"Wantonness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... foul example on most minds Begets its likeness. Rank abundance breeds In gross and pamper'd cities sloth and lust, And wantonness and gluttonous excess. In cities, vice is hidden with more ease, Or seen with least reproach; and virtue, taught By frequent lapse, can hope no triumph there Beyond th' achievement of successful flight. I do confess them nurs'ries of the arts, In which they flourish ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... than mere desert sands, in which life's current is lost until it reappears in a parcel of bubbles called babies. What is it but the fool's end, the knave's means; a warning to the wise, a snare to the simple; the wantonness of youth, the weakness of years; a pillory wherein to exercise patience; what is it but the Church's stocks for the wayward feet of women. Marry you! To marry is to commit two souls to the prison of one body; to put two pigs into one poke; two legs ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... fruit carriers, who, not satisfied at seeing me ride past, want to stop me; one of them rushes up behind, grabs my package attached to the rear baggage-carrier, and nearly causes an overthrow; frightening him off, I spurt ahead, barely escaping two or three donkey cudgels hurled at me in pure wantonness, born of the courage inspired by a majority of twenty to one. There is no remedy for these unpleasant occurrences except travelling under escort, and the avoiding serious trouble or accident becomes a matter for every-day congratulation. At eighteen miles from the last ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... these places were now exhibited; for some Protestants who had been permitted there had stolen handfuls of the precious ashes, merely to throw away. I assured him that I thought them beasts to do it; and I was afterwards puzzled to know what should attract their wantonness in the remnants of mortality, hardly to be distinguished from the common earth out of which the ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... However that may be, flames broke out in various parts of the city, while a miscellaneous mob, inflamed by excitement and by the alcohol which had run freely in the gutters the night before, rushed from store to store, smashing in the doors and indulging all the wantonness of pillage and greed. Public spirit was paralyzed, and the whole fabric of society seemed crumbling to pieces, when the convicts from the penitentiary, a shouting, leaping crowd of party-colored demons, overcoming their guard, and drunk with liberty, appeared upon the ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... churches, which must needs compel men to frequent them, though they be open to all without charge. Only when there is a matter of a murder, or a plot, or a pretty youth in petticoats, or some naughty tale of wantonness, will your subjects pay the great cost of good players and their finery, with a little profit to boot. To prove this I will tell you that I have written two noble and excellent plays setting forth the advancement of women of high nature and fruitful industry even ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... The wantonness of this generation was in a measure due to the ideal conditions under which mankind lived before the flood. They knew neither toil nor care, and as a consequence of their extraordinary prosperity they grew insolent. In their arrogance they rose up against God. A single ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... "good one." I have no slaves, and I owe this character to the propagation of a good name by the slaves of Zanzibar, who are anything but good themselves. I have seen slaves belonging to the seven men now with us slap the cheeks of grown men who had offered food for sale; it was done in sheer wantonness, till I threatened to thrash them if I saw it again; but out of my sight they did it still, and when I complained to the masters they confessed that all the mischief was done by slaves; for the Manyuema, on being insulted, lose temper and use their spears ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... them will tell me what he or she has been thinking relative to the motto. Most of the work in the country is of such a kind that, in doing it, the people are liable to think all sorts of things, and they get a lot of bad notions in their heads, which afterwards break out in the form of wantonness, lies, and deception. But when a man has such a motto to ponder over, he will not rest until he has extracted the moral from it, and meanwhile the time has elapsed without any evil thoughts having ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... tyranny and oppression, and thou avouches that I have done ill by one who did well by me. Who is this who hath guarded my honour while I garred his become dishonour? Who protected my Harim and whose Harim I wrecked?" "He is Ghanim son of Ayyub," replied she, "for he never approached me in wantonness or with lewd intent, I swear by thy munificence, O Commander of the Faithful!" Then said the Caliph, "There is no Majesty and there is no Might save in Allah! Ask what thou wilt of me, O Kut al-Kulub." "O Prince of the Faithful!", answered she, "I require ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... requisite strength being given to the motives that are to drive the driver, there has never, or hardly ever, been an instance of a man stopping his engine through wantonness. But such a case might occur; yes, and it might occur that the engine should break down: but if the train is stopped from some trivial motive it will be found either that the strength of the necessary influences has been miscalculated, ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... gave me another, gentler picture of myself—a fight here, a failure there, a hunger somewhere else, and Lord knows how many old shreds of cynicism and belief, of selfishness and ambition and wantonness and pride, and just a little bit of love and desire for beauty. I told him that madness of mine, about the Mater's letters that I told you to take to King George. He was interested in that—said it was ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... this collision between Milton, young and unknown, and the venerable prelate, whom he was assaulting with the rude wantonness of untempered youth, deserves to be mentioned here. Usher had incautiously included the Ignatian epistles among his authorities. This laid the most learned man of the day at the mercy of an adversary of less reading than himself. ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... The 'man between two women' became a regular feature of the new domestic tragedy. In play after play we find a soulful, clinging, romantic creature—usually the title-heroine—set over against a full-blooded rival whose ways are ways of wantonness. Lessing himself repeated the group in 'Emilia Galotti', which in its turn became the mother of a new brood. The tragedy of lawless passion led by an easy step to the tragedy of social conflict, which portrayed ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... and hatred of me Sprang from your delusion that it was wantonness Of spirit and contempt of your soul's rights Which made me turn to Annabelle and forsake you. You really grew to hate me for love of me, Because I was your soul's happiness, Formed and tempered To solve your life for you, and would not. But you were my misery. If you had been My happiness ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... Higglesby-Browne. You now heard the voice of Violet in exhortation, mingled with Aunt Jane's sobs. I seemed to see that an ear of Mr. Tubbs was cocked attentively in that direction, He had indeed erred in the very wantonness of triumph, for a single glance would have kept Aunt Jane loyal and prodigal of excuses for him in the face of any treachery. Not even Violet could have clapped the lid on the up-welling fount of sentiment in ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... of bisons are killed annually—myriads of them in pure wantonness—and yet enormous droves may be encountered today in many portions of the west, where it is hard for the experienced hunters to detect any ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... suffered all that cruelty and rapacity could devise—indeed, the house and gardens bore evidence to the facts—window shutters pierced with bullets, broken doors, furniture gone, and above 800 francs' worth of honey destroyed out of pure wantonness—in short the poor people seemed quite ruined. I received a similar account in the town. Fontainebleau is a dull, melancholy-looking place, with a very extensive ugly palace—interesting only from the late events. Scarcely a soul appeared about; we crossed the large court in which ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... those shall be standing round the fount of mercy who play in idleness and wantonness with its waters, and let them not flow widely, nor take their natural course. Dutiful gallants may encompass it, and it may linger among the flowers they throw into it, and never reach the parched lip on ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... upon his breast who taught "Reverence thyself!" We looked down on the unpolished wretches, their impertinent wives, and clouterly brats, as the lordly bull does on the little dirty ant-hill, whose puny inhabitants he crushes in the carelessness of his ramble, or tosses in the air in the wantonness of his pride. ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... death. Certainly, despite her cold composure, she must be filled with rage against him for killing the animal. He might now have exhibited his arm, to confound her with the evidence of his innocence of wantonness, and very probably she would have been instantly remorseful. But he had no such intention; he was keenly alive to his opportunity to show her that he was answerable to no one for his conduct. He enjoyed her chagrin; he was moved ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... poor fare which I have to offer you," he said. "The best of the herd ever goes to the young lords who are wooing my mistress. Their wantonness and riot calls aloud to Heaven for vengeance. They are worse than the wildest band of robbers that ever lived by open pillage and violence. Such waste of good meat and wine was never seen before. For ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... In wantonness a shepherd's boy Alarm'd the neighbor's with his cry; "The wolf! the wolf!" And when they came, Of their lost labor made his game. At last the wolf when there indeed, His real cries they did not heed; He and his flock a prey were made, And for ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... the deeds of Cornwallis and his officers in Carolina! And while the churches in England were, everywhere, resounding with prayers to Almighty God, "to spare the effusion of human blood," those monsters were shedding it with the most savage wantonness! While all the good people in Britain were praying, day and night, for a speedy restoration of the former happy friendship between England and America, those wretches were taking the surest steps to drive all friendship from the American ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... everywhere. Men out of employment, excited by club orators, were ready for any violence. At Lyons they destroyed the hospitals and orphan asylums, out of mere wantonness. ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... danger. If, with a little too much self-confidence, I let myself be induced to assume a less haughty and reserved manner, if I associated a little more familiarly with the bold tribe, I soon repented, for I was carried along by their wantonness and folly, I could no longer subdue the laughter and extravagances, nor could I, to my own disgrace and sorrow, restrain myself in my wrath ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... recalled, gave testimony as to other buried bodies, chiefly of children slaughtered in wantonness or jealousy, or ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... much suffice. And indeed not without reason do the multitudes of the servants of the Muse in this land of social policy avoid scenes of an inordinate wantonness, which detract from the dignity of our leaders and menace human nature with confusion. Sagacious are they who conduct the individual on broad lines, over familiar tracks, under well-known characteristics. What men will do, and amorously minded men will do, is less the question than ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... establishing economic equality. Just so in your day might the duty of the state to safeguard the lives of citizens from physical violence have been discharged after a nominal fashion if it had contented itself with preventing outright murders, while leaving the people to suffer from one another's wantonness all manner of violence not directly deadly; but tell me, Julian, were governments in your day content with so construing the limit of their duty to protect citizens from violence, or would the citizens have been content ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... on which an exasperated enemy could wreak his fury; that they had fire and sword at their command, and it was better that friendly and faithful hands should destroy what must necessarily perish, than that enemies should insult it with haughty wantonness. To these exhortations a dreadful execration was added against any one who should be diverted from this purpose by hope or faint-heartedness. Then throwing open the gates, they rushed out at a rapid pace and with the utmost impetuosity. Nor was there any guard sufficiently strong ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... carefully he drives carelessly against a carriage, you are liable for all damages resulting from the collision; and if the servant acts wantonly or mischievously, causing thereby additional bodily or mental injury, such wantonness or mischief will enhance ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter
... after some grim tiger-like creeping on his belly, he springs at last, with huge long spangs, on the woolly people, with bull-like growlings quailing their poor harmless hearts, and then fast throttling them, one after another—till, as it might seem rather in wantonness of rage than in empty pangs, he lies down at last in the midst of all the murdered carcasses, licking the blood off his flews and paws—and then, looking and listening round with his red turbid eyes, and sharp-pointed ears savagely erect, conscious of crime and fearful ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... above us the curtain of the rain exclude the view. The sky was clear, the sun strong overhead; around us, a thin growth of bushes and creepers glittered green in their black setting, like plants upon a ruinous pavement; all else was lava—wastes of lava, some of them enclosed (it seemed in wantonness) with dry-stone walls. But the bushes, when the rain descends often enough from its residential altitudes, flourish extremely; and cattle and asses, walking on these resonant slabs, collect a livelihood. Here and there, a prickly-pear came to the bigness of a standard tree and made ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... country its ancient laws, traditions, and privileges. Permit no longer, to your shame and ours, a band of Spanish landloupers and other foreigners, together with three or four self-seeking enemies of their own land, to keep their feet upon our necks. Let them no longer, in the very wantonness of tyranny, drive us about like a herd of cattle—like a gang ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Asgrim. "I think so all the more because these men fare with laughter and wantonness; but such kinsmen of Njal as Thorgeir is would not smile before some vengeance is taken for the burning, and I will make another guess, and maybe ye will think that unlikely. My meaning is that it must be Flosi and the burners with him, and they must mean to humble us with insults, ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... Avon have a dwelling place, Where I may see my quil or cork down sink, With eager bit of Pearch, or Bleak, or Dace; And on the world and my Creator think, Whilst some men strive, ill gotten goods t'imbrace; And others spend their time in base excess Of wine or worse, in war and wantonness. ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton
... her woman's instinct that he was at heart lonely and uncompanioned. Well, what wonder with that hard, mean little being for a wife! Had she captured him, or had he thrown himself away upon her in mere wantonness, out of that defiance of sentiment which appeared to be his favourite parti-pris? In any case, it seemed to this happy wife that he had done the one fatal and irreparable thing; and she was genuinely sorry for him. She felt him very young, ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Opening to right and left, the well-trained troops Leave a large void for their retreating foes. Away they fly, on wings of fear upborne, To seek on distant hills their late abodes. Ye proud oppressors, whose vain hearts exult In wantonness of power, 'gainst the brute race, 520 Fierce robbers like yourselves, a guiltless war Wage uncontrolled: here quench your thirst of blood: But learn from Aurengzebe to ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... did they break to me what they had learned of the fate of Leatherhead. Two days after I was imprisoned it had been destroyed, with every soul in it, by a Martian. He had swept it out of existence, as it seemed, without any provocation, as a boy might crush an ant hill, in the mere wantonness of power. ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... had sides by which it so resembled New York, Paris was like smart, neat prose—and her close correspondence with Madame Merle did much to stimulate such flights. She had never had a keener sense of freedom, of the absolute boldness and wantonness of liberty, than when she turned away from the platform at the Euston Station on one of the last days of November, after the departure of the train that was to convey poor Lily, her husband and her children to their ship at Liverpool. It had been good for her to regale; she was very conscious of ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... door and he alighted. How handsome he was, and how magnificent to look upon! How noble and proud his tall figure! How regularly beautiful his fresh, youthful face! How saucy the haughty smile about his mouth; and how his eyes flamed and flashed and shone in wantonness and youthful happiness. His look glanced for a moment at Elizabeth's window. He saluted her, and then entered the door leading to the wing of the palace of Whitehall occupied by the queen. Elizabeth's heart beat so violently that she felt almost suffocated. Now he must have reached the great ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... many of the old patriarchs traveling on donkeys, shows that the influence of Christians will be thrown against you in your selfish wantonness, causing you to ponder over the rights and ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... consented to mask myself in the motley and assume the name of Boccadoro. I counted on the Lord Giovanni's generosity to let things continue thus, and, meanwhile, I provided for my mother out of the vails that were earned me by my shame. But there came a day when Giovanni in evil wantonness of spirit chose to make merry ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... arrived, he asked her how matters stood. The woman, seeing that he was so handsome, youthful, and well-bred, and was withal so loving and yet so little loved, took pity upon him and told him of his mistress's wantonness, thinking that on hearing this he would be cured of loving her so much. She related to him that the Bishop of Sees had but just arrived, and was now in bed with the lady, a thing which the latter had not expected, for he was not to have come until ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... as a feather, and he snapped his fingers in the very wantonness of joy as he repaired to Delmonico's, and ordered the first good French dinner that had gladdened his palate since ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... destroy us. They kill us because our feathers are beautiful. Even pretty and sweet girls, who we should think would be our best friends, kill our brothers and children so that they may wear plumage on their hats. Sometimes people kill us from mere wantonness. Cruel boys destroy our nests and steal our eggs and our young ones. People with guns and snares lie in wait to kill us, as if the place for a bird were not in the sky, alive, but in a shop window or under a glass case. ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... a religion which Montaigne wanted, and which defends him from wantonness; and though Plutarch is as plain spoken, his moral sentiment is ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... become known to him, and she said: "Be it not that I see the king angry." He said: "How should I not be angry? Thou, by craft, and trickery, and intrigue, and plotting, hast brought thy desire from Rome—what wantonness is this that thou hast done?" Then he thought to slay her, but he forbore, because of his great love for her. But he ordered the chamberlain to carry the youth to some obscure place, and straightway ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... comrade win. In fullness of young life he climbed the cliffs Where human foot had never trod before. He led the chase, but when soft-eyed gazelles Or bounding deer, or any harmless thing, Came in the range of his unerring dart, He let them pass; for why, thought he, should men In wantonness make ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... features of her character. If she was without love she was without hate. She cherished no petty resentments; she never stooped to envy or suspicion of the men who served her. She was indifferent to abuse. Her good humour was never ruffled by the charges of wantonness and cruelty with which the Jesuits filled every Court in Europe. She was insensible to fear. Her life became at last a mark for assassin after assassin, but the thought of peril was the thought hardest to bring home to her. Even when Catholic plots broke out in her very ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... free and unshackled in her loose draperies, quite unabashed in her state of semi-nudity—gay, reckless, wooing pleasure on the wing, surely she might have posed as the embodied archetype of France itself. So has this pagan among modern nations borrowed something of the antique spirit of wantonness. Along with its theft of the Attic charm and grace, it has captured, also, something of its sublime indifference; in the very teeth of the dull modern world, France has laughed ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... and the room smelt too cloyingly of be-drugging sweetness. Then on the walls were tapestries which depicted Merlin's Dream, so that everywhere recoiling women smiled with bold eyes; and here their wantonness ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... the sick woman. "She is within you; she fills your head; from here I can see her. Once a thousand mad fancies occupied her place,—illusions of your taste, naked women, a wantonness that was your religion. Now it is she who fills it. It is your desire incarnated. Go on and be happy. I am going away—there is no place ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... observation, for 'although these people are kindly towards each other and their children, they have no sympathy for the suffering of animals, and little sympathy for pain when the person who feels it is not in danger.' I had thought it was in the wantonness of fancy Martin Dhoul accused the smith of plucking his living ducks, but a few lines further on, in this book where moral indignation is unknown, I read, 'Sometimes when I go into a cottage, I find all the women of the place down on their knees ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats
... paler, and less active and robust; a pettish, cowardly, capricious, selfish little fellow, only active in doing mischief, and only clever in inventing falsehoods: not simply to hide his faults, but, in mere malicious wantonness, to bring odium upon others. In fact, Master Charles was a very great nuisance to me: it was a trial of patience to live with him peaceably; to watch over him was worse; and to teach him, or pretend to teach ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... of this change of colour; and she had again, with it, her apparent way of subjecting herself, for explicit honesty and through her willingness to face him, to any view he might take, all at his ease, and even to wantonness, of the condition he produced in her. As soon as he perceived that emotion kept her soundless he knew himself deeply touched, since it proved that, little as she professed, she had been beautifully hoping. They stood there a minute while he took in from this sign that, yes then, certainly ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... officially reached the States-General until the 31st of March, so that this most dangerous crisis was protracted nearly five months long—certainly without necessity or excuse—and whether through design, malice, wantonness, or incomprehensible carelessness, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... thought of the measure with which I had meted to Catriona that same night; how I had prated of the two lives I carried, and had thus forced her to enjeopardy her father's; and how I was here exposing them again, it seemed in wantonness. A good conscience is eight parts of courage. No sooner had I lost conceit of my behaviour, than I seemed to stand disarmed amidst a throng of terrors. Of a sudden I sat up. How if I went now to Prestongrange, caught him (as I still easily might) before he slept, and made a full submission? Who ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... other people had been suffering in all the various quarters of France for many years—yes, decades of years. For the first time we saw wrecked and smoke-blackened homes, and in the lanes and alleys carcasses of dumb creatures that had been slaughtered in pure wantonness—among them calves and lambs that had been pets of the children; and it was pity to see the children ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... public good. If it be said that this scheme is chimerical and impracticable on ordinary occasions, and to the generality of mankind, well and good; but those who accuse the author of having trampled on the common feelings and prejudices of mankind in wantonness or insult, or without wishing to substitute something better (and only unattainable, because it is better) in their stead, accuse him wrongfully. We may not be able to launch the bark of our affections on the ocean-tide of humanity, we may be ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... o'er her sleeping innocence exhaled Voiceless thanksgiving. Children ceased to play, Feeling an awe they comprehended not, And stood, unconscious of their beauty's pose, As those Murillo's pencil glorifies. Upon the airy esplanade the steed No longer pawed the air in wantonness, But, like his compeer of the fabled song, Stood statued with his rider, while below The beggar ceased his cry importunate, And to a Higher Almoner than man Sent up a dumb appeal. In folly's court The laugh was hushed, and the half-uttered jest Fell witless into air, and burning ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... were alternately very enviable and very helpless. It was not the first time he had had a sense of Roderick's standing helpless in the grasp of his temperament. It had shaken him, as yet, but with a half good-humored wantonness; but, henceforth, possibly, it meant to handle him more roughly. These were not times, therefore, for a friend to ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... step, taken in the mere wantonness of tyranny, and in criminal ignorance or more criminal contempt of public feeling, England owes her freedom. The first performance of the foreign ceremonies produced a riot. The riot rapidly became ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... bear in mind, in order to do justice to Rabelais and Sterne, that by right of humoristic universality each part is essentially a whole in itself. Hence the digressive spirit is not mere wantonness, but in fact the very form and vehicle of their genius. The connection, such as was needed, is given by ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... whilst he suggests, "a careful abridgment of the tale of Omar the Son of No'man" (ii. 7,, etc.). Let me add that wittiest and most rollicking of Rabelaisian skits, "All the Persian and the Kurd Sharper" (iv. 149), struck-out in the very wantonness of "respectability;" and the classical series, an Arabian "Pilpay," entitled "King Jali'ad of Hind and his Wazir Shimas" (iv. 32). Nor must I omit to notice the failure most injurious to the work which destroyed in it half the "spirit of the East." Mr. Lane had no ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... world has heard more of the natural beauties of Naples than of the artificial ones of Venice, but when Naples is made the scene of a drama of any kind it seems that its attractions for librettist and composer lie in the vulgarity and vice, libertinism and lust, the wickedness and wantonness, of a portion of its people rather than in the loveliness of character which such a place might or ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... along a little distance ahead of us, the young dogs would gambol about him, leap on his neck, worry at his ears, and endeavor to tease him into a frolic. The old dog would keep on for a long time with imperturbable solemnity, now and then seeming to rebuke the wantonness of his young companions.... ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... proportion of the men lived in holes in the ground, in the utmost wretchedness. Some froze to death, others had their hands and feet frozen. The rebel guards would occasionally, and on the least pretence, fire into the prison from mere demonism and wantonness. All the horrors that can be named, starvation, lassitude, filth, vermin, despair, swift loss of self-respect, idiocy, insanity, and frequent murder, were there. Stansbury has a wife and child living in Newbern—has written to them from here—is in the U. S. light-house employ still—(had ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... saw them running along the shore as fast as their legs would carry them. My boys exerted their arms in a like manner. The Frenchmen, although they saw that we were beyond their reach, fired a shot at us. Another and another followed. It was done in mere wantonness, for they could not have known who we were. We were much too distant from them, however, for the shot to reach us. Heavily laden as was our boat, the boys urged her on fast, and in a short time we were alongside the schooner. Charley White, who had ...
— Peter Biddulph - The Story of an Australian Settler • W.H.G. Kingston
... fully exposed by another diametrically opposed theory propounded by Siun Tsz (Jun-shi) and his followers. 'Man is bad-natured,' says Siun Tsz, 'since he has inborn lust, appetite, and desire for wealth. As he has inborn lust and appetite, he is naturally given to intemperance and wantonness. As he has inborn desire for wealth, he is naturally inclined to quarrel and fight with others for the sake of gain.' Leave him without discipline or culture, he would not be a whit better than the beast. His virtuous acts, such as charity, honesty, propriety, chastity, truthfulness, ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... who write with a wink at you, which sets the wicked part of us on fire: I have known it myself, and I own it to my shame; and if I happened to be ignorant of the history of Countess Fanny, I could not refute his wantonness. He has just the same benevolent leer for a bishop. Give me, if we are to make a choice, the beggar's breech for decency, I say: I like it vastly in preference to a Nymney, who leads you up to the curtain and agitates it, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... been able to eradicate Jones from his bosom; but it was greatly injurious to him, and prepared Mr Allworthy's mind for those impressions which afterwards produced the mighty events that will be contained hereafter in this history; and to which, it must be confest, the unfortunate lad, by his own wantonness, wildness, and want of caution, ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... be good friends." Then, having closed the door, holding Gabrielle with one hand and Rosny with the other, he said: "Good God, madame! What is the meaning of this? So you would vex me from sheer wantonness of heart in order to try my patience? By God, I swear to you that, if you continue these fashions of going on, you will find yourself very much out in your expectations! I see quite well that you have been put up to all this pleasantry in order to make me dismiss a servant whom I ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... such melodies, the praise of God dies upon their paled lips, and they cover their heads weeping. At times when the obligate goat's laugh bleated in among the melodious pangs, I caught a glimpse in the background of a crowd of small women-figures who nodded their odious heads with wicked wantonness. Then a rush of agonizing sounds came from the violin, and a fearful groan and a sob, such as was never heard upon earth before, nor will be perhaps heard upon earth again, unless in the valley of Jehoshaphat, when the colossal trumpets of doom shall ring out, and the naked corpses ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... isle, Which the fairies had built in the lonely sea, And the Surf Sprite's brow was bent with a smile, As we gazed through the mist on their revelry. The ripples that swept to the pebbly shore, O'er shells of purple in wantonness played, And the whispering zephyrs sweet odors bore, From roses that bloomed amid silence and shade. In winding grottos, with gems all bright, Soft music trembled from harps unseen, And fair forms glided on wings of light, 'Mid forests of fragrance, and valleys of green. There ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... follow the present prevailing fashion, I think they ought to give me a testimonial for the paper on Dinner-giving Snobs, which I am now writing. What do you say now to a handsome comfortable dinner-service of plate (NOT including plates, for I hold silver plates to be sheer wantonness, and would almost as soon think of silver teacups), a couple of neat teapots, a coffeepot, trays, &c., with a little inscription to my wife, Mrs. Snob; and a half-score of silver tankards for the little Snoblings, to glitter on ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the venerable compiler, "as, praised be God, we seldom meet in Scotland with these belly-gods and voluptuaries, whilk are unnatural enough to devour their patrimony bequeathed to them by their forbears in chambering and wantonness, so that they come, with the prodigal son, to the husks and the swine-trough; and as I have the less to dreid the existence of such unnatural Neroes in mine own family to devour the substance of their own house like brute ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... from such faults of taste, which few as they numerically are yet affect my liking and more repel my sympathy than do all the rude shocks of his purely artistic wantonness— apart from these there are definite faults of style which a reader must have courage to face, and must in some measure condone before he can discover the great beauties. For these blemishes in the poet's style are of such quality and magnitude as ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... which may be necessary or convenient for their several commands, for supplies, or for other Military purposes; and that while property may be destroyed for proper Military objects, none shall be destroyed in wantonness ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... He himself pressed a wicked, mischievous young blackguard, who was appointed the young gentleman's servant. Incredible as the fact may appear, my lord, he contrived, in a manner that Dr Thompson can best explain to you, to destroy all the clothes of his young master merely in the wantonness of his malice. I know that Mr Rattlin is well provided with money, and that he will take the first opportunity again to assume the garb of a gentleman; and I do assure your lordship that ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... filling the mind of Ralph Bastin, as he sat in his Editor's chair in the office of the "Courier." Allied to this thought there came another—an almost necessary corollary of the first—namely the new atmosphere of evil, of lawlessness, of wantonness that pervaded the city. ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... beautiful. So thinks everybody who has survived Puritanism unscathed, so thought the majority of Brineweald's visitors that year, so thought Mrs. Delarayne and her party of eager young swains and still more eager virgins. Wantonness was in the air,—wantonness and beauty; and when these two imps of passion come together August is ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... Tanna with muskets, attempted twice to shoot a man in sheer wantonness and display of malice. The Islanders met, and informed them that if man or woman was injured by them, the other men would load their muskets and shoot them dead in general council. This was a mighty step towards public order, and I greatly rejoiced before the Lord. His ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... great pilgrimage to Bubastis, during which the Egyptians forget their usual gravity, and the shores of the Nile look like a great stage where the wild games of the satyrs are being performed by choruses, hurried on in the unrestrained wantonness of intoxication. When she saw thus for the first time an entire people given up to the wildest and most unfettered mirth and enjoyment, she woke up from her silent brooding thoughts and began to weep again, as in the first days after ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... man!—but I must be careful, for Doctor Ormerod and Parson Dewhurst are within hearing, and may lecture me on the wantonness and profanity of swearing. By Saint Gregory de Northbury!—no, that's an oath too, and, what is worse, a Popish oath. By—I have several tremendous imprecations at my tongue's end, but they shall not out. It is a sinful propensity, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... determined to punish his son, and he therefore confined him, according to his usual mode of correction, in his own house. Astley was, however, but little disposed to remain passive in his imprisonment, and in the wantonness of his ever-active disposition amused himself by climbing up the chimney, and having at length reached the summit, endeavoured, by imitating the well-known tone of the chimney-sweeper, and calling out as ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... in one of the most noted of these cases, it was not without much delay and imminent hazard of war that the execution of the treaty was finally enforced. No one acquainted with these portions of our history, can hesitate to ascribe much of the wantonness and duration of the wrongs we endured, to a knowledge on the part of our assailants of the scantiness and inefficiency of ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... administration are alleged to be wilfully directed to the impoverishment, and even to the depopulation, of India; his social customs are traduced as depraved and corrupt; even his women-folk are accused of common wantonness. This systematized form of personal calumny is a scarcely less significant feature of the literature of Indian unrest than its appeals to the Hindu scriptures and to the Hindu deities and its exploitation ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... Simonides), distinctly he will need them none the less. I know it is with certain human beings as with horses, some trick of the blood they have, some inborn tendency; the more their wants are satisfied, the more their wantonness will out. Well then, to sober and chastise wild spirits, there is nothing like the terror of your men-at-arms. (1) And as to gentler natures, (2) I do not know by what means you could bestow so many benefits upon them as by means ...
— Hiero • Xenophon
... you one face, and you make yourselves another; you jig, you amble, you nick-name God's creatures, and make your wantonness ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... Where I may see my quill, or cork, down sink With eager bite of Perch, or Bleak, or Dace; And on the world and my Creator think: Whilst some men strive ill-gotten goods t' embrace; And others spend their time in base excess Of wine. or worse. in war and wantonness ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... than the scientific fact of any kind; or again, on that yet more pregnant saying of Shelley, that "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world". Gosson had denounced poetry as "the vizard of vanity, wantonness, and folly"; or, in Sidney's paraphrase, as "the mother of lies and the nurse of abuse". Sidney replies by urging that of all arts poetry is the most true and the most necessary ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... seen maternal fickleness and maternal constancy, maternal savagery; the end of mated bliss and its—renewal. She had seen the relentless catastrophes of storm. There had been starving winters and renewing springs, sad beautiful autumns, the riotous waste and wantonness of summer. These had all been objective experiences, but Joan's untamed and undistracted heart had taken them in deeply and deeply pondered upon them. There was no morality in their teachings, unless it was the morality of complete ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... by the Persians in wantonness, or in hatred of the Egyptian religion; and the priests now put upon it the name of Philip Arridaeus, for whom Ptolemy was ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... earth clave asunder, and forth from the chasm leaped a horse, such as never shall be seen again for strength and beauty. His body shone white all over as the driven snow, his mane streamed proudly in the wind as he stamped on the ground and scoured in very wantonness over hill and valley. "Behold my gift," said Poseidon, "and call the city after my name. Who shall give aught better than the horse to the sons ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... journey up to Chickaloosa, although still weak from his wounds and securely ironed besides, he made two separate efforts to assault his guards. In his cell, a few days later, he attacked a turnkey in pure wantonness seemingly, since even with the turnkey eliminated, there still was no earthly prospect for him to escape from the steel strong-box which enclosed him. That was what it truly was, too, a strong-box, for the storing of many living pledges held ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... not so forbidden me. On the contrary, there had been occasions when she had even INVITED me to speak. Of course, this might have been done out of sheer wantonness, for I well knew—I had remarked it only too often—that, after listening to what I had to say, and angering me almost beyond endurance, she loved suddenly to torture me with some fresh outburst of contempt and aloofness! Yet she must have known that I could not live without ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... elements which still exist in Anglo-Saxon thought and feeling generally, the Puritanic aspect of life has never received embodiment in the English or American drama. On the English stage it is never permitted to hint at the tragic side of wantonness; vice must always be made seductive, even though a deus ex machina causes it to collapse at the end of the performance. As Mr. Bernard Shaw has said, the English theatrical method by no means ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... together." Then, having shut the door quite close, and holding Gabrielle with one hand and Rosny with the other, he said, "Good God! madame, what is the meaning of this? So you would vex me for sheer wantonness of heart in order to try my patience? By God, I swear to you that, if you continue these fashions of going on, you will find yourself very much out in your expectations. I see quite well that you have been put up to all this pleasantry in order to make me ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... despair, and throw the handle after the hatchet. Say to yourself, that, after all Lust is not the most unpardonable of faults, that it is one of two sins for which the human being pays cash, and which are consequently expiated in part at least before death. Say to yourself that wantonness and avarice refuse all credit and will not wait; and in fact, whoever unlawfully commits a fleshly act is almost always punished in his lifetime. For some there are bastards to provide for, sickly wives, ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... increase of a baneful habit on which I scarce can bring my tongue to dwell. (The Stage darker; blind at back illuminated.) Oh, CONRAD, there are children—think of it!—so lost to every sense of decency that, in mere wantonness or brainless sloth, they obstinately suck forbidden thumbs! (CONRAD starts with irrepressible emotion.) Forgive me if I shock your innocence! (Sadly.) Such things exist—but soon shall cease to be, thanks to the measure ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... encyclopaedic range of topic by this most voluminous and most versatile of modern writers [may we not say of all English writers?] there is not one line that is base, or coarse, or frivolous; not a sentence that was framed in envy, malice, wantonness, or cruelty; not one piece that was written to win money, or popularity, or promotion; not a line composed for any selfish end or in any trivial mood. Think what we may of this enormous library of print, we know that every word ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... down on a low block of gneiss to rest themselves, and then and there did the King of Borva recite his grievances and rage against the English smacks. Was it not enough that they should in passing steal the sheep, but that they should also, in mere wantonness, stalk them as deer, wounding them with rifle-bullets, and leaving them to die among the rocks? Sheila said bravely that no one could tell that it was the English fishermen who did that. Why not the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... think, if we shall tempt them to pride, that may do something; and if we tempt them to wantonness, that may help. But, in my mind, if we could drive them into desperation, that would knock the nail on the head; for then we should have them, in the first place, question the truth of the love of the heart of their Prince towards them, and that will disgust him much. This, if it works ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... would he bring it of his own accord to be tried at Westminster? We who write, if we want the talents [talent], yet have the excuse that we do it for a poor subsistence; but what can be urged in their defence, who, not having the vocation of poverty to scribble, out of mere wantonness take pains to make themselves ridiculous? Horace was certainly in the right where he said, "That no man is satisfied with his own condition." A poet is not pleased, because he is not rich; and the rich are discontented because the poets will not admit them of their number.' BOSWELL. Boswell, it ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... before Colonel Belford's house singing obstreperous and unseemly songs at the top of his voice; he would even rattle the ferrule of his cane against the palings of the fence, or throw a stone at Madam Belford's cat in the wantonness of ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... attributable in part to the peculiarities of the volunteer service—such as the lack of care and knowledge on the part of the officers, and the disposition of the men to break down their horses by improper riding, and sometimes out of mere wantonness, for the purpose of getting rid of animals they do not like, for the chance of obtaining better. A measure has recently been adopted to remedy these evils, by putting into the infantry cavalry officers and men who show themselves ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... unscathed through this fierce fire of temptation. Well, for myself, I fear not woman and her wiles; I know naught of them, and naught do I wish to know; and I still hold that this Caesar was a fool. Had I stood where Caesar stood, to cool its wantonness that bale of rugs should have been rolled down the palace ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... had no idea, madame, that your frivolity went so far as continually to wound the laws, the customs, and the hallowed order of things. You do it—you do it, scorning every thing established with the random wantonness of a child that plays with fire, and does not know that the waves will flare up and consume it. Madame, I have come here to warn you once more, and for ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... barbarous appropriations of the most precious monuments of art, that the columns and domes of earlier Rome were regarded by all classes but as quarries, from which every man was free to gather the materials, whether for his castle or his cottage,—a wantonness of outrage far greater than the Goths', to whom a later age would fain have attributed all the disgrace, and which, more perhaps than even heavier offences, excited the classical indignation of Petrarch, and made him sympathise with Rienzi in his ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... from the sale of it. He is like a poor trembling little mouse caught and held in the paws of a cruel cat. Sometimes Fate relaxes her grip on him, and he breathes freer and dares to hope for a larger liberty: then she puts her paw on him again, and tosses him and plays with him in very wantonness. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... make a speech, when you all approve more than anything else of the fact that I have been keeping silence. And now it seems to me that the response you give to that remark ought to justify me in closing just here. I have not kept silence since the Presidential election from any party wantonness, or from any indifference to the anxiety that pervades the minds of men about the aspect of the political affairs of this country. I have kept silence for the reason that I supposed it was peculiarly proper that I should do so until the time came when, according to the custom of the country, ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... fears, with deadly fear, lest her lover be untrue. Plutina had never a doubt as to the faith of the absent one. A natural jealousy sometimes leaped in her bosom, at thought of him exposed to the wiles of women whom she suspected of all wantonness. But she had no cowardly thought that the fairest and most cunning of them could oust her from the shrine of Zeke's heart. Her great grief lay in the failure of any word from the traveler. The days became weeks; almost a month had gone since he held her in his arms, and still no message ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... wreck, and some priceless china vases and bowls that had been the glory of the drawing-room were lying on the floor, shivered to atoms. But a little closer inspection revealed that while an immense amount of damage had been done—much of it through pure wantonness and lust for destruction—the building itself was practically intact, the roof was still weatherproof, and some of the rooms were in quite inhabitable condition; while there were many articles of furniture and dress, as well as ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... be not frugal he will find it hard to continue to be honest. Some day when the butcher is knocking at the door he may be tempted, he may be obliged to turn out and sell a slovenly piece of work. If the obligation shall have arisen through no wantonness of his own, he is even to be commended, for words cannot describe how far more necessary it is that a man should support his family than that he should attain to—or preserve—distinction ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... the day is at hand; let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... that his favours in jewelry given in sheer wantonness of pride to rich guests would be worth twenty-five thousand dollars. His plan was ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... conducted between the rows of name-boards, where we saw, in cells, many persons of each sex amusing themselves in such a manner) that it seemed to me that every one of them must have been drinking satyrion. (On catching sight of us, they attempted to seduce us with paederastic wantonness, and one wretch, with his clothes girded up, assaulted Ascyltos, and, having thrown him down upon a couch, attempted to gore him from above. I succored the sufferer immediately, however,) and having joined forces, we ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... practical in her material life as she had been light and audacious in her sentimental experiences. The story circulated of her infidelity to Steno with Werekiew at St. Petersburg, where the diplomatist was stationed, after one year of marriage, was confirmed by the wantonness of her conduct, of which she gave evidence as ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... with game, and it was killed from mere wantonness, such was their improvidence, that they were obliged to resort to their salt pork and other provisions; and as, in thirty days, forty large casks of whisky were consumed, it is easy to suppose, which was indeed the fact, that every night that they halted, the camp was a scene of drunkenness ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... in which it cherishes an inordinate pride, shut out the few rays of sunlight which penetrate its dusky atmosphere. They have not the excuse of narrow space which their rivals in New York may plead. They are built in mere wantonness, for within the City Limits, whose distance from the centre is the best proof of Chicago's hopefulness, are many miles of waste ground, covered only with broken fences and battered shanties. And, as they raise their heads through the murky ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... restoration, surely the "restoration" of this venerable ruin is the most grotesque and lamentable of all. The municipality of Caen have lately made themselves a spectacle to mankind by pulling down, seemingly out of sheer wantonness, one half of one of the most curious churches of their city.[10] We commend them not; but we do not place even them on a level with the subtler destroyers of Falaise. The savages of Caen are satisfied with simple, open destruction; what they cannot understand or appreciate they make away with. ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... of annexation characteristic of flirts, while all the time she was engaged to Victor Braithwaite. And having made mischief like this, she had run away. It was like a child who, having from sheer wantonness set fire to something, runs to a safe ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... nothing but what this confident creature Betty throws out in the wantonness of office. Now it is, Why, Miss, don't you look up your things? You'll be called upon, depend upon it, before you are aware. Another time she intimates darkly, and in broken sentences, (as if on purpose to tease me,) what one says, what another; with their inquiries how I dispose ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... because the sacrificing of these animals represented purity of heart. Because as the gloss says on Lev. 1, "We offer a calf, when we overcome the pride of the flesh; a lamb, when we restrain our unreasonable motions; a goat, when we conquer wantonness; a turtledove, when we keep chaste; unleavened bread, when we feast on the unleavened bread of sincerity." And it is evident that the dove denotes charity ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... shrouds, in the curtsy of the long sprit that caught the ridges of foam and lifted them in spray, even in the free streaming of that loose untidy end of line which played in the air from the leach, as young things play from wantonness, in the rush of the water, just up to and sometimes through the lee scuppers, and in the humming tautness of the sheet, in everything about me there was exuberance and joy. The sun upon the twenty million faces of the waves made, music rather than laughter, and the energy which ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... they had nothing now to think of but some safe retreat where they might give themselves up to all the pleasures that luxury and wantonness could bestow; and for the present pitched upon a place called the Devil's Islands in the river of Surinam, on the coast of Caiana, where they arrived, and found the civilest reception imaginable, not only from the governor and factory, but their wives, who exchanged wares, ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... who never gave any better reason for it, than that it was their fancy to support the idle complaint of one rival actress against another, in their several pretentious to the chief part in a new tragedy. But as this tumult seem'd only to be the Wantonness of English Liberty, I shall not presume to lay ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... day falling in love with Katys, but marrying Isabels, and Isabels the same, mutatis mutandis. We submit to it because there is no alternative; and we believe that good shall finally be wrought and wrested from evil. Don't, for heaven's sake, let us in mere wantonness introduce into our novel-world the work of our own hand, an abridged edition, a daguerreotype copy of the world without, of which we know so little and so much. I always do and always shall read the last page of a novel first; and if I perceive there any indications that matters are not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of blossoms, birds, and bowers, Of April, May, of June, and July-flowers; I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes, Of bride-grooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes. I write of Youth, of Love;—and have access By these, to sing of cleanly wantonness; I sing of dews, of rains, and, piece by piece, Of balm, of oil, of spice, and ambergris. I sing of times trans-shifting; and I write How roses first came red, and lilies white. I write of groves, of twilights, and ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... 'heaping fire upon an enemy's head,' and forgiving me too readily to permit me to forgive myself. The part applied to you is pert, and petulant, and shallow enough; but, although I have long done every thing in my power to suppress the circulation of the whole thing, I shall always regret the wantonness or generality of many of its attacks. If Coleridge writes his promised tragedy, Drury Lane will be set up." Though harassed with pecuniary difficulties of all kinds, Byron contrived to help Coleridge, who he had heard ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... took an opportunity again and again of pressing her not unwilling hand. And still at every pressure he caught that soft momentary glance, was it of love and passion, or of mere coquetry and girlish wantonness, succeeded by the fleeting blush pervading face, neck, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... the companionship they had so long held with the pleasant drawing-room, and the tasteful arrangements among which Fleda was so much at home; the easy chairs in whose comfortable arms she had had so many an hour of nice reading; the soft rug, where, in the very wantonness of frolic, she had stretched herself to play with King; that very luxurious bright grateful of fire, which had given her so often the same warm welcome home an apt introduction to the other stores of comfort which awaited her above and below stairs; the rich-coloured curtains and carpet, ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... of her, the gracious charm, the quick sympathy, went through him, pierced him. He caught his breath as though he listened for the beloved sound of her voice. She had not been really angry with him for the wantonness of those stones. She had been very ready with her forgiveness, her kindly offer of friendship. She had never been other than kind to him ever since. She had awakened in him the deepest, most humble gratitude and devotion. She had even once or twice ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... government was thus tempered by Lycurgus, yet soon after it degenerated into an oligarchy, whose power was exercised with such wantonness and violence, that it wanted indeed a bridle, as Plato expresses it. This curb they found in the authority of the Ephori, about a hundred and thirty years after Lycurgus. Elatus was the first invested with this dignity, in the reign of Theopompus; who, when his wife upbraided him, ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... Then some of the gentlemen remembered to have heard of cases when dogs addicted to sheep- killing had destroyed whole flocks, as if in sheer wantonness, scarcely deigning to taste a morsel of each ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... have been three such instances. The first was in 1827. Some men got an old ship—the Michigan—which had been used on lake Erie, and had been pronounced unseaworthy. For mere wantonness they put aboard a bear, a fox, a buffalo, a dog and some geese and sent it over the cataract. The bear jumped from the vessel before it reached the rapids, swam toward the shore, and was rescued by some humane persons. ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... been against them, than could have happened in the case of a people who had neither their adhesion to a separate religion founded on historic memories, nor their characteristic family affectionateness. Tortured, flogged, spit upon, the corpus vile on which rage or wantonness vented themselves with impunity, their name flung at them as an opprobrium by superstition, hatred, and contempt, they have remained proud of their origin. Does any one call this an evil pride? Perhaps he belongs to that order of man who, while he has a democratic dislike to dukes ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... beauty. Seems he not The god of this fair scene? Those waves claim such a master as that boy; And these green slopes have waited till his feet Should wander them, to prove they were not spread In wantonness. What were this flower's prayer Had it a voice? The place behind his ear Would brim its cup with bliss and overbrim; Oh, to be worn and fade beside his cheek!'— 'In love and happy, Delphis; and the ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... the corruption of their own hearts, mistake for wantonness that which is nothing more than the thoughtlessness ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... Thomas Becket's life—whose names are Herbert Boseham, John Salisbury, William of Canterbury, Alen of Tewkesbury, Benet of Peterborough, Stephen Langton, and Richard Croyland—he bestoyed his youth in all kinds of lascivious lightness, and lecherous wantonness. After certain robberies, rapes, and murders, committed in the king's wars at the siege of Toulouse in Languedoc, and in other places else, as he was come home again into England, he gave himself to great study, not of the holy ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... who did not well avised it view Would surely deem it to be ivy true; Low his lascivious arms adown did creep That themselves dipping in the silver dew Their fleecy flowers they tenderly did steep, Which drops of crystal seemed for wantonness ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... horse was staggering, swaying—then down he crashed, Hobbs swinging clear barely in time to escape being pinioned to the ground. A stream of blood was pouring from the side of the poor beast. Aghast at this unheard of wantonness, the little interpreter knew not which way to turn, but stood there dazed until a third shot brought him to his senses. The bullet kicked up the dust near his feet. He scrambled for the heavy underbrush at the roadside and darted off into the forest, his revolver in his hand, ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... fleshy part. Nor was this all; he oft became the butt Of journeymen or 'prentice, who would glut Their hardened hearts by showing greatest spite 'Gainst him for following what he thought was right. Often that wicked youth, in wantonness, Would try all means to give him sore distress. And once, with all a dreadful demon's rage— In such acts none but demons would engage— He threw him down, and held him; then applied A lighted candle to his throat and tried To make him think it merely was a joke! Which was as ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... moral philosopher; there is no longer any estrangement between Ethics and Medical Practice. Medicine, sent from Heaven to be an angel of mercy to man, is now ever faithful to its beneficent mission; it never more performs the task of a destroying spirit, as—not in wantonness, but in ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... salutation of the gambler, the outcast, the reprobate,—then, then I swore that you should be mine, if I tore you from the sanctuary. Speak now, Jovita: if it was coquetry, speak now; I forgive you: if it was sheer wantonness, speak now; I shall spare you: ...
— Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte
... of shooting his companion. The natives assembled, and came to a resolution to avenge the murder, and literally stoned Thompson to death, and his skull was brought on board the Pandora. This horrible wretch had some time before slain a man and a child through mere wantonness, but escaped punishment by a mistake that had nearly proved fatal to young Heywood. It seems that the description of a person in Otaheite is usually given by some distinguishing figure of the tattoo, and Heywood, having the same ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... Rue Saint-Fiacre after the play to write his article. It was a piece of savage and bitter criticism, written in pure wantonness; he was amusing himself by trying his power. The melodrama, as a matter of fact, was a better piece than the Alcalde; but Lucien wished to see whether he could damn a good play and send everybody to see a bad one, as his ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... reasonable curiosity. Imagine what would be felt if a child were subjected to such a fate, or what could be answered if the present victims could tell their agonies as well as feel them! Byron speaks of the barbarians who, in the wantonness of power, were 'butchered to make a Roman holiday;' and verily the horrors exhibited in our public gardens and menageries are something akin to the fights of gladiators; it is the infliction of misery for mere sport. With reference also to lions, tigers, and other ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various |
