"Wanton" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... written just before our departure for Osborne.[11] I hope that you will not have been alarmed by the account of the occurrence which took place on Saturday, and which I can assure you did not alarm me at all. This time it is quite clear that it was a wanton and wicked wish merely to frighten, which is very wrong, and will be tried and punished as a misdemeanour. The account in the Times is quite correct. The indignation, loyalty, and affection this act has called forth ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... feats of archery, of bull-baiting, and other popular amusements, were to be practised, for the more immediate amusement of the populace. In this manner did Prince John endeavour to lay the foundation of a popularity, which he was perpetually throwing down by some inconsiderate act of wanton aggression upon the feelings and prejudices of ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... Ralph. "I should rather say that it was a bit of wanton outrage of all the decencies of ordinary life, and arranged by some of the rude fellows—male and female—of the baser sort. You noticed, of course, that most of those immediately connected with the two cars, looked like ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... scruples into this line of business. I suppose," said I, nettled, "when you read in the General Order that the notorious McNeill was lurking disguised within the circle of cantonments, you took it that Marmont was putting a wanton affront on your character, just for the ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... engaged with a skilful and quick swordsman, might have sent him to the place from which the prayers of his brethren have (we are bound to believe) released so many thousands of souls. But, meanwhile, the servants, who at first thought the clashing of swords was the wanton sport of some young gallants as yet new to the honour of wearing them, grew alarmed by the continuance of the sound, and flocked hurriedly to the place of contest. At their intrusion we mutually drew back. Recovering my presence of mind (it was a possession I very easily ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... squadron, supported by a few battleships and cruisers which had survived the battle of Dover, had proceeded to Portsmouth, destroyed the booms and submarine defences, while a detachment of aerostats shelled the land defences, and then in a moment of wanton revenge had blown up the venerable hulk of the Victory, which had gone down at her moorings with her flag still flying as it had done a hundred years before at the fight of Trafalgar. After this inglorious achievement they had been laid ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... each anxious watcher's sight, Baring her bosom to the wanton sea, The lordly ship sweeps onward in her might, Her ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... loue, anger, spite, sensualitie, excesse, and ambition, trouble and prouoke the mynde? How many doo wee see, whiche euen from their youth, too their latter dais neuer awake nor repet them of the drunkennes, of ambitio, nigardnes, wanton lust, & riatte? Spu. I haue knowen ouermany of that sorte. Hedo. You haue grauted that false and fayned good || thinges, are not too bee estemed for the pure and godly. Sp. And I affirme that ...
— A Very Pleasaunt & Fruitful Diologe Called the Epicure • Desiderius Erasmus
... generative light falling from the moon". When the bull of Attis was sacrificed his worshippers were drenched with its blood, and were afterwards ceremonially fed with milk, as they were supposed to have "renewed their youth" and become children. The ancient Greek god Eros (Cupid) was represented as a wanton boy or handsome youth. Another god of fertility, the Irish Angus, who resembles Eros, is called "the ever young"; he slumbers like Tammuz ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... of Alain Chartier. His Livre de l'Esperance, where the oratorical prose is interspersed with lyric verse, spares neither the clergy nor the frivolous and dissolute gentry, who forget their duty to their country in wanton self-indulgence; yet his last word, written at the moment when Joan of Arc was leaving the pastures for battle, is one of hope. His Curial (The Courtier) is a satire on the vices of the court by one who ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... of 1783 Great Britain agreed to give us the whole West below a certain line, but when the time came for the surrender, she refused to yield the forts south of this line. With the bad faith of wanton power she kept her posts at Oswego, Niagara, Detroit, and Mackinaw, because we were weak and she was strong; and from these points her agents abetted the savages in their war upon the American frontiers. Just before the battle of Fallen Timbers, where Wayne won ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... in her eye, her cheek, her lip, Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out At every joint ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... same time I felt that I had not yet reached the level of straight and simple relations with her. I asked myself despairingly, "What am I to do?" In foolish dreams I imagined her now as my mistress and now as my wife, but rejected both ideas with disgust. To make her a wanton woman would be dreadful. It would be murder. To turn her into a fine lady, the wife of Dmitri Andreich Olenin, like a Cossack woman here who is married to one of our officers, would be still worse. Now could I turn Cossack like Lukashka, ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... south-west from Ripon in Yorkshire, stands in a beautiful wooded valley, through which runs a pretty stream known as the Skell. The abbey is noted for the great extent of its remains, which seem to have escaped any wanton destruction. A fine tower at the north end of the transept still stands, but the central one has fallen into great decay. Besides the church there are many remains of this famous abbey, which at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries was one of the richest in ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... of white men, armed to the teeth, rushed to the vicinity from neighboring cities and towns. Governor Charles H. Brough telegraphed to Camp Pike for Federal troops, and five hundred were mobilized at once "to repel the attack of the black army." Worse than any other feature was the wanton slaying of the four Johnston brothers, whose father had been a prominent Presbyterian minister and whose mother was formerly a school-teacher. Dr. D.A.E. Johnston was a successful dentist and owned a three-story building in Helena. Dr. Louis Johnston ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... throughout a great part of the poem a dangerous indulgence of his wit; the amusement of remote analogies; the use of far-fetched illustrations; quips and cranks and wanton wiles of the reasoning fancy in deviating self-indulgence; and an allusiveness which sets commentators into note-making effervescence. All these, and more, which belong to wit, are often quite ungoverned, allowed to disport themselves as they please. Such matters ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... Lettera, p. 23.] I wish the reader especially to notice that a separate tower or range of apartments was built for this purpose, in order to clear the government of the accusations so constantly made against them, by ignorant or partial historians, of wanton cruelty to prisoners. The stories commonly told respecting the "piombi" of the Ducal Palace are utterly false. Instead of being, as usually reported, small furnaces under the leads of the palace, they were ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... not attached by any practical interest. Some are too distant to be perceived; the proximity of others passes unnoticed. It is far from requisite, in pursuing safety, that every strange animal be regarded as either a friend or an enemy. Wanton hostilities would waste ammunition and idle attachments would waste time. Yet it often happens that some of these beings, having something in common with creatures we are wont to notice, since we stand to them in sexual, parental, or hostile relations, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... of the province of Syria, who in a time of scarcity had been massacred by the people of Antioch, with the connivance, and almost at the instigation, of Gallus, was justly resented, not only as an act of wanton cruelty, but as a dangerous insult on the supreme majesty of Constantius. Two ministers of illustrious rank, Domitian the Oriental praefect, and Montius, quaestor of the palace, were empowered by a special commission * to ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... Bois de Bouvigny to the west of it—where I stood among Canadian batteries just six weeks before the battle of Arras in 1917. The lamentable ruin of once beautiful Arras, the desolation of Douai, and the villages between it and Valenciennes, the wanton destruction of what was once the heart of Cambrai, and that grim scene of the broken bridge on the Cambrai—Bapaume road, over the Canal du Nord, where we got out on a sombre afternoon, to look ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ancient birds; the earliest travelers note their presence in great flocks, and to-day there are few vistas open to us, without from one to dozens of them wheeling about in mid-air, seeking what they may devour. Public opinion in the valley is opposed to the wanton killing of these scavengers, so useful in a climate as ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... was undiscovered, the Dahcotah raised his person again, and bending forward, he moved his dark visage above the face of the sleeper, in that sort of wanton and subtle manner with which the reptile is seen to play about its victim before it strikes. Satisfied at length, not only of the condition but of the character of the stranger, Mahtoree was in the act of withdrawing ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... youths were swimming in the sea, and there came some wanton women and girls who told the young men to come out and kiss them. But the youths would not come out, so the ladies stripped themselves and ran into the water after them. And the gentles who were driven away swam further into the water, and ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... paradises of the great trout, who frequent the old brickwork and timber foundations. The water in its rush through the arches, had of course worked for itself a deep hole, and then, some twenty yards below, spread itself out in wanton joyous ripples and eddies over a broad surface some fifty yards across, and dashed away towards a little island some two hundred yards below, or rolled itself slowly back towards the bridge again, up the backwater by the side of the bank, as if longing ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... the music float Along the gloaming lea; 'Tis sweet to hear the blackbird's note Come pealing frae the tree; To see the lambkins lightsome race— The speckled kid in wanton chase— The young deer cower in lonely place, Deep in her flowing den; But sweeter far the bonny face That smiles in ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... soldiers there was one who looked with disapproving eyes upon so much wanton cruelty, as he marched along silently with his brows knit in disgust. At length, seeing that the guard, not satisfied with the branch, was kicking the prisoners that fell, he could no longer restrain himself but cried out impatiently, ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... acquired in its passage through the medium of the poet's mind, but in other respects essentially the language of the historical personages who are made to speak. The diction belongs in each case to the period of the ballad in which it is employed, and yet there is no wanton use of archaisms, or any disposition manifested to resort to meretricious artifices by which to impart an appearance of probability to the story other than that which comes legitimately of sheer narrative excellence. The characterisation is that of history ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... birth-rate,'" he went on; "yet if, according to the modern scientist, all civilisations are only so much output of wasted human energy, doomed to pass into utter oblivion, and human beings only live but to die and there an end, of what avail is it to be born at all? Surely it is but wanton cruelty to take upon ourselves the responsibility of continuing a race whose only consummation is rottenness ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... Columbia by our cannon. On the other hand, the night before, when Woods's division was in camp in the open fields at Little Congaree, it was shelled all night by a rebel battery from the other aide of the river. This provoked me much at the time, for it was wanton mischief, as Generals Beauregard and Hampton must have been convinced that they could not prevent our entrance into Columbia. I have always contended that I would have been justified in retaliating for this unnecessary act of war, but did not, though ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... decay should be arrested, and that the future operations of rural husbandry and of forest industry, in districts yet remaining substantially in their native condition, should be so conducted as to prevent the widespread mischiefs which have been elsewhere produced by thoughtless or wanton destruction of the natural safeguards of the soil. This can be done only by the diffusion of knowledge on this subject among the classes that, in earlier days, subdued and tilled ground in which they had no vested rights, but who, in our time, own their woods, their pastures, and their ploughlands ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... rebel has become, Morose, insubordinate and glum, A peevish, wayward, wanton, wicked swain: To strive against the darts of love ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... you; let this suffice you for your salvation. If evil covetousness cry aught else to you, be ye men, and not silly sheep, so that the Jew among you may not laugh at you. Act not like the lamb, that leaves the milk of his mother, and, simple and wanton, at its ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... materially modified, or at least greatly postponed, by wise statesmanship and timely compromise. Take, for example, the American Revolution, which destroyed the political unity of the English race. You will often hear this event treated as if it were simply due to the wanton tyranny of an English Government, which desired to reduce its colonies to servitude by taxing them without their consent. But if you will look closely into the history of that time—and there is no history which is more instructive—you ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... three men, who refused to arrest the assassin, for no other reason than because he endeavoured to have justice done his employers; and the following extract from the report of the Irish Mining Company of Ireland, contains the particulars of as wanton an outrage ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... Gabriel, for in submitting she could save not only Graustark, but the man she loved. The sacrifice —but no! he would not believe that such affliction could come to her! Marry Gabriel! The man who had planned to seize her and make her his wanton! He ground his teeth and glared at Quinnox as if he were the object of his hatred, his vicious jealousy. The captain stepped backward in ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... not responsible for my brothers," the second man spoke up, filling his pipe in a meditative manner. Hay Stockard was at times as thoughtful of speech as he was wanton of ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... nearest had already undergone a revulsion of feeling. The assault of the old woman on two harmless strangers seemed too wanton to be tolerated. Ludlow's easy manner and calm language restored them fully to their senses, and the sight of his revolver effectually overawed the more excitable or reckless. They were also jealous of the good name ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... a sheep.—Levit. xix: 20 to 22, inclusive. Again, there was a law which guarded his people, whether free or bond, from personal violence. If in vindictiveness, a man with an unlawful weapon, maimed his own slave by knocking out his eye, or his tooth, the slave was to be free for this wanton act of personal violence, as a penalty upon the master.—Exod. xxi: 26 to 27, inclusive. But for the same offense, committed against a free person, the offender had to pay an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, as the penalty.—Levit. ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... the shades, I presently do see The god of love forsake his bow and sit me by; If that I think to write, his Muses pliant be; If so I plain my grief, the wanton boy will cry. If I lament his pride, he doth increase my pain If tears my cheeks attaint, his cheeks are moist with moan If I disclose the wounds the which my heart hath slain, He takes his fascia off, and wipes them dry anon. If so I walk the woods, ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... office of his Majesty, to resume the exercise of his negative power, and to prevent the passage of laws by any one legislature of the empire, which might bear injuriously on the rights and interests of another. Yet this will not excuse the wanton exercise of this power, which we have seen his Majesty practise on the laws of the American legislatures. For the most trifling reasons, and sometimes for no conceivable reason at all, his Majesty ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... One wanton villain—it was the French gutter-snipe, Virot—paused a moment to ride up to a window of the hall and discharge his revolver through the glass. Fortunately his aim was as evil as his intent. Beyond shattering a priceless vase, ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... a few hours earlier not a ship nor a house could have escaped. But it was the lesson, not the loss, that told. As it was, enough damage had been done to demonstrate—as Paul had declared to the wise man of Paris—that the disasters caused by the wanton fires and assaults on the American coasts, could be easily brought home to the enemy's doors. Though, indeed, if the retaliators were headed by Paul Jones, the satisfaction would not be equal to the insult, being abated by the magnanimity of a chivalrous, ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... it so happily if I had my baby," she sobbed to Marilla. "But when I haven't it just seems like wanton cruelty—though I know Phil wouldn't hurt me for the world. Oh, Marilla, I don't see how I can EVER be happy again—EVERYTHING will hurt me all the rest of ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... farewell, you wanton powers; I'm free again. Thou dull disease of bloud and idle hours, Bewitching pain, Fly to fools that sigh away their time: My nobler love to heaven doth climb; And there behold beauty still young, That time can ne'er corrupt, nor death destroy; Immortal ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... carries with her an infectious grief That strikes all her beholders, she will sing The mournful'st things that ever ear hath heard, And sigh, and sing again, and when the rest Of our young Ladies in their wanton blood, Tell mirthful tales in course that fill the room With laughter, she will with so sad a look Bring forth a story of the silent death Of some forsaken Virgin, which her grief Will put in such a phrase, that ere she end, She'l send them weeping one ...
— The Maids Tragedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... warrior in the Moorish ranks was deeply interested in forwarding their views, his disorderly and savage followers were affording proofs of their wanton cruelty and insubordination. El Feri saw with disgust and sorrow, that the men he led to the field adhered not to the principles which they pretended to profess. He perceived that his army more resembled ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... were disturbed only by those echoes of revelry in honour of the late manifestation of the Hun's divine right to do wanton murder on the ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... him! Those eyes have taught the lover flattery. His face, ...nay, Jacob! Jacob! were it fair To judge a lady in her dishabille? Fancy it dressed, and with saltpeter rouged. Behold his tail, my friend; with curls like that The wanton hop marries her stately spouse: So crisp in beauty Amoretta's hair Rings round her lover's soul the chains of love. And what is beauty, but the aptitude Of parts harmonious? Give thy fancy scope, And thou wilt find that no imagined change Can beautify this beast. Place at ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... not all duty. Indeed, the true spiritual life is quite other, not harsh and constrained, but free and spontaneous—a wealth of feeling playing about a constantly shifting centre. Spirit is not consecutive and law-abiding, but capricious and wanton, seeking the beautiful in no orderly progression, but in a refined and versatile sensibility. If this be the nature of spirit, and if spirit be the nature of reality, then he is most wise who is most ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... recompounded in the other forms with which she daily supplies those which daily disappear, and return under different forms—the watery particles to streams and showers, the earthy parts to enrich their mother earth, the airy portions to wanton in the breeze, and those of fire to supply the blaze of Aldebaran and his brethren.—In this faith have I lived, and I will die in it!—Hence! begone!—disturb me no farther!—I have spoken the last word that mortal ears ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... David to stand up for her. She had not understood how her father's righteous soul would be stirred to the depths of shame and utter disgrace over her wanton action. Not that she would have been in the least deterred from doing as she pleased had she understood, only that she counted upon too great power ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... whirlwind, caught me up and bore me away into a large room, where he made himself visible to my eyes in human form, appearing like a young man whose beard is just growing, with a face of indescribable beauty, but austere, not wanton. He bade me look around the room, and said: "The crowd of men thou seest in this place are all those who up to this day have been born and afterwards have died upon the earth." Thereupon I asked him why he brought me hither, ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... darkened. But what did he want with me? 'Tis thought he had received a despatch - and that he misreads it (so we fully believe) to the effect that they are to have war ships at command and can make their little war after all. If it be so, and they do it, it will be the meanest wanton slaughter of poor men for the salaries of two white failures. But what was his errand with me? Perhaps to warn me that unless I behave he now hopes to be able to pack me off in ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the introduction to his Tibullus: "Verbal translations are always inelegant, because always destitute of beauty of idiom and language; for by their fidelity to an author's words, they become treacherous to his reputation; on the other hand, a too wanton departure from the letter often varies the sense and alters the manner. The translator chose the middle way, and meant neither to tread on the heels of Tibullus nor yet to lose sight of him."[430] The preface to Fawkes' Theocritus harks back to Dryden: "A ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... ladies," said the head-mistress in that slightly vibrating and authoritative voice of hers. "I have a word or two to say to you all. Miss Good has just brought me a painful story of wanton and cruel mischief. There are fifty girls in this school, who, until lately, lived happily together. There is now one girl among the fifty whose object it is to sow seeds of discord and misery among her ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... Calv's impersonation, it seemed that I was enjoying my first revelation of some of the elements of the character of the gypsy as it had existed in the imagination of Prosper Mrime when he wrote his novel. To me she presented a woman thoroughly wanton and diabolically equipped with the wicked witcheries which explained, if they did not palliate, the conduct of Don Jos. Here we had a woman without conscience, but also without the capacity for even a wicked affection; a woman who might have been the thief whom the novelist describes, who ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... part to view— Of wanton waste and reckless gambling, What darker paths shall he pursue With sacrilegious step and shambling? What coarse defiance, haply, hurl At lights beyond his comprehension— An attitudinising churl Who ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Jan. 9, 1892 • Various
... the eye; the richest and most delicate sculpture being put on the walls of the porches, or on the facade of the building, just high enough above the ground to secure it from accidental (not from wanton[23]) injury. The decoration, as it rises, becomes always bolder, and in the buildings of the greatest times, generally simpler. Thus at San Zeno and the duomo of Verona, the only delicate decorations are on the porches and ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... savage animals. The early Christians were especially subjected to this species of cruelty. Nero availed himself of the prejudice against them to turn aside popular indignation after the great conflagration of Rome, which is commonly ascribed to his own wanton love of mischief; and we learn from Tertullian, that, after great public misfortunes, the cry of the populace was, "To the lions with ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... what I'm about," she said, breathing quick. "He made a fule o' me wi' that wanton Lizzie Short, and he near killt me the last morning afore he went. And I'd been a good wife to him for fifteen year, and never a word between us till that huzzy came along. And she's got a child by him, ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... upon him: The third day comes a frost, a killing frost; And, when he thinks,—good easy man,—full surely His greatness is a ripening,—nips his root, And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured, Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders, These many summers in a sea of glory; But far beyond my depth: my high-blown pride At length broke under me; and now has left me, Weary and old with service, to the mercy Of a rude stream, that must forever hide me. Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye! I ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... baby, and these otherwise gentle folk, evicted and aggrieved, knowing naught of Blakely from previous association, and seeing no reason why he should wish to be at the far end of the row instead of the middle, with his captain, where he properly belonged, deemed themselves the objects of wanton and capricious treatment at his hands, and resented it according to their opportunities. Bridger, being a soldier and subordinate, had to take it out in soliloquy and swear-words, but his impetuous little helpmate—being ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... was good company at jeists. And wanton when he came to feists, He scorn'd the converse of great beasts, O'er a sheep's head; He laugh'd at stones about ghaists; ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... representative of the people, to institute a domiciliary search in his house, and to waste valuable time, which otherwise belonged to the service of the Republic. And this you did, not from a misguided sense of duty towards your country, but in wanton and impure spirit, to be rid of the surveillance of one who had your welfare at heart, and who tried to prevent your leading the immoral life which had become a public scandal, and which has now brought you before this court of justice, ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... including three lay sisters, also possessed, into the choir of the said church, accompanied by a great many monks, Carmelites, Capuchins, and Franciscans; and by three physicians and a surgeon. The sisters on entering made some wanton remarks, calling Grandier their master, and exhibiting ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... apart for Himself and who were obedient to His will; and though by desert of nature they were condemned, yet God by making them partakers in the hidden mystery, long afterwards to be revealed, vouchsafed to recover fallen nature. So the earth was filled by the human race and man who by his own wanton wilfulness had despised his Creator began to walk in his own ways. Hence God willing rather to recover mankind through one just man than that it should remain for ever contumacious, suffered all the guilty multitude to perish by the wide waters of a flood, save only Noah, the just one, with ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... behaved on its advance to Smolensk, things were even worse as they left the ruined town behind them and resumed their journey towards Moscow. It seemed that the hatred with which they were regarded by the Russian peasantry was now even more than reciprocated. The destruction they committed was wanton and wholesale; the villages, and even the towns, were burnt down, and the whole country made desolate. It was nothing to them that by so doing they added enormously to the difficulties of their ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... a thousand pleasures bring, Which from decrepid age will fly; Sweets that wanton in the bosom of the spring, In winter's ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... Wanton avidity, bilious envy, careworn revenge, populace-pride: all these struck mine eye. It is no longer true that the poor are blessed. The kingdom of heaven, however, is with ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... last times is, that professing men (for so I understand the Text) s[h]all be, many of them, base; (2 Tim. 3.) but continue thou in the things that thou hast learned, not of wanton men, not of licentious times, but of the Word and Doctrine of God, that is according to Godliness; and thou shalt ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... characterises the descendants of the Goths," said Maltravers, and his voice slightly trembled; "they gave up to the monopoly of the senses what ought to have had an equal share in the reason and the imagination. Their love was a beautiful and wanton butterfly; but not the butterfly which is ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of the Russians to mistreat the people of Galicia. They came, in their own estimation at least, as deliverers, not as despoilers. As for the Austrians, they were in their own country when in Galicia. When they penetrated north into Russia, it appears that they did little wanton damage. On their return, it is true, they laid waste a large part of the province of Volhynia, burning villages and farmsteads as they proceeded. But this was dictated by military exigencies, in order to ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... congratulation that Congress and the country had the virtue and firmness to bear the infliction, that the energies of our people soon found relief from this wanton tyranny in vast importations of the precious metals from almost every part of the world, and that at the close of this tremendous effort to control our Government the bank found itself powerless and no longer able ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... threat seemed to be nearly as effectual as the mop. Edmund stretched himself lazily, and in very sleepy accents desired to know what his brother could possibly mean by such wanton cruelty. ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... you, Sir, that a feather would have knocked me down. The coarse insult, the wanton injustice, had deprived me of the use of my limbs and of my speech. Then the juge ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... messenger seemed to strike the host with More astonishment than any other enormity that had taken place on the road; and indeed it was the first time so wanton an outrage had been committed; the robbers generally taking care not to meddle with any thing ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... were quite as ghastly as anything set forth in the reports from Cuba. And yet every thinking man among us, young and old, turned cold with apprehension when we were threatened with a European interference which would have dishonoured us. That Spain is behaving with wanton brutality would not be to the point, even if the reports were not exaggerated, which they are,—for the matter of that, the Cubans are equally brutal when they find the opportunity. The point is that it is none of our business. The Cubans ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... This is my last evening with you. Do you think a woman has the right to be as gloriously beautiful as you are to-night? Do you think it's fair to the feelings of a poor wretched man, who adores her, and whom she, in mere wanton wickedness, is sending to the ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... wedded wife (for invoking some other god). But Kunti addressed him, saying, 'The wise do not sanction a fourth delivery even in a season of distress. The woman having intercourse with four different men is called a Swairini (wanton), while she having intercourse with five becometh a harlot. Therefore, O learned one, as thou art well-acquainted with the scripture on this subject, why dost thou, beguiled by desire of offspring, tell me so in seeming forgetfulness of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... sides. To one like me, whose occupations tie him to the town-foot, it really is a sweet and grateful thing to be let loose, as it were, for a wee among the scenes of peace and quietness, where nature is in a way wild and wanton—where the clouds above our heads seem to sail along more grandly over the bosom of the sky, and the wee birds to cheep and churm, from the hedges among the fields, with greater pleasure, feeling that ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... bent as I am on the full fruition of love and vengeance, I would use cruelty—Understand me: I mean wanton or unnecessary brutality. I will be as forbearing as she will permit. I fear she will not suffer me to caress her tenderly—But she shall never sleep in the arms of Henley!—She never shall!—I will make sure of that! My mind is reconciled ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... the company of a more refined, licentious sort of people, and taking to all their wanton ways rushed into the opposite extreme from an abhorrence of his father's meanness. At last, being a better man than his corruptors, he was drawn in both directions until he halted midway and led a life, not of vulgar and slavish passion, but of what he deemed ...
— The Republic • Plato
... which crest With waving woods wide Huron's breast,— Her countless isles, that love too well The crystal waters whence they rise, Far from her azure depths to swell, Or wanton ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... Romans, or writing with a desire to appeal to them, can recognize only material, concrete causes. The deeper spiritual motives of the struggle escape him altogether, as they escaped the Roman procurators. He recounts the wanton insults of a Pontius Pilate, who brought into Jerusalem Roman ensigns with the image of Caesar, and spoiled the sacred treasures of the Korban for the purpose of building aqueducts; and he dwells on the attempt of Gaius ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... Not to be forgotten was the wrath in his eye and voice when she had come upon him with his limping horse, and now, at last she knew why his horse had been lamed and by whom! For that seemingly wanton cruelty had accomplished that which it was planned to do, making her certain beyond a doubt that Thornton had lied to her, that he had been the man whom she had seen following her, hence that he it was who had robbed her and had kissed her ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... that the Admiral's high temper was usually kept under firm control, and that he showed far less severity than most men would have done under similar provocation. Bartholomew was made of sterner stuff, but his whole career presents no instance of wanton cruelty; toward both white men and Indians his conduct was distinguished by clemency and moderation. Under the government of these brothers a few scoundrels were hanged in Hispaniola. Many more ought to ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... far out at sea, There came a sudden tiny puff of smoke— And then a dull strange throb, a whistling hiss, And scarce a score of yards away a shot Ploughed up the turf. None knew, none ever knew From whence it came, whether a perilous jest Of English seamen, or a wanton deed Of Spaniards, or mere accident; but all Her maids in flight were scattered. Bess awoke As from a dream, crying aloud—"'Tis he, 'Tis he that sends this message. He is not dead. I will not pass the porch. Come home with me. 'Twas he that ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... household of the wazir were surprised, and exclaimed, "What man has entered [the house]!" The young merchant, that is, the wazir's daughter, ran and threw herself at her mother's feet, and wept and said, "I am your child." On hearing this, the wazir's wife began to reproach her, by saying, "O, wanton girl, thou hast greatly dishonoured thyself; thou hast blackened thine own face, and brought shame on thy family; we had imagined thee lost, and, after weeping for thee, had with resignation given thee up; ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... Jimmie, watching him, was torn between two contradictory emotions. He hated him—hated him with a deadly and abiding hatred. But also he admired him, marvelled at him, cringed before him. Lacey was a wanton, a cursing tyrant, a brutal snob; but also he was the master, the conqueror, the proud, free, rich young aristocrat, for whom all the rest of humanity existed. And Jimmie Higgins was a poor little worm ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... found a great crowd surrounding a party who were dancing, by the light of some large fires, to the music of four drums, which were beat with great exactness and uniformity. The dances, however, consisted more in wanton gestures than in muscular exertion or graceful attitudes. The ladies vied with each other in displaying the most voluptuous ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... a young fellow got a wanton cocquette, a cream keiper, wt child. For fear he sould be put to marry hir he quietly went and enrolled himselfe amongs the sogers whom the King was levieng at Poictiers. She gets notice of it, causes clap him fast and lay him prisoner. The Captain came to seik back his soger, since he was ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... unfaithfulness. Yet shall they not with him take But of wilful heart his liberal grace forsake. Which will compel me against man for to make In my displeasure, and send plagues of correction Most grievous and sharp, his wanton lusts to slake, By water and fire, by sickness and infection Of pestilent sores, molesting his complexion; By troublous war, by dearth and painful scarceness, And after this life by an extreme heaviness. I will first begin with Adam for his lewdness Which for an apple neglected ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... student of soldiership, and wreaked in that sort the passion of his most gallant spirit. But whether this was true or not, it is certain that he pursued the study with a devotion which never blinded him to the atrocity of war. Some wars he could excuse and even justify, but for any war that seemed wanton or aggressive, he had ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... now thinking of the loss of property involved, immense and serious as that is, but only of the wanton and wholesale destruction of the lives of non-combatants, men, women, and children engaged in pursuits which have always, even in the darkest periods of modem history, been deemed innocent and legitimate. Property can be paid ...
— Why We are at War • Woodrow Wilson
... had broken out, and were marked by all the ferocity and terrorism characteristic of luddism in the manufacturing districts. They spread from Kent, Sussex, and Surrey into Hampshire, Wiltshire, Berkshire, and Buckinghamshire. In these four counties there was a wanton and wholesale destruction of agricultural machinery, of farm-buildings, and especially of ricks, as if the misery of labourers could possibly be cured by impoverishing their only employers. The rioters moved about in large organised bodies, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... the altar tomb (6) which now contains the remains of Bishop Beauchamp, who died in 1481. When this was removed from the aisle at the north end of the great transept it was empty, and showed no trace of its original dedication. During the wanton demolition of the Beauchamp chantry, where, "in marble tumbes," with his father and mother on either hand, the remains of Bishop Beauchamp had been unmolested for over three hundred years, his own tomb was "mislaid" and never recovered. It is pleasant ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... the juicy pine, On choicest melons and sweet grapes they dine, And with potatoes fat their wanton kine,' ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... one of the daisies we are treading on," answered Buttar. "Do you know, Bracebridge, I never like treading on wild flowers; it seems such wanton destruction of some of the most beautiful works of nature. I feel all the time as a donkey who has got into a flower-bed ought to feel,—that I am a very mischievous animal. I would always rather go out of my way than injure them, especially ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... you?" cried the father, putting one hand to his ear, while with the other he pointed to a chair; and as Mrs. Morton looked up from the preserves with that air of indignant suffering with which female meekness upbraids a husband's wanton outrage, Mr. Roger added, shrugging ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... destruction, having seen it in full operation and practised on the gigantic scale. Henceforth he would devote all the energy he possessed to construction—on however modest and private a one—to a building up, as personal protest against much lately witnessed wanton and chaotic pulling-down. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... shutting of the eyes, a self-deception. Every other book becomes clean, once one has read the New Testament: for example, immediately after reading Paul I took up with delight that most charming and wanton of scoffers, Petronius, of whom one may say what Domenico Boccaccio wrote of Caesar Borgia to the Duke of Parma: "e tutto festo"—immortally healthy, immortally cheerful and sound.... These petty bigots make a capital miscalculation. They attack, but everything they attack ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... the slain fresh bleeding at the end of their axes. After them followed the Seleucian singing women, repeating scurrilous and abusive songs upon the effeminacy and cowardliness of Crassus. This show was seen by everybody; but Surena, calling together the senate of Seleucia, laid before them certain wanton books, of the writings of Aristides, the Milesian; neither, indeed, was this any forgery, for they had been found among the baggage of Rustius, and were a good subject to supply Surena with insulting remarks upon the Romans, who were not able even in the time of war to forget such writings ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... have been mistaken for a young jaguar, was his special pet, and when this beautiful animal followed him, purring, into the pantry, and he always followed, there was no end to the dainty morsels given him. The best was none too good. This wanton waste made the Schroeder girl, faithful soul that she was, fly into a rage, for she often saw her plans for dinner ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... dimber dell I courted [1] She had youth and beauty too, Wanton joys my heart transported, And her wap was ever new. [2] But conquering time doth now deceive her, Which her pleasures did uphold; All her wapping now must leave her, For, ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... the clearest of his showing. Here he appears as an irrepressible felicitous sketcher, and I know no pleasanter record of the joys of sketching, or even of those of simply looking. Theophile Gautier himself was not more inveterately addicted to this latter wanton exercise. There ought to be a pocket edition of Mr. Boughton's book, which would serve for travellers in other countries too, give them the point of view and put them in the mood. Such a blessing, and such a distinction too, is it ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... it. For her talk with Trevison last night had convinced her of the futility of hope. She had gone out of his life as a commonplace incident slips into the oblivion of yesteryear. Worse—he had refused to recall it. It hurt her, this knowledge—his rebuff. It had aroused cold, wanton passions in her—she had become a woman who did not care. She met Corrigan's gaze with a look of ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... do fade, and wanton fields To wayward winter reckoning yields. A honey tongue, a heart of gall, Is fancy's spring but ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... whom they had long maintained a continued intercourse of kindness and good offices. Nay, even death was the slightest punishment inflicted by these monsters in human form; all the tortures which wanton cruelty could invent, all the lingering pains of body, the anguish of mind, the agonies of despair, could not satiate revenge excited without injury, and cruelly derived from no just cause whatever. Depraved nature, even perverted religion, though encouraged ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... Waked from the dead repose of rolling years; When sacred worthies she bids breathe anew, That men may be what she displays to view; By fashion's law with light fantastic mien The Comic Sister trips it o'er the scene; Armed at all points with wit and wanton wiles, Plays off her airs, and calls forth all her smiles; Till each fine feeling of the heart be o'er, And the gay wonder how ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... golden shafts employs, here lights His constant lamp, and waves his purple wings, Reigns here and revels; not in the bought smile Of harlots, loveless, joyless, unendeared, Casual fruition; nor in court-amours, Mixed dance, or wanton mask, or midnight ball, Or serenate, which the starved lover sings To his proud fair, best quitted with disdain. These, lulled by nightingales, embracing slept, And on their naked limbs the flowery roof Showered ...
— Love—Marriage—Birth Control - Being a Speech delivered at the Church Congress at - Birmingham, October, 1921 • Bertrand Dawson
... I will take away my eyes from your face. If it suddenly startles you in your walk, I will step aside and take another path. If it confuses you in your flower-weaving, I will shun your lonely garden. If it makes the water wanton and wild, I will not row my boat ...
— The Gardener • Rabindranath Tagore
... chieftain, who received the envoy in his tent, surrounded by his captains. Theodomir was frank and abrupt in speech, for the most of his life had been passed far from courts. He delivered, in round terms, the message of the Prince Ataulpho; upbraiding the Arab general with his wanton invasion of the land, and summoning him to surrender his army, or ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... slaughtered and driven the birds from the river! And this, in fact, is precisely what happened at a distance from London, where guns could be discharged without danger to the public, in numberless bays and rivers in which the birds sought refuge. They were simply slaughtered wholesale in the most wanton manner; in Morecambe Bay a hundred and twelve gulls were killed at one discharge, and no hand and no voice was raised to interfere with the hideous sport. Not because it was not shocking to the spectators, but ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... in New Mexico, has been the scene of a fearful tragedy. A band of desperadoes had gradually collected there, who indulged in the most wanton acts of outrage and barbarity, upon the Mexican residents, finally ending in more than one deliberate murder. A few members of the Boundary Commission who had been left there, headed an organization which captured a number ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... so beautiful that it seemed to be like so much wanton destruction to throw it away, and I could not help thinking what delight it would have given me before I had seen Uncle Dick's collection, to have been the possessor of one of these noble birds. But as my uncle very reasonably ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... wanton grace, Then unto sudden tears give place, While gazing, silent, on my face With mild devotion. Her's all the art of tenderness, That pleases while it wounds no less: Her breasts, half-covered, now confess Their strange emotion. Then sighs that can no reason find, Or used to make my ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... inclination and motion, towards love of others, which if it be not spent upon some one or a few, doth naturally spread itself towards many, and maketh men become humane and charitable; as it is seen sometime in friars. Nuptial love maketh mankind; friendly love perfecteth it; but wanton love ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... particularly to recount the destruction and havoc they made here, burning and sinking all the shipping except a Bristol galley, and destroying the fisheries and stages of the poor planters without remorse or compunction; for nothing is so deplorable as power in mean and ignorant hands—it makes men wanton and giddy, unconcerned at the misfortunes they are imposing on their fellow-creatures, and keeps them smiling at the mischiefs that bring themselves no advantage. They are like madmen that cast fire-brands, arrows, and death, and say, Are not ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... fails to bring prosperity. Just now industry is collapsed; but it is not dead; it sleepeth. It is vital yet. It will spring like mown grass from the roots that need but showers and heat and time to bring them forth. Though in many districts not a generation will see wanton wastes of self-invoked war repaired, and many portions may lapse again to wilderness, yet, in our lifetime, we shall see States, as a whole, raised to a prosperity, vital, wholesome, and immovable, 6. The destruction of class interests, working with a religion which tends toward true democracy, in ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... I had settled that my health would never survive such a wanton infringement of all sanitary laws, Irene again sank on her knees and buried her face in her hands. Now was my time. I crept noiselessly back up the corridor until my hand was actually on the baize door. Then excitement got the better of prudence; and, tearing it open, I rushed ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... hardly any of the trouble required for continuous farming, quickly recovers itself by being simply let alone. So when we consider how easily it can be preserved in Labrador, and how beneficial its preservation is to all concerned, we can understand how the wanton destruction going on there is quite as idiotic ...
— Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood
... from Ninus, and the last King of the Assyrians, exceeded all his Predecessors in Sloth and Luxury; for besides that he was seen of none out of his family, he led a most effeminate life: for wallowing in Pleasure and wanton Dalliances, he cloathed himself in Womens' attire, and spun fine Wool and Purple amongst the throngs of his Whores and Concubines. He painted likewise his Face, and decked his whole Body with other Allurements.... He imitated likewise a Woman's voice...; ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... indication, and yet it was enough to tell me that the great malignant brain was there, as the gentlest tremors of the edges of the web remind one of the foul spider which lurks in the centre. Petty thefts, wanton assaults, purposeless outrage—to the man who held the clue all could be worked into one connected whole. To the scientific student of the higher criminal world no capital in Europe offered the advantages which London then possessed. But now——" He shrugged ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... same dream caught old Lanciotto's reins, Bent in a weary huddle on his steed, In darkling haste along the blindfold lanes, Making a clattering halt in all that speed:— 'Fool! fool!' he cried, 'O dotard fool, indeed, So ho! they wanton while the old man rides,' And on the night flashed pictures of the deed. 'Come!'—and he dug his charger's panting sides, And all the homeward dark tore by ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... bringing. What dreams beguile you on your poet's height? What puts a full house in a merry mood? More closely view your patrons of the night! The half are cold, the half are rude. One, the play over, craves a game of cards; Another a wild night in wanton joy would spend. Poor fools the muses' fair regards. Why court for such a paltry end? I tell you, give them more, still more, 'tis all I ask, Thus you will ne'er stray widely from the goal; Your audience seek to ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... too," said Lucien, "because the least necessary. The other creatures were but following out their instincts to procure food, whereas Basil's only motive was one of wanton destruction." ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... nymphs the Queen of Love Summons to the myrtle-grove; And see ye, how her wanton boy Comes with them to share our joy? Yet, if Love be arm'd, they say, Love can scarce keep holiday: Love without his bow is straying! Come, ye nymphs, Love goes a Maying. His torch, his shafts, are laid aside— From them no harm shall you betide. Yet, I rede ye, nymphs, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... to understand from an intimate woman-friend why it was that his elder niece, who had been privily married, "could no longer hide her secret" (the reticence of his friend was the sort of silly thing that you get in books and plays, but never in life) was perhaps a little wanton and caused needless embarrassment both to the young wife and to us. And one need not be very squeamish to feel that it was a pity to put into the lips of a mere child, a younger sister, the rather precocious comment that she makes on the inconvenience of a secret marriage. The humour of the play ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... his pebbled shore, O'erhung with wild woods, thickening green; The fragrant birch, and hawthorn hoar, Twin'd amorous round the raptur'd scene. The flowers sprang wanton to be prest, The birds sang love on ev'ry spray, Till too, too soon, the glowing west Proclaim'd the speed of ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... those great expansive instincts—sympathetic, aesthetic, and scientific—which Nature has implanted in every child, it set itself to extirpate them, one and all, with ruthless pertinacity. As a partial compensation for this work of wanton destruction, it made the child blindly obedient, mechanically industrious, and (within very narrow limits) accurate and thorough. I have described it at some length because I see clearly that no one who does not realise what the elementary school used to be, in the days of ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... fear, I shall begin to grow in love With my dear self, and my most prosperous parts, They do so spring and burgeon; I can feel A whimsy in my blood: I know not how, Success hath made me wanton. I could skip Out of my skin, now, like a subtle snake, I am so limber. O! your parasite Is a most precious thing, dropt from above, Not bred 'mongst clods, and clodpoles, here on earth. I muse, the mystery was not made a science, It is so liberally profest! almost ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... vital elements in the human body. It not only assists in maintaining the life of the individual, but communicates the essential, transforming principle which generates another mortal having an imperishable existence. Its waste is a wanton expenditure, which robs the blood of its richness and exhausts the body of its animating powers. No wonder that its loss enfeebles the constitution, and results in impotency, premature decline, St. Vitus's dance, paralysis, ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... Erh snatched her hands out of his grasp and ran away out of the room; which so exasperated Chia Lien that as he bent his body, he exclaimed, full of indignation: "What a dreadful niggardly young wench! she actually sets her mind to stir up people's affections with her wanton blandishments, and then, after all, she ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... He has done more than conquer others—he has conquered himself: and in the midst of the blaze and flush of victory, surrounded by the homage of nations, he has not been betrayed into the commission of any act of cruelty or wanton offence. He was as cool and self-possessed under the blaze and dazzle of fame as a common man would be under the shade of his garden-tree, or by the hearth of his home. But the tyrant who kept Europe in awe is ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... perspective so much, that though they took the greatest pains with the circlet of a crown, or the rim of a crystal cup, in the heart of their picture, they would twist their capitals of columns and towers of churches about in the background in the most wanton way, wherever they liked the lines to go, provided only they left just perspective enough to please ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... whether she would take notice of it or no) and off to Stangate and so to the King's Head at Lambeth marsh, and had variety of meats and drinks, but I did so towse her and handled her, but could get nothing more from her though I was very near it; but as wanton and bucksome as she is she dares not adventure upon the business, in which I very much commend and like her. Staid pretty late, and so over with her by water, and being in a great sweat with my towsing of her durst not go home by water, but took coach, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... greater imminence of the danger, in having to contend with armed men instead of ferocious brutes, and in the higher value of the prizes which they would obtain in case of success. The idea of there being any injustice or wrong in this wanton and unprovoked aggression upon the territories of a neighboring nation seems not to have entered the mind either of the royal robber himself or of ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Perceval tells us that it was the Act for the dissolution of some of the Irish bishoprics, passed in 1833, winch first made the authors of the Tracts resolve to commence their publication. Mr. Perceval himself cannot even now speak of that Act temperately; he calls it "a wanton act of sacrilege," "a monstrous act," "an outrage upon the Church;" and his friends, it may be presumed, spoke of it at the time in language at least equally vehement. Now, I am not expressing any opinion upon the justice or expediency of that Act; it was opposed by many good men, and its ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... he tore the fuse from his weapon, and flung the gun—too heavy to be of use to us longer—to the ground. It was done in a moment. While the mob swept over the barricade, and smashed the rich furniture of it in wanton malice, we filed aside, and nimbly slipped under it one by one. Then we hurried in single file to the end of the room, no one taking much notice of us. All were pressing on, intent on their prey. We gained the door as the butcher struck his first blow on that which we had guarded—on that which ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... Metz, where he surprised a large division of the Alemanni, before they had time to run to their arms; and flushed his soldiers with the confidence of an easy and bloodless victory. Another division, or rather army, of the enemy, after the cruel and wanton devastation of the adjacent country, reposed themselves on the shady banks of the Moselle. Jovinus, who had viewed the ground with the eye of a general, made a silent approach through a deep and woody vale, till he could distinctly perceive ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... among vulgar vices and tame slavery, will stare at these accounts. Pray be acquainted with your own country, while it is in its lustre. In a regular monarchy the folly of the Prince gives the tone; in a downright tyranny, folly dares give itself no airs; it is in a wanton overgrown commonwealth that whim and debauchery intrigue best together. Ask me which of these governments I prefer—oh! the last—only I fear it ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... walk without wetting her silken shoes. The fertility of the place is apparent from its extraordinary verdure, and it is so shaded with large and flourishing elms, that its narrow lanes are a natural grove or walk, which, in the regularity of its plantation, vies with the power of art, and in its wanton ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... her, my arms folded on my breast. Overcome though I was by the wonder of her loveliness I hated her in my heart, this woman who dared to clothe herself in the dress of Isis, this usurper who sat upon my throne, this wanton squandering the wealth of Egypt in chariots and perfumes. When she had looked me over from head to the feet, she spake in a low full voice and in the tongue of Khemi which she alone had learned ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... highest Alpine crests. How had she solved in such short space the Jesuitical problem how to display a bosom whiter than her soul by hiding it in gauze? How could she look so ethereal while her eyes drooped so murderously? Those almost wanton glances seemed to give promise of untold languorous delight, while by an ascetic's sigh of aspiration after a better life the mouth appeared to add that none of those promises would be fulfilled. Ingenuous youths (for there ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... will not close this narrative without mentioning an act of bravery performed by a lone woman which stopped the vulgar and inhuman searching of women in our section of the city. The most atrocious and unpardonable act of the mob was the wanton disregard for womanhood. Lizzie Smith was the first woman to make a firm and stubborn stand against the proceeding in the southern section. It was near the noon hour when Lizzie, homeward bound, reached the corner of Orange and Third streets. ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... the people on Bora Bora were Christians; but he was a heathen, the only unbeliever on the island, a gross materialist, who believed that when he died he was dead. He believed merely in fair play and square dealing. Petty meanness, in his code, was almost as serious as wanton homicide; and I do believe that he respected a murderer more than a man given ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... reflects the ways of life and thought of the people who conceived it; and this religion of Here, the special religion of Argos, is congruous with what has been here said as to the place of art in the civilisation of the Argives; it is a reflexion of that splendid and wanton old feudal life. For Here is, in her original essence and meaning, equivalent to Demeter—the one living spirit of the earth, divined behind the veil of all its manifold visible energies. But in the development of a common ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... feet, was on random themes: Dan Rice, John Owens, Adelina and Carlotta Patti, the comparative merits of Victor's and Moreau's restaur'—hah! Greenleaf snatched up his light cane, sprang erect, and gazed close into the mild eyes of Maxime. Gibbs's more wanton regard had no such encounter; Hilary gave him a mere upward glance while ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... in Kendal, a town nearly twenty miles distant, of necessity I was but imperfectly known; and though there was a pretty general expression of disgust at the character of the publication, and the wanton malignity which it bore upon its front, since, true or not true, no shadow of a reason was pleaded for thus bringing forward statements expressly to injure me, or to make me unhappy; yet there must have been many, in so large a place, who had too ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... dollars!" scowled President Bascomb. "Now, Reade, doesn't that amount of wanton, revengeful mischief teach you the folly of trying to regulate camp life ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... a man never marry, nor have children, What takes that from him? Only the bare name Of being a father, or the weak delight To see the little wanton ride a-cock-horse Upon a painted stick, or hear him chatter Like ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... Gods that whileom heard the Romaine state, And Quirinus, whose strong puissant arme, Did shild the tops and turrets of proud Rome, Do now conspire to wracke the gallant Ship, Euen in the harbor of her wished greatnesse. And her gay streamers, and faire wauering sayles, With which the wanton wind was wont to play, To drowne with ...
— The Tragedy Of Caesar's Revenge • Anonymous
... the watchful spirit of a thieving camp-follower. When William landed at Torbay on the invitation of the other Whig nobles, Churchill, as if to add something ideal to his imitation of Iscariot, went to James with wanton professions of love and loyalty, went forth in arms as if to defend the country from invasion, and then calmly handed the army over to the invader. To the finish of this work of art but few could aspire, but in their ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... administration, and some of regret at the wrongs we were suffering from their country. So, also, during the short interval of Mr. Fox's power. But every other administration since our Revolution has been equally wanton in their injuries and insults, and has manifested equal hatred and aversion. Instead, too, of cultivating the government itself, whose principles are those of the great mass of the nation, they have adopted the miserable ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Mr. Clifford spoke of the "wanton barbarity with which the Federal Government has allowed its officers to wage the war, as though they sought to emulate the ravages of Attila and Genghis-Khan. . . And these things were done not for military objects which would afford some excuse for them, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... of Push methods that sealed his tongue. No one would risk his skin by giving evidence. If the police had brought the offenders to book, the magistrates, who seemed to regard these outrages as the playful excesses of wanton blood, would have let them off with a light punishment, and the streets would never have been safe for him again. So he held his tongue, thankful to have ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... obligation. Since the Romans saw you in my theatre—you, a man of the most approved taste, of the soundest knowledge, and a master in art, not only has my fame increased, but my receipts have doubled. I am therefore all the more deeply pained to learn that certain wicked wanton boys made a murderous attack upon you and your friends as you were returning from my theatre at night. But I pray you, Signor Pasquale, by all the saints, don't cherish any grudge against me or my theatre on account of this ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... found it had been sacked and burned, evidently by Arab slave-raiders, who, Omar said, were constantly descending upon the towns and villages on the border of his land. At evening we went over the ruins of what not long ago must have been a populous trading town, saw how wanton had been the destruction, and judged from the heaps of bleaching bones how terrible had been ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... whole. In general, I will only say that I have written nothing which savors of immorality or profaneness; at least, I am not conscious to myself of any such intention. If there happen to be found an irreverent expression, or a thought too wanton, they are crept into my verses thro' my inadvertency; if the searchers find any in the cargo, let them be stay'd or forfeited, like counterbanded goods; at least, let their authors be answerable for them, as being but imported merchandise, and not of my own manufacture. On the other side, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... the fairies, has been commonly identified with pogge, the toad, which was believed to sit upon most of the unwholesome fungi; and the Champignon (or Paddock Stool) was said to owe its growth to "those wanton elves whose pastime is to make midnight mushrooms." One of the "toad stoo's" (the Clathrus cancellatus) is said to produce cancerous sores if handled too freely. It has an abominably disgusting odour, and is therefore named the "lattice ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... not fetch a sum equal to the amount of the duty chargeable, then the commodity was to be burnt. Great exertions were undoubtedly made by the soldiers for the suppression of smuggling, but care had to be taken to prevent wanton and improper seizures. The men of this branch of the service were awarded 40s. for every horse that was seized ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... this man was wanton, and entirely unprovoked on the part of McIntire, not only from his relation of the circumstance, but from the account of those who were with him, and who bore testimony to his being unarmed, the ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... accurate copy. But I don't think you will get much out of it. Depend upon it, it is mere nonsense, a wanton scribble. I must be going now, Dyson. No, no more; that stuff of yours is ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... were left perhaps as soon as they were finished. Though Saxony is one of the richest and most fertile provinces of Germany, and the vicinity of Leipzig has been remarkable for abundance, yet it cannot appear surprising, that, with such wanton waste, famine, the most dangerous foe to an army, should have at length found its way into all the French camps. Barns, stables, and lofts, were emptied; the fields were laid bare; and the inhabitants fled into ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... of the company of holy Kiaranus, called Crithir of Cluain (a boy of great wit, but hurtful and wanton) fled from Saint Kiaranus to the settlement of Saigyr, in the northern border of Mumonia, that is, the land of Hele, to the other Kiaranus, the most holy aged bishop. And that boy, sojourning for some days with the holy bishop, after his ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... The "wanton, ragged garments of the Muse," which you abandon with strict generosity, make a show and please almost everywhere. Her sensual charm is not unknown to me; yet I think I may say that it was given me ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... gave him a gentle tap upon the shoulder, and asked him if he would drink a bottle of mead with her? But the Knight, being startled at so unexpected a familiarity, and displeased to be interrupted in his thoughts of the widow, told her, "she was a wanton baggage," and bid her go ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... being as you say, should he work so wanton a destruction?" he asked stupidly, as if jealousy were not cause enough to drive an evil man to destroy that which he may not possess. "Nay, nay, your wits are disordered. You remember that he looked at Madonna whilst she drank, and you construe that into a proof that he ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini |
