"Heartlessness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... love and sympathy and genuine ministry to their needs. He saw clearly that his course must end in death, unless a great change should come over his enemies; yet, as the Good Shepherd, he was ready to lay down his life for the sheep, rather than leave them to the heartlessness of leaders who cared only for themselves (x. 11-18). The critics of Jesus could not, or would not, understand his charge against them, and accused him of madness for his extraordinary claims. There were some, however, ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... owing, and whose intellect he despised: but he took care not to refuse the bounties or the honors bestowed upon him by his royal master—nor can we repress a smile when we find such a man gravely rebuking that prince for utter heartlessness and selfishness. It might be, and probably was so, but assuredly Talleyrand was not the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... great responsibility to desert this creature, the only one from whom he had experienced devotion. To conclude: a season of extraordinary dissipation, to use no harsher phrase, had somewhat exhausted the nervous powers of our hero; his energies were deserting him; he had not heart or heartlessness enough to extricate himself from this dilemma. It seemed that if this being to whom he was indebted for so much joy were miserable, he must be unhappy; that if she died, life ought to have, could have, no charms for him. He kissed away her tears, he pledged ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... selfish heartlessness of society, Joab shambled off and was passing the scratching-post without noticing her. (Her name was Arabella Cliftonbury Howard.) Suddenly she kicked away a multitude of pigs who were at her feet, and called to the rolling beef of ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... down on me. But I don't care for it; I'm used to it. It's Lady Clavering that riles me. It's a shame that that good-natured woman, who has paid him out of gaol a score of times, should be ruined by his heartlessness. A parcel of bill-stealers boxers, any rascals, get his money; and he don't scruple to throw an honest fellow over. Would you believe it, sir, he took money of ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the little world of a school, as in the bigger world outside, it is not for long that the circles in the waters of daily life mark the spot of any disappearance; it has to be so, and does not necessarily imply either heartlessness or caprice. We are limited as to our powers in all directions—the more marvellous that somewhere, invisible, unsuspected, our innermost self lives on. And far down, below the surface restlessness and change, may we not hope ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... Madame Lavaux had readily related the history of Madelon's birth and Madame Linders' death. It was a story she was fond of telling; it had been a little romance in the ordinary routine of hotel life, and one in which, when she had duly set forth M. Linders' heartlessness and her own exertions, she felt that she must shine in an exceptionally favourable light; and indeed it was so pitiful a tale the her hearers could not but share the indignation and compassion she felt and expressed ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... stalks on impassively, ignoring these gibes; whether he is reflecting on the beauty and heartlessness of the Pale-face Maiden, or resolving to save up for the monkey if it takes him a lifetime, or thinking of something else totally different, or of nothing whatever, is a dark secret which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 25, 1892 • Various
... people, who were mostly insolvent, but he suffered severely by the outrages which had taken place, and doubly so in consequence of the anxiety which so many felt to wreak their vengeance on him, under that guise, for his heartlessness ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... must still be very great. It would be amusing, if amusement were possible in the presence of so much sadness and suffering, to put side by side the absolutely contradictory criticisms, all equally vehement, to which our action is subjected. On the one hand is the outcry against the cruelty and heartlessness manifested in not making better provision for the people in the concentration camps: on the other, the equally loud outcry against our injustice in leaving the British refugees in idleness and poverty at the coast, in order to keep the people in the concentration camps supplied ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... moment that a man of genius could have made this revolting blunder? It is beyond comparison the densest bit of stupidity in dealing with the emotions I have encountered anywhere. Anybody but Mr. Crockett can see where the point of the story lies. It lies in the cool impertinence and heartlessness of his visitors. To put the emphasis on the rejection of their proposal—to make a point of that—is to insult the reader. Of course it was rejected. How should it possibly, by any stretch of ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... peculiarly unfortunate in the impressions she had made upon him. Her attendant at the concert-garden had been a fool; and now he was associating her with a man whom he more than despised. She believed that he pitied her father as the victim of a wife's heartlessness and a daughter's selfishness and frivolity, and that he felt a repugnance toward her mother which his politeness could not wholly disguise. He was probably learning to characterize them in his mind by her ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... succeeded it, but now, smarting under injustice, pride, and, with pride, many less worthy passions, were summoned up, and I appeared in the course of two short hours to be another being. I felt confidence in myself, my eyes were opened all at once as it were to the heartlessness of the world; the more I considered the almost hopeless condition in which I was in, the more my energy was roused. I sat down on the sofa a confiding, clinging girl. I rose ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... took the pen which Alice offered, but quickly put it from her, saying, with a little rational indignation, as she remembered 'Lina's heartlessness: ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... would not see me here." "My friend fell ill, I attended him; he died, and I dissected him" was the remark of a wit on reading her satirical pen portrait of the Marquise du Chatelet. This cold skepticism, keen analysis, and undisguised heartlessness strike the keynote of the century which was socially so brilliant, intellectually so fruitful, ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... practice with those who have outlived the susceptibility of early feeling, or have been brought up in the gay heartlessness of dissipated life, to laugh at all love stories, and to treat the tales of romantic passion as mere fictions of novelists and poets. My observations on human nature have induced me to think otherwise. They have convinced me that, however the surface of the character may be chilled and frozen by ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... don't know. I have not ventured to intrude on my poor insulted friend. Papa, I hear her distress is fearful; they fear for her reason. Oh, if harm comes to her, God will assuredly punish him whose heartlessness and treachery has brought her to it. Mark my words," she continued with great emotion, "this cruel act will not go unpunished even in ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... who wished to become familiar with those poems, I recommended the translation of my fair and gifted countrywoman, the Baroness Elise von Hohenhausen. On this occasion, as is my custom when talking with young ladies, I did not fail to declaim against Byron's godlessness, heartlessness, cheerlessness, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... and headquarters, the four hundred pairs of eyes noted this evidence of heartlessness with varied emotions. But, unmindful of them, Ranson now leaned forward, the eager, searching look coming back into his black eyes. They were so close to Mary Cahill's that she drew away. He dropped his voice to a whisper ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... like nothing she has ever known before. But she isn't the kind you think she is. I doubt even if Jerry has kissed her. To Marcia men are merely so much material for experimentation. She has a reputation for heartlessness. I'm not sure that she isn't heartless. It's a great pity. She's very young, but she's already devoured with hypercriticism. She's cynical, a philanderer. You can't tamper with a passion the way Marcia has done ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... escape from the attempt of Damien: and these things are fine and generous, and very gratifying to the author of the Broad Stone of Honour, and all the other wise men who think, like him, that God made the world only for the use of gentlemen. But they spring in general from utter heartlessness. No war ought ever to be undertaken but under circumstances which render all interchange of courtesy between the combatants impossible. It is a bad thing that men should hate each other; but it is far worse that they should contract the habit of cutting one another's throats without hatred. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... are the same distinctions among clergymen as among other people. Some of them are quite respectable gentlemen, especially those with whom I am not acquainted. I think that since the loss of my brother nothing could exceed the heartlessness of the remarks made by the average clergyman. There have been some noble exceptions, to whom I feel not only thankful but grateful; but a very large majority have taken this occasion to say most unfeeling and brutal things. I do not ask the clergy to forgive ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... on Charity or of his new mood, chanced to be in a most unfortunate humor. She criticized Jim; she declined to be amused or entertained; rebuffed his advances, ridiculed his pretensions of love. She even chose to denounce his mother for her heartlessness, his sister for her neglect, his father for his snobbery. That is always bad business. It puts a husband at bay with his back against the foundation walls of loyalty. They quarreled wonderfully and slept dos-a-dos. They did not speak the ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... her up; she would not look at me, but hid her face in her hands; her eyes were dry, she had wept away all her tears. I could not bear her grief, and I tried to comfort her; all might yet be well. Again she confessed all, her deceit, her heartlessness; but she laid it to the drink. True, she was in this a self-deceiver, but how terrible must be the power for evil in a stimulant which can so utterly degrade the soul, cloud the intellect, and benumb the conscience! Well, she poured forth a torrent of vows, promises, and resolutions for ...
— Nearly Lost but Dearly Won • Theodore P. Wilson
... long believed dead. She had settled, several years before, in this place, whither he had unawares followed her. In an interview—the first for nearly half a lifetime—all the old errors and falsehoods were cleared up. She told him how her husband's heartlessness and insolent indifference had made her leave him; and how, for the sake of her son, and partly also out of pride, she had made no attempt to repossess herself of the fortune with which she had endowed her husband at their marriage. The hardest of all had been to leave her son, whom she ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... young woman, without enough desire of any kind to impel her to trample over feelings, creeds and codes. If she died that moment, it would be said of her that she was beautiful, and that was all. Reginald, with his greed, his heartlessness, his indifference to all that did not serve him, would not be forgotten: people would sigh and smile at the mention of his name, hate him and wish him back. She envied him; she wished she could feel in swift, passionate gusts as he had done, with the force ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... dragged to Edinburgh without a word. Women had never come much my way, but I had a boy's distrust of the sex; and as I plodded along the highroad, with every now and then a cuff from a trooper's fist to cheer me, I had hard thoughts of their heartlessness. ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... had hitherto sneered at woman's incapacity for intellectual attainments, or lectured her roundly for frivolity, heartlessness, and deception, sneered all the more at her presumption in fancying her heart, or head either, required any other cultivation than man, in his wisdom, saw fitting. Any thing at all likely to elevate woman to her proper place of equality with her husband, ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... ever.(1). At this his bowels yearned so over the poor deserted cherub, that the tears of pure tenderness stood in his eyes, and still, beneath the crime of the mother, he saw the divine goodness, which had so directed her heartlessness as to comfort ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... done with a friendly serenity and composure that had something almost motherly about it, and it was free from all suggestion of frivolity or of heartlessness. In a few weeks the company had to leave Lauchstadt to proceed to Rudolstadt and fulfil a special engagement there. I was particularly anxious to make this journey, which in those days was an arduous undertaking, in Minna's company, and if only I had succeeded in getting ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... quarrelled so continually, that he was dismissed, and I was persuaded to go to school again. Once more I ran away; but this time I did not run home. I wanted to see the world, and I was resolved to become a sailor. I cannot bear to dwell on my ingratitude and heartlessness. I knew that my disappearance would almost break my mother's heart, and that my father would suffer equally; yet I persevered. I little thought what I was to go through. A fine brig was on the point of sailing for the coast of Africa. ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... and offended at what he considered the heartlessness of the physician. "You don't understand," he protested. "Mr. Morton was badly ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... some surprise when they observed this action, but they said nothing, and most likely felt no suspicion as yet of their captain, whose desperation and heartlessness on more than one previous occasion had won the ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... the office an' he laughs I guess, for then She always mumbles something 'bout the heartlessness of men. She calls to mind a peddler who came to the kitchen door, An' she's certain from his whiskers an' the shabby clothes he wore An' his dirty shirt an' collar that he must have been a crook, An' she's positive that feller came and ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... and met Harley's thin smile, the smile that on Wall Street was a synonym for rapacity and heartlessness, in the memory of which men had committed murder and suicide. On the instant there jumped between him and his ambition the face that had worked magic on him. What a God's pity that such a lamb should be cast to this ravenous wolf! He felt again her arms creeping round his neck, the divine ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... had with this Christian religion—its infinite heartlessness; and I cannot tell them too often that during our last war Christians who knew that if they were shot they would go right to heaven, went and hired wicked men to take their places, perfectly willing the men should go to hell, provided they could stay ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... woman would gossip all over the place about my heartlessness, unless I explained my presence in a public cafe so soon after Jim's death ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... The duties of training devolve upon the father as much as on the mother. A father's wider experience and worldly wisdom prove valuable contributions to the mother's simpler knowledge in the raising of their children. A father's continuous absence, or neglects, or severity, or unkindness, or heartlessness, has made more reprobates and scamps and criminals in this world than all the failings of women combined. Think less of your dignity and more of your duty. Rather that your child should love you than fear you. You can maintain your authority and dignity by love and gentleness as well as by frowns ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... detestation in my eyes. The effrontery, the ease and insolence of her bearing, all confirmed my conviction of her utter shamelessness and heartlessness. ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... Fortunate Youth and companion of the wealthy and great. Harry carried his woes to Mrs. Lambert. In a passion of sorrow he told her of his aunt's cruel behaviour to him. He was stricken down and dismayed by the fickleness and heartlessness of the world in its treatment of him. While the good lady and her daughters would move to and fro, and busy themselves with the cares of the house, our poor lad would sit glum in a window-seat, heart-sick ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Selfishness, heartlessness and brutality manipulated the birch. Head was all; heart and hand nothing. This was schoolteaching. As a punishment for failure to memorize lessons, there were various plans to disgrace and discourage the luckless ones. Standing in the corner with face to the wall, and the dunce-cap, ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... consolation in another form. Queen Anne is on her deathbed, and a young Stuart prince appears upon the scene, of whom some loyal hearts dream that they can make a king. He is such as Stuarts were, and only walks across the novelist's canvas to show his folly and heartlessness. But there is a moment in which Beatrix thinks that she may rise in the world to the proud place of a royal mistress. That is her last ambition! That is her pride! That is to be her glory! The bleared eyes can see no clearer than that. But the mock prince passes away, and ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... course of years, he can forget the affair, and that she cannot. He has many things of which to think; whereas she, perhaps, has only that one. She may have made that thing so vital to her that it cannot be got under and conquered; whereas, without any fault or heartlessness on his part, occupation has conquered it for him. In this case I fear that the engagement, if made, could not but be long. I should be sorry that he should not take his degree. And I do not think it wise to send a lad up to the University hampered ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... than ever. Not I alone, but the cities and the deserts of Syria and Arabia, missed my loving friend. How gloriously he would have filled the tribune of the day, I sadly mused.... O Khalid, I can never forgive this crime of thine against the sacred rites of Friendship. Such heartlessness, such inexorable cruelty, I have never before observed in thee. No matter how much thou hast profited by thy retirement to the mountains, no matter how much thy solitude hath given thee of health and power and wisdom, thy cruel remissness can not altogether be drowned in ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... day her plaintive cry may be heard among the hills answering back again the voices of those who laugh and sing. But now the nymphs were angry with the loveless youth, and prayed the gods to punish him for his heartlessness. ...
— The Enchanted Castle - A Book of Fairy Tales from Flowerland • Hartwell James
... a lady of the Court of Francis I., who, in order to test the courage of her suitor, threw her glove into the enclosure in which a captive lion stood; and describes the suitor—one De Lorge—as calmly rescuing the glove, but only to fling it in the lady's face; this protest against her heartlessness and vanity being endorsed by both the King and Court. But at this point Mr. Browning departs from the usual version: for he takes the woman's part. The supposed witness and narrator of the incident, the poet ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... which they cannot create; so much more will be contumely; so much more will be innuendoes which can not be met openly, as they certainly will not be in the slimy words and manner of utterance of bitter heartlessness, that is to say, if you be made of that stuff which presents to the world an artist, who is nothing if he be ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... journals into his trunk as a precaution, and was smothering his disgust at their heartlessness, when Arthur Ferris, white-faced, dashed ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... incredible fashion. To prevent this imaginary and impossible result, they insist upon regulating one another's lives from outside with the strictest taboos, like those which hem round the West African kings, and punish with cruel and relentless heartlessness every man, and still more every woman, who dares ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... immediate connection? They are forgotten because, in the rush and turmoil of life, every thing is soon forgotten. The dead, who were beloved and honored while living, are soon comparatively forgotten beyond their families and familiar circle. This is not exactly owing to the heartlessness of men, but rather to the fact that their minds are occupied with the persons and things they see every day around them, and this is probably as much the case with the poor as with the rich; but it seems to have become a sort of custom to speak of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of these left renew the dance, you see. I cannot stop them; but with memory hot Of those late gone, of where they are gone, and why, It smacks of heartlessness! ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... being played for ever around us. Here were all the elements of romance—love, admiration, vanity, envy. Here was a hero in humble life—a lady-killer in his own little sphere. He dances with one, neglects another, and multiplies his conquests with all the heartlessness of ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... friends. Some men shed friends at every step they rise in the social scale. It is mean and contemptible to merely use men, so long as they further one's personal interests. But there is a nemesis on such heartlessness. To such can never come the ecstasy and comfort of mutual trust. This worldly policy can never truly succeed. It stands to reason that they cannot have brothers born for adversity, and cannot count on the joy of the love that loveth at all ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... sensation-paragraphists sometimes do, of stealing the pennies off the eyes of a dead grandmother to play at pitch-and-toss, or forging the name of a buried father to a note and then allowing it to go to protest,—it is idle to talk of these as the extreme of criminal heartlessness: the men who could thus trade—the men who have thus traded, during the whole war—on the public patriotism and the public necessity, would deserve the lowest deep in the pit of perdition, following upon leprosy in life and deaths on dunghills—if there was not ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... than this in his preface, indeed, a marvellous piece of reality and irony which tells how a courtesan in Gibraltar fell madly in love with a gentleman-sponger who lived on her money while he could, and then took the first boat home with discreet heartlessness on coming into a bequest from a far-off cousin. "Good God, a pretty sight I should have looked...." he explained to a kindred spirit as they paced the deck of the boat to get an appetite. "I like her well enough, but what I say ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... you stricken from your horse, and often since my eyes have been moist in thoughts of you. No doubt 't was but the sudden reaction from seeing you again alive that made me so forgetful of these dread surroundings as to smile. I beg you to forgive me; it was not heartlessness, but merely the way of a thoughtless ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... this fortuitous meeting brought everything to his mind, and compelled the acknowledgment of his heartlessness, cruelty and baseness which made it possible for him to live undisturbed by the sin which lay on his conscience. He was yet far from such acknowledgment, and at this moment was only thinking how to avoid disclosure which might be made by her, or her ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... (and a good many outside) made covert. stealthy, and indirect steps in the same direction; for Trix (as her friends called her) was, if not wise, at least pretty and witty, displaying to the material eye a charming figure, and to the mental a delicate heartlessness—both attributes which challenge a self-respecting mans best efforts. But then came the fatal obstacle. From heiresses in reason a gentleman need neither shrink nor let himself be driven; but when it comes to something like twenty thousand a year—the reported ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... late, after I had gone to bed, that she would spend the night at her, Kitty's, home. Fancy! Rousing me from my sleep like that! And then, early this morning, Marcia telephoned herself and said that she could not possibly be at home before evening. Imagine! The thoughtlessness, the heartlessness of ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... say that you never cared even to ask whether I lived or died in my long, weary illness?—that you were so supremely indifferent to my fate that you could not articulate one sentence of inquiry? Surely this is the very sublimity of heartlessness; this is to be callous beyond one's power of imagination. It seems to me that I would feel as much interest as that in any human being I had once known. If even a dog had licked my hand in good-will, and afterward I had seen it, wounded or sick, creep ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... and heartlessness of my punishment, however, made every one who heard the story vehement in censuring it, so that those who had a hand therein were soon eager to disclaim all responsibility, shouldering the blame on others. Nay, matters came to such a pass that even my rivals denied that they ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... and the ambition of the teachers to work upon. 'There was a perfect reign of terror in the ward,' says the report of the investigating committee. 'The agent performed his duty with alacrity and with a heartlessness worthy of the employers. It appears that he not only summoned the teachers to come to him, but that he called on their parents and friends as to the amount they should pay for their appointments—the sums varying from $50 to $600, ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... possessed of a high sense of honor and a good understanding; was active, loyal, of a military disposition, and, withal, strong philanthropic inclinations. By placing implicit confidence in the royal governors of New York, he fell a victim to their roguery, deception and heartlessness, which ultimately crushed him and left him almost penniless. The story has been set forth in the following memorial, ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... he began to whistle before he was out of the building; it wasn't from heartlessness, it was from pure discomfort and remorse. Anyway, his father heard the shrill piping—and he sat and looked straight ahead of him, and his face was as that of Satan fallen—fallen, and hell fires licked into ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... and marred by him who was meant to be its crowning glory. Behind me on this island are crowded vile and wicked men, the murmur of whose ribaldry riseth continually like the smoke and fumes of a lower world. Oh! Father of Mercies, forgive the hard heartlessness and blindness and scarlet sins of my fellows, ...
— The Record of a Quaker Conscience, Cyrus Pringle's Diary - With an Introduction by Rufus M. Jones • Cyrus Pringle
... guests, after a moment of flustered consternation, go on supping and dancing![4] We are not at all deeply interested in the host or his fortunes. The author's purpose is to illustrate, rather crudely, the heartlessness of plutocratic Bohemia; and by means of the bankruptcy and suicide he brings about what may be called a crisis of ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... pride in his own superiority. It was contempt for the nature of the man, for his low contemptible plots and tricks, and cunning ways, for his entire lack of principle, and his utter selfishness and heartlessness, that made Cameron feel justified in his attitude toward Wainwright. "He is nothing but a Hun at heart," he ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... generous fever In a noble heart to give, Still an equal fire may live In the heart of the receiver. Heartlessness is something hateful, I would boast a liberal name; Thus I put my highest claim In the fact of being grateful. Then to me that title leave,— Gentle birth breeds gentleness; For the honour is no less To bestow ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... Mrs Calvert. She broke off her engagement; scrupulously, however, refunding to Mr Maddocks every penny which he had spent upon her. This second instance on her part of jilting a fiance confirmed many people in the belief of her heartlessness; but the reason which probably determined her action on this latter occasion was that she had already met the one man, who, she recognised, could enchain her fickle affections for ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... that opened my eyes to the cruelty and wickedness of slavery, and the heartlessness of my old master, was the refusal of the latter to interpose his authority, to protect and shield a young woman, who had been most cruelly abused and beaten by his overseer in Tuckahoe. This overseer—a ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... unwilling to part with her. However unhappy they might be, just because they were unhappy, they wished to be together.—Madame Poyet took it very badly. She said that people who had no means of living had no business to be proud. Madame Jeannin could not refrain from crying out upon her heartlessness. Madame Poyet spoke bitterly of the bankruptcy and of the money that Madame Jeannin owed her. They parted, and the breach between them was final. All relationship between them was broken off. Madame Jeannin had only one desire left: to pay ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... give you a little of this cheese?" said Maryanne. What a story such a question told of the heartlessness, audacity, and iron nerves of her who asked it! What power, and at the same time what cruelty, there must have been within that laced bodice, when she could bring herself to make ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... for his death? Heaven forbid! Did I wish it! Ah no!" then she thought of Cousin Jennie's prophetic speech and a chill seized her as of ague. "It is indeed hard to decide between right and wrong. Will I ever feel real happiness again! Will not the bitter past come up and taunt me with cruel heartlessness. Would it not have been better if he had lived! then I would have had an opportunity to know ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... prevails in mankind, having seen that, though the offences which man commits against the laws of Nature are promptly detected and assuredly punished, they are yet repeated over and over again, and having more pity for the victims of man's heartlessness and folly than regard for the consequences which man suffers in the blows that Nature inflicts as she recoils, the inevitable conclusion was that moral suasion was of little purpose—that there must be more of example than precept. In this ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... have been pleasant just then, said superficial commentators. To every woman who called upon the lady of the house in her invalid state, Mrs. Forrest had something to say about the heartlessness and utter lack of sympathy with which she was treated; and who can doubt that the letters she wrote her soldier husband made frequent complaint to the same effect? Now, if in the domestic circle Miss Forrest had ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... he exclaimed. "Brute! coward! wretch!" He looked down again, and saw the reptile trying to move away with its broken shell. His anger turned to pity. He began to expostulate against all such heartlessness to the animal world as the scene exhibited before him. The poor turtle again tried to move away, his head just protruding, looking for some way out of the world that would deny him his right to the sunshine and the streams. The young orator saw ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... 'Awfully wicked,' he said slowly, 'awfully wicked! How meaningless! How incomprehensible! Awfully wicked to be friendless, or poor, or wretched, or unhappy! Awfully wicked to be driven by despair, or by heartlessness, to such a pitch of misery or frenzy that you want to fling yourself wildly into the river, only to be out of it all, anywhere, in a minute! Why you poor, unhappy girl, how on earth ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... right in smiling at the Pograms and the Bricks as in smiling at the Pickwicks and the Boffins. And he might still be as wrong in seeing Mr. Pogram as a hypocrite as the great Buzfuz was wrong in seeing Mr. Pickwick as a monster of revolting heartlessness and systematic villainy. He might still be as wrong in thinking Jefferson Brick a charlatan and a cheat as was that great disciple of Lavater, Mrs. Wilfer, in tracing every wrinkle of evil cunning in the ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... is turned away because she is too honest to humor an old man's whim. The result is what might have been expected. Lear has put himself absolutely into the power of his two older daughters, who are the very incarnation of heartlessness and ingratitude. By their inhuman treatment he is driven out into the night and storm, exposing his white head to a tempest so fierce that even the wild beasts refuse to face it. As a result of exposure and mental suffering, his mind becomes unhinged. At last his daughter Cordelia ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... the heartlessness of society, and is besides a full and fearful picture of the system of imprisonment for debt. For variety, power, and pathos, it is ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... will not square with our conception of Defoe's character. Those of us who have an almost unlimited admiration for Defoe as a master of narrative, and next to no affection for him as a man, might pass the heartlessness of such conduct. "At first sight," Mr. Wright admits, "it may appear monstrous that a man should for so long a time abstain from speech with his own family." Monstrous, indeed—but I am afraid we could have passed that. Mr. Wright, ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... against them very much as one of the Pilgrim Fathers might do if he could see the furniture in the drawing-rooms of some of his descendants. There is no harm in pretty things, but the aesthetic craze does sometimes indicate and increase selfish heartlessness as to the poverty and misery, which have not only no ivory on their divans, but no divans at all. Thus stretched in unmanly indolence on their cushions, they feast on delicacies. 'Lambs out of the flock' and 'calves out of the stall' seem to mean animals ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Warrender that he meant no harm whatever by this. He meant, perhaps, to punish them a little for their heartlessness. He meant them to see that their position was changed,—that they were not as of old, in assured possession; and he reckoned upon that slowness of apprehension which probably would altogether preserve them from any painful consciousness. But it is astonishing ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... year of her husband's death, I swore that her only child should be as dear to me as a son. I have kept that promise. Few parents can find patience to forgive such follies as I have forgiven. But my endurance is exhausted; my affection has been worn out by your heartlessness: henceforward ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... turn had been fascinated by the brilliancy and vivacity which had made Kennedy such a favourite in Roman society. I say "had," because just at the moment the young Englishman was somewhat under a cloud. A love-affair, the details of which had never quite come out, had indicated a heartlessness and callousness upon his part which shocked many of his friends. But in the bachelor circles of students and artists in which he preferred to move there is no very rigid code of honour in such matters, and though a head might be ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sympathy was not so much with any possible feeling of disappointment as with the chilling heartlessness and unbelief that seemed to boast themselves ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... in the midst of the assembly, unto thy brother, that man of limited sight, viz., Dussasana, wedded to unrighteousness, always quarrelsome, of wicked understanding, and cruel in behaviour. Thou shalt soon see the terrible effects of vanity and pride, of wrath and arrogance, of bragging and heartlessness, cutting words and acts, of aversion from righteousness, and sinfulness and speaking ill of others, of transgressing the counsels of the aged, of oblique sight, and of all kinds of vices! O scum of humanity, how canst thou, O fool, hope for either life ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... among the poets. But if we listen to the master-passion itself rather than to the loquacious arts it may have enlisted in its service, we shall understand that it is not self-condemned because it is silent, nor an anomaly in nature because inharmonious with human life. The fish's heartlessness is his virtue; the male bee's lasciviousness is his vocation; and if these functions were retrenched or encumbered in order to assimilate them to human excellence they would be merely dislocated. We should not produce virtue where there was vice, but defeat a possible arrangement ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... middle-aged man, with an expression of countenance so cherubic that no one would have suspected him of being a lawyer; and the other was a tall, large-boned, parchment-faced personage, of whom almost any degree of heartlessness might have been believed. The two lawyers rose and bowed as "Cobbler" ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... of the Memoirs, the book having had a great success here. By the enclosed, which is as true and as like as I could make it, you will see that he was a very brilliant and charming person. I believe that next to having been heart-broken by the committee and the heartlessness of his pupil ——, and enraged by the passion for that miserable little wretch, Tom Thumb, that the real cause of his suicide was to get his family provided for. It succeeded. By one way and another they had L440 a year between the four; but although the poor father never ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... about it," she said softly. "I felt that so keenly that I never lost an opportunity to war against the war. I made enemies right and left, and acquired a reputation for heartlessness." ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... wicked plot. We both were victims of a crafty scheme To break our hearts asunder. Forgery Had done its work and pride had aided it. The spurious letter was a cruel one— Casting her off with utter heartlessness, And boasting of a later, dearer love, And begging her to burn the billets-doux A moon-struck boy had sent her ere he found That pretty girls ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... there was no longer any immediate danger. By this time Lady Baxby's feelings were more Parliamentarian than ever, and in her fancy the fagged countenance of her brother, beaten back by her husband, seemed to reproach her for heartlessness. When her husband entered her apartment, ruddy and boisterous, and full of hope, she received him but sadly; and upon his casually uttering some slighting words about her brother's withdrawal, which seemed to convey an imputation upon his courage, she resented them, and retorted ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... housewives at back doors, the kindly spleen of bartenders behind provincial free-lunch counters, the amiable truculence of rural constables, the kicks, arrests and happy-go-lucky chances of the other vulgar, loud, crude cities than this freezing heartlessness. ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... of supreme pain. The love that he had now for Clare was something more tender, more devoted, than he had ever felt for any human being. His mind flew back fiercely to that night of his first quarrel when she had told him. Now he was to be punished for his heartlessness and cruelty ... ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... were fair average specimens for heartlessness and falsehood of the lower classes of Mohamadans in East Africa. When we were on the Shire we used to swing the ship into mid-stream every night, in order to let the air which was put in motion by the water, pass from end to end. Musa's brother-in-law stepped into the water ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... and austerity, holding always before her the wickedness to which she was born. Yet it was no use. She fled from his house with a man no one knew, and died in Paris after a life of great splendor and heartlessness. Everyone who loved the Desires suffered. That is ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... of the winter had been open and warm, and very little snow had fallen. This was much in Phemy's favour, and by the new year she was quite well. But, notwithstanding her heartlessness toward Steenie, she was no longer quite like her old self. She was quieter and less foolish; she had had a lesson in folly, and a long ministration of love, and knew now a trifle about both. It is true she wrote nearly as much silly poetry, but it was not so silly ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... is a triumph of vanity, and it is deemed respectable to be 'well settled in the world;' but that it is a necessary sacrifice of her freedom and her gayety. And then how many affectionate dispositions have been trained into heartlessness, by being taught that the indulgence of indolence and vanity were necessary to their happiness; and that to have this indulgence, they must marry money! But who that marries for money, in this land of precarious fortunes, can tell how soon they will lose the glittering temptation, to ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... Johnston a feeling of hatred had developed for Adelaide. She was certain that she had marred the happiness of her son. The heartlessness of a flirt who could trifle with the affection of one who had a right to assume in her an honor equal to his own deserved only to be hated with even righteous hatred. She saw the scrawled note which she knew Percy had not seen, but what did it signify? An eccentric ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... the story of a pure and noble soul, who mistakes this actual life for that ideal one which he fancies (and not so wrongly either) eternal in the heavens: and finding instead of a battlefield for heroes in God's cause, nothing but frivolity, heartlessness, and godlessness, becomes a laughing-stock,—and dies. One of the saddest books, I say again, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... thousands of years old, to the effect that there is nothing new under the sun. It is a deliberate emendation of that invocation in the Lord's Prayer "Lead us (not) into temptation." The shrieking irony of this trenchant parable, its cynicism and heartlessness, would make of it an unendurable criticism of human life—were it accepted literally as a representation of society. In essence it is a morality pure and simple, animated not only by its brilliantly original ethical suggestion, ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... put forth a beautiful energy. If Olive desired to get Verena into training, she could flatter herself that the process had already begun, and that her colleague enjoyed it almost as much as she. Therefore she could say to herself, without the imputation of heartlessness, that when she left her mother it was for a noble, a sacred use. In point of fact, she left her very little, and she spent hours in jingling, aching, jostled journeys between Charles Street and the stale suburban cottage. Mrs. Tarrant sighed and grimaced, wrapped herself more than ever in her mantle, ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... distorted the form of her eldest son, and by lingering tortures dragged him to the grave. And then her little daughter was taken from her. Maria watched at the couch of suffering and death with maternal anguish. The glowing heart of a mother throbbed within the bosom of Maria. The heartlessness and emptiness of all other pursuits had but given intensity to the fervor of a mother's love. Though but twenty-three years of age, she had drained every cup of pleasure to its dregs. And now she began to enter upon a path every year more ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... wickedness, as Clare thought she ought to call it—sank into insignificance before the cynical heartlessness of the man. It was impossible ever to forget the cool way in which he had said she ought not to take it so tragically, because it was not worth it. Yet he had admitted that he had promised to marry her if she got a divorce. He had made ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... something of the same heartlessness in his conduct when he discovered the faithlessness of La Binet although that is belied by the measures he took to avenge himself. His subsequent contempt of the woman I account to be born of the affection in which for a time he held ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... Farquhar's moral tone is not high; sensuality is confounded with love, ribaldry mistaken for wit The best that can be said of him that he contrasts favourably with his contemporary dramatists; Virtue is not always uninteresting in his pages. He is free from their heartlessness, malignity, and cruelty. The plot of The Beaux-Stratagem is comparatively inoffensive, and the moral of the whole is healthy. Although a wit rather than a thinker, Farquhar in this play shows himself capable of serious feelings. It is remarkable how much Farquhar repeats himself. Hardly an allusion ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... never gave a thought to it until I saw Mr. Fielding. The illness isn't serious,' and Mrs. Willoughby laughed, with peculiar heartlessness thought Clarice. They were, however, not thinking ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... 'how very kindly you are doing it! Little did I think that Charles's heartlessness would have brought me so much ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... through the garden upon the wings of affection. The valet's heart misgave him, when he beheld her speeding with such haste to her destruction. He contrasted the devoted confidence of Theodora, hurrying to the fatal spot, with the duplicity and heartlessness of Gomez Arias tranquilly awaiting her arrival. Roque led her towards the place appointed; nor could he suppress a tear, as he listened to the artless language in which her full heart indulged during the way, in the fond expectation of being again united to her lover, and obtaining the forgiveness ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... heartlessness are criticised to-day, and the criticism is just. Yet, MORALLY, the human race has improved more than in any ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... the vanity, the meanness, the heartlessness, the vulgarity, have only been condensed and concentrated, if we are to believe Mr. Pulitzer; and I don't see why we should doubt him. Did you say you hadn't seen his very shapely little study? It takes, with all the unpitying sincerity of a kodak, ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... suffering fresh in their minds. They still looked at him as a sort of person his father had made him appear, and viewed his succession as a calamity. The old regime had been bad enough, they told one another, but this young man, with his ruthlessness, his heartlessness, with what seemed to be a savage desire to trample workingmen into unresisting, unprotesting submission—this would be intolerable. So they scowled at him, and in their homes talked to their wives with apprehension of ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... fire, passion or emotion in the orator; hence in delivery, as in tone, haste is in an inverse ratio to emotion. We do not glide lightly over a beloved subject; a prolongation of tones is the complaisance of love. Precipitation awakens suspicions of heartlessness; it also injures the effect of the discourse. A teacher with too much facility or volubility puts his pupils to sleep, because he leaves them nothing to do, and they do not understand his meaning. But let the teacher ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... George and I have had a flare-up," said Herbert. "I was disgusted with his heartlessness in refusing to take you from Egg Island, and I told him so pretty plainly. He accused me of insulting him and threatened to lay a complaint before my mother. I requested him to do so. Considerably to his surprise, ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... value, with the request to pay, and with notice that in failure of immediate payment the amount would be charged upon his pay-roll. This treatment disgusted the Colonel, who is a gentleman of high tone and the kindliest feelings, and angered by the heartlessness that denied him proper shelter for his sick, now increased to a number frightfully large, with a heavy share of mortality, he cut red-tape, sent over a detail to the house, had it cleansed of Rebel filth, and filled it with the ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... of Raoul's scandalous behavior, he became very indignant, and swore that he would soon make him repent of his heartlessness. ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... horizons, and never without bringing to bear some momentary, powerful influence upon the life she illumined. She was not, like some of her class, led by principles more or less consistent and dependable: sordid greed for money; complete selfishness; experienced heartlessness. To her own detriment, Bohemia and penury could attract her as surely and as frequently as heavily paid-for luxury. Contrast, indeed, constituted the one law of her lawlessness. Without this, how had it been possible for that first contact with the young painter to have filled her, instantaneously, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... had gained from another. Practicing on his own maxim to 'open the heart to sincere veneration for all excellence' in human act and thought, not even his profound admiration for the surpassing genius of Goethe could draw him into sympathy with the heartlessness and colossal egoism of his later career. In the midst of public honors he valued more than all his delightful home and literary life, and his motto was Tecum habita. Surrounded by Pyrrhonism, and bent by the nature of his studies toward skeptical habits, how grandly he recovered ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... right to thrust this second burden on to Opdyke? However, self-forgetfulness comes best by focussing all one's energy upon the victim next in line; and Reed Opdyke, just at the present crisis, needed nothing else one half so much as self-forgetfulness. Nevertheless, the pity of it all, the seeming heartlessness, surged in on Whittenden. It would have been far easier for him to have tried to lighten Opdyke's burden than to increase its heaviness. But ease was not ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... Women," made herself an agent for the sale of the book, and traversed hill and dale, walking miles daily to accomplish her purpose. She thus succeeded in placing more than one hundred and fifty copies in the hands of the women of Hyde Park and the vicinity, in spite of the ignorance, narrowness, heartlessness, and slavery which, she says, she had ample opportunity to deplore. The profits of her sales were given ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... armored her spirit, she built a fire, put on water to heat, attended capably to innumerable details. Rose was a woman of sound experience. She had been with others at such times. It held no goblin terrors for her. Had it not been for Martin's heartlessness, she would have felt wholly equal to the occasion. As it was, she made little commotion. Dr. Bradley, gentle and direct, had been the Conroys' family physician for years. Nellie, who arrived in an hour, had been through the experience often herself, ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... accompaniment to his own mirth with a tin spoon upon a tin cup, was to meet a little triumph of the human species. Even when his mother and the rest of his family lay sick and prostrate around him, he sat upright in their midst and sang aloud in the pleasant heartlessness ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... selfishness, heartlessness, and greed by opposing the greatest boon to workers, the Factory Acts. "Was it the Liberal party which initiated the Factory Acts, which were certainly the greatest step towards the elevation of the working class ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... wear. I had a valet attending to my luggage—just the sort of thing a penniless adventurer would have. I was driving to the Albany—just the sort of place where a penniless adventurer would live. And London knew all this—and scoffed at me in stony heartlessness. The only object that gave me the slightest sympathy was Nelson on top of his column. He seemed to say, "After all, you can't feel such a fool and so much out in the cold ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... kindness and generosity, almost at the very moment of his death, deeply affected me; and, at the same time, I could not help feeling disgusted with the heartlessness displayed by Sargent, who regarded the tragical death of his partner merely as an event calculated to advance his ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... narrate the most painful period in Shelley's life as it occurred, without extenuation and without condemnation. Until the papers, mentioned with such insistence by Lady Shelley and Mr. Garnett, are given to the world, it is impossible that the poet should not bear the reproach of heartlessness and inconstancy in this the gravest of all human relations. Such, however, is my belief in the essential goodness of his character, after allowing, as we must do, for the operation of his peculiar principles upon his conduct, that I for my own part am ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... fact, that there is truth in both these contentions. That the individualistic regime has bred a fearful amount of heartlessness and rapacity is painfully evident; that such socialistic experiments as have been tried have weakened human virtue appears to be true. Under which regime the greater damage would be done is not yet quite clear. Therefore the church cannot commit herself to either of these methods. The best ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... both worldly in his judgment, and hasty in his temper, was not a heartless man. Keen feelings are not always dissociated from brutality even. One thing will reach the heart that another will not; and much that looks like heartlessness, may be mainly stupidity. He had never ceased, after the first rush of passion, to regret he had used the word that incensed the boy; and although he had never to his own heart confessed himself ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... misconceived my anxiety, sir; for who is there that could be indifferent to the good opinion of one so simple and yet so cultivated; with a mind in which nature and knowledge seem to struggle for the possession. One, Mr. Effingham, so little like the cold sophistication and heartlessness of Europe on the one hand, and the unformed girlishness of America, on the other; one, in short, so every way what the fondest father or the most ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... better feelings on the part of those who were anything but unsophisticated, and from knowledge of the world could gauge him at his true worth? Not even a sentimental girl would show her heart to such a man. And yet with the blind egotism of selfishness he smiled grimly at their apparent heartlessness and ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... member felt the deep insult that had been inflicted upon our head; the spirit of the whole family was roused; we talked of it in our nightly gatherings, and showed it in our daily melancholy aspect. The oppressor saw this, and with the heartlessness that was in perfect keeping with the first insult, commenced a series of tauntings, threatenings, and insinuations, with a view to crush the spirit of ...
— The Fugitive Blacksmith - or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington • James W. C. Pennington
... hearts; they, I suppose, must put up with their wretchedness too,' said Mrs. Woodward; 'and their wives, also, and children, who have been looking forward for years to this vacancy as the period of their lives at which they are to begin to be comfortable. I hate such heartlessness. I hate the very name of ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... put heart into the people by taking the heartlessness out of politics, business, and industry. We have got to make politics a thing in which an honest man can take his part with satisfaction because he knows that his opinion will count as much as the next man's, and that the boss and the interests have been dethroned. Business we have ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... without a heart. Strange theories of something else supplying its place were rife among the anatomical students. With the girl in the pictures, the wild imagination of Lottchen, probably in part from her apparently absolute unattainableness and her undisputed heartlessness, had fallen in love, as far as the mere imagination can ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... in the act of buttoning the second glove. Tears sprang to her eyes at this evidence of her mother's heartlessness, and one bright drop ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... are somewhat retired, and pass the greater part of their time in the country. As to the powdered menials that throng the walls of fashionable town residences, they equally reflect the character of the establishments to which they belong; and I know no more complete epitomes of dissolute heartlessness and pampered inutility. ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... In Holinshed Richard is not accused of the murder of Gloster, whereas Shakespeare directly charges him with it, or rather makes Gaunt do so, and the accusation is not denied, much less disproved. At the close of the first act we are astonished by the revelation of Richard's devilish heartlessness. The King hearing that his uncle, John of Gaunt, is "grievous ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... multitudinous tread of gliding feet, the lingering sweep of silken skirts, the faint, sweet perfume of exotic flowers, all had a new and strange significance; the effect of an orchestral fugue wearily repeating the expression of a frenzied heartlessness, a ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... to the South. The Superior thought my cheeks were ominously hollow, and suspected threats of consumption in my cough. So I was to go to the Mediterranean, and try its milder air. I liked the change. Paris, with its gloss of noisy gayety and its substance of sceptical heartlessness, was repugnant to me. Perhaps it was because of this that Brother Sebastian had been mured up in the capital two thirds of his life. If our surroundings are too congenial we neglect the work set before us. But no matter; to the coast ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... "is indignant at Mosu's heartlessness. And although he will see to it that you meet again, he has said nothing to Mosu which would lead him to believe that you are not our own daughter. Therefore Mosu was delighted to marry you. But when the wedding is celebrated this evening, you must do thus and so, in order ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... noted too that Miss Stisted has no word of womanly sympathy for the wife who loved her husband with a love passing the love of women, and who was bowed down by her awful sorrow. On the contrary, with revolting heartlessness and irreverence, she jeers at her aunt's grief and the last offices of the dead. We may agree with the doctrines of the Church of Rome, or we may not; the solemn rites may be unavailing, or they may be otherwise; but at least they can ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... pause. I could bring no words to my lips. Finally I stammered out: "Nancy knows. I told her everything last night. I broke my word with you, Bob, but I could not help it She was crying again over what she thinks to be your heartlessness. I had to ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... to hear of one convert to the gospel of mercy," said Mrs. Brown heartily. "The apathy of our women on this subject is heart-sickening. Men are denouncing us; the newspapers are full of our cruelty; the pulpit makes our heartlessness its theme; and yet we keep on with our barbarous work with an indifference that must make ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... cold world through the medium of the newspapers, that first attracted the attention of Tretherick. Several poems descriptive of the effects of California scenery upon a too-sensitive soul, and of the vague yearnings for the infinite which an enforced study of the heartlessness of California society produced in the poetic breast, impressed Mr. Tretherick, who was then driving a six-mule freight wagon between Knight's Ferry and Stockton, to seek out the unknown poetess. Mr. Tretherick was himself dimly conscious of a certain hidden sentiment in his own nature; and ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... imputation of indolence, heartlessness, and moroseness, Mr. Froude appends the following remarks on other moral characteristics of certain sable peasants at [203] Mandeville, Jamaica, given on the authority of a police official, who, our ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... the latest news from Fernay. And better than all these, we may mount, au cinquieme, au sexieme, to the lofty yet humble garret of the author or the artist, and there find, in an age of sickening heartlessness, refreshing scenes of household sincerity, patient endurance of hardship, showing that even that depraved age was not utterly devoid of the heroic and the pure. M. Houssaye is no rigid moralist, he employs no historic pillory, and often displays the painful ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... principle prior to (as you say I do), than after marriage, as I know you all do; better not put the shackles on until one meets a woman who will cause one not to feel them. As to your charge of heartlessness against me, trust me; you say I know them; under the amiable exterior of some of the most gentle-voiced and loveliest, ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... Suddenly it struck him with a new force that he had not heard from Mary for nearly three weeks. A fear seized him that while he had been dancing and making merry Mary had been ill and suffering. He was amazed at his own heartlessness, for surely nothing but sickness would ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... one to demonstrate the heartlessness of the projectors, who, while pretending to glorify liberty in the distance, were treating it with contumely at home, where 3,000,000 slaves were held in bondage, and feeling keenly the ostracism of the slave as beyond the pole of ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... just closed was characterized by many instances of cruelty and heartlessness, in marked contrast with the boasted clemency and culture of the age, of which two prominent illustrations may be given. The first occurred at Plataea in the year 427, soon after the execution by the Athenians of the Mitylene'an prisoners. After a long and heroic defence against the Spartans ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... will die, and good and bad women will suffer at the sight. But for God's sake have done with the notion that you—you have anything to take to yourself, except that you've fought a good fight, and—lost. It sounds like the devil talking, doesn't it? Maybe you'll think me a monster of heartlessness. I'm not." ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... Oxford divine, and the other a Cambridge student, declare that, Glenroy and M'Dow are exquisite originals.' My own favourite, 'Molly Macaulay,' preserves her good-humour to the last, though I thought you rather unmerciful in shutting her up so long in Johnnie's nursery. The fashionable heartlessness of Lady Elizabeth and her daughter is coloured to the life, and the refreshment of returning to nature, truth, affection, and happiness at Inch Orran is admirably managed. Mary tells me you have returned from Fife ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... than depressed and worried all our life. But when more cheerful times come, they suggest only such times of cheerfulness, and no effort will bring back the worry vividly as when we felt it. It is not selfishness or heartlessness; it is the result of an inevitable law of mind that people in happy circumstances should resolutely believe that it is a happy world after all; for looking back, and looking around, the mind refuses to take ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... promise to tell my father that lots of people write plays just like this one—that I havnt selected it out of mere heartlessness? ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... deep well. But the question returned, where would Barney be while she was being conducted by acclaiming multitudes along her triumphal way? "Oh, he will wait—we will wait," she corrected, shrinking from the heartlessness of the former phrasing. How many years she could not say. But deep in her heart was the determination that nothing should stand in the way of the ambition she had so long cherished and for which she had ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... was now sobered and chastened, was eager to separate herself from the mess she had got into and return to her own sort of people. It struck him as heartless that she should go away in this fashion; but on second thought, he could not associate heartlessness with her. Also, he saw how there might be something in what she had said about not wishing to have to think of her friend as dead. He stood watching her straight narrow young figure until it was lost to view in the crowd of ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... overwrought when young: so, if the human soul were a thing that could be seen, you might discern the scars where the iron entered into it long ago,—you might trace not merely the enduring remembrance, but the enduring results, of the incapacity and dishonesty of teachers, the heartlessness of companions, and the idiotic folly and cruelty of parents. No, it will not do to tell us that past sufferings have ceased to exist, while their remembrance continues so vivid, and their results so great. You are not done with the bitter frosts of last winter, though it be summer ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various |
