"Unfeeling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... paralyzed, the European exchanges were exorbitantly high. They sought information from the jeweler or insinuated to him a few ideas, with the hope that these would be communicated to the Captain-General. To all the remedies suggested Simoun responded with a sarcastic and unfeeling exclamation about nonsense, until one of them in exasperation ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... place in sickness, and Marget, who did not think our thoughts, endured much consolation at her neighbour's hands. It is said that in cities visitors congratulate a patient on his good looks, and deluge his family with instances of recovery. This would have seemed to us shallow and unfeeling, besides being a "temptin' o' Providence," which might not have intended to go to extremities, but on a challenge of this kind had no alternative. Sickness was regarded as a distinction tempered with judgment, and favoured people found it difficult to be humble. I always thought more ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... Adr. Unfeeling fools can with such wrongs dispense. I know his eye doth homage otherwhere; Or else what lets it but he would be here? 105 Sister, you know he promised me a chain; Would that alone, alone he would detain, So he would keep fair quarter with his bed! ...
— The Comedy of Errors - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... Away! Who is so patient of this impious world, That he can check his spirit, or rein his tongue? Or who hath such a dead unfeeling sense, That heaven's horrid thunders cannot wake? To see the earth crack'd with the weight of sin, Hell gaping under us, and o'er our heads Black, ravenous ruin, with her sail-stretch'd wings, Ready to sink ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... additional to another that was now martyrizing them; their eyes were fixed on the sandal-wood box! All the while the two agents were talking together they were each taking note of those eager looks. A sort of cold anger stirred the unfeeling hearts of these men who relished the power of inspiring terror. The police man has the instincts and emotions of a hunter: but where the one employs his powers of mind and body in killing a hare, a partridge, or a deer, the other is ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... deadly sick at the stomach, and heave like a dog with a bone in his throat, he is safe. Cornwallis has all this time been lulling them by his proclamations, and protections, and lies. But, thank God, that time is pretty well over now; for these unfeeling monsters, these children of the devil, have let out the cloven foot, and the thing is now beginning to work as I expected. Our long deluded people are opening their eyes, and beginning to see and smell the blood and burnings of that 'Tophet', that political ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... heads as much out of the way as they could; the body did not matter so much. Many a time, too, I failed altogether to get them to go, and had to have help. Then two of us shoved the sledge forward, while the third used the whip, shouting at the same time for all he was worth. How hard and unfeeling one gets under such conditions; how one's whole nature may be changed! I am naturally fond of all animals, and try to avoid hurting them. There is none of the "sportsman's" instinct in me; it would never occur to me to kill an animal — rats and flies excepted — ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... dressed with the most ostentatious display of wealth, was seated upon an ottoman, in stately dignity, employing her fingers with fancy needle-work. Her face was thickly covered with rouge, and, as her guests were announced, she raised her eyes from her embroidery, and fixing a cold and unfeeling glance upon them, without rising to receive them, or even making the slightest inclination of her body, in a very patronizing and condescending tone ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... an unfeeling baste, to treat you like that," Mike exclaimed indignantly. "Sure I know the name, and have heard him spoken of as a traitor who had gone over to the enemy, and turned Protestant ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... of his part in the transaction, though he had been ready enough to adopt his son's suggestion. But now that the deed was done, he would not allow the prisoners to be insulted by Zeb, and the boy's unfeeling remarks were cut short by a vigorous kick on his nether part which completely lifted ...
— The Hero of Ticonderoga - or Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys • John de Morgan
... through the whole of French literature and art. Social refinement sharpens, no doubt, the sense for the ludicrous, and even on that account, when it is carried to a fastidious excess, it is the death of every thing like enthusiasm. For all enthusiasm, all poetry, has a ludicrous aspect for the unfeeling. When, therefore, such a way of thinking has once become universal in a nation, a certain negative criticism will be associated with it. A thousand different things must be avoided, and in attending to these, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... Our duty is to cleanse, to reconsider, to restore, to correct the evil without impairing the good, to purify and humanize every process of our common life without weakening or sentimentalizing it. There has been something crude and heartless and unfeeling in our haste to succeed and be great. Our thought has been "Let every man look out for himself, let every generation look out for itself," while we reared giant machinery which made it impossible that any ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... desert is not loneliness; it is only solitude. True loneliness is to be found only in great communities. To be without a single friend or confidant, when thousand of beings move about you; to pour your sorrows into cold, unfeeling ears; to seek sympathy in blind eyes—that is loneliness. That is the loneliness that causes the heart ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... admirable wife is with him: that is quite out of the question. You can well understand how much it grieves me not to be able to take part in the sufferings of my Carl, and that I at least wish to hear frequently of his progress. As I have renounced such an unfeeling, unsympathizing friend as Herr B. [Bernard], I must have recourse to your friendship and complaisance on this point also, and shall hope soon to receive a few lines from you. I beg to send my best regards and a thousand ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... pinched smile and pressed Rhoda's hand as she said, "A friend in need is a friend indeed." Rhoda would have given anything to be able to return the pressure and the sentiment, but Rhoda was too desperately sincere. She was sorry for Miss Quincey; but all her youth, unfettered and unfeeling, revolted from the bond of friendship. So she only stooped and laced up the shabby boots, and fastened the thin cape by its solitary button. The touch of Miss Quincey's clothes thrilled her with a pang of pity, ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... with scorn by the high-spirited young man. Elinor could not contradict these statements. She knew the impetuous disposition of her lover, and she more readily admitted their probability. Mark had been represented to her by him as a sullen, morose, avaricious young man, selfish, unfeeling, and cruel, suspicious of his friends, and implacable to his enemies. She had found him the reverse of all this; and she began to entertain doubts of Algernon's veracity, and to conclude that it was for some more ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... The unfeeling hunter recked not of this. With a coarse jest he stooped over the body; and severing the scalp, stuck it, reeking and bloody, behind the ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... miserable, pusillanimous reprobates did not know it as well as you!" spluttered Mrs. Wynn, with her apron to her eyes. Clemence's white face, with its appealing look, had gone straight to her motherly heart. "The unfeeling creatures, to take away a girl's character, like that! There had ought to be a place of everlasting punishment for such wretches, and I know they'll get it, sure as the Lord reigns. But I told you so! I knew how it would be when you went to pickin' that lazy, idle, ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... you cabbage, you son of a cauliflower? It's the first time I ever heard such an unfeeling remark. I tell you I have been in the editorial business going on fourteen years, and it is the first time I ever heard of a man's having to know anything in order to edit a newspaper. You turnip! Who write the dramatic critiques for the second-rate ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... edition is printed was once the property of Mr. Aytoun, author of Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers, and, I presume, of Ta Phairshon. Mr. Aytoun has written a prefatory sonnet which will be found in its proper place, a set of rhymes on the flyleaf at the end, and various cheerful but unfeeling notes. After some hesitation I do not ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... me, and thus I gave my sanction to conclusions which really were not mine; and when the report of those conclusions came round to me through others, I had to unsay them. And then again, perhaps I did not like to see men scared or scandalized by unfeeling logical inferences, which would not have troubled them to the day of their death, had they not been forced to recognize them. And then I felt altogether the force of the maxim of St. Ambrose, "Non in dialectica ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... for the unfeeling, the falsely refined, The squeamish in taste, and the narrow of mind, And the small critic wielding his delicate pen, That I sing of old Adam, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... quarrel? Such incidents do occur, even during honeymoons. If the two had a little quarrel he may have left her at our door—just to punish her, Monsieur le Senateur. He would know she was safe in our respectable hotel. Your sex, if I may say so, Monsieur le Senateur, is sometimes very unkind, very unfeeling, in their ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... and its warmth. Sometimes it is hung up for the time, and becomes dusty, while republicans take a turn at governing, though seldom with success. There were troubles in the families of Louis XIV., who was too heartless, selfish, and unfeeling not to be that worst kind of king, the domestic tyrant. He tyrannized over even ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... whose dejected eye Th' unfeeling proud one looks, and passes by, Condemned on penury's barren path to roam, Scorned by the world, and left without a home. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... direct his powers are not so fine as Heywood's. He depresses the mind, rather than invigorates it. The eye he cast on human life was not the eye of a sympathizing poet, but rather that of a sagacious cynic. His observation, though sharp, close, and vigilant, is somewhat ironic and unfeeling. His penetrating, incisive intellect cuts its way to the heart of a character as with a knife; and if he lays bare its throbs of guilt and weakness, and lets you into the secrets of its organization, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... the partition that separates our rooms is so thick that sounds are seldom heard through it. Do you know, Gildart, I think we sometimes judge men harshly. Knowing my father as I do, I am convinced that he is not the cold, unfeeling man that people give him credit for. He acted, I believe, under a strong conviction that the course he adopted was that of duty; he hoped, no doubt, that it would result in good to his child, and that in the course of time he should be reconciled ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... there are so many ways of feeling. We're apt to think that our own way is the only way, of course; but I suppose that most philanthropists—men who have done the most to better conditions—have been people of cold temperaments; and yet you can't say they are unfeeling." ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... I shrink from," Vesta said, "although he is your brother. His unfeeling respectability, his unchangeableness, his want of every impulse but hate, his appropriation of our family honor, as if he was our lawgiver and high-sheriff, his secretiveness, formal religion, and mysterious prosperity, I do not appreciate, ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... regret that this subject has been touched upon in a spirit of levity. It was my intention, at the proper time, to introduce a resolution of sympathy for those ladies who have been so summarily and I may say brutally unmarried by the unfeeling wretches who sit upon the bench of the Supreme Court. It is awful to think that our highly respected sisters, whose wealth alone should have protected them, have been told by the highest court in the land that ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... matrimonial connections, arising from their looser morality, slaves, for obvious reasons, are comparatively insensible. I am no apologist of vice, nor would I extenuate the conduct of the profligate and unfeeling, who would violate the sanctity of even these engagements, and occasion the pain which such violations no doubt do often inflict. Yet such is the truth, and we can not make it otherwise. We know that a woman's having been before a mother, is ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... the rule at the French court, but there were exceptions, and not inconspicuous ones, for Louis XV. was an unfeeling man, and Louis XVI. was an awkward one. When Mademoiselle Genet, fifteen years old, was first engaged as reader to the former king's daughters, she was in a state of agitation easy to imagine. The court was in mourning, and the great rooms hung with ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... None of us went to take the stranger by the hand and welcome her as the companion of our studies and our play. We stood aloof, and stared at her with cold and unfeeling curiosity. The teacher called her Abby. When she first came to her place for recitation, she took a seat beside the rich plaid. The plaid drew haughtily away, as if the sixpenny calico might dim the beauty of its colours. A ...
— The Old Castle and Other Stories • Anonymous
... become the derision of society? For he is right: a faithless wife is a dishonour! and to forgive her, is to share her shame. What though Adelaide may be an exception; a young deluded girl, who has so long and so sincerely repented, yet what cares an unfeeling world for this? The world! he has quitted it. 'Tis evident he loves her still; and upon this assurance builds my sanguine heart the hope of a happy termination to ...
— The Stranger - A Drama, in Five Acts • August von Kotzebue
... their General Fund dinner. Believe me, I flatter nobody, unless it be sometimes myself; but, in such a company as the present, I always feel it my manful duty to bear my testimony to this fact—first, because it is opposed to a stupid, unfeeling libel; secondly, because my doing so may afford some slight encouragement to the persons who are unjustly depreciated; and lastly, and most of all, because I ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... nearly destroyed by the unfeeling tones of the voice in which she was answered. She looked, however, at her famishing children, and once more returned to the door, after having gone a ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... Portrait of yon hoary sage From whose grave lore I learnt in youth Many a rigid moral truth, Frowns me again to cold unfeeling age—- How are the soft emotions checkt While tow'rd me he seems to direct, 180 As if alive, his conscious eye; At whose austere reproving glance, I wake reluctant from my trance, And feel with ...
— A Pindarick Ode on Painting - Addressed to Joshua Reynolds, Esq. • Thomas Morrison
... nor the band Which really spann'd Thy body chaste and warm, Thenceforward move Upon the stony rock their wearied charm. At last, then, thou wast dead. Yet would I not despair, But wrought my daily task, and daily said Many and many a fond, unfeeling prayer, To keep my vows of faith to thee from harm. In vain. 'For 'tis,' I said, 'all one, The wilful faith, which has no joy or pain, As if 'twere none.' Then look'd I miserably round If aught of duteous love were left undone, ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... 'll lead you to the birken bower, on yon burn side, Sae sweetly wove wi' woodbine flower, on yon burn side; There the busy prying eye, Ne'er disturbs the lovers' joy, While in ither's arms they lie, down by yon burn side, Awa', ye rude, unfeeling crew, frae yon burn side, Those fairy scenes are no for you, by yon burn side; There fancy smoothes her theme, By the sweetly murm'ring stream, And the rock-lodged echoes skim, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... were even those who murmured bitterly that they were disappointed of the spectacle, which they had left their beds to witness. Such unfeeling selfishness is not without example in ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... immediately by his side, and pushed him into his arm-chair, commanding him, in her harsh, cold to remain quiet and take care of his health, and listen to what his son-in-law had to say to his unfeeling and unnatural daughter. "He alone has to decide.—Speak, my dear son," said she, turning to the young man, who, with a malicious smile, had listened to the baroness, fixing his dull-blue eyes upon the young ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... I saw not that cold, distant, unfeeling fate, or that crushing regularity of power and wisdom, which was all the ancient Greek or modern Deist can behold in God; but I beheld, as it were, crowned and glorified, one who had loved with our loves, and suffered with our sufferings. Those shining snows were as his garments on ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... him, of all persons, less calculated to endure the peculiar trial to which he was now subjected. He was, in fact, one who, under such circumstances, would display his weakness, and give a man with a cold, selfish, unfeeling nature, every advantage over him. The night in question he drank until Tims positively refused to give him ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... death of Mr Spinney had been occasioned by her violence, and she looked forward with alarm, as great as the regret with which she looked back upon her former behaviour. When she called to mind her unfeeling conduct towards her husband—the many years of bitterness she had created for him, her infraction of the marriage vow—the solemn promise before God to love, honour, and obey, daily and hourly violated,—her unjust hatred ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... have your almshouse if it can be got. How unfeeling you are to think only of yourself when my dearest friend may be at death's door. Here's a sovereign, which will more than cover the expenses of the tea.—Good-bye, Kathleen, core of my heart.—Good-bye, ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... morning. If he had any spare ——, I would borrow them; if not, I would, first thing in the morning, send him cadging round the neighbourhood for cast-off clothes, while I sought ease-with-dignity in his blanket. This was not too much to count on; for I have yet to find the churlish or unfeeling swagman; whereas, my late experience of the respectable classes had not been satisfactory. At all events, the fire would give ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... It was universal, not only as adapted to all nations, but as fitted to regenerate and perfect the whole nature of man—body, mind, and soul. It would take me too long to tell all the changes it wrought. It found the heart hard and unfeeling, and made it tender and loving. It found men filled with every evil passion and almost without a desire to be better, and it gave them a longing to be free from sin and pure in heart. It found the race in darkness and despair, and brought them hope ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... state of agitation and distress, she perceived the door open, and the next moment ALMORAN entered the apartment. When she saw him, she turned from him with a look of unutterable anguish; and hiding her face in her veil, she burst into tears. The tyrant was moved with her distress; for unfeeling obduracy is the vice only of the old, whose sensibility has been worn away by the habitual ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... father myself when I say that I should not like to think that one of my children would be so foolish and so unfeeling as to erect a marble tomb to my memory while the others needed a friend or a meal. And I speak in the same spirit when I add that to build a cathedral, and to spend our tears and pity upon a Saviour who was crucified nearly two thousand years ago, while women and men ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... in me. I was no longer that good child, who could be frightened by strong words, and tamed by a sweet tongue,—I had become a hard, cruel unfeeling boy:—they could not ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... unfeeling lot, aren't we?" the fat young man inquired. "No temperament, no appreciation." ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... the shore. Go forth now! Be it into some other life: the divine breath is everywhere, even there. Be it into forgetfulness for ever; at least thou wilt rest from the beating of sensible images upon thee, from the passions which pluck thee this way and that like an unfeeling toy, from those long marches of the intellect, from thy toilsome ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... think her unfeeling if he liked; she felt as if she had only too much feeling just then, for it was bringing on her a strange contraction of heart. But he was too inherently good himself to put any harsh construction on her speech. ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... till we reached the parsonage again; but before I re-entered its gate the Reverend Walter Fairman had risen in my esteem, and ceased to be considered a cold and unfeeling man. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... still worse when we turn to writers of a different school. Take the poets from the Restoration to the closing years of the American war; and it is not too much to say that, with the exception of Thomson—saved perhaps by his "glossy, unfeeling diction"—there is not one of them who overstepped the bounds marked out for literary effort by the prevailing taste of the Augustan age, in its narrowest sense, without paying the price for his temerity in the sneers or reprobation of Johnson. Collins, it is true, escapes ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... not at all to my taste, I confess. Your father, too, dislikes the Taylors very much. The way in which she spoke of this story about Elinor's engagement was really unfeeling. Not that I believe it; but breaking off an engagement without good reason, is no such trifle in my opinion, as it seems to be ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... attend; While thou, Achilles, still remain'st unmov'd. Oh, be it never mine to nurse such hate As thou retain'st, inflexibly severe! Who e'er may hope in future days by thee To profit, if thou now forbear to save The Greeks from shame and loss? Unfeeling man! Sure Peleus, horseman brave, was ne'er thy sire, Nor Thetis bore thee; from the cold grey sea And craggy rocks thou hadst thy birth; so hard And stubborn is thy soul. But if the fear Of evil prophesied thyself restrain, Or message by thy Goddess-mother ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... favour of this lady who has had such cruel usage from an unknown husband; and as you undoubtedly know a great many things, we have reason to believe you cannot, be ignorant of this; oblige me with the name of this unfeeling fellow, who could not be contented to exercise his cruelty upon her person, but has also most unjustly taken from her all the substance she had I only wonder that such an unjust and inhuman action could be performed in spite ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... a harp, Or like a cunning instrument cased up, Or, being open, put into his hands That knows no touch to tune the harmony; Within my mouth you have engaoled my tongue, Doubly portcullis'd with my teeth and lips, And dull, unfeeling, barren ignorance Is made my gaoler to attend on me. I am too old to fawn upon a nurse, Too far in years to be ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... synthetic food, untouched by human hands. In one chamber a group of mechanicals, soulless and brainless, engaged in the delicate chemical compounding of raw materials that went into the making of their clothing. Here was a nursery, where tiny tots born to the purple were reared to adolescence by unfeeling but efficient mechanical nurses. The mothers of the purple could not be bothered with their offspring until they had reached the age of reason. The whirring machinery of a huge power plant provided much amusement for the feminine members of the party. It was all so massive; throbbing with energy. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... be so unfeeling as to make Prince run away and cause all that trouble," observed Mollie, as they were ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake • Laura Lee Hope
... to witness this scene, the disgusting and unfeeling nature of which we cannot sufficiently condemn, but merely state that for some minutes the air was rent by the shrieks of the victim; while the two gentlemen and J.P. watched the process, and then returned arm in arm to the house in high glee. Upon reaching the domicile, ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... with self-abasement, that I once loved you, and with deep humiliation, amounting to agony, that that love was the cause of my ruin. The vail is now torn from my eyes, and I behold you as you are, a corrupted, debased, unfeeling demon, in the human form; and I would not even touch you with my finger's end, so deep is my detestation and abhorrence of your depravity! Aye, sir, even for me your very touch is defiling! But ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... was restored, and two thousand ministers were driven from their livings, and compelled to seek a precarious support. Many other acts of flagrant injustice were passed by a subservient parliament, and cruelly carried into execution by unfeeling judges. But the religious persecution of dissenters was not consummated until the reign of James under whose favor or direction the inhuman Jeffreys inflicted the most atrocious crimes which have ever been committed under the sanction of the law. But ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... of our bread? I have already spoken of it as mouldy and ANIMATED. On several occasions, in the course of my adventures, I have seen ship bread which could boast of those abominable attributes, remnants of former voyages put on board ships by unfeeling skinflints, to be "used up" before the new provisions were broached, but I never met with any which possessed those attributes to the extent which was the case on board the schooner John. Although many years have passed since I was supported and invigorated by that ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... distress touched no chord of sympathy; and from the lips accustomed to drop oil and wine into every wound, came words like swords, cold, unfeeling, keen-edged, fitted and meant to lacerate. We shall not understand them, or Him, if we content ourselves with the explanation which jealousy for His honour as compassionate and tender has led many to adopt, that He meant all the long delay in granting her request, and the words ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... I have something more to say to you—I have a requisition to make which after what has passed would to common minds appear unfeeling and almost capricious cruelty; but I have no fear that yours should be liable to this mistake. Recollect but who and what you are, remember what are the best purposes of existence, and the noblest efforts of mind, and then refuse me if you can—I have formed a project, and call ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... force.] He did not spare even the vestal virgins, but punished them on charges of their having had intercourse with men. It is further reported that since their examination was conducted in a harsh and unfeeling manner, and many of them were accused and constantly being punished, one of the pontifices, Helvius Agrippa, could not endure it, but, horror-stricken, expired there in the senate where he sat. [Domitian also took pride in the fact that he did not bury alive, as was the ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... authorities present a trait common to mankind. We know from experience in our own country that the negro-driver on a Southern plantation—a slave selected from slaves—is often more tyrannical in the use of authority than the overseer or owner. We know that there are hard and unfeeling overseers on many plantations, where the owner is comparatively mild and humane. So far as he knows any thing of the details of his own affairs, his natural disposition accords with his interest, and he is favorable to the kind treatment of his slaves. But he can not permit them ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... home—my sister to London and I to Chicago—our mother came here to this town and soon died. In the sorrow of that time, when first I knew how much and how tenderly I loved her, I remembered about the hollyhocks, and at last realized how brutally thoughtless and unfeeling we had been. So, in shame and remorse, I did the one little thing that was all I could do, and covered the grave of our dear, patient, gentle, saint-like mother with the flowers she loved the best of all, but which we had not let her gladden her life with. I do not pretend to ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... do not think, Mr. Ried, that this nonsense ought to be allowed; besides being a very strange, unfeeling thing to do, it is in my opinion positively indecent—and I do think, Mr. Ried, that you ought to exercise your authority ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... huge cross, which he bad had brought to him out of the church. "God has blessed you, my children, in giving you the sacred privilege of fighting in His cause. You would indeed be weak—senseless as the brutes—unfeeling as the rocks—aye, impious as the republicans, had you not replied to the summons as you have done; but you have shown that you know your duty. I see, my children, that you are true Vendeans. I bless you ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... children were known to slaughter their companions. Nor was there any escape from these atrocities; the very altars which had once protected Christians from pagans were polluted by Catholic executioners. Ladies jested with unfeeling mirth over the dead bodies of murdered Protestants. The very worst horrors of which the mind could conceive were perpetrated in the name of religion. And then, when no more victims remained, the King and his court and his clergy proceeded in solemn procession ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... him that she could not tell him anything about her husband's movements, as, contrary to his usual custom, he had not informed her of the route he intended to take when he left home. Not a word or a hint was given of the trouble that was preying upon her heart, of the harsh, unfeeling treatment to which she had been subjected, or of the brutal order, expulsion and separation. The dignity of the noble little woman sustained her grandly, and no confession of her wrongs escaped her ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... contradiction to that of his highness, and the assertions of the Prophet. "It cannot be said that I behaved to them as if they had," replied he; "and before I changed my religion, I was often smitten with remorse for my selfish and unfeeling conduct towards Marie; but all that is passed, I am now a Turk;" and the renegade passed his hand over his brow; for some long, smothered feelings of virtue had been conjured up by remorse, as he was reminded of the career of guilt which he had run through, and which he ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... everything I know.... But darling, he isn't unfeeling. He does it because he can't bear to think Uncle Robert won't get better. He's trying to make himself believe he will. I think he does believe it. But if he stayed away from the tournament that would mean ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... world's history have we so few sayings of a personal kind. He was ready enough to talk or to write about the public duties which he had in hand, but he hardly ever talked of himself. Yet there can be no greater error than to suppose Washington cold and unfeeling, because of his silence and reserve. He was by nature a man of strong desires and stormy passions. Now and again he would break out, even as late as the presidency, into a gust of anger that would sweep everything before it. He was always reckless of personal ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... VII. He appealed to the pope's sense of justice; he repudiated the stories and depicted the violence of his enemies; and finally pleaded the rights of his son, innocent of all that was imputed to himself, and yet similarly attacked and despoiled. Innocent III. had neither a narrow mind nor an unfeeling heart; he listened to the father's pleading, took an interest in the youth, and wrote, in April, 1212, and January, 1213, to his legates in Languedoc and to Simon de Montfort, "After having led the army of the crusaders into ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... it had several wives. They were as unfeeling as brutes. If a wife displeased her lord and master, he would mercilessly cut off her nose; and with apparently as little concern as a dog-fancier trims the ears of a terrier. United with these execrable traits of character, there were others, to which we have already alluded, which were ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... understanding from the tendencies of the fancy or of the heart. He should be prepared to follow the light of evidence, though it should lead him to conclusions the most painful and melancholy. He should train his mind to all the hardihood of abstract and unfeeling intelligence. He should give up every thing to the supremacy of argument and he able to renounce without a sigh all the tenderest possessions[fn 2] of infancy, the moment that TRUTH demands of him the sacrifice." (Dr. Chalmers on the Evidence and Authority ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... exhilarating gas, protoxide of nitrogen; refrigeration. V. be insensible &c adj.; have a thick skin, have a rhinoceros hide. render insensible &c adj.; anaesthetize^, blunt, pall, obtund^, benumb, paralyze; put under the influence of chloroform &c n.; stupefy, stun. Adj. insensible, unfeeling, senseless, impercipient^, callous, thick- skinned, pachydermatous; hard, hardened; case hardened; proof, obtuse, dull; anaesthetic; comatose, paralytic, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of some Jacobite royalist. That faction could not forgive the Duke of Cumberland his excesses or successes in Scotland; and, not contented with branding the parliamentary government of the country as usurpation, indulged in frequent unfeeling and scurrilous personalities on every ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... nothing; only a five minutes' walk before breakfast. It is no trouble to me; and I did not want you to think me unfeeling, or unkind ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... short-lived. When he tried the same editor with another effusion signed with the same pen-name, the unfeeling man actually printed in his columns: "'C'est Moi's' last is not worth the paper it is written on." Alas! for the prophet in his own country. Years afterwards he got another criticism just as harsh from another Irish paper. It was a ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... opened the letter and read it very slowly. It was stern and almost unfeeling in the calmness of the words chosen; but in those words her proposed marriage with Harry Clavering was absolutely abandoned. "I know," she said, "that your son is more warmly attached to another lady than he is to me, and under ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... might oppose the fact of genius miraculously unfolding through her sacrifice. But she thought, "The world! What is that?" And thereupon, "All the same it shall not strike down this helpless creature." And the world became a monster, unfeeling, indeed immeasurably malign, lying far off with the teeming cells of its brain all plotting to rob her of her wretched victory, and with the claws of one outstretched paw already touching the threshold ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... nurtured in falsehood by the atmosphere of lies which envelops their palace; steeled against natural sympathies by the selfish natures of all that surround them; hardened in cruelty, partly indeed by the fears incident to their position, but partly too by the unfeeling creatures, the factions, the unnatural productions of a court whom alone they deal with; trained for tyrants by the prostration which they find in all the minds which they come in contact with; encouraged to domineer by the unresisting medium through which ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... "Unfeeling wretch! To thine own avaricious cruelty in first pinching me on food, and then loading me beyond my strength, thou owest the misfortune which thou so unjustly ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... of Dr. Chambers and call him rough and unfeeling—neither of which I ever found him for a moment—and I like him for his truthfulness, which is the nature of the man, though it is essential to medical morality never to let a patient think himself mortal while it is possible to prevent ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... care who dwell high above For the hardships of poverty wedded to love; Whose awful temptations you never can know, When the unfeeling winds of adversity blow; When the loved one is lying all helpless abed, And children are crying and begging for bread. Yes, little you dream, ye rich sons of Jove Of the trials of love in a ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... became depressed, her overstrained nerves relaxed, her unfeeling and violent nature softened. She had already felt compassionate in the early days of her second marriage, and this feeling now returned, as a necessary and ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... supplied, And in the gap he sought, the victim died. So was I once, in thy fair street, Saint James, Through walking cavaliers, and car-borne dames, Descried, pursued, turn'd o'er again, and o'er, Coursed, coted, mouth'd by an unfeeling ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... man of fashion; handsome, insinuating, profligate, and unfeeling. The lady—it is painful to speak of her: what she had been, she could never more be; and what she then was, she herself had yet to learn. She had been the darling pet daughter of a rich old man; and a dissipated nobleman had married her ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 397, Saturday, November 7, 1829. • Various
... throughout all this experience, his physical condition was one of ebb—and he was in considerable distress by reason of the negligence, the positive ill-treatment even, he received from his wife and step-children. His wife was vain, extravagant, unfeeling, and had a growing taste for private drinking; his step-daughter was mean and over-reaching; and his step-son had conceived a violent dislike for him, and lost no chance of showing it. The requirements ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... were right or wrong, whether they did harm or good. How vain the quarrel is! It was inevitable. It was inevitable in the nature of things that two such natures living here together should be set violently against each other. It is inevitable, till man be far more unfeeling and untrue to his convictions than he has always been, that a great wrong asserting itself vehemently should arouse to no less vehement assertion the opposing right. The only wonder is that there was not more of it. The only wonder is that so few were swept ...
— Addresses • Phillips Brooks
... pay the butcher's bill," said Sara with a sniff, "and landlords have an unfeeling preference for money over affection. Besides, Blanche is a mere child, far too young to be burdened with the ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... affairs, on the contrary, are unprosperous. Heavy losses, instead of fair profits, are the result of a year's tireless efforts, and you find yourself near the bottom of the wheel, while I am sweeping upward. As I think of this, and of my unfeeling conduct toward you in your misfortunes, I am mortified as well as pained. There is an element in my character which ought not to be there. I am self-convicted of cruelty. Accept, my dear sir, in the enclosed receipt, the best reparation in my power to make. In giving up this claim, ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... How can you have the cruel heart to repeat what they say? Unfeeling thing that you are.... But I'LL see if you or anybody else in the village, or town either, dare do such a thing!" She started off, pacing from fireplace to door, ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... Jacob was deceived is perhaps the most heartless bit of the whole heartless crime. It came as near an insult as possible. It was maliciously meant. The snarl about the coat, the studied use of 'thy son' as if the brothers disowned the brotherhood, the unfeeling harshness of choosing such a way of telling their lie—all were meant to give the maximum of pain, and betray their savage hatred of father and son, and its causes. Was Reuben's mouth shut all this time? Evidently. From his language ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... with unusual energy interrupted Lisette. "Mine a tender heart? Ask this little lady here—who cannot tell a lie—if I am not the woman who has the hardest, the most unfeeling heart in all the world. Ask her that, your ladyship. Tell her, mon petit garcon," she added, turning to Marie,—"tell the lady it is as ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... caprice may dictate—subjected alike to neglect, contempt, and abuse. Exceptions to this general rule doubtless occurred occasionally; for irresponsible power does not of necessity convert every man into an unfeeling tyrant, just as under other systems of slavery, some were fortunate enough to fall into the hands of kind, considerate owners, whose hearts they inspired with love and tenderness; but neither bound wife nor bond slave was treated with kindness, respect, ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... nothing, Miss Carvel, nothing that the most unfeeling man in our army would not do. Nothing that I would not have done ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... morality for one who suffered from "the base indifference of mankind." He ought to have known that poverty is not a vice for which the poor are to be blamed; and that intemperance is not the only other cause of their diseases. Perhaps the unfeeling passage is a mere paradox in the ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... corresponds with all I have before heard, and confirms the opinion I have long had that a more contemptible, cowardly, selfish, unfeeling dog does not exist than this King, on whom such flattery is constantly lavished. He has a sort of capricious good-nature, arising however out of no good principle or good feeling, but which is of use to him, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... since his dream had been shattered, the photograph left him cold and unfeeling. Something had happened, he hardly knew what—something he hardly dared confess to himself, with Dorothy only in his vision. The lifeless picture's ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... age of reason? The oath of ordination, the priest's oath, echoed in his throbbing ears like a soul-sentence to eternal doom; while spectral shades of moving priests and bishops, laying cold and unfeeling hands upon him, sealing him to endless servitude to superstition and deception, glided to and fro through the darkness before his straining eyes. Could he receive the ordination to-morrow? He had promised—but the assumption of its obligations would brand his shrinking soul with torturing falsehood! ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... chain of sequences be duly followed, the result is a sound condition of this part of the moral economy. If either of the voluntary steps be neglected or violated, the mental harmony is lost, and a habit is formed of unfeeling selfishness. ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... luxurious and corporately corrupt, and individually somewhat despicable, with a sort of softness about it in morals and in military affairs. The despot or the bureaucracy will be individually corrupt, especially in the lower branches of the system, and hatefully unfeeling. ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... one whose life was spent in bringing to the public eye all the private coils of property, the domestic disagreements of others, should dread so utterly the public eye turned on his own; and yet not odd, for who should know so well as he the whole unfeeling process of legal regulation. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... your friends would advise you not to grieve; but they would think you very unfeeling if ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... when they had separated, the Vizier began to reflect with uneasiness on the engagements into which he had entered. His mother and grandmother protested and implored. His heart, deeply corrupted by absolute power and licentious pleasures, yet not naturally unfeeling, failed him in this crisis. Even the English resident at Lucknow, though hitherto devoted to Hastings, shrank from extreme measures. But the Governor-General was inexorable. He wrote to the resident in terms of the greatest severity, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... account. To this he answered, that the unforeseen circumstances which had occurred, were a sufficient warrant to every one to consult his own individual safety. I insisted and beseeched him not to treat me with such unfeeling cruelty, but all in vain, for he prepared to set off along with the Turkish ambassador, who had been sent by Uzun-Hassan as his particular companion. In this extremity I went to Marcus Ruffus, and the Turkish ambassador who was joined with him by the king of Persia, to whom I ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... fruit, this scheming of the countess-dowager's, and Maude's own love? In her wildest hopes the old woman never dreamed of what that fruit would be; or, unscrupulous as she was by habit, unfeeling by nature, she might have carried away Maude from Hartledon within the hour ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... so unfeeling toward Amy was the fact that from the beginning she had expressed no sorrow over the destruction of the dormitory, and that she had refused to write home to ask for a contribution to the fund being raised for the ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson
... us, and what a chilling doom awaits us! Oh, what mocking irony then runs through the loftiest promises and hopes of the world! Just as the wise and good have learned to live, they disappear amidst the unfeeling waves of oblivion, like snow flakes in the ocean. "The super earthly desires of man are then created in him only, like swallowed diamonds, to cut slowly through his material shell" and ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... this battle disdained to fight with any but great and noble antagonists. As the friend of the poor man, crushed and mocked by a cold and unfeeling nobility; as the protector of the Church, in danger of being subverted by the unhallowed tyranny and greed of princes; as the consecrated monarch of a great spiritual fraternity,—he resolved to face the mightiest monarchs, and suffer, and if need be die, for a cause which he regarded ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... sometimes almost infinitesimally small. I find myself setting down little things and little things; none of them do more than demonstrate those essential temperamental discords I have already sought to make clear. Some readers will understand—to others I shall seem no more than an unfeeling brute who couldn't make allowances.... It's easy to make allowances now; but to be young and ardent and to make allowances, to see one's married life open before one, the life that seemed in its ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... felt most keenly in Leander's conduct was, that he should have placed the ring, which to all intent was her own, upon the finger of another. She could not bear to think of so unfeeling an act, and yet she thought of it all through the long day, as she sat, outwardly serene, at her high desk, while her attendants at her side made up sprays for dances and wreaths for funerals from ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey |
