"Callousness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... men who are as noble, as high-minded, as chivalrous as even the most captious American girl could wish. But I refer to the general run of men when I say that there is something about men born outside of America, a native selfishness or callousness, a lack of perception and appreciation of the fineness of womanhood, amounting to a sort of mental brutality, which wellnigh unfits them for close social contact with the super-sensitive American woman. And just as surely as American women persist ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... callousness and his selfishness, the intense womanliness of the girl stirred the softer emotions of his heart; there was so much freshness in her, so much beauty and so much girlishness that just for one brief second a wave, almost of tenderness, swept ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... marry a Count!" Mrs. Hanway-Harley was shocked as only an American mother could have been shocked. She appealed to the ceiling with her horrified hands. "Oh! the callousness of children!" she cried. Following this outburst of despair, Mrs. Hanway-Harley composed herself. "We need not consider that now; it will be soon enough when the Count offers us his hand." Mrs. ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... Conservatives, ready assent or superstitious deference. Hence flow (be it at once conceded) some of the best characteristics of the age, such as the detestation of inhumanity; the distrust in violent methods of government; the dislike to anything which savours of indifference to the wishes, or callousness to the wants, of the people. Hence the growth of the conviction that property has at least as many duties as rights, and of the faith inspired, rather by compassion than by reason, that the toiling multitudes can and must be made to share in ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... the Italians is the good-nature with which they take personal jokes, and their callousness to ridicule of personal defects. Jests which would provoke a blow from an Anglo-Saxon, or wound and rankle in the memory for life, are here taken in good part. A cripple often joins in the laugh at his own deformity; and the rough carelessness with which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... tug, and I neither feeling glad nor sorry, I got my last lesson about mankind; I mean my latest lesson, for of course I do not know what surprises there are yet in store for me. But that I could have so felt astonished me beyond description. There is a wonderful callousness in human nature which enables us to live. I had no feeling one way or another from New York to California, until, at Dutch Flat, a mining camp in the Sierra, I heard a cock crowing with a home voice; and then I fell to hope and regret ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... what Will meant to do, but, expressed in his uncle's cold, business-like tones, its callousness jarred upon him, and he felt some twinges of conscience, and a regretful sympathy with his old father rose in his heart, which brought a lump in his throat and an unwonted moisture in his eyes. But he mastered the feeling, and assumed an air ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... answer it with an unmistakable affirmative. What we can do even now is to notice that every maladjustment in our present social life tends to increase the amount of failure in true sex morality. All our callousness about social evils revenges itself upon us by confronting us with an increasingly menacing problem in this connection, and all honest service devoted to the increase of social health of any sort is also helping ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... party as we wended our way to the beach, but I could not observe any other expression on the faces of the men than that of total indifference or contempt. It seemed to me a very awful thing that it should be possible for men to come to such hardness of heart and callousness to the sight of bloodshed and violence; but, indeed, I began to find that such constant exposure to scenes of blood was having a slight effect upon myself, and I shuddered when I came to think that I too ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... He forgot all his anger. It seemed shocking to him to find the old man untended in his extremity. He had heard tales of Indian callousness. ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... continued as hopeless as ever. Prayer was unceasing for her; and it pleased God suddenly to reveal Christ to her as her Saviour. Great self-loathing now at once took the place of former indifference; confession of sin, of previous callousness of conscience; and unspeakable joy in the Lord, of former apathy and coldness. It was a spiritual miracle—this girl's sudden transformation into a witness for God, manifesting deepest conviction for past sin and earnest concern for others. Her thoughtless and heedless ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... act of his long life was available to his biographer. His career was that of the most sordid of hucksters. Of eleven of his sons nothing good is told, but Joseph was undoubtedly an able and exemplary man; the only thing to his discredit being his utter callousness regarding the fate of his father, after he had attained to a ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... world's most pretentious religions and of the beginnings of the modern organization of industry. In the midst of this advance and uplift this slave trade and slavery spread more human misery, inculcated more disrespect for and neglect of humanity, a greater callousness to suffering, and more petty, cruel, human hatred than can well be calculated. We may excuse and palliate it, and write history so as to let men forget it; it remains the most inexcusable and despicable blot ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... sorrow was genuine enough, requiring no artificial stimulus and no outward tokens to keep it alive, and if Vincent could have been assured of this it would have reconciled him to all else. No callousness nor forgetfulness on the part of others could have had power to wound him so long as he should live on in the memory of ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... enough," rejoined Sir Percy with a quaint laugh. "I know what venomous reptiles you and those of your kidney are. You certainly do owe your life at the present moment to the unfortunate girl whom you are persecuting with such infamous callousness." ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... heartless, knowing his sentiments; but callousness to the pangs of a lightly won and unvalued heart is not uncommon ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... was absent from school," said the master coldly, turning away. "If you are satisfied, I have nothing more to say." Nevertheless, for the moment he was so startled by this remarkable theory of his own responsibility in the case that he quite accepted the father's callousness,—or rather it seemed to him that his unfortunate charges more than ever needed his protection. There was still the chance of his hearing some news from Julian Fleming's father; he lived at some distance, ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... to high mental or moral endowment, far less than has wealth. There is much left to be done to achieve a meritorious distribution of wealth. The fact that the insignia of success are too often awarded to trickery, callousness and luck does not argue for the abolition altogether of the financial success element in reputability, in favor of a "dead level" of equality such as would result from the application of certain communistic ideals. Distinctions, rightly awarded, are an aid, not a hindrance to sexual ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... the house now," he used to say to his mother with joy. They learned how perfectly peaceful the home could be. And they almost regretted—though none of them would have owned to such callousness—that their father was soon ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... we should be always self-consciously studying ourselves, ready to nip the pernicious idea in the bud; nor yet that we should adopt the ostrich's policy of sticking our heads in the sand and declaring that disease and evil have no real existence. The one leads to egotism and the other to callousness. Duty sometimes requires us to give our attention to things in themselves evil and depressing. The demands of friendship and human sympathy are imperious, and we cannot ignore them without moral loss. But there is a positive and a negative way ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks
... a selfish callousness about your reply which I do not like. A crisis in the life of another evidently does ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... old 'Lias and his wife; by Mr. Ancrum, the lame minister at Clough End; by the dogs; hardly ever by Louie. He had grown used, moreover, to her perpetual explosions, and took them generally with a boy's natural callousness. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... captives. It must have been unspeakably dreadful before, for the foulness of the narrow paved court, shut in by strong walls, was something terrible. Tired, spent, and aching all over, and with boyish callousness to dirt, still Giles and Stephen hesitated to sit down, and when at last they could stand no longer, they rested, leaning against one another. Stephen tried to keep up hope by declaring that his master would soon get them released, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... however: she was a devoted student, and in the society of her books she forgot the callousness of her parents, and, living in imagination in the bygone annals of the empire, she was able to take part, as it were, in the great deeds which mark the past history of the state, and to enjoy the converse ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... seats, on the steps of hotels, discharging dilatory duties; the appalling chaos of hard-eyed, capable dames with defiant clothes, and white-cheeked hunted-looking men; of splendid creatures in their cabs, and cadging creatures in their broken hats—the callousness ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... gradually shrank and hardened into one stern resolve? I looked as from a height over the whole conduct of Montreuil. I saw him in our early infancy with no definite motive (beyond the general policy of intrigue), no fixed design, which might somewhat have lessened the callousness of the crime, not only fomenting dissensions in the hearts of brothers; not only turning the season of warm affections, and yet of unopened passion, into strife and rancour, but seizing upon the inherent and reigning vice of our bosoms, which he should have seized to crush, in order ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... urge such a vindication, when it became known in what way it was likely to operate. The government itself had made it perilous to profess humanity; and every man henceforward gloried publicly in his callousness and insensibility, as the one best safeguard to himself on a path ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... a heavy toll of victims, but it must reckon with the might of organized, united mass defense represented and organized by the I.L.D. For example, the Nine Old Men who have made the United States Supreme Court the stronghold of reaction with the same callousness as their predecessors, arrogantly refused to review the appeal in the case of Haywood Patterson, one of the innocent Scottsboro boys. But the fight goes on, until all ...
— Labor's Martyrs • Vito Marcantonio
... country,' wrote Sir T. Smith, a distinguished lawyer of the time, 'do malefactors go to execution more intrepidly than in England'; and assuredly, buoyed up by custom and the approval of their fellows, Wild's victims made a brave show at the gallows. Nor was their bravery the result of a common callousness. They understood at once the humour and the delicacy of the situation. Though hitherto they had chaffed the Ordinary, they now listened to his exhortation with at least a semblance of respect; and though their last night ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... business in London on the top of a motor omnibus. It would only need to be shown that the gentle mind secured his seat with dignity and comfort at the bus's starting point and daily for years watched with amusement, and then with callousness and so with brutality the struggles of the unhappy fellow creatures who fought to assail it at its stopping places on the way to ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... method of dipping into the world's capital seemed quite as honorable as his own. Neither really did any work for the money. This he reflected was both morally and economically unsound, and yet Archie found himself envying Leary the callousness that made it possible for him to pocket sixty thousand stolen dollars without the quiver of ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... callousness with which he made this reply. It disconcerted me, but I did my best not to show it. I adopted the tone used by my Uncle Henry, a clergyman, when he was asking one of his relatives for a subscription to the Additional ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... caused much scandal. Stories of the ill-treatment of the king while in the prince's charge may be dismissed as unfounded; it is alleged that the prince made sport of his father's ravings, it is certain that his associates did so, and that he and his brother behaved with brutal callousness and openly indulged in riotous merry-making during the king's illness.[219] Before the resolutions could be made law it was thought that a formal opening of parliament was necessary in order to invest it with legislative capacity, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... gardens were full, in spite of the weather; for what must be the callousness of that man who could let the Gardens pass under the hammer of George Robins, without bidding them an affectionate farewell? Good gracious! we can hardly believe such insensibility does exist. Hasten then, dear readers, as you would fly to catch the expiring ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... callousness that affected him more than his own squeamishness. He could not regret Carlsen's death. With the doctor alive, his own existence would have been a constant menace. But he was not used to seeing a killing, though, in his ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... "Give me back my daughter!" he thundered, with his back to my closed door, and a pistol pointed to my head. I rang the bell, and Irene came, dressed for the evening, and humming a light opera tune. Then I saw to what depths of callousness I had dragged her, and I shuddered. She listened to the old man's stormy eloquence, and when he had finished his passionate appeal, she shrugged her shoulders slightly. She was perfectly happy, she declared, and she would ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... chosen for the punishment of these saintly innocents Nero gave one more proof of the close connection between effeminate aestheticism and sanguinary callousness. As in old days, "on that opprobrious hill," the temple of Chemosh had stood close by that of Moloch, so now we find the spoliarium beside the fornices—Lust hard by Hate. The carnificina of Tiberius, at Capreae, adjoined the sellariae. History has given many proofs that no man is ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... flinch or give back. Neither did he obey. Instead, he laughed with a hollow callousness and replied, "Shoot ef ye've a mind ter. I hain't goin' ter stir a ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... himself. His natural reticence in serious situations and calamity, and his reserve in the outlet of feeling by vocal expression, give a wrong impression of its real depth, and may even convey the impression of callousness to anyone not conversant with ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... sacred in my nature how can you send me away as if I had no part or lot in your life? It is not, cannot be true. When I honor you and would give my life for you, and shall love you all my days, it is absurd to say that I am nothing to you. Only embodied selfishness and callousness could say that. You may not be able to give what I do, but you should give all you can. 'Rivers of blood flowing between us' is morbid nonsense. Forgive me that I speak strongly,—I feel strongly. My soul is in my words. ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... Under other circumstances, the callousness of this speech, the coarseness of some of the expressions, the calling of Miss Draper by her surname, would have grated upon me. But I was too rejoiced both at the girl's departure and the matter of fact way in which Dicky ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... of what we love. The effort required is barbarous in the eyes of the universe—'tis brutality rather than highest virtue. In this misfortune I will not wear a show of insensibility, and hide the grief I feel. I renounce the vanity of this fierce callousness, known as fortitude, and whatever be the name given to the keen pain, the pangs of which I feel, I will exhibit it, my daughter, to the gaze of all, and in the heart of a king display that of ...
— Psyche • Moliere
... caused if some commission were free to determine who were insane or feeble or worthless enough to be put out of the way! Or free to select a human victim for vivisection whenever experts deemed it wise! The widespread horror and uneasiness of such a regime, the callousness to suffering it would engender, the private revenges and crimes that might insidiously creep in under the guise of public good, are alone enough to render ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... gratify his secret wish to participate in stirring adventures, he would see to it that all his wounded enemies, no matter how many there might be of them, received adequate medical attention. He had often been shocked at the callousness with which so many of the heroes of romance dash blithely into the next adventure—though those whom they have seriously injured lie on all sides of them as thick as autumn leaves—with only the most perfunctory consideration ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... that rude exterior there dwelt a very seraph. Then again he is so sly and still, so imperturbably saturnine; shows such indifference, malign coolness towards all that men strive after; and ever with some half-visible wrinkle of a bitter sardonic humour, if indeed it be not mere stolid callousness,—that you look on him almost with a shudder, as on some incarnate Mephistopheles, to whom this great terrestrial and celestial Round, after all, were but some huge foolish Whirligig, where kings and beggars, and angels and demons, and stars and ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... black-edged paper when writing a few brief and curiously stiff acknowledgments of the letters of condolence she received, reacted indirectly in Andrew's favor. People pitied the brother of this unfeeling girl. How wounded he must feel by her callousness! ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... outspoken to the point of cruelty, sprang from an indifference to her? Clarice had seen a good deal of Drake lately. She caught herself almost smiling at the idea, softening at its palpable falsity. In a last effort at resistance she fixed her thoughts on the cruelty, the callousness, in his method of narration, and began to feel herself on solid ground. She was consequently inspired to run over all that he had said, in order to make her footing yet firmer, and at the outset she was brought to a check. Why ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... all as clearly as I, but it held no terrors for him. From the moment of his birth, all the forces of his environment had tended to harden him, and he viewed his wretched, inevitable future with a callousness and ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... this mysterious hurly-burly of arms and legs as a capital jest. So far from being alarmed or annoyed, they shouted with glee. The old lady, who had gathered herself together and was directing a stream of voluble reproof at Corporal Smith for his "callousness and cruelty to these unhappy blind heroes," retired discomfited. Jock's comments routed her more effectively than the Corporal's assurance that the episode was ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... had returned upon her over-whelmingly with his brief reference to it. His lack of emotion seemed to her as hideous callousness, more horrible than the deed itself. His physical exhaustion had called her out of herself, but the reaction ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... ceased to trouble about all these people. I found that my lamp had gone out leaving behind an awful smell. I fled from it up the stairs and went to bed in the dark. My slumbers—I suppose the one good in pedestrian exercise, confound it, is that it helps our natural callousness—my slumbers were ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... adventure. Civilian audiences would have watched in breathless, awe-struck silence; but at a military school of aviation it was a different matter. "Oh, la la! Il est perdu!" adequately gauges the degree of emotional interest taken in the incident. At the time I was surprised at this apparent callousness, but I understood it better when I had seen scores of such accidents occur, and had watched the pilots, as in this case, crawl out from the wreckage, and walk sheepishly, and a little shaken, back to their classes. Although the machines were usually badly ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... most alluring beauty; young, graceful and most delicately seductive, whose skill in the arts and sciences put many of their doctors to shame. This creature, his most prized possession, San-Lan with the utmost moral callousness ordered to seduce me, urging her to apply without stint and to its fullest extent, her knowledge of evil arts. Had I not seen the naked horror of her soul, that she let creep into her eyes for just one unguarded instant, and had it not ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... except Meehan and his brother, and a few who were really innocent, had slunk back out of the circle into the crowd. Denis, however, became pale as a corpse; and from time to time wiped the large drops from his haggard brow: even Anthony's cheek, despite of his natural callousness, was less red; his eyes became disturbed; but by their influence, he contrived to keep Denis in sufficient dread, to prevent him from mingling, like the rest, among the people. The few who remained along with them advanced; and notwithstanding ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... them, if there had not been so many things that were interesting to him. He would find himself confronted with the image of the society clergyman, or of the sleek editor in his club, or some other memory out of the world of luxury and pride. And each day came the newspaper, with its burden of callousness and scorn; and perhaps also a letter from Corydon, with something to goad him to new tilts with the ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... had set her hand; she was going back to Australia by the first boat, and her packing must be done that night. Her resolve only hardened as her spirit cooled. The sooner her departure, the less his opposition; let her delay, and the callousness of the passing brute might give place to the tyranny of the normal man. But she was going, whether or no; not another day—though she would doubtless see its dawn. It was the month of September. And she was not going to fly empty-handed, nor fly at all; ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... The listener furtively speculates about mama. He feels quite sure about papa. Anyhow this particular mot attracted no comment. Doubtless the young lady was as far above suspicion as the wife of Caesar; but she and her companions in this particular set have an appalling frankness of speech and a callousness in regard to discussing the more personal facts of human existence that is startling to ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train |
