"Untempered" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... other fears it; both miss it. But those who by violence go beyond the barrier are without question the most mischievous; because, to go beyond it, they overturn and destroy it. To say they have spirit is to say nothing in their praise. The untempered spirit of madness, blindness, immorality, and impiety deserves no commendation. He that sets his house on fire because his fingers are frost-bitten can never be a fit instructor in the method of providing our habitations with a cheerful and salutary warmth. We want no foreign examples to rekindle ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... In the play of untempered golden light the face seemed pale. It was narrow, rather long, with marked and prominent features, a nose with a high bridge, a mouth with straight, red lips, and a powerful chin. The eyes were hazel, almost yellow, with curious markings of a darker shade in the yellow, dark ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... emerged from his bedroom glowing. He was one or two shades of tan lighter than when he had reached the city, but the paint of Arizona's untempered sun still distinguished him from the native-born, if there are any such among the inhabitants of upper ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... that Baloo was so fond of, never flowered. The greeny, cream-coloured, waxy blossoms were heat-killed before they were born, and only a few bad-smelling petals came down when he stood on his hind legs and shook the tree. Then, inch by inch, the untempered heat crept into the heart of the Jungle, turning it yellow, brown, and at last black. The green growths in the sides of the ravines burned up to broken wires and curled films of dead stuff; the hidden pools sank down and caked over, keeping the last ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... soul. What Moses and David and Samuel taught as the word and will of God, we, who are fortunate enough to live in the same age with Charles Darwin, know to be the expression of a low social condition untempered by the light of science. Their "thus saith the Lord," read in the light of to-day, is "thus saith ignorance and ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... they're a pack of liars!" said the mason, catching up his untempered chisels and ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... Ahab and Jezebel, we saw at a glance, is now only a ruined, dirty village, where a European could not hope for shelter for a night. The hills sank into a heavy plain that seemed interminable. The short twilight faded into untempered darkness. Hassan was again in the rear. He would have fled incontinently at the first sign of danger. Our only consolation was that his horse was tired and he couldn't get very far away from us under any circumstances. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... former existences," she answered, "that may have been lived here or elsewhere. It is the sum of our past, good and bad. It is based on a belief in reincarnation, and it is the law that whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap. It is justice untempered by mercy, and it is at variance with the doctrine of vicarious atonement, though one may believe it and worship Christ as the highest type of love the world has ever known. Naturally, it does not appeal to the people who are willing to ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... to respect their race prejudice, to be considerate of their religious idiosyncrasies, and to dispense justice untempered with mercy, the latter virtue being considered a weakness in the eyes of our Mohammedan brothers, and as such to be taken advantage of. The border troubles in India, the mutiny of '57, the Turkish atrocities in '95, the Pathan rising under Mad Mullah in '97, the ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... and political order maintained, by a rigid communism. To harmonize individual rights and national interests, was the wisdom reserved for the fishermen of Galilee. The whole method of Plato's "Politeia," breathes the spirit of legalism in all its severity, untempered by the spirit of Love. This was the living force which was wanting to give energy to the ideals of the reason and conscience, to furnish high motive to virtue, to prompt to deeds of heroic sacrifice and suffering for the good of others; and this could not be inspired by philosophy, nor constrained ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... the untempered candour of eighteen, suggested to Fay that she should cease to make a slave of Magdalen. It is hardly necessary to add that Fay and Bessie did not materially increase the sum of each ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... content to see it opening here and closing there; rejoicing to catch, through the thinnest films of it, glimpses of stable and substantial things; but yet perceiving a nobleness even in the concealment, and rejoicing that the kindly veil is spread where the untempered light might have scorched us, or the ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... about the lower half of it, accompanied by a tendency to thinness as it approached its termination, quite out of agreement with the prominent cheek-bones. The whole face had a certain air of tough endurance, of determination, of resolute go-forwardness untempered by the recoil of sensitiveness. Miss Bowyer was clad in good clothes ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... occasion for those assaults which met him on every hand, and which history justifies. He might even have been forgiven for his spoils system and unprecedented removals from office. In attacking the Bank he laid a profane touch upon a sacred ark and handled untempered mortar. He stopped the balance-wheel which regulated the finances of the country, and introduced no end of commercial disorders, ending in dire disasters. Like the tariff, finances were a question with which he was not competent to deal. His fault was something ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... youth Horace had been an aristocrat, but his choice of sides was perhaps more the result of accident than of conviction, and he afterward acquiesced without great difficulty in the imperial government. His acquiescence was not at first untempered with regret; and in the odes modern critics have found touches of veiled sarcasm against the new monarchy and even a certain sympathy with the abortive conspiracy of Murena in 22 B.C. But as the empire ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... quality that great warriors arise. Such feats as the cutting of this railway or the subsequent saving of the Bethulie Bridge by Grant and Popham are of more service to the country than any degree of mere valour untempered by judgment. Among other results the cutting of the line secured for us twenty-eight locomotives, two hundred and fifty trucks, and one thousand tons of coal, all of which were standing ready to leave Bloemfontein station. The gallant little band were ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... only the wind raved with untempered force. Overhead it was blowing clear; through rifts and rents in the fast-moving cloud-rack pale turquoise patches of moonlit sky showed, here and there inlaid with a far shining star. The dunes were coldly a-glimmer with the meagre light ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... eight in number, formed the principal attraction. On the glass, hill and mountain scenery was depicted, the summits in some of them appearing beyond wide, barren plains, whitened with the noonday splendor and heat of midsummer, untempered by a cloud, the soaring peaks showing a pearly luster which seemed to remove them to an infinite distance. To look out, as it were, from the imitation shade of such an arbor, or pavilion, over those far-off, sun-lit expanses where the ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... convenient or beseeming for those times, but the times are appointed as convenient for the worship. Festival days are holy both by dedication and consecration of them; and thus much the Bishop himself forbeareth not to say,(470) only he laboureth to plaster over his superstition with the untempered mortar of this quidditative distinction, that some things are holy by consecration of them to holy and mystical uses,(471) as water in baptism, &c., but other things are made holy by consecration of them to holy political uses. This ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... advice and edification; so that when Bella met his tentative exhortations with the curt remark that she preferred to do her own housecleaning unassisted, her uncle's grief at her ingratitude was not untempered ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... graceless edifice, the rigors of the hour and occasion reached their climax. The shivering gas-jets lit up the austere pallor of the bare walls, and the hollow, shell-like sweep of colorless vacuity behind the cold communion table. The chill of despair and hopeless renunciation was in the air, untempered by any glow from the sealed air-tight stove that seemed only to bring out a lukewarm exhalation of wet clothes and cheaply dyed umbrellas. Nor did the presence of the worshippers themselves impart any life to the dreary apartment. Scattered throughout ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... to a nicety, he paid off the sheet and pulled up the tiller. The cat-boat pivoted on her heel; with a crack her sail flapped full and rigid; then, with the untempered might of the wind behind her, she shot like an arrow under the brigantine's bows, so close that the bowsprit of the latter first threatened to impale the sail, next, the bows plunging, crashed down a bare two ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... honoured, and esteemed in all the various relations of father, husband, friend, citizen, and Christian, who is on cushioned sofa composing himself for his wonted nap, after a dinner in substance and quantity of the most satisfactory description, and not untempered by a modicum of old port. His amiable partner, with that refined delicacy and sense of decorum peculiar to the female sex, has already withdrawn with her infant progeny, leaving her good man, as she fondly imagines, to enjoy ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 346, December 13, 1828 • Various
... have just missed the perfect love, Not the hot passion of untempered youth, But that which lays aside its vanity And gives thee, for thy trusting ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... authorities are wise. The regiment is stiff and out of condition: it is suffering from moral and intellectual "trench-feet." Heavy drafts have introduced a large and untempered element into our composition. Many of the subalterns are obviously "new-jined"—as the shrewd old lady of Ayr once observed of the rubicund gentleman at the temperance meeting. Their men hardly know them or one another by sight. The regiment must be moulded anew, and its lustre restored by ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... hidden thing, but that fact weighed as nothing with him. It would bring pain to the woman he loved; it might ruin her father; but the pain and the ruin would be inflicted unsparingly by his righteous young hand, which knew nothing yet of mercy but was all for justice, and justice untempered with mercy is a terrible weapon. This Hinton ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... him as he fell, and sought the road to death by the same steel; Giton, however, showed not the faintest trace of any wound, nor was I conscious of feeling any pain. The razor, it turned out, was untempered and dull and was used to imbue boy apprentices with the confidence of the experienced barber. Hence it was in a sheath and, for the reason given above, the servant was not alarmed when the blade was snatched nor did Eumolpus break in upon this ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... her whole attitude, but he had no contempt towards her on account of it. He felt as if he were facing some new system of things, some higher order of creature for whom unreason was the finest reason. He bowed before the pure, unordered, untempered feminine, and his masculine mind reeled. And all the time, deeper within himself than he had ever reached with the furthest finger of his emotions, whether for pain or joy, he felt this tenderness, which was like the quickening of another soul, so alive ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... no more, if lightly left behind, To guard the dancing clusters thought unmeet, It is because with gilded trellis twined Thy liberal growth demands untempered heat. ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... you will not reverence God's holy Sabbath and commandments according to the clear precept, do you let them alone, if you do not want a worse thing to befal you, for just so sure as you fight against them they will destroy you. This beating the air, is some like daubing with untempered mortar; you cannot make any of it stay put. If I were in your place, I should a great deal rather have been fast asleep than to be caught in such heaven-daring business—fighting against God! This looks like "following ...
— A Vindication of the Seventh-Day Sabbath • Joseph Bates
... to have a serious turn of mind, and yet to talk pleasantly and cheerfully. This class of mind is suited to all persons in all times of life. Young persons have usually a cheerful and satirical turn, untempered by seriousness, ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... parables, revelations, in every common event. The other, from without, was the spiritual ferment of the age, the multiplication of strange sects,—Quakers, Free-Willers, Ranters, Anabaptists, Millenarians,—and the untempered zeal of all classes, like an engine without a balance wheel, when men were breaking away from authority and setting up their own religious standards. Bunyan's life is an epitome of that astonishing religious individualism which marked the ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... where the Gila heads on the east, is one of singular characteristics. The plains and valleys are low, arid, hot, and naked, and the volcanic mountains scattered here and there are lone and desolate. During the long months the sun pours its heat upon the rocks and sands, untempered by clouds above or forest shades beneath. The springs are so few in number that their names are household words in every Indian rancheria and every settler's home; and there are no brooks, no creeks, and no rivers ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... and mellow as dusk fell. Every minute now brought its swift quota of changing beauty. A violet haze enveloped the purple mountains, and in the crotch of the hills swam a lake of indigo. The raw, untempered glare of the sun was giving place to a limitless ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... voice clouded a little as he said it, and his grin, for a moment, had a rueful twist. But for a moment only. Then his untempered delight in the possession of his old friends took him again and, with the exception of one or two equally momentary ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... and truthfully glowing words, a picture of woman's progress under the institutions and laws of the United States, she said: "For the first time, all political right, privilege and power reposes undisguisedly on the one brutal fact of sex, unsupported, untempered, unalloyed by any attribute of education, any justification of intelligence, any glamour of wealthy any prestige of birth, any insignia of actual power.... To-day, the immigrants pouring in through the open gates of our seaport towns, the Indian when settled in severalty, the negro hardly emancipated ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... untempered speech descends—poor heirs! Grimy and rough-cast still from Babel's brick-layers; Curse on the brutish jargon we inherit, Strong but to damn, not memorize a ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... being swept along by the comet, whose perihelion probably lay in the immediate neighborhood of the sun, I saw no way of escape from the frightful fate of being broiled alive. Even where I was, the untempered rays of the sun scorched me, and I knew that within two or three hundred thousand miles of the solar surface the heat must be sufficient to melt the hardest rocks. I was aware that experiments with burning-glasses had sufficiently demonstrated ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... brotherhood and social rectitude. But the just who despise others for their faults and misdeeds, cut themselves off from humanity, and their goodness, descended to the rank of an ornament for their vanity, becomes like those riches which kindness does not inform, like authority untempered by the spirit of obedience. Like proud wealth and arrogant power, supercilious virtue also is detestable. It fosters in man traits and an attitude provocative of I know not what. The sight of it repels instead of attracting, and those whom it deigns to distinguish with ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... were drawing out and the nights getting shorter. The untempered sun of the Northland beat down on the cold snow crystals and reflected a million sparks of light. In that white field the glare was almost unbearable. Both of them wore smoked glasses, but even with these their eyes continually smarted. They grew red and swollen. If time had ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... and turned in at the lane. Cullison, standing on the porch at the head of the steps looked like a man who was passing through the inferno. But he looked too a personified day of judgment untempered by mercy. His eyes bored like steel gimlets into those of ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... the drivers of the trail herd squatted on their heels or lay sprawled at indolent ease. The glow of the leaping flames from the twisted mesquite lit their lean faces, tanned to bronzed health by the beat of an untempered sun and the sweep of parched winds. Most of them were still young, scarcely out of their boyhood; a few had reached maturity. But all were products of the desert. The high-heeled boots, the leather ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... from want and crime the humblest door, Is one among—the many ends for which God makes us great and rich! The hour perchance is not yet wholly ripe When all shall own it, but the type Whereby we shall be known in every land Is that vast gulf which laves our Southern strand, And through the cold, untempered ocean pours Its genial streams, that far-off Arctic shores May sometimes catch upon the softened breeze Strange tropic warmth and hints ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... the occasion very appealing. As she looked down on the arena from the box her party occupied, the heart of the girl throbbed with the pure joy of it all. She loved this West, with its picturesque chap-clad brown-faced riders. They were a hard-bitten lot, burned to a brick red by the untempered sun of the Rockies. Cheerful sons of mirth they were, carrying their years with a boyish exuberance that ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... his entertainment in most unseemly fashion; for if he lacked aught he would call loudly for it; and then, taking a great cup wreathed with leaves of ivy in his hands, he drank great draughts of red wine untempered with water. And when the fire of the wine had warmed him, he crowned his head with myrtle boughs, and sang in the vilest fashion. Then might one hear two melodies, this fellow's songs, which he sang without thought for the troubles of my lord and the lamentation wherewith ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church
... turning, watched the girl moving along in the deeps of the corn. Hardly a leaf was stirring; the untempered sunlight fell in a burning flood upon the field; the grasshoppers rose, snapped, buzzed, and fell; the locust uttered its dry, heat-intensifving cry. The ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... whose anniversary we celebrate, must have been as disagreeable to live in as any that history records; not only were the physical conditions of life hard, but its inquisitorial intolerance overmatched that which it escaped in England. It was a theocratic despotism, untempered by recreation or amusement, and repressive not only of freedom of expression but of freedom of thought. But it had an unconquerable will, a mighty sense of duty, a faith in God, which not only established its grip upon the continent but carried its influence from ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... debt to Burke, and he repeated his former expression of faith in the blessings which the abolition of royal despotism would bring to France. With unabated vehemence Burke again rose to denounce the French Constitution—"a building composed of untempered mortar—the work of Goths and Vandals, where everything was disjointed and inverted." After a short rejoinder from Fox the scene came to a close, and the once friendly intercourse between the two heroes was at an end. When they met in the Managers' ...
— Burke • John Morley
... If ye who are of the household of faith permit idle bickerings to divide your hearts, how can ye expect the blessing of Heaven on your labors? If the cement to hold together the stones of the temple be untempered mortar, must not the fabric fall, and bury the worshippers in its ruins? If you love me, Captain Endicott, my brave and generous, but hasty friend, take up your glove; if you have respect for the high station you so worthily fill, noble Dudley, extend your hand ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... fence to have her laugh out, before repairing to the shed where the gardening tools were stored. Then she unrolled an apron, tied it over her skirt, rolled up her sleeves to protect the starched little cuffs, took a rake in one hand and a hoe in the other, and surveyed the prospect. With ambition untempered by ignorance, she had openly avowed her intention of possessing the finest flowers in the county, and giving an object-lesson in gardening to ignorant professors of the art, so that it was more than time ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... of Athenian landscape is always ready to take the colours of the air and sun. In noonday it smiles with silvery lustre, fold upon fold of the indented hills and islands melting from the brightness of the sea into the untempered brilliance of the sky. At dawn and sunset the same rocks array themselves with a celestial robe of rainbow-woven hues: islands, sea, and mountains, far and near, burn with saffron, violet, and rose, with the tints of beryl and topaz, sapphire and almandine and amethyst, each in due order and ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... imaginations of the finite mind can never rise up to and comprehend the Infinite. The natural sun is inconceivably great, we cannot grasp its magnitude; it is inconceivably glorious, we cannot bear to gaze for one moment on its untempered light. The source to us of all heat, we have to shield ourselves from its tropical power, though millions of miles from its surface: the sustainer of the essential conditions of physical life, and the great ruler and centre ...
— A Ribband of Blue - And Other Bible Studies • J. Hudson Taylor
... will be greatly intensified, so influencing the fertility of the earth. Before their healing light and heat, in the newly tempered atmosphere, all poisonous growths, the blight of drought, and suffering of untempered heat, will disappear. ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... the garden; at the head of one of the alleys stood a green wooden bench, embayed in the midst of a fragrant continent of lavender bushes. It was here, though the place was shadeless and one breathed hot, dry perfume instead of air—it was here that Mr. Scogan elected to sit. He thrived on untempered sunlight. ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... down the west, its glare remained untempered, and the tantalizing shade of the sparse mesquite was more of a trial than a comfort to the lone woman who, refusing its deceitful invitation, plodded steadily over the waste. Stop, indeed, she dared not. In spite of her fatigue, regardless of the torture from feet and limbs unused to walking, ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... Drift I rode the ford without a thought of crocodiles. I looked placidly at the spot where Henriques had slain the Keeper and I had stolen the rubies. There was no interest or imagination lingering in my dull brain. My nerves had suddenly become things of stolid, untempered iron. Each landmark I passed was noted down as one step nearer to my object. At Umvelos' I had not the leisure to do more than glance at the shell which I had built. I think I had forgotten all about ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... rouses the fierce claw and tooth of Nature to drag Hilary and Daphne down to her level. As clearly as the poet saw that, 'all's Love, yet all's Law' so clearly is the same truth held in these stories with their divergent ends. The lawlessness of Nature is the lawlessness of man, untempered and ungoverned by that principle of chastity which is the law of love; and again Nature, lawless in herself, becomes beneficent, law-abiding, when controlled by that higher law of instinct in man which is the seal and sign of the Divine ...
— James Lane Allen: A Sketch of his Life and Work • Macmillan Company
... a gracious adieu to her women, an adieu which did not fail to remind them how infinitely beneath her were those she greeted. Every movement of her hand was full of regal pride, and her eyes, unveiled and untempered, were radiant with a young woman's pleasure in a perfect toilet, with satisfaction in her own person, and with the anticipation of the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... had stopped ringing and the flags were hauled down and the released debtors had ceased to congratulate themselves upon their newly recovered liberty, Boston and the other colonial cities found that their satisfaction was not untempered. The broadsheet that had blazoned the repeal had also assured its readers that the Acts of Trade relating to America would be taken under consideration and all grievances removed. "The friends to America are very powerful and disposed to assist us to the best of their ability." The friends to ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... member attended twelve meetings, and one only of the five attended all the fourteen. The inquiry was from first to last conducted in a spirit of partisanship, and the report, in the language of Dr. Rolph, was "the offspring of untempered zeal, insufficient evidence, hasty conclusions, and executive devotion."[249] As a general rule, it is a difficult matter to convict a Government of actual, direct interference with the freedom of election. But in the case of the general election of 1836, there is unfortunately ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... pleadest thy goodness before him? Be ashamed, Pharisee! dost thou think that God hath eyes of flesh, or that he seeth as man sees? Are not the secrets of thy heart open unto him Thinkest thou with thyself that thou, with a few of thy defiled ways, canst cover thy rotten wall, that thou has daubed with untempered mortar, and so hide the dirt thereof from his eyes; or that these fine, smooth, and oily words, that come out of thy mouth, will make him forget that thy throat is an open sepulchre, and that thou within art full of dead men's bones, and all uncleanness? Thy thus cleansing ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan |
