann, who well-nigh fainted at this sudden paternity so put upon him. However, being a good-humoured, soft-hearted man, he kissed his lady hurriedly, and vowed that he would take care of the poor little things, whom he would also have kissed, but the darlings refused ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... on it and I went out into the kitchen to laugh it over with the cat. I'm a soft-hearted boob and I hate to take a sucker, at that. But accordin' to my dope, that dough of friend Alex's was the same as in the ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... soft-hearted," and her big son became silent. She might as well have called him "soft-headed"; but Nan began better to appreciate Tom's ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... ten o'clock in the morning, but midnight, or a trifle past it I fancy, and we are in a room more secluded and retired than the cave could have been where the treacherous and daring AEneas enjoyed the fair soft-hearted Dido. But give me your hand, senora; I require no better protection than my own continence, and my own sense of propriety; as well as that which is inspired by that venerable head-dress;" and so saying ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... on her husband's neck with both paws, and wept, and besought him so piteously to have patience with her darling, that old Nutcracker, who was himself a soft-hearted old squirrel, was prevailed upon to put up with the airs and graces of his young scapegrace a little longer; and secretly in his silly old heart he revolved the question whether possibly it might not be that a great genius was actually to come ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... and while he chuckled over the recollection that it had been an expensive jest to the perpetrator, who had lost a valuable gold coin by the transaction, he had no fancy for exposing himself to any further ridicule on the occasion. So the bluff, imperious, soft-hearted captain issued an ukase commanding silence on the subject; and silence was observed, not in the least because Rosamond Duncombe or Susan Trott were afraid of him, but because Rosamond loved her father, and ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... silently to herself among the sofa cushions. Emmy was amazed. Zora, the magnificent, had broken down, and was weeping like any silly fool of a girl. It was real crying; not the shedding of the tears of sensibility which often stood in her generous eyes. Emmy moved gently across the room—she was a soft-hearted, affectionate woman—and knelt by ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... the request. He even proposed that the Greeks should perform funeral rites and build a tomb in her honor. The foul-mouthed Thersites (mentioned in a previous chapter as having been chastised by Ulysses) scoffed at this proposal, and ridiculed Achilles, saying that he was not so soft-hearted in his treatment of Hector. Enraged at his insulting words, the chief of the Myrmidons struck him dead with a ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke
... losing his usual calm. Why? because his son—his only son—was coming home for the first time? Really, that was not such an event as to put him beside himself in this way! And then next he blamed himself for having thought it unbefitting an old soldier, and too soft-hearted altogether, to go and fetch his son from the station. He could not remain in the house, so he went to a spot on the highway whence he could watch the railway. He could see the train coming in, and the clouds of white smoke from the engine rising up from ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... soft-hearted, all of a sudden, senorita," he said, with a fairly well-defined sneer, when he could bear no more. "You won't enjoy the bull-fighting, then, to-morrow—for all you have been looking forward to it so anxiously, and have robbed yourself of ribbons to decorate the ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... day or two after his call upon the judge. He was dissatisfied with the ending of their interview. He felt that he had been foolishly soft-hearted in promising to call at the Fair Harbor, or, to consider for another hour the preposterous offer of management of that institution. He must say no in the end. How much better to have said it then and there. Fifteen hundred a year looked like a lot of money to him. It tempted ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... reason. Hit don't look no sech a thing—like you was shif'less an' lazy. Hit jes look like Pappy got nothin' to do, an' love to come and give you a turn with yo' co'n; an', Sammy honey,"—the good farmer for the moment getting the better of the timid, soft-hearted parent,—"hit is might'ly in the weeds, boy. Don't you reckon I ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... can be said with regard to it? It will help just here to think of the man behind the work. No sensible human being, it would appear, can become aware of the life and personality of Thackeray without concluding that he was an essentially kind-hearted, even soft-hearted man. He was keenly sensitive to praise and blame, most affectionate and constant with his friends, generous and impulsive in his instincts, loving in his family, simple and humble in his spiritual nature, however questioning in his intellect. That is a ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... use as weapons to turn against us, be it to please some other man, or to smooth the path by which they escape from us. It was with a bracelet of Glycera's that I paid the captain of the ship that brought us to Alexandria; but the soft-hearted fool, whose dove flew after me, and I are men of a different stamp; I will follow my flown bird, and catch it again." He spoke the last words aloud, and then desired one of the senator's slaves to give his mule a good ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and fitted crystal shells over the rivers and lakes. As I stood in front of the tepee, thinking of the vast prairies which separated us from our tribe, and wondering if the high sky likewise separated the soft-hearted Son of God from us, the icy blast from the North blew through my hair and skull. My neglected hair had grown long and fell upon ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... feelings toward the man. And last, but not least by any means, he found the chevalier himself a frank, open-minded, open-hearted, lovable man, who ought not, in the natural order of things, to have an enemy in the world. Despite his high-falutin nom de theatre, he was a Belgian, a big, soft-hearted, easy-going, unsuspicious fellow, who worshiped his wife, adored his children, and loved every creature of the ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... indeed," nothing daunted; "I shouldn't hesitate. And, at all events, I should be civil to him at all times. Why, the way you treated that wretched young man to-day at Clonbree Barracks was, I consider, shameful! And you call yourself, I dare say, soft-hearted. To look at you, one would think you couldn't be unkind if you tried; and yet the barbarity of your conduct to-day, to a person who literally worships the ground you ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... reappeared, condensed with an icy reality, even more paralysing than the burning presentation of them in the morning's sermon. She was spared questions herself, as she was a stranger; and sat to hear girls of her own age and older men and women who looked as soft-hearted as herself, utter definitions of the method of salvation and the being and character of God that compelled the assent of her intellect, while they jarred with her spiritual experience as fiercely as brazen trumpets out ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... to another man, moreover a wealthy man, was to make some provision for her forsaken husband. That little income of hers should have been transferred to him. Her action was unexpected; he had thought her too timid, too religious, too soft-hearted, for anything of this kind. Since the disastrous wedding-day, she had, it was true, declined to hold communication with him; but he always looked forward to a meeting when he regained his freedom, and had faith in his personal influence. It was not solely for the sake of her money that he ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... fresh and healthy portrait the looking- glass presented of the Reverend Septimus, feinting and dodging with the utmost artfulness, and hitting out from the shoulder with the utmost straightness, while his radiant features teemed with innocence, and soft-hearted benevolence beamed from ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... blade of a knife, Haye adroitly probed the wound. Soft-hearted as he was, the action seemed to hurt him more than the patient; but his efforts were rewarded by the extraction of a small ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... gayly, but her brown eyes were dim with tears as she ended her little appeal. Dr. Carr, who was soft-hearted where women were concerned, was touched. Perhaps his face showed it, for Mrs. Ashe added in ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... soft-hearted fools like me permit crude little girls like you to speak a line without any excuse for so doing. We'll have no great acting in America until we shut the door upon every boy and girl who thinks he can act, ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... was a little hard at first," she answered, "for boys and girls of ten and twelve have surprisingly keen intuitions, and it seemed to me they made a study of my face from the first and concluded I was soft-hearted. I had one little boy that was a born mischief-maker, but he had such winsome ways I had to love him in spite of it. But he had to be punished some way, and so one day I kept him after school and then told him I must whip him hard, but not at that time. I explained to him what I was going ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... Have raised their usual fee to fifteen shillin's! Nor, to reduce their rates, will they engage (Sympathetically) For two poor orphans who are under age! So (as I'd give no more than half a guinea) I must myself get rid of TOM and JENNY. Yet, like an old soft-hearted fool, I falter, And can't make up my mind to risk a halter. (Looking off). Ha, in the distance, JANE and little TOM I see! These berries—(meditatingly)—why, it only needs diplomacy. Ho-ho, a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, May 3, 1890. • Various
... conventions of the period, to be genuinely moved. But what unpleasantly strikes a reader is that these devout unfortunates found a revenue in their devotion. It is everywhere the same tale: on the side of the soft-hearted ladies, substantial acts of help; on the side of the correspondents, affection, italics, texts, ecstasies, and imperfect spelling. When a midwife is recommended, not at all for proficiency in her important art, but because she has "a sister whom I [the correspondent] ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... moment, unfortunately, Captain West returned. All the victuals and munitions having been put ashore, the old factious projects were revived. The soft-hearted West was made to believe that the rebellion had been solely on his account. Smith, seeing them bent on their own way, took the row-boat for Jamestown. The colony abandoned the pleasant Non-such and returned to the open air at West's Fort. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner |
