"Wanton" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but a wanton maiden, The plaything of thy idle hours; But laughing streams with gold are laden, And sweets are ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... that it should be them. Preyer or preyed upon—such was the iron immutable law of life, from man in his highest development to the minutest of insects; and with this law he was but complying, not in wanton cruelty, ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... so strong that it might become a commercial, if not a naval, rival of Italy in the Adriatic. The Italian delegates in private interviews showed great bitterness toward the Slavs, who, they declared, had, as Austrian subjects, waged war against Italy and taken part in the cruel and wanton acts attendant upon the invasion of the northern Italian provinces. They asserted that it was unjust to permit these people, by merely changing their allegiance after defeat, to escape punishment for the outrages which they had committed against Italians and actually to profit ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... It compelled him to labour with Sir John vehemently until that blundering knight consented to wait before exploding his alarms upon Lady Waverton. Even as the first blundering remonstrances had irritated Alison's wanton will into passionate resolution, so this ensuing vacillation and delay gave ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... for granted that the author is a merry fellow, who troubles himself little about the cries, tears and tricks of the lady you call glory, fashion, or public favour, for he knows her to be a wanton who would put up with any violence. He knows that in France her war-cry is Mount Joy! A fine cry indeed, but one which certain writers have disfigured, and which signifies, "Joy it is not of the earth, it is there; seize it, otherwise good-bye." The author has ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... most keenly what I have often before observed. Persons who can claim a certain rank keep themselves coldly aloof from the common people, as though they feared to lose their importance by the contact; whilst wanton idlers, and such as are prone to bad joking, affect to descend to their level, only to make the poor people feel their ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... violently affect the Reputation of Wits, that not a French Journal, Mercury, Farce, or Opera, can escape their Pillaging: yet the utmost they arrive at, is but a sort of Jack-a-lanthorn Wit, that like the Sun-shine which wanton Boys with fragments of Looking-glass reflect in Men's Eyes, dazles the Weak-sighted, and troubles the strong. These are the Muses Black-Guard, that like those of our Camp, tho' they have no share in the Danger or Honour, yet have the greatest in the Plunder; ...
— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay
... about as thick as your arm, your companion, if you have a forester with you, will spring joyfully. With a few blows of his cutlass he will sever it as high up as he can reach, and again below, some three feet down, and, while you are wondering at this seemingly wanton destruction, he lifts the bar on high, throws his head back, and pours down his thirsty throat a pint or more of pure cold water. This hidden treasure is, strange as it may seem, the ascending sap, or rather the ascending pure rain-water which has been taken ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... stood a creature whose dishevelled, rusty hair, blotched and bloated features, wanton, cunning, restless eyes, combined perfectly to form the head of the mythological Harpy. It required little effort of the imagination to believe that her foul, bedraggled dress concealed the "wings and talons of the vulture." Being still unsteady from her night's debauch, ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... and melancholy, I rove to charming Dolly, Whose Sweetness doth so charm me, And wanton Tricks so warm me, That quite dissolv'd in Love, No Trouble then I prove, But am as truly blest Upon her panting Breast, As if to me she brought All for which Caesar fought: For I, like Anthony, With Beauty would be free, Altho' again't ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)
... when it appears (as is sufficiently and admirably proved by my friend the author of An Enquiry into Happiness) that these men live in a constant opposition to their own nature, and are no less monsters than the most wanton abortions ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... the Master?' Then they answer, 'Fool! A man shall cast a stone into the air For pastime, or for lack of heed,—but He! Will He come fingering of His ended work, Fright it with His approaching face, or snatch One day the rolling wonder from its ring, And hold it quivering, as a wanton child Might take a nestling from its downy bed, And having satisfied a careless wish, Go thrust it back into its place again?' To such I answer, and, that doubt once mine, I am assured that I do speak aright: 'Sirs, the significance of this your doubt Lies in the reason of ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... "This wanton sacrifice of horrors speaks eloquently of a forlorn hope! Sweep the walls with light, Kennedy; all those filthy things are nocturnal and they will retreat before us ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... Edith, 'deed we has, chile—but you needn't look so 'stonish and 'mazed. You can't help of it, chile. An' if de British do come dar and burn de house and heave we-dem into de fire jes' out of wanton, it'll only be two poor, ole, unvaluable niggers burned up. Ole marse know dat well enough—dat's de ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... gathering cloud. Those insolent ladies are revelling in the land from which they have ousted their only brother; they are granting leases not worth a straw; they are riding the high horse; they are bringing up that cub (who set the big dog at me) in every wanton luxury. But wait a bit—wait a bit, my ladies; as sure as I live ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... He answered his own question. Pascherette had proven false to falsity; she had schemed against the schemer; and, in the other tray of the balance she had done these things for love of him, out of a deep and all-powerful ambition to place him, Milo the slave, in the high place of the wanton ingrate who had deserted her people. And the thought hurt him now; he had not yet yielded her the kiss she craved. Even now the little gold-tinted one might be cold in death, denied that small consolation because of ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... The wanton cruelties committed upon these people by the commanders and crews of many of the vessels that have been of late years in the habit of resorting to their shores, are testified to, by too many evidences, to allow us to doubt the enormous extent to which they have been carried; and they are, at the ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... delicious passion from her eyes; Felt the new thrill of young Desire, and press'd The graceful Virgin to his glowing breast.— The conscious Fair betrays her soft alarms, Sinks with warm blush into his closing arms, Yields to his fond caress with wanton play, And sweet, reluctant, ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... by their nearest neighbours, with whom they had long maintained a continued intercourse of kindness and good offices. Nay, even death was the slightest punishment inflicted by these monsters in human form; all the tortures which wanton cruelty could invent, all the lingering pains of body, the anguish of mind, the agonies of despair, could not satiate revenge excited without injury, and cruelly derived from no just cause whatever. Depraved nature, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... pertain to youthful vigor and manhood?" To be destitute of that which may be described as raw material in the human frame, means that no really vigorous manhood can have place; to burn up the juices of the system in the fires of lust is madness and wanton folly, {418} but it can be done. To divert the currents of life and energy from blood and brain, from memory and muscle, in order to secrete it for the shambles of prostitution, is death to true manhood; but remember, it can be done! The generous liquid life may inspire ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... guard you against insults. He told me, that to move you to compliance, he forged that letter, pretending I was ruined; ruined by Him too. The fraud succeeded; and what a trusting wife bestowed in pity, was lavished on a wanton. ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore
... young ladies," said the head-mistress in that slightly vibrating and authoritative voice of hers. "I have a word or two to say to you all. Miss Good has just brought me a painful story of wanton and cruel mischief. There are fifty girls in this school, who, until lately, lived happily together. There is now one girl among the fifty whose object it is to sow seeds of discord and misery among her companions. Miss Good has told me of three different occasions on which mischief ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... so much, that though they took the greatest pains with the circlet of a crown, or the rim of a crystal cup, in the heart of their picture, they would twist their capitals of columns and towers of churches about in the background in the most wanton way, wherever they liked the lines to go, provided only they left just perspective enough to please ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... solitary life thou true repose, Wherein the wise contemplate heaven aright, In thee no dread of war or worldly foes, In thee no pomp seduceth mortal sight. In thee no wanton cares to win with words, Nor lurking toys which silly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... questioned. The mother, it is said, died insane, and the time has come when the daughter also is watched with all care lest she harm herself—or her attendants. So I hear—the maid I do not know, but the scarf I can trace. Briefly—the evident place for such a wanton spitfire is the convent. You can easily see the turmoil a woman like that can make as each ship brings adventurers—and she seeks a ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... and thought of the people who conceived it; and this religion of Here, the special religion of Argos, is congruous with what has been here said as to the place of art in the civilisation of the Argives; it is a reflexion of that splendid and wanton old feudal life. For Here is, in her original essence and meaning, equivalent to Demeter—the one living spirit of the earth, divined behind the veil of all its manifold visible energies. But in the development of a common mythological motive the various peoples are subject ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... dismay this wanton destruction of his interior, cried to the Tin Woodman to save him; and that good friend responded with renewed energy. His axe fairly flashed among the Jackdaws, and fortunately the Gump began wildly waving the two wings remaining ...
— The Marvelous Land of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... comrades, scour the plain; and, ere ye strip the slain, First give another stab to make your search secure; Then shake from sleeves and pockets their broadpieces and lockets, The tokens of the wanton, the plunder of ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... morning, and behind them the brown-faced yeoman in his coat and hood of green with a mighty bow in his hand. A group of ecclesiastics light up for us the mediaeval church—the brawny hunt-loving monk, whose bridle jingles as loud and clear as the chapel-bell—the wanton friar, first among the beggars and harpers of the country-side—the poor parson, threadbare, learned, and devout, ("Christ's lore and his apostles twelve he taught, and first he followed it himself")—the summoner with his fiery face—the pardoner with his wallet "bretfull of pardons, come from ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... appeared, attacking me as an impostor, and aspersing the motives of Eveleth in her former marriage, and treating her as a foolish crank or an audacious flirt. The goodness of her life, her self-sacrifice and works of benevolence, counted for no more against these wanton attacks than the absolute inoffensiveness of my own; the writers knew no harm of her, and they knew nothing at all of me; but they devoted us to the execration of their readers simply because we formed apt and ready themes for paragraphs. You may judge of how wild they were in their aim when some ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... commendations, for when they find they are handsom, they are unwholsome; one without ears, not giving time to flatterers, for she that hears her self commended, wavers, and points men out a way to make 'em wicked; one without substance of her self; that woman without the pleasure of her life, that's wanton; though she be young, forgetting it, though fair, making her glass the eyes of honest men, not her own admiration, all her ends obedience, all her hours new blessings, if there ...
— Wit Without Money - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher • Francis Beaumont
... in Florida and along the Gulf coast to Indian Territory. As late as 1885, the Carolina Paroquets were abundant in the South Atlantic and Gulf States, but owing to their wanton destruction by man, they have been exterminated in the greater portion of their range, and now are rarely seen in any locality, and then only in the most unhabitable swamps and thickets. A reliable account ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... the leaves "Of snow-white lilies; fresher than the meads; "More lofty far than towering alder trees; "Than chrystal clearer; than the wanton kid "More gay; than shells, by ocean's constant waves "Smooth polish'd, smoother; dearer than the shade "In summer's heat; than winter's sun more dear; "More than the apple bright; and fairer far "Than lofty planetrees; clearer than the frost; "More beauteous than the ripen'd ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... to renew the struggle in 1813. He entered upon a campaign which was signalized by acts of barbarity on both sides. His declaration of "war to the death" was answered in kind. Wholesale slaughter of prisoners, indiscriminate pillage, and wanton destruction of property spread terror and desolation throughout the country. Acclaimed "Liberator of Venezuela" and made dictator by the people of Caracas, Bolivar strove in vain to overcome the half-savage ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... judiciously adds, "where so little interest has been felt in the preservation of these relics, it is only surprising that so many of them yet remain in different parts of the kingdom." Among all acts of wanton license, the destruction of a cross is to us the most unaccountable. We can readily refer the defacement of imperial insignia and the spoliation of royal houses to political turbulence engendered by acts of tyrannical misrule; but the mutilation of the cross—the universal ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 563, August 25, 1832 • Various
... do but continue the investigation and send the details to the 'Society for Psychical Research,' when he got down from his horse and walked towards the door of the house. At his approach, as if to rebuke his wanton curiosity, a great blast of snow blew out of the window and got him full in the face. He ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... declared. "It is malicious and wanton brutality, and I fancy I can lay my hands on the fellow who was ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... Constantinople. The annals of those days, which seem to be credible, state that he floated down the Dnieper with ten thousand barges, and spread his sails upon the waves of the Euxine. Entering the Bosporus, he landed on both shores of that beautiful strait, and, with the most wanton barbarity, ravaged the country far and near, massacring the inhabitants, pillaging the towns and committing all ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... for the wanton love of blood, but to gratify revenge for some injury done to himself, or to his tribe; but it was difficult to still the terrible apprehensions that haunted the minds of Louis and Hector. They spent much time in searching the northern shores and the distant islands, in the vain hope ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... men will agree that wanton cruelty, treason to family or the state, falsehood for private gain, breach of faith, are admirable?" strikes the Martian as absurd when viewed in the light of the historical annals of the Church itself. Mr. Belloc's creed must have considered these very vices as virtues, ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... By far the richest part of his property was the 'haven royal' of Youghal, with the thickly-wooded lands on either side of the river Blackwater. He is scarcely to be forgiven for what appears to have been the wanton destruction of the Geraldine Friary of Youghal, built in 1268, which his men pulled down and burned while he was mayor of the town in 1587. Raleigh's Irish residences at this time were his manor-house in Youghal, which still remains, and Lismore Castle, which he rented, from 1587 onwards, of the ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... good as her word; yet engages him to take no notice of it to her Mother, and then as soon as he was a Bed, she'd come to him: Accordingly, after he was a Bed, she comes to Bed to him, as she before had promis'd: And after they had both gratify'd their wanton desires, the Whore professing a great deal of Love to him, and pretending she shou'd never be happy till they were married, Miss Betty all of a sudden pretends to want the Chamber-pot, which she desir'd him to help her to, who feeling ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... they had been in danger of their lives. The argument is gratis dictum: and as Richard loved Hastings and had used his ministry, the probability lies on the other side: and it is more reasonable to believe that Richard acted in self-defence, than that he exercised a wanton, unnecessary, and disgusting cruelty. The collateral circumstances introduced by More do but weaken(17) his account, and take from its probability. I do not mean the silly recapitulation of silly omens which forewarned Hastings ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... motionless. It was a fine shot, for the tiny moving thing was fully thirty yards from them and looked hardly the size of a dollar. Talbot glanced at her with startled admiration. He himself never shot except for food or other necessity, and wanton killing rather annoyed him than otherwise, but here the skill and the correctness of wrist and eye were so obvious that they compelled him to an ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... though it be that of the enemy, and the act, even if necessary, brings its penalty. It begets a spirit of violence, a disregard of human life, a destruction of institutional order. Such is the training of the Greeks before Troy. The wanton attack of Ulysses and his companions upon the city of the Ciconians (Book Ninth) is an indication of the spirit engendered in this long period of violence, among the best and ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... at New Amsterdam in the merry month of June, the sweetest month in all the year; when dan Apollo seems to dance up the transparent firmament—when the robin, the thrush, and a thousand other wanton songsters make the woods to resound with amorous ditties, and the luxurious little bob-lincon revels among the clover blossoms of the meadows—all which happy coincidences persuaded the old dames of New Amsterdam, who were ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... swear he never loved that knew to part. Why part we then? That spring, which but this day Met some sweet river, in his bed can play, And with a dimpled cheek smile at their bliss, Who never know what separation is. The amorous vine with wanton interlaces Clips still the rough elm in her kind embraces: Doves with their doves sit billing in the groves, And woo the lesser birds to sing their loves: Whilst hapless we in griefful absence sit, Yet dare not ask a hand to ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... advantage more than compensated by the loss of Sir Philip Sidney, who, being mortally wounded in the action, was carried off by the soldiers, and soon after died. This person is described by the writers of that age, as the most perfect model of an accomplished gentleman that could be formed even by the wanton imagination of poetry or fiction. Virtuous conduct, polite conversation, heroic valor, and elegant erudition, all concurred to render him the ornament and delight of the English court; and as the credit which he possessed with the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... trees have thus perished near London?—witness the large elms that once stood in Jews' Walk, at Sydenham. Barking the trunks for sheer wanton mischief is undoubtedly the cause in some cases, and it has been suggested that quicksilver has occasionally been inserted in gimlet holes. The mercury is supposed to work up the channels of the sap, ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... cord of trunk, with his other hand pointing up the hill. From the base of the castle a broad blaze rushed, showing window and battlement, arch and tower, as in a flicker of the Northern lights. Then up went all the length of fabric, as a wanton child tosses his Noah's ark. Keep and buttress, tower and arch, mullioned window and battlement, in a fiery furnace leaped on high, like the outburst of a volcano. Then, with a roar that rocked the earth, they broke into a storm ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... disinherit him? 'No, he did not.' Who stopped him? 'Well, he was thinking of it.' To whom did he say so? 'To no one.' Surely," cries Cicero, "this is to abuse the laws and justice and your dignity in the basest and most wanton way, to make charges which he not only cannot but does not even ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... the dispersion of the Acadians, that terrible and wanton piece of political policy, which resulted in the extinction and denationalizing of a simple and pious people. The fugitive Acadians found their way through a wilderness of forests, suffering and dying as they went, some landing in distant ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... the 1st ed. In the account given of St Helena in the narrative of my former voyage, I find two mistakes. Its inhabitants are far from exercising a wanton cruelty over their slaves, and they have had wheel-carriages and porters' ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... Pierre Garcon says that Bois DesCaut is at Seven Isles on the Qui Appelle with Henderson. Since telling that wanton lie to the Nor'wester he has not had enough to show his face here. A bad lot Bois, and one to be watched ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... Then we were escorted by an army ten thousand strong, then musicians had sung before us and our path was strewn with flowers. And now! Now we came two fugitives from the vengeance of the Teules, I borne in a litter by four tired soldiers, while Otomie, the princess of this people, still clad in her wanton's robe, at which the women mocked, for she had been able to come by no other, tramped at my side, since there were none to carry her, and the inhabitants of the place cursed us as the authors of their woes. Nor did we know if they ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... The speaker's former careless and boisterous manner instantly resumed possession. "You must permit me to speak of a wholly fictitious lady, a creature of my wanton fancy, sir, whom I call Carmen. It will enable me to relieve my burdened soul of some remarks I have long wished to address to your ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... as the weaker Power in North America, Great Britain considers itself entitled to claim the use of the lakes as a military barrier."[394] The declaration of war by the United States was regarded by most Englishmen as a wanton endeavor to overthrow their immemorial right to the services of their seamen, wherever found; and consequently the invasion of Canada had been an iniquitous attempt to effect annexation under cover of an indefensible pretext. To guard against ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... squatter drinks and gambles; his son will drink less, gamble more—though it was not a young man who recently lost L40,000 in a night's sitting at a club in Melbourne—and lead a wanton life; but he will probably have the sense to educate his children thoroughly, instead of taking them away from school at seventeen, as was done with himself; and the grandson will obtain some cultivated tastes which will make a fight for it with those he has inherited. In the ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... 1783 Great Britain agreed to give us the whole West below a certain line, but when the time came for the surrender, she refused to yield the forts south of this line. With the bad faith of wanton power she kept her posts at Oswego, Niagara, Detroit, and Mackinaw, because we were weak and she was strong; and from these points her agents abetted the savages in their war upon the American frontiers. Just before the battle of Fallen Timbers, where Wayne won his victory, ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... words renounce their allegiance to their Creator. Put an instance, then, with respect to any one of these three. Though we should suppose profane swearing, and in general that kind of impiety now mentioned, to mean nothing, yet it implies wanton disregard and irreverence towards an infinite Being our Creator; and is this as suitable to the nature of man as reverence and dutiful submission of heart towards that Almighty Being? Or suppose a man guilty of ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... revel, a portrait of the unhappy man himself who had thus unconsciously left behind him not only a memorial, but a warning. How often had the now silent halls echoed to the brawl of the drunkard, the song of the wanton, the jest of the profane, the laugh of the scorner! It was here, perhaps in this very room, that the dread hand of death had struck him; here he had been suddenly called to account for property misused, a life misspent. ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... times are evil; we servants of the Lord are threatened by that adulterous king and his proud ministers, who swear they will strip us to the shirt and turn us out to starve. I'm but just from London, and, although our enemy Anne Boleyn has lost her wanton head, I tell you the danger is great. Money must be had to stir up rebellion, for who can arm without it, and but little comes from Spain. I am in treaty to sell the Foterell lands for what they will fetch, but as yet can give no title. ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... his alternation of wanton and pious ideas. Without power to resist, he saw himself slipping. "All this is far from clear," he cried, one day, in a rage, when, less apathetic than usual, he forced himself to take stock. "Now, Monsieur l'Abbe, what ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... large Front and Eye sublime declar'd 300 Absolute rule; and Hyacinthin Locks Round from his parted forelock manly hung Clustring, but not beneath his shoulders broad: Shee as a vail down to the slender waste Her unadorned golden tresses wore Dissheveld, but in wanton ringlets wav'd As the Vine curles her tendrils, which impli'd Subjection, but requir'd with gentle sway, And by her yeilded, by him best receivd, Yeilded with coy submission, modest pride, 310 And sweet reluctant amorous ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... it appears to them now for that matter, not warranted either by law or justice. The punishment which that order inflicted on a whole battalion of American soldiers, without trial of any kind seemed unmerited and cruel in the highest degree, and a wanton ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... and threw him to the waves; but the very fragments were melodious and reached the Muses, who buried them where the nightingale still sings "Eurydice." So runs the allegory; even drowned by earthly clamors, slain and torn by wanton hands, the song of Poetry ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... describe them as fools, for what will it matter to posterity what their initials or names are; they only rouse the ire of those who follow them and a feeling of disappointment that they had not caught the offenders in their act of wanton mischief and been able to administer some corporal ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... their prisoners, seldom getting the worst of the bargain, no armies—to their lasting honour be it spoken, for no armies were so destitute—were ever less formidable to peaceful citizens, within the border or beyond it, than those of the Confederacy. It was exceedingly seldom that wanton damage was laid to the soldier's charge. The rights of non-combatants were religiously respected, and the farmers of Pennsylvania were treated with the same courtesy and consideration as the planters ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... But my grandmother began a loud lecture upon the idleness of the wives of this age, who, for fear of their shape, forbear suckling their own offspring; and ten nurses were immediately sent for; one was whispered to have a wanton eye, and would soon spoil her milk; another was in a consumption; the third had an ill voice, and would frighten me instead of lulling me to sleep. Such exceptions were made against all but one country milch-wench, to whom I was committed, and put to the breast. This ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... reputation discussing the measures they were going to take, and it was evident that it had become a mania closely resembling insanity. Buchanan's criticism had a rancor and breath of personality in it which had no excuse; it was a savage, wanton attack on the poet which he felt not only as poet and artist but as personal; for, to Rossetti, the two were the silver and golden sides of the shield. Though the morbid state was there, I think that the article of Buchanan had more to do with the intensification ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... By permitting the tree to stand and merely building a staging up to the burl, the latter could have been removed without vital injury to the tree—whereas by destroying the tree the wretches had evidenced all too clearly to Bryce a wanton desire to add insult ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... are not joyously light nor particularly airy, but their occupants could have suffered no extreme physical discomfort; and the thick wooden casing of the interior walls evidences at least the intention of the state to inflict no wanton hardships of ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... green slope before us, glowing warm, Came Alfred, tugging at his mother's arm; Willing she seem'd, but he still led the way, She had not walk'd so fast for many a day; His hand was lifted, and his brow was bare, For now no clust'ring ringlets wanton'd there, He threw them back in anger and in spleen, And shouted "Jennet" o'er the daisied green. Boyish impatience strove with manly grace In ev'ry line and feature of his face; His claim appear'd resistless as his choice, And when he caught the sound of ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield
... existence concealed conflicts of heart and mind which Sidney himself could not have explained, could not lucidly have described. The moral shock which he experienced at his father's death put an end to the wanton play of his energies, but it could not ripen him before due time; his nature was not of the sterile order common in his world, and through passion, through conflict, through endurance, it had to develop such maturity as fate should permit. Saved from self-indulgence, ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... Jones' representation of our 'standard English', and his book is the most trustworthy evidence at my disposal: but before exhibiting it I would premise that our present fashionable dialect is not to be considered as the wanton local creator of all the faults that Mr. Jones can parade before the eye. Its qualities have come together in various ways, nor are the leading characteristics of recent origin. I am convinced that our so-called standard English sprang actively ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... of that hellishly wanton globe remain a bore. Instead, it spread. That devil's brew ate into and dissolved everything it touched like a stream of boiling water being poured into a loosely-heaped pile of granulated sugar. By the time the ravening sphere had reached ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... down to continue her narrative. I am convinced that nothing would more powerfully preserve youth from irregularity, or guard inexperience from seduction, than a just description of the condition into which the wanton plunges herself; and therefore hope that my letter may be a ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... for miles around having long since been delivered up to brutal destruction, wanton waste, hideous massacre, and a goodly number of the churches of which the pious man was taking so much pains to record the history, were now but anonymous ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... felt by the moral man in the presence of the "brazen" woman lies in the threat to his purposes of respectability and faithfulness; he is angered that this creature can arouse a conflict in him. The bitterness of the "saint" against the wanton originates in the ease with which she tempts him, and his natural conclusion is that the fault lies with her and not with his own passions. The respectable woman inveigles against her more untrammeled sister, not so much through her concern for morality, as through the anger felt ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... abomination of desolation in the holy places of our hearts. We pollute them all—conscience, imagination, memory, will, intellect. How many a man listening to me now has his nature like the facade of some of our cathedrals, with the empty niches and broken statues proclaiming that wanton desecration and destruction have been ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... once with some passage of Holy Writ as 'Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?' And what can I say to that but Amen? Jack is always loving and tender, but he can (I well perceive) see little comfort herein himself; and to do so much as name the thing to Thekla were wanton cruelty, though I do fancy she should be the best comforter. So I must wait on, and cry unto God. It may be that is the very thing He would ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... now. A week ago I did think you half-mad—a poor, ill-used creature, a visionary, a moral woman living immorally; yet, in spite of all, a woman to be loved and pitied. But now I'm beginning to think you're only frail—wanton. Oh, you're not so mad as not to know you're wicked! [Tapping the book forcibly.] And so ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero
... philosophy"; but it is more obvious still that, whether they like it or not, the drapings grow a trifle dingier every year, and that no one seems to have the courage to tack up something gay. What is much worse, even those bits of wanton color which have rested generations of weary eyes are being rapidly obscured by somber and intricate scroll-work, warranted to oppress and fatigue. The great masterpieces of humor, which have kept men young by laughter, are being tried in the courts of an orthodox ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... vile indeed) I mourn for thy misfortunes, seeing thee An aged outcast, wandering on and on, A beggar with one handmaid for thy stay. Ah! who had e'er imagined she could fall To such a depth of misery as this, To tend in penury thy stricken frame, A virgin ripe for wedlock, but unwed, A prey for any wanton ravisher? Seems it not cruel this reproach I cast On thee and on myself and all the race? Aye, but an open shame cannot be hid. Hide it, O hide it, Oedipus, thou canst. O, by our fathers' gods, consent I pray; Come back to Thebes, come to thy father's home, Bid Athens, as is ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... meteors play, And struggling clouds repel the rising ray. Yet nought disturb'd my unprophetic soul; Resign'd to joy, impatient of control, I seem'd new-born: Creative Hope again Restored the sense of pleasure, and of pain; Tumultuous transport, now no more suppressed, Shone from my eyes, and wanton'd in ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... Zenobia has escaped without harm—its lofty walls and insulated position were its protection. The Long Portico, with its columns, monuments, and inscriptions, remains also untouched by the flames and unprofaned by any violence from the wanton soldiery. The fire has fed upon the poorer quarters of the city, where the buildings were composed in greater proportion of wood, and spared most of the great thorough-fares, principal avenues, and squares of the capital, which, being constructed in the most solid manner ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... sometimes carries his big mittens), "it is my opinion that the flood will recede more rapidly than you think, and that the majority of these people will survive. But I quite agree with your merciful view of the matter. We must be guilty of no wanton destruction. Probably more than nine-tenths of the inhabitants of Mars have perished in the deluge. Even if all the others survived ages would elapse before they could regain ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... the Sun shower on his glancing mail. The estray Winds are wanton with his locks. His mutinous waves whisper each to ...
— The Masque of the Elements • Herman Scheffauer
... [Footnote: Vide Bettio, Lettera, p. 23.] I wish the reader especially to notice that a separate tower or range of apartments was built for this purpose, in order to clear the government of the accusations so constantly made against them, by ignorant or partial historians, of wanton cruelty to prisoners. The stories commonly told respecting the "piombi" of the Ducal Palace are utterly false. Instead of being, as usually reported, small furnaces under the leads of the palace, they were comfortable ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... treading barefoot on the embers; the circle of grunting figures, leaning forward, hatchet and musket in hand, moving slowly around the fire with a shuffling, hopping step; the outer circle of sitting or lying figures, men, women, and children, drunken, wanton, quarrelsome, dreaming of the blood that should be let before the sun had gone; and at one side the little group of old men, beating their drums of wood and skin with a rhythm ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... never intended as a defensive fortress. It stands on the margin of a lovely lake, and considering its delightful situation and its comparative comfort, it is not strange that it was a favorite residence of the Scottish kings. It owes its dismantled condition to the wanton spite of the English dragoons, who, when they retreated from Linlithgow in face of the Highland army in 1746, left the palace ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... had felt at times last year, born of this man's hostility, was gone long since, effaced by a tide of stronger feelings. So his sudden exhumation of the topic as a cause of war now came upon her with the harshest discordance. It seemed almost like a wanton wounding of her, somehow like sheer disloyalty in him. Surely if there were need of articles, this man might leave them to somebody ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... in which the great moralist strips off our mask of hypocrisy and shows the hideous evil that results when a man and a woman degrade the holy sacrament of marriage. That is not love, but a perversion of love. How can God bless a union in which the wife is expected to conduct herself like a wanton or lose her husband? And she loses him anyway, for sensuality in a man inevitably leads him to promiscuousness. I know ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... Frolick, and form, and wanton playfulness, And some unspoken radiant vanity, And some enrapturing bewitching charm, And perfect virgin beauty are your own! Fading like gods' pale images, you seem! Even the bird sometimes bows to your grace! And Nereids wind-footed fan your faces, O ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... she cast on her brother a look so wanton that the young man blushed under it: but as at the moment he had to think of other things than his illicit loves, he ordered that four servants should be awakened; and while they were getting armed ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... time, call for victuals between meals, use him to nothing but dry bread. If he be hungry more than wanton, bread will go down; and if he be not hungry, it is not fit that he should eat. By this you will obtain two good effects. First, that by custom he will come to be in love with bread; for, as I said, our palates and stomachs, too, are pleased with the things we are used to. Another good you will ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... daughter, whome king Edward kept as concubines: for the mother being of noble parentage, sought to satisfie the kings lust, in hope that either he would take hir or hir daughter vnto wife. And therefore perceiuing that Dunstane was sore against such wanton pastime as the [Sidenote: Dunstane banished the realme.] king vsed in their companie, she so wrought, that Dunstane was through hir earnest trauell banished the land. This is also reported, that when he should depart the realme, the diuell was heard ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (6 of 8) - The Sixt Booke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... with stranger eyes, Could pick no meaning from their parling looks, Nor read the subtle-shining secrecies Writ in the glassy margents of such books: She touch'd no unknown baits, nor fear'd no hooks; Nor could she moralize his wanton sight, More than his eyes were open'd to ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... abandon herself without reserve, to all the promptings of her voluptuous nature. Her appearance, conversation and actions were not without their influence on me, you may be sure; and if ever I envied mortal man, it was that young officer, who could revel at will in the arms of the beautiful wanton ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... entertained concerning it. The pious historian was apprehensive of exposing that incomprehensible mystery to the cavils and objections of unbelievers: and he durst not, "seeing the nature of this book, venture it abroad in so wanton and lewd an age" (Preface to the Life ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... thousand pleasures bring, Which from decrepid age will fly; Sweets that wanton in the bosom of the spring, In ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... "The wanton taste no flesh nor fowl can choose, For which the grape or melon it would lose, Though all th' inhabitants of earth and air Be listed in the glutton's ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... flattering prospect was soon to be overcast. England and France had long been at war; and, at the period of which we are treating, France had become the ruthless bandit of the land, and England the wanton pirate of the sea. Each desired the cooperation of the United States in the war—and each determined, in the event of our refusal to take part in the controversy in its favor, to cripple our commerce ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... which he had been born and bred. So was it with the jury and bystanders; and—most wonderful of all—so was it even with the prisoner. Throughout he seemed fully impressed with the notion that he was being dealt with justly: he saw nothing wanton in his being told by the judge that he was to be punished, not so much as a necessary protection to society (although this was not entirely lost sight of), as because he had not been better born and bred than he was. But this led me to hope that he suffered less than he would ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... themselves a wide range; they were willing to eat almost anything that they could shoot, even blackbirds, which were so abundant and so easy to shoot. But there were some things which they would have thought it not only wanton but wicked to kill, like turtle-doves, which they somehow believed were sacred, nor robins either, because robins were hallowed by poetry, and they kept about the house, and were almost tame, so that it seemed a shame to shoot them. They were very plentiful, and so were the turtle-doves, ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... earthly career. The reader cannot require to be reminded that the personage, whose relegation to St. Helena has formed the topic of so many indignant appeals and contemptuous commentaries, was, after all, the same man, who, by an act of utterly wanton and unnecessary violence, seized Pius VII. and detained him a prisoner for nearly four years, and who, having entrapped Ferdinand VII. to Bayonne, and extorted his abdication by the threat of murder, concluded by locking him up ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... gone from the smoke-house, the flour from the bin, the delicacies from the pantry. These things, though forbidden, are half excused by sympathy with the soldier's craving for variety of food. Yet, as the habit of measuring right by might goes on, pillage becomes wanton and arson is committed to cover the pillage. The best efforts of a provost-marshal with his guard will be useless when superior officers, and especially colonels of regiments, encourage or wink at license. The ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... meant to draw; The George and Garter dangling from that bed, Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red, Great Villiers lies:—alas! how changed from him, That life of pleasure and that soul of whim! Gallant and gay, in Claverdon's proud alcove, The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love, Or, just as gay, at council in a ring Of mimic'd statesmen and their merry King. No wit to flatter left of all his store, No fool to laugh at, which he valued more, Then victor of his health, of fortune, friends, And fame, this ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... experience. Animism developed into mythology, mythology into gnomic philosophy, and this again became differentiated into science, art, philosophy, and theology. In the earlier stages, the instability of men's imaginings and conceptions was kaleidoscopic; but it was no more governed by wanton fickleness and caprice than is the course of modern thought. The human spirit was striving then, as now, to realise worlds vaguely experienced and dimly surmised. The more imperfect expression was continuously yielding place to the less imperfect—the ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... trembling stream, or where it boils Around the stone, or from the hollow'd bank Reverted plays in undulating flow, There throw, nice-judging, the delusive fly; And as you lead it round in artful curve, With eye attentive mark the springing games Straight as above the surface of the flood They wanton rise, or urged by hunger leap, Then fix, with gentle twitch, the barbed hook: Some lightly tossing to the grassy bank, And to the shelving shore slow-dragging some, With various hand proportion'd to their force. ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... matter—there was the man! What a force he might have been—was! What a Samson, when he pulled the whole Irish Party down—got them all on top of him to pull with him. What d'you think he was doing then? Trying to give his Irish nation a soul! It looked like pride, pique, mere wanton destruction; but it was a great idea. And if ever they rise to it—if ever the whole Irish nation puts its back to the wall as Parnell wanted it to do then—shakes off dependence, alliance, conciliation, compromise, it may beat us yet! They were afraid of defeat. That's why we won. A cause or ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... groundless has been proved in many regions of the earth, where wanton destruction of game in former days has resulted in great scarcity or extinction at ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... his royal captive in triumph to Samarkand. An attempt to facilitate his escape, by digging a mine under the tent, provoked the Mongol Emperor to impose a harsher restraint; and in his perpetual marches, an iron cage on a wagon might be invented, not as a wanton insult, but as a rigorous precaution. But the strength of Bajazet's mind and body fainted under the trial, and his premature death might, without injustice, be ascribed to the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... known nothing of Droulde's plans for the escape of Marie Antoinette, they didn't know what the letter-case had contained, and yet they both vaguely felt that the beautiful girl, who stood up so calmly before the loathsome Terrorist, was not a wanton, as she tried to make out, but only misguided, ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... militia officers appointed by the States. The result of these combined causes was that the Governor of Connecticut refused to send militia, declaring that he must "yield obedience to the paramount authority of the Constitution and the laws." The Massachusetts House voted that the "war is a wanton sacrifice of our best interests;" and the Governor of Massachusetts informed the President that since there was no invasion, there was no constitutional reason for sending the militia. New Hampshire took similar ground, ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... my passionate, deathless soul, Was less than his finger-tips; He turned away fro the gold of my love For the dross on a wanton's lips. My faith in his truth is broken— Even truth itself is a lie. I have cursed him!—but I love him, And I'll love ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris
... lies in one little word! Four lagging winters and four wanton springs End in a word: such is ...
— The Tragedy of King Richard II • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... 'Tom Dixon's got charge of my interests, you know, and he sees to it that she has everything she wants.' Malemute Kid laid hand upon his arm and hushed him suddenly. They had stepped without. Overhead, the aurora, a gorgeous wanton, flaunted miracles of color; beneath lay the sleeping town. Far below, ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... Thing, but the Mind that distinguishes us from Jews; they held their Hands from certain Meats, as from unclean Things, that would pollute the Mind; but we, understanding that to the Pure, all Things are pure, yet take away Food from the wanton Flesh, as we do Hay from a pamper'd Horse, that it may be more ready to hearken to the Spirit. We sometimes chastise the immoderate Use of pleasant Things, by the Pain ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... poet's height? What puts a full house in a merry mood? More closely view your patrons of the night! The half are cold, the half are rude. One, the play over, craves a game of cards; Another a wild night in wanton joy would spend. Poor fools the muses' fair regards. Why court for such a paltry end? I tell you, give them more, still more, 'tis all I ask, Thus you will ne'er stray widely from the goal; Your audience seek to mystify, cajole;— ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... was in little better case. Only was the scene here in closer touch with human understanding. Here the terror was of earth, here disaster was of human making. Here the rack of heart was in destruction by wanton fire. Shrieking, hissing, crackling, only insignificant by comparison with the war of the greater elements, flames licked up and devoured with ravening appetites the tinder-like ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... not spared. More than one speaker waxed eloquent over what he declared was wanton waste of the greatest amount of money ever intrusted to an exposition management, which wanton waste had made the Exposition Company bankrupt and again at the doors of the Treasury begging for funds. Those working against the bill triumphantly ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... attacked and captured the Gaspee, and burned the vessel. Abraham Whipple, afterward a commodore in the Continental Navy, and one of the founders of the State of Ohio, led the expedition. The royal authorities were greatly exasperated on hearing of the daring achievement, and Joseph Wanton, Governor of Rhode Island, afterward deposed from office for his loyalty to King George, issued a proclamation ordering diligent search for the perpetrators of the act. The British government offered a reward of $5000 for the leader, but although the people of Providence well knew ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... thy door Entreats with dolorous cry and clamoring, That mendicant who quits thee nevermore; Now winter chills the world, and no birds sing In any woods, yet as in wanton Spring He follows thee; and never will have done, Though nakedly he die, ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... even worse as they left the ruined town behind them and resumed their journey towards Moscow. It seemed that the hatred with which they were regarded by the Russian peasantry was now even more than reciprocated. The destruction they committed was wanton and wholesale; the villages, and even the towns, were burnt down, and the whole country made desolate. It was nothing to them that by so doing they added enormously to the difficulties of their own commissariat; ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... by this will I govern Prussia. I will have no blinded subjects, no superstitious, conscience-stricken, trembling, priest-ridden slaves. My people shall learn to think; thought shall be free as the wanton air in Prussia; no censor or police shall limit her boundary. The thoughts of men should be like the life- giving and beautifying sun, all-nourishing and all-enlightening; calling into existence and fructifying, not only the rich, and rare, and ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... case; should they cause any unknown species to be brought into public view, and thus add a little more to the page of natural history, it will please me much. But should they unfortunately tend to cause a wanton expense of life; should they tempt you to shoot the pretty songster warbling near your door, or destroy the mother as she is sitting on the nest to warm her little ones, or kill the father as he is bringing a mouthful of food for their support—Oh, ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... a thing to say, but let it goe: The Sunne is in the heauen, and the proud day, Attended with the pleasure of the world, Is all too wanton, and too full of gawdes To giue me audience: If the midnight bell Did with his yron tongue, and brazen mouth Sound on into the drowzie race of night, If this same were a Churchyard where we stand, And thou possessed with a thousand ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... enemies turned his comedy into a libel. He has defended himself in his preface from this imputation. It was particularly laid to his charge, that in the characters of Bartoline, an old corrupt lawyer, and his wife Lucinda, a wanton country girl, he intended to ridicule a certain Serjeant M—— and his young wife. It was even said that the comedian mimicked the odd speech of the aforesaid Serjeant, who, having lost all his teeth, uttered his words ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... enough, the Girl not quite so comely. They were both very young, and happened one day to be playing near the looking-glass, which stood on their mother's toilet. The Boy, pleased with the novelty of the thing, viewed himself for some time, and in a wanton, roguish manner observed to the Girl how handsome he was. She resented the insult, and ran immediately to her father, and, with a great deal of aggravation, complained of her brother, particularly for having acted so effeminate a part as to look in a glass, and meddle with things which ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... ruthless, wanton band, Deep in our hearts we guard from scathe Of last year's log a smouldering brand, To light at Yule ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... husbands' mistresses, were reverenced by the people; we find striking contrasts to them in the two queens-regent, Louise of Savoy and Catherine de' Medici, who, in the period of their power, were as unscrupulous and brutal, intriguing and licentious, jealous and revengeful, as the most wanton mistresses who ever controlled a king. In this century, we find two other remarkable types: Marguerite d'Angouleme, the bright star of her time; and her whose name comes instantly to mind when we speak of the Lady of Angouleme—Marguerite ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... Romaine state, And Quirinus, whose strong puissant arme, Did shild the tops and turrets of proud Rome, Do now conspire to wracke the gallant Ship, Euen in the harbor of her wished greatnesse. And her gay streamers, and faire wauering sayles, With which the wanton wind was wont to play, To drowne with Billows of ...
— The Tragedy Of Caesar's Revenge • Anonymous
... suspicious element. Praise has been lavished upon the most questionable characteristics of the old drama. Apologists have been found, not merely for its daring portrayal of human passion, but for its wanton delight in the grotesque and the horrible for its own sake; and some critics have revenged themselves for the straitlaced censures of Puritan morality by praising work in which the author strives to atone for imaginative weakness by a choice of revolting motives. Such adulation ought to ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... the profound irony of the position, a blackness of misery fell upon Katherine. And then, since she was of a strong, undaunted spirit, an immense anger possessed her, a revolt against nature which could work such wanton injury, and against God, who, being all-powerful, could sit by and permit it so to work. All the foundations of faith and reverence were, for the time being, shaken ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... man should be allowed with impunity to make a wanton attack upon such venerable characters as the judges of the land. We award costs and damages to the aggrieved party in the most trifling actions. By what analogy, then, can we refuse the same justice in the most important cases, to the most important personages? If we allow every ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... a wall, not downwards. This habit makes his course appear so uncertain; he may go there, or yonder, or in a third direction, more undecided than a startled snipe. Is there a little vanity in that wanton flight? Is there a little consciousness of the spring-freshened colours of his plumage, and pride in the dainty touch of his wings on the sweet wind? His love is watching his wayward course. He prolongs it. He has but a few yards ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... on the principles of the Church of England, exclusively, and allotting a seventh of the whole territory, for that purpose, to the Episcopalian clergy, with free access, in the meantime, to the colonial treasury-chest. It will scarcely be believed that so wanton an insult as this precious document implied, could have been offered to the common sense of a whole community, even by the late tory administration; or that men could have been found in the nineteenth century to perpetrate ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... so,' had pertinence to Southampton at any period between his father's death in his boyhood and the close of his bachelorhood in 1598. To no other peer of the day are the words exactly applicable. The 'lascivious comment' on his 'wanton sport' which pursues the young friend through the sonnets, and is so adroitly contrived as to add point to the picture of his fascinating youth and beauty, obviously associates itself with the reputation ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... of a sheep.—Levit. xix: 20 to 22, inclusive. Again, there was a law which guarded his people, whether free or bond, from personal violence. If in vindictiveness, a man with an unlawful weapon, maimed his own slave by knocking out his eye, or his tooth, the slave was to be free for this wanton act of personal violence, as a penalty upon the master.—Exod. xxi: 26 to 27, inclusive. But for the same offense, committed against a free person, the offender had to pay an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, as the penalty.—Levit. ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... Hart minor, who blushed scarlet, and whose eyes filled with tears. . . . "The less said about the matter the better," continued the headmaster, "but I confess that it is difficult for me to understand how any one, however young, can be so hardened and so wanton as to behave in the callous and indecent way in which certain of you—I need not mention who—have behaved to-day. You have disgraced the school in the eyes of strangers; you have violated the laws of hospitality and courtesy; you have ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... thirst, I would desert you—think not but I would!— And seek another as I sought you first. But you are mobile as the veering air, And all your charms more changeful than the tide, Wherefore to be inconstant is no care: I have but to continue at your side. So wanton, light and false, my love, are you, I am most faithless ...
— A Few Figs from Thistles • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... E'en so the MASTIFF, or the meaner Cur, At times will from the path of duty err, (A pattern of fidelity by day; By night a murderer, lurking for his prey); And round the pastures or the fold will creep, And, coward-like, attack the peaceful sheep: Alone the wanton mischief he pursues, Alone in reeking blood his jaws imbrues; Chasing amain his fright'ned victims round, Till death in wild confusion strews the ground; Then wearied out, to kennel sneaks away, And licks his guilty paws till ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... with much regret that I heard it proposed to burn Mackey's Mills, and to ravage the country round, in consequence of the attack which had been made on our boats. I opposed the suggestion with all my might. I said that I thought it a wanton destruction of property, that would in no way advance our cause, and would certainly exasperate the sufferers against us. Not only were my counsels disregarded, but several remarks were made hinting pretty broadly ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... Ben!" nodded Brandes in his low, deliberate voice. His heavy, round face was deeply flushed; Fortune, the noisy wanton, had flung both arms around his neck. But his slow eyes were continually turned on the slim young girl whom he was teaching to walk beside him ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... as long as he could and then retreated to the main body, after killing three- thousand of the enemy, just double the number of his original command. On his retreat, the Chileans swarmed into Chorrillos, more intent on plunder and wanton murder than honorable warfare, while the Chilean fleet continued to pour a storm of shot and shell after the retreating fragments of the little command. That night the Chileans broke into the liquor store-houses and soon drunkenness increased their ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... bring with thee Jest and youthful Jollity, Quips, and Cranks, and wanton wiles, Nods and Becks, and wreathed Smiles Such as hang on Hebe's cheek, And love to live in dimple sleek; Sport that wrinkled Care derides, And Laughter holding ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch |
