"Ruthless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... residence and took him by surprise. They were married in a week after our return. My mother is comfortably situated on a small farm with a kind and affectionate companion, with whom she had formed an early acquaintance, and from whom she had been severed by the ruthless hand of Wrong; but by the divine hand of Justice they were ...
— The Story of Mattie J. Jackson • L. S. Thompson
... one," she cogitated, "laughs at me for labouring under a foolish mania, but is there likely another fool besides myself?" She then raised her head, and, casting a glance about her, she discovered that it was Pao-yue. "Ts'ui!" eagerly cried Tai-yue, "I was wondering who it was; but is it truly this ruthless-hearted and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... This ruthless destruction of the forests in northern China has brought about, or has aided in bringing about, desolation, just as the destruction of the forests in central Asia aid in bringing ruin to the once rich central Asian cities; just as the destruction of the forest in northern Africa ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... her mother's eternal moan, "All men are alike." She dramatized her poor mouse of a husband as a devastating Don Juan; and then forgave him, as most of the victims of Don Juan's ruthless piracies forgave him. ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... burgomasters; most of the officers and magistrates had already met an enviable death. The avarice of the officers had saved 400 of the richest citizens, in the hope of extorting from them an exorbitant ransom. But this humanity was confined to the officers of the League, whom the ruthless barbarity of the Imperialists caused to be ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... fearful times. As long as William lived, ruthless as he was to all rebels, he kept order and did justice with a strong and steady hand; for he brought with him from Normandy the instincts of a truly great statesman. And in his sons' time matters grew worse ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... His scathing attacks, his magnetism, his ruthless insistence left an indelible mark upon the minds of the jury—such a mark as no subsequent comments from the judge could efface or even moderate. The verdict returned was unanimous in spite of a by no means favourable summing-up. The prisoner ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... selection is nature's way. It works well—give it a chance; but it has to be accompanied by a ruthless slaughter of the unfit, and takes thousands upon thousands of years. We have a ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of somber pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror—of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... double pen; and all present followed him. The scribe read the holy book, and extended the measuring cord, and laid the foundations on the spot which the temple was to occupy. A grand building arose; but it has been wholly demolished by the ruthless hand of time and the barbarity of conquerors. Of all its glories nothing now remains but the one taper obelisk of pink granite, which rises into the soft sleepy air above the green cornfields of Matariyeh, ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... thing and then laugh at the man who had helped her? She was kind to her cats, the neighbors all liked her, to everyone else she seemed human; but when it came to him she was a devil of hate, a fiend of ruthless cunning. She would tell him to his face—at three in the morning, when he had caught her running away from the mill—that she hoped his old mill would be ruined. And now, when the trammer or some other soft-head ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... the thought. His self-respect and sensitiveness had been growing less day by day, and he himself growing proportionately hardened; but still he knew what remorse was, and by the very agony of his shame was still held out of the lowest of all depths—the depths of ruthless sin. ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... Makassar without buying bird-of-paradise plumes, she said, would be like visiting Japan without buying a kimono. The bird is usually sold entire, the prices ranging from twenty-five to thirty dollars, according to size and condition, though, owing to the ruthless slaughter of the birds to meet the demands of the European market, prices are steadily advancing. The Winsome Widow bought four of the finest birds I have ever seen—gorgeous, flame-colored things with plumes nearly ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... need of men in forestry; for we must win back the trees we have slain with such ruthless hand. The lumberman of the future will pick ripe trees and save the rest as carefully as the herdsman selects his stock. In engineering, in mining, in invention, there are endless possibilities. Every man who masters what is already known ...
— The Call of the Twentieth Century • David Starr Jordan
... hauled in a bold, daring, vigorous, and muscular fish armed with prickles on its head and stings on its fins, a real scorpion measuring two to three meters, the ruthless enemy of cod, blennies, and salmon; it was the bullhead of the northerly seas, a fish with red fins and a brown body covered with nodules. The Nautilus's fishermen had some trouble getting a grip on this animal, ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... babe is gone! Oh, spare my child, And strike my heart in twain!" To those ruthless men the lady knelt, But her piteous suit ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... forts surrounding Liege. Peasants were fleeing from the frontier villages, and their tales of what the Germans had done to their homes and dear ones made the blood of Max and his friend alternately freeze with horror and boil with rage. Their tales were a long catalogue of deeds of ruthless barbarity, cold-blooded cruelty, lust, and rapine. The smoke of burning houses seen in the distance gave emphasis to their tales of horror, and Max and Dale at last felt as though the world must be coming to an end. Indeed, the world of make-believe German civilization ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... their mediation. Prudent ambassadors are sent; The vultures with the terms content, Agree their guarantee to take, And armistice and treaty make. This kind desire to interfere, Cost the poor peace-makers full dear. To rapine bred, the ruthless crew, Nor gratitude nor faith who knew, On the defenceless pigeons fall, And shortly ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... ruthless attempt at infanticide was in accordance with the manners of the age nor has it yet disappeared from Rajput-land, China and sundry over-populous countries. Indeed it is a question if civilisation may not be ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... would-be masters; not so much now, perhaps, between different factions of property-owners as between the property-owners and the intellectuals. Out of the frying-pan into the fire seems the likely course; for the intellectuals, if they have the chance, enslave the whole man; they are logical and ruthless. The worst tyrannies have been priestly tyrannies, whether of Christians, Brahmins or negro witch-doctors; and those priests were the intellectuals of their time. I wonder when we shall have a party of intellectuals content to find out the people's ideals and to ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... and barter. And thus art is degraded, made a thing of carnal desire—a commodity of the exchange. Yes, Sophon, to be instructive, to become a teaching instrument, the art-edifice must be cleansed from its abominations; and, with them, must the artist sweep out the improvements and ruthless restorations that hang on it like formless botches on peopled tapestry. The multitude must be brought to stand face to face with the pious and earnest builders, to enjoy the severely simple, beautiful, aspiring, and solemn temple, in all its first purity, the same as ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... be seen all over the house. If the wretch had lugged her into her workroom and thence to the kitchen, and thence back to the spot of first assault, the evidences could not have been more ghastly. Bits of her clothing torn off by a ruthless hand, lay scattered over all these floors. In her bedroom, where she finally breathed her last, there could be seen mingled with these a number of large but worthless glass beads; and close against one of the base-boards, the ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... numbers. The moment he saw the insignificant band he felt that they were doomed men, or else the spirit abroad was not what he thought it to be, and he had been witnessing some strong indications of its ruthless nature. ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... "ruin, ruthless," "helm or hauberk," are below the grandeur of a poem that endeavours at sublimity. In the second stanza the Bard is well described, but in the third we have the puerilities of obsolete mythology. When we are told that "Cadwallo hushed the stormy main," and that "Modred made huge Plinlimmon bow ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... had been the abode of happiness. Cheerfulness and contentment—rare visitors at the home of opulence—dwelt gracefully amid the luxurious splendor of this house. But now a heavy stroke of affliction had come upon the devoted Emily. The ruthless hand of death had struck down her father in the midst of prosperity and happiness. She felt that she was alone in the world. Her unsympathizing uncle seemed not to feel the loss, but appeared even more cold and churlish than ever. She could ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... have already urged, the practice of that which is ethically best—what we call goodness or virtue—involves a course of conduct which in all respects is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence. In place of ruthless self-assertion, it demands self-restraint; in place of thrusting aside or treading down all competitors, it requires that the individual shall not merely respect, but shall help his fellows; its influence is directed ...
— Reincarnation • Swami Abhedananda
... freeholder named Allatson—in their disappointment and wrath set upon the hermit, whom they fatally wounded. When the abbot afterwards came to the dying hermit, and told him his assailants would suffer extreme penalty for their ruthless conduct, the hermit asked the gentlemen to be sent for, and said he would pardon them on certain conditions. 'The gentlemen being present bade him save their lives.—Then said the hermit, "You and yours shall hold your lands of the Abbot of Whitby, and his ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... that Russia was not economically ripe for a social revolutionthat only a political revolution was possible. According to their interpretation, the Russian masses were not educated enough to take over the power; any attempt to do so would inevitably bring on a reaction, by means of which some ruthless opportunist might restore the old rgime. And so it followed that when the moderate Socialists were forced to assume the power, they ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... an instant the youth and enthusiasm were wiped out of his face as by a ruthless hand, and he started to his feet. "Miss Ryder, forgive me! I've been talking like a fool, and you sit there listening like an ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... with ruthless vigour—naturally raised up adversaries on every side. In the court itself Maachah and her party were implacable. Outside it the idolatrous priests, and all their hangers-on, whose vested interests were abolished, were plotting and scheming against ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... he replied, with a groan, "I would to heaven it had been otherwise, for I am reserved for all the horrors of the most poignant sorrow and remorse. O Monimia! Monimia! I hoped by this time to have convinced thy gentle shade, that I was, at least intentionally, innocent of that ruthless barbarity which hath brought thee to an untimely grave. Heaven and earth! do I still survive the consciousness of that dire catastrophe! and lives the atrocious villain who hath blasted all ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... knights who had followed, hopelessly, in the Princess's train was one whose attentions had ever been very noxious to her. This was a coarse, over-fed, over-confident Norman, brutally skilful in the games at tourneys and ruthless in battles a outrance. His name was Guy of Gisborne, and he hailed from the borders of Lancashire. To him had fallen the rich fat acres of Broadweald, that place for which poor Hugh Fitzooth had ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... admiration. It was a people stirred by men like Henry Clay, great public speakers, leaders in public assemblies, impassioned advocates of the oppressed in other lands. It was a people equally affected by the rough and ruthless character of men like Jackson. An account which purports to come from Davy Crockett illustrates the political horse-play of the time. In 1830 he was an anti-Jackson candidate for re-election to Congress. He ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... of the unhappy. Oh, Rejoice that thou art king no longer! that All ways are closed against thee! There is none For innocent action, and there but remains To do wrong or to suffer wrong. A power Fierce, pitiless, grasps the world, and calls itself The right. The ruthless hands of our forefathers Did sow injustice, and our fathers then Did water it with blood; and now the earth No other harvest bears. It is not meet To uphold crime, thou'st proved it, and if 't were, Must it not end thus? Nay, this happy ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... mocking-bird lay on his back, kicking spasmodically, in the last agonies, with a tiny sword-thrust cleaving his melodious throat in twain, so that from the instrument which used to gush with wondrous music only scarlet drops of blood now trickled. The manikins were ruthless. Their faces were ten times wickeder than ever, as they roamed from cage to cage, slaughtering with a fury that seemed entirely unappeasable. Presently the feathery rustlings became fewer and fainter, and the little pipings of despair died away; and in every ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... irregular attempts at regularity were set forth with all the cruel, uncompromising clearness of the Californian atmosphere. There was the straight Main Street with its new brick block of "stores," ending abruptly against a tangled bluff; there was the ruthless clearing in the sedate pines where the hideous spire of the new church imitated the soaring of the solemn shafts it had displaced with almost irreligious mockery. Yet this foreground was Cissy's world—her life, her sole girlish experience. She did not, however, bother her pretty ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... considered as the founder of the modern school of the Law of Nature and of Nations. He was struck with the ruthless manner, in which wars were generally conducted; the slight pretences, upon which they were generally begun; and the barbarity and injustice, with which they were generally attended. He attributed these evils to the want of settled ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... was," pursues Molly, with a ruthless and amused laugh, "you must have been an awfully funny baby to look at." She appears to find infinite amusement in this idea for a full minute, after which follows a disgusted silence that might have lasted until dinner-hour but for ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... boundless. Other disguises, carefully chosen, helped them on to the Grand Duchy, Quentin as the gray-bearded man, Savage as the old woman. The suffering of Dorothy Garrison during that wild night and day was the only thing that wrung blood from the consciences of these ruthless dare-devils. Philip Quentin, it must be said, lived years of agony and remorse while carrying out his part of the plan. How the plot was carried to the stage where it became Lady Saxondale's duty to acquaint Dorothy Garrison ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... look of ruthless delight that Jonathan Moor descried his old enemy at the head of the opposite party; and he said unto his sons—"Yonder is the murderer of your uncle—Cunningham of Simprin, with his three young birkies brawly mounted, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... Redesdale, who in his eulogistic preface to the English translation of Chamberlain's torrent of folly, hinted not obscurely that the real father of Christ was not the Jew, Joseph, but a much more Germanic person. Neither Clausewitz, who first impressed upon the German mind the theory of ruthless warfare, nor Bernhardi, nor Treitschke, who did as much to build up the Emperor's political imagination, strike one as bearing particularly German names. There are indeed very grave grounds for the German ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... on as one driven by a ruthless force. His teeth were clenched upon his lower lip. His hands were shaking, and yet he knew that what he did was too superb for criticism. It was the work of genius—the driving force within that would not let him pause to listen to the wild urgings of his heart. That ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... sayings of the wise, the end of all reptiles, if not actually in view, cannot be long postponed. Is it not mete, therefore, to take fair opportunity of studying the characteristics and qualities of an animal, closely associated with us by fable and in fact, which is doomed to extinction by the ruthless strides of civilisation, which is regarded by some as cleanly and decent, and by others as repulsive and direful? Plain, unromantic, unsensational statements make for the acquirement of knowledge illustrative of the habits and faculties of the creature against ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... first time he realised that among the ruthless, no ruthlessness was permitted him; among the reckless, circumspection had been required of him; no arrogance, no insolence had been permitted him among the arrogant and insolent; for, when such as he turned threateningly upon one of those belonging to that elemental matrix ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... course by the wind, they at length reached the shore of South Carolina, at the mouth of the Wateree River, which they named the Jordan, calling the country Chicora. Though kindly treated by the natives, the ruthless adventurers carried away some seventy of these. One ship was lost, and most of the captives on the others died during the voyage. Vasquez was, by the Emperor Charles V., King of Spain, made governor of this new province, and again set sail to take possession. ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... already in this country to guard the portals carefully, it is equally necessary for the welfare of all, that the community through their legislators, both state and national, should accept the responsibility of preventing the ruthless exploitation of immigrants in the interest of private profit. Exploited and injured themselves, these become the unconscious instruments of hardly less ruthless exploitation and injury to their fellows in the competitive ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... consoles me." Again her agony wrung from her these bitter words,—the bitterest she ever uttered,—words of transient madness, yet most characteristic:—"Oh God! help me, is all my cry. Yet I have little faith in the Paternal love I need, so ruthless or so negligent seems the government of this earth. I feel calm, yet sternly, towards Fate. This last plot against me has been so cruelly, cunningly wrought, that I shall never acquiesce. I submit, because useless resistance is degrading, but I demand an explanation. I see that it is probable I ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... just as she was about to do so. How very little of that passion had Alaric breathed himself! and yet, alas! enough to fill the fond girl's heart with dreams of love, which occupied all her waking, all her sleeping thoughts. Oh! ye ruthless swains, from whose unhallowed lips fall words full of poisoned honey, do ye never think of the bitter agony of many months, of the dull misery of many years, of the cold monotony of an uncheered life, which follow so often as the consequence ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... been already pillaged of everything of value about her. Even the cabin door and windows were gone, and every rope and spar and sail; the cook's galley, hold and forecastle plundered of every article worth carrying off, and an air of general desolation and ruthless ransacking pervaded ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... gone, the Master called Bohannan and Leclair, outlined the next coup in this strange campaign, and assigned crews to them for the implacable carrying-out of the plan determined on—surely the most dare-devil, ruthless, and astonishing plan ever conceived by the ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... the German Government, now fighting to maintain the dynasty and the Junker domination, took the issue out of Mr. Wilson's hands. Ten days after his "peace without victory" address the German autocracy put into effect its cherished programme of ruthless submarine warfare. The only possible answer on the part of the United States was the dismissal of Count von Bernstorff the German Ambassador, and from that time war between the United States and Germany was only a matter of days. But Mr. Wilson had achieved the great purpose ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... were willing to confirm the receipt of this Memorandum and declare themselves satisfied. Fate, however, had decreed that I should play the role of Sisyphus at Washington. Scarcely were the negotiations terminated when the German Government, on the 8th February, declared the so-called "ruthless submarine war," i.e. announced to the sea powers their intention of sinking armed merchantmen without warning and without regard to crew or passengers. In view of this the American Government refused to complete the exchange of letters on the subject of the Lusitania. Instead of this there ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... I had fallen into the hands of the most troublesome, most ruthless, and most famous of the Dacoit leaders. Over and over again he had been hotly chased, but had always managed to get away; and when I last heard anything of what was going on four or five troops of native ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... from more recent information. The plan adopted by Milton is to go over the Fides Publica, extracting phrases and sentences from it, and commenting on each extract; but the general effect of the book is that of the ruthless chasing round and round of the poor ecclesiastic in a biographical ellipse, the two foci of which are Geneva ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... burden till their usefulness could serve. For each man, and An-ina, the burden of a heavy pack. Such preparations were wholly inadequate. He knew that. He was staking the courage and endurance of those he was responsible for against a ruthless, inhospitable world. ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... full-blooded Indian is that of Brant, the great Mohawk Chief, an ally of the English and a cruel and ruthless foe; on one occasion having, it is said, slain with his own hand, forty-four of his enemies. Other portraits of Jacques Cartier, Champlain, Vaudreuil, Montcalm, deLevis, Dorchester, deSalaberry and Murray are also there to be seen ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... beneath his pen. He was witty and satirical, he rose to yet new views of sentiment, of ideas and imagery in literature. With subtle ingenuity, he went back to his own first impressions of Nathan's work, when he read it in the newsroom of the Cour du Commerce; and the ruthless, bloodthirsty critic, the lively mocker, became a poet in the final phrases which rose and fell with majestic rhythm like the swaying censer before ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... didn't realize that. Thought that by holding Brady and that conceited Inverness for hostages, they'd be safe—and I'd be idiotic enough to not see this chance to get all the glory of the expedition for myself—instead of sharing it with those two. You're a quick thinker, Tipene—the true, ruthless, ...
— The Death-Traps of FX-31 • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... August 25 we hear little or nothing of the movements of the Roumanians, and in every case the fighting was done by the Russians, either alone or in conjunction with their ruthless allies the Bulgarians,[179] the operations being then spoken of as those of the 'Russo-Bulgarian' forces; but on the date named, or thereabouts, the main portion of the Roumanian army crossed the Danube, ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... on the French Village road and sat looking soberly at the slopes that stretched up away from the road on either side. Every child of the hills knew the menace that a hot dry summer brought to us in those days. The first, ruthless cutting of the timber had followed the water courses. Men had cut and slashed their way up through the hills without thought of what they were leaving behind. They had taken only the prime, sound trees that stood handiest to the roll-ways. They had left dead and dying trees standing. Everywhere ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... wanton slaughter; but I had little time to think, for the captain's deep voice came again over the water towards us: "Pull ashore, lads, and fill your water-casks." The men obeyed in silence, and it seemed to me as if even their hard hearts were shocked by the ruthless deed. On gaining the mouth of the rivulet at which we intended to take in water, we found it flowing with blood, for the greater part of those who were slain had been standing on the banks of the stream, a short ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... upon the beautiful green isle as brilliantly as if no ruthless invader had passed and laid it in ruins. The birds still chirped among the trees and the butterflies darted from flower to flower as happily as when the land was filled with a prosperous and ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... Governor into exile upon the Eastern Shore, had been compelled to leave their estates to the mercy of the enemy. And the desperate rebels, especially after death had removed the strong arm of Bacon, had subjected many plantations to thorough and ruthless pillage. Crops had been destroyed, cattle driven off, farm houses burned, servants liberated. Almost every member of the Council had suffered, while Berkeley himself claimed to have lost ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... did, she was cleverer than any Georgian of them all, her mind would slip away to Berkeley Square. She had, of course, noted young Craven's tacit resistance to the pressure of her desire, and her girlish vanity had resented it. But she had remembered that even in these active days of the ruthless development of the ego a sense of politeness, of what is "due" from one human being to another, still lingers in some perhaps old-fashioned bosoms. Lady Sellingworth was elderly. Craven might have thought it was his absolute duty to protect her from the possible dangers lurking ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... man's land revealed to me once and for all the fomenting spirit of each of the Indian Wars which had accompanied the exterminating, century-long march of our invading race. In a single sentence these men expressed the ruthless creed of the land-seeker. "We intend to wipe these red sons-of-dogs from the face of the earth." Here was displayed shamelessly the seamy ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... typical pirate, for in many ways he was different from the ordinary marine freebooter, especially when we consider him in relation to our own country. All other pirates who made themselves notorious on our coast were known as robbers, pillagers, and ruthless destroyers of life and property, but Captain Kidd's fame was of another kind. We do not think of him as a pirate who came to carry away the property of American citizens, for nearly all the stories about him relate to his arrival at different points on our shores for the sole purpose ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... the worst for them, full of seditious conceits; Asa is censured for only deposing his mother for idolatry, and not killing her." Thus early the dark spirit of Machiavel had lighted on that of the ruthless Calvin. The grievances of our first dissenters were futile—their innovations interminable; and we discover the king's notions, at the close of a proclamation issued after this conference: "Such is the desultory levity ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... fail; vainly fancying that each shaft launched hit the mark, and infatuatedly pluming herself on success, when her pride and self-complacency repelled further and further what she wished to allure—to witness this, was to be at once under ceaseless excitation and ruthless restraint. ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... a nice plot to face, and countermine! A plot that was only to be defeated by subtlety and strategy; for, at the most, there were but three of us, all told, against thirteen ruthless, treacherous men; and it was not to be forgotten that no dependence whatever was to be placed upon the man Harry; his scruples apparently drew the line at cold-blooded murder, but on the hither side of that, consideration ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... thou, vast outbound ship of souls, What harbor town for thee? What shapes, when thy arriving tolls, Shall crowd the banks to see? Shall all the happy shipmates then Stand singing brotherly? Or shall a haggard ruthless few Warp her over and bring her to, While the many broken souls of men Fester down in the slaver's pen, And nothing to say ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... find the Dane," said the old proverb—none the less ruthless and cruel because of the gloss of a ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... there are a thousand exceptional cases, and a million points of ruthless prejudice. 'An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,' sounded very righteous and respectable in the ears of the Jews, yet I believe the sentence had its condemnation, and the amendment ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... cities and established many political reforms which were the beginning of the modern Russian nation. He had trained an efficient army and was the father of the Russian navy. While possessed of many faults and of a savage, ruthless nature, the elements of greatness and of heroism were strong ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... Mark Twain was not particularly anxious that Howells should see his MS., fearing that he might lay a ruthless hand on some of his more violent fulminations and wild fancies. However this may be, further postponement was soon at an end. Mrs. Clemens's eyes troubled her and would not permit her to read, so she requested that the Yankee be passed upon by soberminded critics, such as Howells and Edmund ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... scissors and the sword to Clotilde, and bade her choose whether the children should be shorn and live, or remain unshorn and die. The proud queen replied that if her grandchildren were not to come to the throne she would rather see them dead than shorn. And murdered they were by their ruthless uncle Clotaire with his own hand." [321] In this case it appears that if their hair was shorn the children could not come to the throne but would be destined to become monks. Similarly, in speaking of the Georgians, Marco Polo remarks that they cut their hair ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... timber-framed and red-tiled) straggle up the immediate hills which surround it. Those of more pretention and inevitable ugliness range themselves decently and in order along two parallel roads. Aloof as this village is from "the madding crowd's ignoble strife," it has yet been touched to its undoing by the ruthless finger of conventionality. The inevitable Kur-Haus and bandstand and Anlagen are here; worst of all, a Trink-Halle! The Trink-Halle stands a mute and awful warning to the vaulting ambition which overleaps itself, since a classic temple in the heart of Liebenstein is surely as ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... fault, depend upon it. Maginnis called him back, you know, and no doubt hauled him off bodily, positively refusing to let him pause for good-byes. A man of ruthless determination, is Maginnis." ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... I conceive emerging in the coming years will deal simply and logically not only with the business of death, but with birth. At present the sexual morality of the civilized world is the most illogical and incoherent system of wild permissions and insane prohibitions, foolish tolerance and ruthless cruelty that it is possible to imagine. Our current civilization is a sexual lunatic. And it has lost its reason in this respect under the stresses of the new birth of things, largely through the difficulties that have stood in the way, and do still, in a diminishing degree, ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... mysterious sweetness and duplicity, these are among the salient points of characterisation which stand out in this powerful book. La Espuma was a cry from the desert to those who wear soft raiment in king's palaces. It was the ruthless tearing aside of the conventions by a Knox or a Savonarola. It was stringent satire, yet tempered with an artist's moderation, with a ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... calmly examined? It is blasphemous, we are told, to say with Edwards, that God holds the 'little vipers,' whom we call 'helpless innocents,' suspended over the pit of hell, and drops millions of them into ruthless torments. Certainly it is blasphemous. But is an infant really more helpless than the poor savage of Australia or St. Giles, surrounded from his birth with cruel and brutal natures, and never catching one glimpse of celestial light? Nay, when the question ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... claim your indulgence if I have in any matter opposed your brother in the interests of the Republic, for my devotion to the Republic is paramount. If, however, it is my personal safety that I have defended against a most ruthless assault of his, I think you should be content that I make no complaint even to you of your brother's injurious conduct. Now, when I had become aware that he was deliberately making every preparation to use his tribunician office to my ruin, I appealed ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... rejoined Mardonius, close by. The bow-bearer himself was covered with blood and dust. A Spartan sword had grazed his forehead. He had exposed himself recklessly, as well he might, for it had taken all the efforts of the Persian captains, as well as the ruthless laying of whips over the backs of their men, to make the king's battalions face the frenzied Hellenes, until the closing in of Hydarnes from the rear gave ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... of industrial plants, the waste of natural resources, the exploitation of the consumers of natural monopolies, the accumulation of stagnant surpluses, child labor, and the ruthless exploitation of all labor, the encouragement of speculation with other people's money, these were consumed in the fires that they themselves kindled; we must make sure that as we reconstruct our life there be no soil in which such weeds ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt
... of government has not been disturbed by the fact that vast Peking, the vaunted capital, is in the hands of ruthless invaders. At first everyone thought that with the Palace empty, and all the great Boards and offices made mere camping-places for thousands of hostile soldiery, the government of the whole empire would be paralysed—sterilised. Yet that ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... the Ulster Unionist Council ever spent. Men not prone to emotion shed tears. It was the most poignant ordeal the Ulster leader ever passed through. But it was just one of those occasions when far-seeing statesmanship demands the ruthless silencing of promptings that spring from emotion. Many of those who on that terrible 12th of June were most torn by doubt as to the necessity for the decision arrived at, realised before long that their leader had never been guided ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... the pieces of ice which flew from the blows of Peter's ax were whisked into the air, and then dashed over the precipice. We had quite enough to do to prevent ourselves from being served in the same ruthless fashion, and now and then, in the more violent gusts of wind, were glad to stick our alpenstocks into the ice ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... whose face had been hopelessly cruel and ruthless, here started back with a gasp and a little cry, which she ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... he had felt before in the presence of this man assailed Prescott again. He was wholly within his power, and metaphorically, he could be broken on the wheel if the adroit and ruthless Secretary wished it. He bit his dry lip, but said nothing, ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... renewal of the conflict, which he now saw was inevitable. His work was to persuade Prussia, Russia, and the lesser Powers, of the absolute necessity of a sincere and cordial alliance to make preparations for the conflict to put down, or at least successfully to resist, the common enemy,—the ruthless and unscrupulous disturber of the peace of Europe; not to make war, but to prepare for war in view of contingencies; and this not merely to preserve the peace of Europe, but to save themselves from ruin. All his confidential letters to his ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... eve of the New Year. The snow had folded its white mantle over the earth, and in the gardens, where the flowers had hidden their fragile beauty from the ruthless fingers of the Frost King, it gleamed whitely from amid the sombre foliage of the hardy evergreens. On lawn and terrace it lay in uneven drifts, tossed at will by the chilling winter winds. Pendant from tree ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... by the other, who begs Jesus to remember him when he comes into his kingdom. To which Jesus replies, "This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise," implying that he will spend the three days of his death there. In short, every device is used to get rid of the ruthless horror of the Matthew chronicle, and to relieve the strain of the Passion by touching episodes, and by representing Christ as superior to human suffering. It is Luke's Jesus ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... Klopstockian note is still more audible. The form is a pseudo-antique strophe such as Klopstock often used; the substance a rhetorical denunciation of military ambition. The most awful curses are imprecated upon the head of the ruthless 'conqueror', whose badness is portrayed in lurid images and wild syntax that fairly rack the German language.[9] No wonder that editor Haug cautioned the young poet against nonsense, ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... the frankincense's fuming And vapours of the candle starlike Into the cloud her wings she buoys on. Each, that thus sets the pure air seething, May poison it for healthy breathing— But the Critic leaves no air to poison; Pumps out with ruthless ingenuity Atom by atom, and leaves you—vacuity. Thus much of Christ does he reject? And what retain? His intellect? What is it I must reverence duly? Poor intellect for worship, truly, Which tells me simply what was told (If mere morality, ...
— Christmas Eve • Robert Browning
... wood and a quantity of chillies which they carried with them for the purpose. This made a suffocating smoke, which hindered the inmates from coming out to defend themselves. Then they cut down the posts of the house, which fell, with all it contained, into their ruthless hands. ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... young lady, it is not a question of what I want. I was not put here in the world to frivol through a life of gross pleasure. I have serious work to do in the service of humankind, and I can do it only by rigid concentration and ruthless elimination of the unessential. Surely you can ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... friendship and pay him tribute, rather than rely upon the uncertain protection of the King of France. They had discovered before this that Rollo was a man whose word could be trusted—a lord of mighty will, who had a ruthless way of enforcing obedience, but was open-handed and generous withal to those who would serve ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... identifies with the patriotic instinct the aspiration of a people to deserve well of foreign opinion. Subsequently the speaker turns from his survey of the ideal which he would have his country seek. He exposes with ruthless frankness the ugly ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... haunted him, and mingled with the recurrent memories of the sad passing of the little Maria, and his own bitter life experience. Oh, the mystery of it all! The tragedy of life! The sudden blighting of hopes! The ruthless crushing of hearts! What did it mean? Did this infinite variety of good and evil which we call life unite to manifest an infinite Creator? Nay, for then were God more wicked than the lowest sinner! Was evil as real as good, and more powerful? Yes. Did love ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... but he could not keep his heart from beating hard, as the Sioux, ruthless and bold, came forward silently to the attack. He did not have the infinite wilderness experience of the older two which had hardened them to every form of danger, and his imagination was alive and leaping. ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... the weakly arm till the boy cried out again, and dropped to his knees in anguish. But, with a ruthless jolt, Will jerked him to his feet, nearly dislocating his arm ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... at the start, Timothy Fry was the possessor of every stick of furniture, every cup and bowl even, and all the ornaments and articles of common usage in the house. Timothy himself had gone. The men had looked about for him, to rally him on his approaching nuptials, the women for the ruthless cross-questioning his madness had invited; but he had slipped away softly, like the wood-creatures he hunted. Even Cap'n Oliver, who might be supposed to know his inner mind, had betaken himself to the porch, and stood there, hat in hand, wiping his ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... reason for his own uncharacteristic leniency to a soldier of this ruthless army, as they sat together by the shady river-side. He went through the dumb show of repeatedly offering to his captive guest the fish they had caught, pressing additional portions upon him, laughing significantly and joyously ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... across the cobwebby bridges, around Goat Island, then to the shore, then to the elevator, and descended to the ice-bridge; but, above the angry battle of Niagara, arose the plaintive, dying cries of scores of snow-white birds, the shouts of gathering sightseers. Against the ruthless edges of ice lay, bleeding and broken, what was left of that superb company homeward bound. Their poor, twisted legs, their crushed heads, their flattened bodies, their pitiful, dying struggles, would melt a heart of stone. No more those graceful throats would whistle through the ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... to the end. Here is a man, possessing many of those qualities which go to make the successful man of action in all walks of life, driven by circumstances to squander them on a criminal career. Yet it is a curious circumstance that this determined and ruthless burglar should have suffered for what would be classed in France as a "crime passionel." There is more than a possibility that a French jury would have?? ing circumstances in the murder of Dyson.?? Peace is only another ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... rather stern, or even ruthless, about the set of the face and the firm ending of the ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... utterances of most public men were guarded and conservative. But when Toombs spoke the people realized that he uttered the convictions of an unshackled mind and a fearless spirit. Leaders deprecated his extreme views, but the hustings rang with his ruthless candor. ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... treetops, or should she cast him to the ground and thus be rid of him quickly and without trouble? No! She had longed for him, had risked her life to gain possession of him, and she would keep him against all odds. He did not fill the void left in her heart by the inroad of the ruthless eagle; he did drive her to the point of distraction; but he was new and interesting just as a doll or a mirror or a rubber ball ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... years upon the throne he had added to the crown Artois, Burgundy, the northern parts of Picardy, Anjou, Franche-Comte, Provence, and Roussillon. To secure such a wholesale aggrandizement he had been unscrupulous in chicanery, sleepless in his aggression, ruthless to the extremest verge of cruelty; no treaty had been too solemn to tear up, no oath too sacred for violation, no ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... only saw one. Wild ducks abound on some of the rivers, but they are becoming fewer and shyer every year. The beautiful Paradise duck is gradually retreating to those inland lakes lying at the foot of the Southern Alps, amid glaciers and boulders which serve as a barrier to keep back his ruthless foe. Even the heron, once so plentiful on the lowland rivers, is now seldom seen. As I write these lines a remorseful recollection comes back upon me of overhanging cliffs, and of a bend in a swirling ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... suddenly recollect that it was time he was going on. The woman did not go on; she stayed right there—hour after hour, day after day, year after year, twisting sausage links and racing with death. It was piecework, and she was apt to have a family to keep alive; and stern and ruthless economic laws had arranged it that she could only do this by working just as she did, with all her soul upon her work, and with never an instant for a glance at the well-dressed ladies and gentlemen who came to stare at her, as at some wild beast ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... fascinated, and soon began to peep out between the branches, and one by one deserting the shady covert, drew near under the irresistible attraction of the music. Then the goat-men rushed upon them with a demoniac fury. Folded in the arms of their ruthless assailants, the nymphs strove to keep up a while longer their raillery and loud laughter, but the mirth died on their lips. With heads thrown back and eyes swooning with joy and terror, they could only call upon their mother, or ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... hard-shell [U.S.], relentless, Spartan, Draconian, stringent, strait-laced, searching, unsparing, iron-handed, peremptory, absolute, positive, arbitrary, imperative; coercive &c 744; tyrannical, extortionate, grinding, withering, oppressive, inquisitorial; inclement &c (ruthless) 914.1; cruel &c (malevolent) 907; haughty, arrogant &c 885; precisian^. Adv. severely &c adj.; with a high hand, with a strong hand, with a tight hand, with a heavy hand. at the point of the sword, at the point of the bayonet. Phr. Delirant ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... means and in the enjoyment of an honorable reputation. There he exercised a generous hospitality, and led a quiet rural life. He planted a mulberry-tree, which became a pilgrim's shrine to numerous travellers; but a ruthless successor in the ownership of New Place, the Reverend Francis Gastrell, annoyed by the concourse of visitors, was Vandal enough to cut it down. Such was the anger of the people that he was obliged to leave the place, which ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... death. Alfieri was not a tender-hearted nor a humane man; had he been, he would have felt more sympathy than he did with the beginning of the great movement, with the strivings after reform which preceded it; he had, on the contrary, the sort of cold continuous rage, the ruthless self-righteousness and cut-and-dryness which would have made him, had he been a Frenchman, a terrorist of the most dreadful type; a regular routinist in extermination of corrupt people. Hence I cannot believe that, much as he may ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... into his prad, he begins to pursue the delinquent round the common, with "Markis, Markis! what are you at, Markis? get into cover, Markis!" But "it's no go"; Marquis creeps through a hedge, and "grins horribly a ghastly smile" at his ruthless tormentor, who wends back, well pleased at having had an excuse for taking "a bit gallop"! Half an hour more slips away, and some of the least hasty of our cits begin to wax impatient, in spite of the oft-repeated admonition, "don't be in a hurry!" ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... mound Ralph would have followed a much more ruthless tyrant than Captain Horn, and although he made no remarks, he went willingly enough. When they had climbed the mound, and the captain had lifted the stone from the opening in the top, Ralph held the lantern while the captain, ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... ascertaining whether they happen to have any eatables. No sooner do they observe me trundling toward them than they ingloriously flee the field, thoughtlessly leaving bag and baggage to the tender mercies of a ruthless invader. Among their effects I find some bread and a cucumber, which I forthwith confiscate, leaving a two and a half piastre metallique piece in its stead; the affrighted women are watching me from the safe distance ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... Bruce's person Katherine had from the first seen the summing up, the leader, of the bitterness against her father. All summer he had continued his sharp attacks, and the virulence of these had helped keep the town wrought up against Doctor West. Moreover, Katherine despised Bruce as a powerful, ruthless, demagogic hypocrite. And to her hostility against him in her father's behalf and to her contempt for his quack radicalism, was added the bitter implacability of the woman who feels herself scorned. ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... idling they had days when they worked intensely, and Ludlow was as severe with Cornelia's work as he was with his own. He made her rub out and paint out, and he drew ruthless modifications of her work all over it, like the crudest of the Synthesis masters. He made her paint out every day the work of the day before, as they did in the Synthesis; though sometimes he paused over ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... river front. The huge gray custom-house that stood at the foot of Canal Street no longer resounded with the rapid tread of sea-captains or busy merchants. From the pipes of the cotton-presses, the rush of the escaping steam, as the ruthless press squeezed the great bale into one-third its original size, was no longer heard. Most of the great towering steamboats that came rushing down the river with stores of cotton or sugar had long since been cut down into squat, powerful gunboats, or were tied up idly to the bank. Across the ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... existence somewhere of a strong and alert personality; a genius along mechanical and scientific lines; a creature of abnormally developed mentality and correspondingly defective ethical nature; an intelligence absolutely passionless and ruthless, playing the game entirely for its own sake, and equally indifferent to the end and to the means used to attain it—in other words, a monster. Quite an elaborate theory, you observe; but the difficulty was to fit it to the individual. Looking back on the problem, ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... themselves to either party. What a triumph was it of Bismarck's skill that the addition of 4,000,000 subjects to the Prussian Crown and complete dominion over Northern Germany should appear, not as the demand which, as a ruthless conqueror, he enforced on his helpless enemies, but as the solution of all difficulties which was recommended to him in reward for his moderation by the ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... this House are not guiltless of the blood of John Brown, his conspirators, and the innocent victims of his ruthless vengeance." ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... calmly weigh the import of these words:—Is it any thing short of robbing the Eternal Father of the brightest jewel in his crown, and sharing his glory with another? Is it not encouraging us to turn our eyes from the God of mercy as a stern and ruthless judge, and habitually to fix them upon Mary as the dispenser of all we want for the comfort and happiness of ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... kingdoms. One Alptagin set up for himself at Ghazni, and was succeeded in 976 A.D. by his slave Sabaktagin, who began the long series of Indian raids which stained with blood the annals of the next half-century. His son, Mahmud of Ghazni, a ruthless zealot and robber abroad, a patron of learning and literature at home, added the Panjab to his dominions. In the first 26 years of the eleventh century he made seventeen marauding excursions into India. In the first his father's opponent, Jaipal, was beaten in a vain effort to save Peshawar. Ten ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... stepped out on the pavement. His bitter disappointment could be read in his countenance, which disclosed the anguish of a drowning man who sees the frail plank which was his only hope of salvation snatched from his grasp by the ruthless waves. ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... bad but it can masquerade as moral. Conquerors have gone forth with the blessing of popes; a nation invokes its God before beginning a campaign of murder, rape and pillage. The ruthless exploitation of India becomes the civilizing fulfilment of the "white man's burden"; not infrequently the missionary, drummer, and prospector are embodied in one man. In the nineteenth century church, press and university devoted no inconsiderable ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... Alas, it is so deep a Moloch, ruthless and strong, 'tis like the unutterable name of the dread Lord, not to be spoken aloud. Yet there it is, the hunger which comes upon us, which we must learn to satisfy with pure, real satisfaction; or ...
— Look! We Have Come Through! • D. H. Lawrence
... Giddings tells us. Too cruel, but too true. It is full of pathetic and tragic interest, and melts and stirs the heart at once with pity for the sufferers, and with anger, that sins not, at their mean and ruthless oppressors. Every American citizen should read it; for it is an indictment which recites crimes which have been committed in his name, perpetrated by troops and officials in his service, and all done at his expense. The whole nation is responsible at the bar of the world and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... Swan himself had told her in the days when he laughed. He told her also of the lawyers' drain upon his wealth, starving her days together to make a pebble of saving to fill the ruthless breach. ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... the war in Europe are very many, ruthless exploitation, heartless and brainless diplomacy, futile dreams of national expansion (the "Mirage of the Map"), of national enrichment through the use of force (the "Great Illusion"), and withal a widespread vulgar belief in indemnities or highway robberies as a means of ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... Astute and ruthless, he could have rivalled in resource the unfortunate son of Laertes and Anticlea. If he did not pit his craft and audacity against the very gods, it is only because the Olympian gods are dead. Certainly no woman could frighten him. A one-eyed giant would not have had ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... forest, of the clouds of sunset and of the summer sea, and whisper Peace. Or He may come, as He comes on winter nights to many a gallant soul—not in the repose of Nature, but in her rage—in howling storm and blinding foam and ruthless rocks and whelming surge—and whisper to them even so—as the sea swallows all of them which it can take—of calm beyond, which this world cannot give ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... sin he could not comprehend.... Labor had been willing to be friendly, but now it hated him. Orders given in his name, but not originating in his will, had caused this. His attitude became fatalistic—he was being moved about by a ruthless hand without regard to his own volition. He might as well close his eyes and his mind and submit, for Bonbright Foote VII did not exist as a rational human individual, but only as a checker on the board, to be moved from square to ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland |
