"Ruthless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... detained for ten minutes. He was, in truth, making some last arrangements about executions and such ugly things; and though these duties were rootedly repulsive to him, he always performed them with precision. Ruthless in the pursuit of criminals, he was very mild about their punishment. Since he had been supreme over French—and largely over European—policial methods, his great influence had been honourably used for the mitigation of sentences and the ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... Copenhagen, has during the last months haunted the region hereabouts. He looks just as he used to, he is the same pale knight of the melancholy mien. He is the most ridiculous mixture of forced gayety and silent hopelessness, he is affected—ruthless and brutal toward himself and others. He is taciturn and a man of few words, and doesn't seem to be enjoying himself at all, though he does nothing but drink and lead a riotous life. It is as I have already said, ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... Differences of race were augmented by differences in religion, and by the absence of strong business interests. Christianity had not been vouchsafed to man, and commerce had very imperfectly done its work, while war was carried on in the most ruthless and destructive manner. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... determining force, instead of being qualified by any play of free-will, or any feasible plan of ultimate and superabounding good, has been a real fatalism, changeless, hopeless, remorseless. That the distaff of the Fates, and the ruthless sceptre of the Erinnys, entered in full force into all the religions of the Greeks and Romans, scarcely needs to be affirmed. They controlled all human affairs, and even the gods were subject to them. The Sagas of the Northmen also were full of fatalism, ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... maddened Rajpoot, to the dreaming Moor, was fiercely shouted by the well of Cawnpore to a chorus of shrieking women, English wives and mothers, and spluttering of blood-choked babes, and clash of red knives, and drunken shouts of slayers, ruthless ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... Norba.] So ruthless an example provoked a desperate resistance at Norba. It was betrayed to Lepidus by night; but the citizens stabbed and hung themselves or each other, and some locking themselves inside their houses, set them in flames. A wind was blowing ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... of any value. It is very easy for us to say that the monarchy might have been saved "if" Louis had been a man of greater energy and less kindness of heart. But the king was not alone. Even "if" he had possessed the ruthless strength of Napoleon, his career during these difficult days might have been easily ruined by his wife who was the daughter of Maria Theresa of Austria and who possessed all the characteristic virtues and vices of ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... infant closer to her bosom when she caught the glittering and fatal eye of Richard, Duke of Gloucester—Warwick's grim avenger in the future—fixed upon that harmless life, destined to interpose a feeble obstacle between the ambition of a ruthless intellect and the heritage ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... of to-day. It is not nice; neither is the social life of to-day nice. One lays the book down sick at heart—sick for life with all its "lyings and its lusts." But it is a healthy book. So fearful is its portrayal of social disease, so ruthless its stripping of the painted charms from vice, that its tendency cannot but be strongly for good. It is a goad, to prick sleeping human consciences awake and drive them into ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... the ruthless manner in which "the multitude of the people and craftismen" proceeded in demolishing the altars, images, &c., in the parish Kirk of Perth, says, they then "passed strait way to the Abbay of the Charter House, and pullit the hoill place downe, alsweill the Kirk thairof as uther ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... vessel that, buttoned inside the khaki tunic, had adapted itself not uncomfortably to the still existing rotundities of the Alderman's figure. A hyaena-yell of laughter broke from each of the crowding heads. Brooker's face assumed the hue of the scarlet flannel chest-protector exposed by the ruthless steel. ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... glad! I am glad! " said the father, but even as he spoke a great sadness came to blend with his joy. The hour when he was to give this beautiful and beloved life into the keeping of another had been heralded by the god of the sexes, the ruthless god that devotes itself to the tearing of children from the parental arms and casting them amid the mysteries of an irretrievable wedlock. The thought filled him ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... "I would distrust every statement of his. I can't determine what was in his mind or what he is aiming at. But this I know, that to make a compact with him would be to be at his mercy. He is ruthless; he would not consider what blood he shed; and, besides, he has committed himself too deeply, and is no fool ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... ideals finds kindness the easiest thing in the world. In truth he was kind, and in a confidential sort of way that seemed to chuckle and wink, saying, "We're rogues together; then I must lend you a hand." But he could be ruthless also, displaying a curious aloofness from his fellow-men and an unconsciousness of any suffering he might inflict that left mere cruelty far behind. If I were making an automaton king, I would model my ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... Which hurry onward through far Western plains, Where the last Indian, for a season, reigns. Here, the red CANUTE on this spot, sat down, His splendid forehead stormy with a frown, To quell, with the wild lightning of his glance The swift encroachment of the wave's advance; To meet and check the ruthless tide which rose, Crest after crest of energetic foes, While high and strong poured on each cruel wave, Until they left his royalty—a grave; But, o'er this wild, tumultuous deluge glows A vision fair as Heaven to ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... From Yarrow braes and banks of Tweed, Where the lone streams of Ettrick glide, And from the silver Teviot's side; The dales, where martial clans did ride, Are now one sheep-walk, waste and wide. This tyrant of the Scottish throne, So faithless and so ruthless known, Now hither comes; his end the same, The same pretext of sylvan game. What grace for Highland Chiefs, judge ye By fate of Border chivalry. Yet more; amid Glenfinlas' green, Douglas, thy stately ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... life of the Jews, it had been completely undermined by the system of ruthless tutelage, which the Government had employed for a quarter of a century in the hope of "reconstructing" it. All these drumhead methods, such as the hurling of masses of living beings from villages into towns and from the border-zone into the interior, the ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... shall be all right." He was very gruff. He felt now a furious angry reluctance at leaving her behind. He stormed at himself as a fool; one of the things that the strong man must learn of life is to be ruthless in these partings and breaking of relations. He stood further away from her and spoke as though he hated ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... Lambeth, was formerly one of the most interesting churches in London, being, next to Canterbury Cathedral, the great burial place of its archbishops, but falling under the ruthless hand of "restorers" it was rebuilt (except its tower of 1377) in 1851-52 by Hardwick, and its interest has been totally destroyed, its monuments huddled away anywhere, for the most part close under the roof, where their inscriptions are of course ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... stands alone; One of the fierce Allobroges, Whose manly virtue was derived Direct from heavenly powers, Not from this dry, unfruitful earth of ours; Whence he alone, unarmed,— O matchless courage!—from the stage, Did war upon the ruthless tyrants wage; The only war, the only weapon left, Against the crimes and follies of the age. First, and alone, he took the field: None followed him; all else were cowards tame, Lost to all sense of honor, ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... from the door.) Never mind her, Mrs. Anderson: you know who she is and what she is. If she gives you any trouble, just tell me; and I'll settle accounts with her. (Mrs. Dudgeon goes into the bedroom, shutting the door sharply behind her as if even it had to be made to do its duty with a ruthless hand.) ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... Russia, and the lesser Powers, of the absolute necessity of a sincere and cordial alliance to make preparations for the conflict to put down, or at least successfully to resist, the common enemy,—the ruthless and unscrupulous disturber of the peace of Europe; not to make war, but to prepare for war in view of contingencies; and this not merely to preserve the peace of Europe, but to save themselves from ruin. All his confidential letters to his sovereign ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... Valentine, suddenly; "some one is coming!" Maximilian leaped at one bound into his crop of lucerne, which he began to pull up in the most ruthless way, under the pretext of being ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... nameless fear that lay behind him, that he could only think of pressing forward. In the night hours he would suddenly rise from his precarious bed under the shadow of a fallen tree and stagger on, haunted by a picture of his ruthless foes pressing through the jungle in pursuit. Thus he accomplished his wonderful journey alone through trackless forests; thus he fended off the sickness which gripped him the moment that he laid him down ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... a man's heart, a faint warmth went through her. She knew an instant of perfect serenity; but the next she uttered a piteous cry of pain. For fire—liquid, agonizing—was on her bloodless lips and in her mouth. It burned its ruthless way down her throat, setting her whole body tingling, waking afresh in her ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... world almost at the same moment, had been developing themselves side by side as two great rival powers, in deadly struggle for the possession of the human race. The weapons of the Empire had been not merely an overwhelming physical force, and a ruthless lust of aggressive conquest: but, even more powerful still, an unequalled genius for organisation, and an uniform system of external law and order. This was generally a real boon to conquered nations, because it substituted a fixed and regular spoliation for the fortuitous and arbitrary miseries ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... Gray's Inn, the Sheldon who was in with the money-lenders, sharpest of legal prestigitators, most ruthless of opponents, most unscrupulous of allies, buried his face in a flaming bandanna, and fairly sobbed aloud. When the passion had passed, he got up and walked hastily to the window, more ashamed of this one touch ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... Bey, the powerful Turkish Minister of the Interior, determined upon a ruthless policy of repression, and it was largely due to efforts to put that policy in force that there resulted the subsequent massacre of Armenians that shocked the world. It is difficult for anyone not in possessions of the actual facts to apportion an exact measure of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... thy love for man. A god thyself, thou gav'st, despite the gods, To mortals more than is a mortal's due. And therefore must thou keep this dreary rock, Erect, with frame unbending, reft of sleep, And many a bootless wail of agony Shalt utter. Change of mind in Zeus is none, Ruthless the rule ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... upon a perhaps. The great Duke, the pattern of good breeding, the champion of many a carouse, the proud ornament of Courts, the man of genius, the graceful winner of hearts that he had wrung as carelessly as a peasant twists an osier withe, was now the victim of a cough, of a ruthless sciatica, of an unmannerly gout. His teeth gradually deserted him, as at the end of an evening the fairest and best-dressed women take their leave one by one till the room is left empty and desolate. The active hands became palsy-stricken, the shapely legs tottered as he ...
— The Elixir of Life • Honore de Balzac
... him, our remaining here now would accomplish nothing. Others will discover the body and give it proper care. But, oh, God! do you realize what it will inevitably mean for us to be discovered here?—the disgrace, the stigma, the probability of arrest and conviction, the ruthless exposure of everything? I plead with you to think of all this, and no longer hesitate. We have no time for that. Leave here with me before it becomes too late. I believe I know a way out, and there is opportunity if we move quickly. But the slightest delay ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... by men who constantly stimulate the trade to make it more profitable. As a result of investigations in New York, it is estimated that the number of prostitutes would be not more than one-fourth of what it is were it not for the ruthless greed of these men. The houses are usually located in the poorer parts of the city, but they are also to be found scattered elsewhere. In cases where public opinion does not warrant rigid enforcement of the law against it, the illicit traffic is disregarded by the police, ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... assistance hope to achieve." My father, upwards of half a century since, commenced collecting mortuary memorials; many of the monuments from which he copied the inscriptions have since been destroyed by time, and many, very many, more by the ruthless innovations of beautifying churchwardens. These "very vast" collections—the labour of a life—however, only form a portion of the materials I now posses; for since I issued my prospectus in 1844, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 78, April 26, 1851 • Various
... any one either young or old desires to travel anywhere abroad at whatever time, is of no consequence. On the other hand, the refusal of states to receive others, and for their own citizens never to go to other places, is an utter impossibility, and to the rest of the world is likely to appear ruthless and uncivilised; it is a practice adopted by people who use harsh words, such as xenelasia or banishment of strangers, and who have harsh and morose ways, as men think. And to be thought or not to be thought well of by the rest of the ...
— Laws • Plato
... of powerful force in the room, powerful and destructive. Everything seemed to be thrown into the melting pot, and it seemed to Ursula they were all witches, helping the pot to bubble. There was an elation and a satisfaction in it all, but it was cruelly exhausting for the new-comers, this ruthless mental pressure, this powerful, consuming, destructive mentality that emanated from Joshua and Hermione and ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... Saviour,[21] mark him well! Bold Richardton's[22] heroic swell; The chief on Sark[23] who glorious fell, In high command; And He whom ruthless fates expel His ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Roses had important results. Nearly all the powerful families of England had been drawn into the fierce struggles, and a great part of the nobility, whom the kings had formerly feared, had perished on the battlefield or lost their heads in the ruthless executions carried out by each party after it gained a victory. This left the king far more powerful than ever before. He could now dominate Parliament, if he could not dispense with it. For a century and more the ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... I think the child enjoyed her Newport days, if not her Newport evenings, and indeed, she seemed to have the feeling that they were snatched from the jaws of the said ruthless lady. We mooned about among the entirely charming and more or less famous houses, in what ought to be called Oldport, a very, very important place for more than a hundred years before a tidal wave of fashion swept over it about the middle of the ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... with something like dismay, that the right and natural sense of elation simply was not. He actually felt depressed. Shrink as he might from the jar of conflict, the sure instinct of a soldier race warned him that hell holds no fury and earth no danger like a ruthless enemy not decisively smitten. The psychology of it was beyond ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... kneel here as we gaze on the giants of the forest, as they spread their huge arms and rear their proud heads to the sky, and thank heaven that in some favoured spots the timber is not the prey of the ruthless destroyer, man. What new country in God's world but has been shorn of its beauty to gratify man's unsatiable love of clearing; and the ignorant clod is not the only despoiler, for peer and peasant rival the great Liberal Leader in wielding the axe, the one to pay his debts, the other because ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... and there burned in them a fire of conviction. Suddenly Samuel realized the import of that word "comrade" which they gave one another; they were men bound together by the memory of persecutions, and by the presence of ruthless enemies. They knew what they were facing at this moment; not only Chief McCullagh with his policemen and their clubs; not only the subsidized "Express" with its falsehoods and ridicule: but all the political and business power of the Hickmans and Wygants. They were facing ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... Mrs. Ess Kay and Potter, and though she seemed so angry with Mrs. Van der Windt and several other members of the Ball committee, for trying to make a stand against her, she was perfectly ruthless about the names she would scratch off the lists her secretary was continually making out and revising ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... me in. What then could I do? What might I still hope to accomplish? At first thought the case appeared hopeless. Those fellows had swept the sloop clean, and had doubtless long ago scuttled it. This ruthless deed once accomplished, their orders were to raid the house on the bluff. But would they go on with their bloody work? They would suddenly find themselves leaderless, unguided. Would that suffice to ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... dreams he saw the familiar face looking at him with pensive, half-reproachful glances; and then a dark figure that was strange to him came between him and that gentle shadow, and thrust the vision away with a ruthless hand. At last, by dint of going over the ground again and again, always pleading Margaret's cause against the stern witness of cruel facts, Clement came to look upon the girl's ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... had accepted it, because there seemed nothing else that he could do. But now, in a sudden flash, he came to see that the law of life was exactly the opposite; everywhere throughout nature that which survived was not ruthless egotism, but co-operative intelligence. The solitary and predatory animals were now almost entirely extinct; and even before the advent of man with his social brain, it had been the herbivorous and gregarious animals which had become most numerous. When it came ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... hunted and despoiled. Their stings failed to penetrate the thick coat and hide of their persistent foes, while a chance stab on the lips or between the nostrils seemed only to arouse the badgers from leisurely methods of pillage to quick and ruthless slaughter of the adult insects as well as of the immature grubs. But Brock never committed the indiscretion of swallowing a full-grown wasp. With his fore-paws he dexterously struck and crippled the angry sentinels that buzzed about his ears, ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... gain the confidence of the West, but a positive and forcible character won their admiration. It was a people stirred by men like Henry Clay, great public speakers, leaders in public assemblies, impassioned advocates of the oppressed in other lands. It was a people equally affected by the rough and ruthless character of men like Jackson. An account which purports to come from Davy Crockett illustrates the political horse-play of the time. In 1830 he was an anti-Jackson candidate for re-election to Congress. He was beaten, by his opponents ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... the eve of the New Year. The snow had folded its white mantle over the earth, and in the gardens, where the flowers had hidden their fragile beauty from the ruthless fingers of the Frost King, it gleamed whitely from amid the sombre foliage of the hardy evergreens. On lawn and terrace it lay in uneven drifts, tossed at will by the chilling winter winds. Pendant from tree and shrub hung glittering icicles, and on ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... cutting, every magazine article in which his name was mentioned, went into my scrapbook. And almost every week for twenty years he wrote to me—those long, radiant letters, so full of verve and elan and ringing, ruthless wit. There was always something very Gallic about his saltiness. "Oh, to be born a Frenchman!" he writes. "Why wasn't I born a Frenchman instead of a dour, dingy Scotsman? Oh, for the birthright of Montmartre! Stead ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... procedure, Nancy rather enjoyed these few days of comparative freedom. She supplied herself with a huge box of bonbons, "Junie's Love Test" and "The Widowed Bride,"—books begun long ago, but wrested from her untimely by the ruthless Mrs. Baxter, on the score of takin' her time off: her rightful work for them that'd took her in, and fillin' her red head with the foolishest sort o' notions. She had had so much to do that to have nothing to do but lie around in a red silk kimona and nibble chocolates and read love ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... of policy, imported from Florence with Catherine of Medicis, your wicked disciple, produced in France such a government, such dissimulation, such perfidy, such violent, ruthless counsels, as threw that whole kingdom into the utmost confusion, and ended my life, even in the palace of my sovereign, ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... managing to avoid a clash with the Spanish officials who ruled the island, or an open break with his Cuban neighbors, who rebelled beneath their wrongs. This was no easy thing to do, for the agents of the crown were uniformly corrupt and quite ruthless, while most of the native- born were either openly or secretly in sympathy with the revolution in the Orient. But Esteban dealt diplomatically with both factions and went on raising slaves and sugar to his own great profit. Owing to the impossibility of ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... generations were prepared; the pangs, The internal pangs, were ready, the dread strife Of poor humanity's afflicted will, Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny." ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... Prussian troops were ruthless; the judges were paid to "punish" those whose crime was fighting for their ordinary rights; and as the judges' billets would not have been worth twenty minutes' purchase if they had not obeyed orders, they cheerfully obeyed them. It is a fine thing to accept a handsome salary ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... to return home; they preferred to stay where they were and enforce their views: "It is quite plain now who were the perpetrators of all the violence—the very people who originally drove us into exile, and shut their gates upon Lacedaemon; the confiscators of our property one day, the ruthless opponents of its restoration the next. Who else but they have now brought it about that we should be fined for appearing at Lacedaemon? and for what purpose but to deter any one else for the future from venturing to expose the proceedings at Phlius?" Thus far the appellants. And ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... Caverned in the hill, at many stages from its foot, and reached by winding walks, are picturesque holes and habitations—happily now no longer used, excepting in very few instances indeed—where the first settlers crowded when the ruthless Dane perched himself like a famished eagle on the rocks of Quatford down below. In the foreground are the time-worn relics of its two castles, to which the little colony was indebted for protection from fierce and threatening foes. The ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... weighed down by fetters and misfortunes; in the next scene, his faithful but unconscious squire regales the audience with a comic song. We behold, with throbbing bosoms, the heroine in the grasp of a proud and ruthless baron: her virtue and her life alike in danger, drawing forth her dagger to preserve the one at the cost of the other; and just as our expectations are wrought up to the highest pitch, a whistle is heard, ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... time, staring at a red George Washington poster, and wondering about a future with a sudden Different Line in it.... It was ten minutes past putting-out-children time! She stared aghast at the ruthless clock, then created two Monitors for Putting Out at one royal sweep. She managed the nightly eviction with such gay expedition that it almost felt like ten minutes ago when the place, except for the pride-swollen monitors, was cleared. While these officers watched the commonalty clumping ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... Negation held out no longer. Ruthless battalions poured over the walls, blew up the Countess's propriety, made frightful ravages in her complexion. Down fell ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... became a bitter critic of successive Administrations. His complaints of our blockade policy were frigidly acknowledged by Lord MILNER and hotly resented by Lord LANSDOWNE, upon whom Lord PORTSMOUTH'S ruddy beard always has a provocative effect. It is all very well to talk of being ruthless to neutrals, but if we had adopted the noble lord's policy early in the War would the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes be to-day floating side by ...
— Punch, Volume 153, July 11, 1917 - Or the London Charivari. • Various
... that remain of the old monastic life, save the slender hexagonal "Old Tower," the graceful lantern of the convent of the grey-robed Franciscans. The above writer also points out the beautifully carved door in Queen Street, sole relic of the College of Secular Canons, from which the chisel of the ruthless iconoclast has chipped off the obnoxious ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... themselves in a mesh of legal claims—old services revived, old dues enforced, endless suits in the King's courts grinding them again to serfage. Oppression was no longer the rough blow of the rough baron; it was the delicate, ruthless tyranny of ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... worked on as one driven by a ruthless force. His teeth were clenched upon his lower lip. His hands were shaking, and yet he knew that what he did was too superb for criticism. It was the work of genius—the driving force within that would not let him pause to listen to the wild ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... bodies of people; however, after the tribe had been governed for upwards of thirty years, by such a person as old Fraser, it were no wonder if the greater part had become either rogues or fools: he was a ruthless tyrant, Belle, over his own people, and by his cruelty and rapaciousness must either have stunned them into an apathy approaching to idiotcy, or made them artful knaves in their own defence. The qualities ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... end. Ambition seemed satiated; and the vanquished, after having passed under the yoke of their enemy, concluded they might wear their chains in peace. Such were the hopes of those Scottish noblemen who, early in the preceding spring, had signed the bond of submission to a ruthless conqueror, purchasing life at the price of all that makes life estimable-liberty ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... regard to the ancient friendship between their people and our own or to the solemn obligations which have been exchanged between them and destroy American ships and take the lives of American citizens in the wilful prosecution of the ruthless naval program they have announced ...
— Why We are at War • Woodrow Wilson
... gate—they passed by the Roman sentry; the lightning flashed over his livid face and polished helmet, but his stern features were composed even in their awe! He remained erect and motionless at his post. That hour itself had not animated the machine of the ruthless majesty of Rome into the reasoning and self-acting man. There he stood, amidst the crashing elements: he had not received the permission to desert his station ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... endless wilds of Scythia had poured a vast swarm of nomad horsemen, ill-favored, fierce, ruthless, the scions of the desert and seemingly sworn to make a desert of Europe. They were led by Attila, the "Scourge of God," as he called himself, in the tracks of whose horse's hoofs the grass could never grow again, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... severe with me I made out in the end that affairs were not so bad as I had thought. The estate would have to be plastered with a mortgage, but some years of stiff economy and retrenchment, together with a ruthless pruning of the fine timber, would suffice to put me on my feet again. The expenditures of the household would have to be cut down, but Mr. Brief thought that a modest establishment befitting my rank might still be maintained. If I ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... most critical events of modern times the battle of Waterloo stands conspicuous. This sanguinary encounter at last stopped the torrent of the ruthless and predatory ambition of the French, by which so many countries had been desolated. With the peace which immediately succeeded it ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the work of destruction, got a glimpse of the juicy remains of his darling bulb, and, guessing the cause of the ferocious joy of Gryphus, uttered a cry of agony, which would have melted the heart even of that ruthless jailer who some ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... doomed; even Babington had, by his own admission, entertained a fearfully evil design; but the other three had evidently dipped far less deeply into the plot, and Tichborne had only concealed it out of friendship. Yet the ruthless judgment condemned all alike! And why? To justify a yet more cruel blow! No wonder honest Richard ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his companions that they should break the bridge down, and leave the Persian king and his army to perish by famine and the Scythian arrows. The rulers of the Asiatic Greek cities whom Miltiades addressed, shrank from this bold and ruthless stroke against the Persian power, and Darius returned in safety. But it was known what advice Miltiades had given; and the vengeance of Darius was thenceforth specially directed against the man who had counselled such a deadly blow against ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... principal character in the work, as originally evolved by her creator, was the daughter of a storekeeper in a small town in Indiana who ran away from home and went to Chicago to learn the millinery business, he, wielding a ruthless but gifted blue pencil, would speedily transform her into the ebon-hearted heiress of a Klondyke millionaire, an angel without but a harpy within, and after opening up Reel One with scenes in a Yukon dance hall speedily would move all the important characters to New York, ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... his Lordship's honor; and how many would find themselves in the House of Correction to his disgrace—how many employers would be annoyed,—how many customers would be disappointed—and how many wives would get broken heads; when suddenly a crowd of filthy, dejected, and ruthless beings swept along in mass, heedless of whatever came in their way, and threatening life and limb in the onset. Then there came such a smashing of maids' bonnets, squeezing of milliners, and frightening of old maids, as never was ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... that "in Ireland famine urges men to take land at any price—they must have it or die;" and that, "when a piece of ground falls out of lease, it becomes a bone of contention amongst some twenty or thirty miserable competitors, who outbid each other, to the great delight and profit of the ruthless and exulting landlord, and to their own utter ruin." If any one takes time to reflect on what he reads in every day's newspaper, he must at once perceive that this statement can have no foundation in fact; if a landlord ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... for her intelligence. If it was to her interest to prove Hermia his companion on this mad pilgrimage, it was clearly to Hermia's interest to prove her own non-existence. As Hermia had suggested, her intrusiveness was impertinent, and Markham mentally added the adjectives "ruthless" and "indecent." He had been almost ready to add "vengeful," but could not really admit, even to himself, that she had anything to ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... cracked ceiling, sat three men in uniform. The one who occupied the chief seat, and seemed to be the president, was old and gray, with hard, suspicious eyes, and a long, typical Spanish face, in every line of which I read cruelty and ruthless determination. His colleagues, who called him "marquis," treated him with great deference, and his breast was covered ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... circuitous route, he miraculously succeeded in effecting his escape to Lima. The bishop of Cuzco, who went off in a different direction, was no less fortunate. Happy for him that he did not fall into the hands of the ruthless Carbajal, who, as the bishop had once been a partisan of Pizarro, would, to judge from the little respect he usually showed those of his cloth, have felt as little compunction in sentencing him to the gibbet as if he had been the meanest of ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... hold thy hand, thou bold baron, I pray thee hold thy hand, Nor ruthless rend two gentle hearts Fast ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... of the noise made by a rusty door-hinge. The tilting of the golden cornucopia had made him a ruthless money-grubber, but he never questioned ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... for her young husband the sole passion to be noted throughout a life in which, especially during its later period, love figured only in the dullest of hues. This marriage took place during the wars of the second Fronde, and at an epoch when a rage for duelling, the anarchical and ruthless effect of Frenchmen's ideas touching the "point of honour," had infused a new element into the spirit of party, and had become a veritable mania. It chanced on the occasion of one of those duels in 1663—that of the two brothers Frette—wherein four fought on either ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... to be spent by his Department this year. But let no one mistake him for a mere HORNE of Plenty, pouring out benefits indiscriminately upon the genuine unemployed and the work-shy. He has already deprived some seventeen thousand potential domestics of their unearned increment, and he promises ruthless prosecution of all who try to cheat the State ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... of these men was Robespierre, the ruthless and incorruptible demagogue; the other was Citizen Chauvelin, ex-ambassador of the Revolutionary Government at the ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... advanced, they made an indiscriminate slaughter of men, women and children. The people fled from their villages a short time before them, and there was no heart in the people to make a stand against such powerful and ruthless invaders. In this emergency, they fled to Hiawatha for his advice. He counseled them to call a general council of all the tribes from the east and west. "For," said he, "our strength is not in the war club and arrows alone, ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... have, but why should he not suffer a loss of pride? He is ruthless and cruel and when he has his way he makes ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... thou hast left my poor little daughter, that her torments may increase mine own a thousandfold. Behold, then, I can only pray that thou wilt take her from the earth, so that my grey head may gladly follow her to the grave! Woe is me, ruthless father, what have I done? I have eaten bread, and suffered my child to hunger! Oh, Lord Jesu, who hast said, 'What man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread will he give him a stone?' Behold I am that man!—behold I am that ruthless father! I have eaten bread and have given wood to my ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... must be eternally reiterated. The procession of the torches defines the sorrow; and by this wild, despairing search in the darkness do we know that her daughter Proserpine, plucking flowers in the fields of light, has been snatched by ruthless Pluto to the realm of the Invisible. Then by the procession of Iacchus we learn that divine aid has come to the despairing Demeter; by the coming of, Aesculapius shall all her wounds be healed; and the change in the evening from the mystae to epoptae is because that now to Demeter, the cycle ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... you know for yourselves. We were sure that our enemies would be behind us like our own shadows. Gorgiano had his private reasons for vengeance, but in any case we knew how ruthless, cunning, and untiring he could be. Both Italy and America are full of stories of his dreadful powers. If ever they were exerted it would be now. My darling made use of the few clear days which our ...
— The Adventure of the Red Circle • Arthur Conan Doyle
... his fault, depend upon it. Maginnis called him back, you know, and no doubt hauled him off bodily, positively refusing to let him pause for good-byes. A man of ruthless determination, is Maginnis." ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... shattered or damaged vessels. Five hundred are said to have been sunk—the majority by the enemy, but some even by their own friends. The sea was covered with wrecks, and with wretches who clung to them, till the ruthless enemy slew them or forced them ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... their obligations. To relax from this salutary rule because the Seminoles have maintained themselves so long in the territory they had relinquished, and in defiance of their frequent and solemn engagements still continue to wage a ruthless war against the United States, would not only evince a want of constancy on our part, but be of evil example in our intercourse with other tribes. Experience has shown that but little is to be gained by the march ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... many of those qualities which go to make the successful man of action in all walks of life, driven by circumstances to squander them on a criminal career. Yet it is a curious circumstance that this determined and ruthless burglar should have suffered for what would be classed in France as a "crime passionel." There is more than a possibility that a French jury would have?? ing circumstances in the murder of Dyson.?? Peace is only another instance of the wrecking a man's ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... seem that anger is the most grievous sin. For Chrysostom says [*Hom. xlviii in Joan.] that "nothing is more repulsive than the look of an angry man, and nothing uglier than a ruthless* face, and most of all than a cruel soul." [*Severo. The correct text is Si vero. The translation would then run thus . . . "and nothing uglier." And if his "face is ugly, how much uglier is his soul!"]. Therefore anger ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... judgments, with which he was charged, in the hard, hot realism of their austere world. Through his verse we see the barer landscapes of Benjamin and Judah without shadow or other relief, every ugly detail exposed by the ruthless noon, and beyond them the desert hills shimmering through the heat. Drought, famine, pestilence and especially war sweep over the land and the ghastly prostrate things, human as well as animal, which their skirts leave behind are rendered with vividness, ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... They hate black as they do dung, and therefore they dislike the Japanese, who are fond of black. Pride they consider the most execrable vice, and one who acts proudly is chastised with the most ruthless correction. Wherefore no one thinks it lowering to wait at table or to work in the kitchen or fields. All work they call discipline, and thus they say that it is honourable to go on foot, to do any act of nature, to see with the eye, and to speak with ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... their necks. The public, whose urges, inhibitions, complexes, were in a state of ferment, but inarticulate, found their release in these novels and stories and wallowed in them. The more insulting, the more ruthless, the more one-sided the disclosure of their irremediable faults and meannesses, the more voluptuous the pleasure. There had been reactions after the Civil War, but on a higher plane. The population had not been maculated ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... delicate legend of the brave days of old, of sprites and pixies, of trolls and gnomes, of ruthless barons and noble knights. "The Silent Maid" herself, with her strange bewitchment and wondrous song, is equalled only by Undine in charm and mystery. The tale is told in that quaint diction which chronicles "The Forest Lovers," and in which Mr. Pangborn, although ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... will be more bitter than his. Speak but a word. That silent sorrow will kill thee and me. My darling, it was fate, and I was not to blame. Come, it will comfort thee to weep beside my breast. Leave the dead for vengeance, for heavy is the vengeance that shall fall on this ruthless king. ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... Murrell's capacity. He knew how the latter had shaped the uneasy population that foregathered on the edge of civilization to his own ends, and that what he had christened the Clan had become an elaborate organization, disciplined and flexible to his ruthless will. ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... the bond between Gotz and his fair Gertrude. To us, indeed, it was as yet a mystery, but that it was sweet and full of joy we deemed a certainty. We would have been fain to cry out to the Emperor and the world to take arms against the ruthless parents who were minded to tread so holy a blossom in the dust; but since this was not in our power we had dreams of essaying to touch the heart of my forest aunt, for she had but that one son and no daughter to make her glad, and I had ever ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... is a girl-girl; a pretty, forward, conceited girl-girl," said the ruthless Augustine. "Lady Elliston is coming to see you this afternoon; she asked me to tell you; she says ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... swimming in a hot maelstrom of pain, but it was quieting as his breathing returned to normal. As long as his opponents were slower or less ruthless, he could ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... carry out his plan until 1612, when he finally retired with ample means and in the enjoyment of an honorable reputation. There he exercised a generous hospitality, and led a quiet rural life. He planted a mulberry-tree, which became a pilgrim's shrine to numerous travellers; but a ruthless successor in the ownership of New Place, the Reverend Francis Gastrell, annoyed by the concourse of visitors, was Vandal enough to cut it down. Such was the anger of the people that he was obliged to leave ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... thieves and outlaws, many of them possibly mere brutal maniacs; naked, living in caves and coverts, knowing no law but their own hunger, rage, and lust; feeding often on human flesh; and woe to the woman or child or unarmed man who fell into their ruthless clutch. Orson, and such like human brutes of the wilderness, serve now to amuse children in fairy tales; they were then ugly facts of flesh and blood. There were heathens there, too, in small colonies: heathen Saxons, cruelest of all the tribes; ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... these succeeded. Cathcart became shrewd, incisive, direct, cold, a little hard; Charley Gates was burly, hearty, a trifle bullying. Both were in all circumstances quite unruffled; and in some circumstances ruthless. ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... Fate! Cunning master of debate, Cunning soother of all sorrow, Ruthless robber of to-morrow; Tyrant to our dallying feet, Though patron of a life complete; Like Puck upon a rosy cloud, He rides to distance while we woo him,— Like pale Remorse wrapped in a shroud, He brings the world in sackcloth to him! O dimly seen, and often met ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... pearls, rubies, and other precious stones which once embellished this and every other part of the edifice, were taken away by ruthless invaders of India; and their places filled by colored stones with little loss of effect. Shah Jahan's cenotaph lies unenclosed at the left, showing that it was not included in the original plan. Indeed, it had been ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... proviso of 1820. Besides, only so recently as 1849, he had said, with all the emphasis of sincerity, that the compromise had "become canonized in the hearts of the American people, as a sacred thing, which no ruthless hand would ever be reckless enough to disturb." And while he then opposed the extension of the principle to new Territories, he believed that it had been "deliberately incorporated into our legislation as a ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... idea of their numbers. The moment he saw the insignificant band he felt that they were doomed men, or else the spirit abroad was not what he thought it to be, and he had been witnessing some strong indications of its ruthless nature. ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... inexorable was that strength which controlled the world; how ruthless, in spite of smooth and compassionate words, towards those who resisted it. The Socialists were to be "repressed"; the heretic was to be tried for his life; and in all that wide world in which he lived it seemed that there ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... men Lays low his head beneath th' impending doom; In terror he descends death's awsome glen; While there appear flashing through the gloom The lurid shades of deeds which in the bloom Of youth he dared; at last the conscience cries With ruthless voice: "There's life beyond the tomb;" His dying thoughts all vanities despise As on the threshold of Eternity ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... less a hero than the Circassian chieftains, possessing a noble form, a soul of bravery, hardy, persevering, and chivalrous. He secured by his gentle treatment the respect of those tribes which submitted to his rule, and by his ruthless severity made a terrible example of those who refused to do so. Going in advance of his arms, his intrigue penetrated into the fastnesses of the mountaineers, and taking advantage of the mutual jealousy of ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... withering scorn he taunted the laboring people—told them they were fools and cowards to submit to the degrading slavery of their capitalist owners. With biting invective and blistering epithet he pictured their employer enemies as the brutal and ruthless destroyers of their homes. With thrilling eloquence he fanned the flames of class hatred, inspired the loyalty of his followers to himself and held out to them golden promises of reward if they would prove themselves men and take that which ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... those bars, unbreakable, and bent and turned them in their sockets with one heave till the five-foot spears were pointed out, and then sprang to climb. Nothing but pikes and blazing brands in a dozen ruthless hands could hold him back. The keepers watched him night and day till a stronger cage was made, impregnable with steel above and ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... no more known. The few memorials, which the ravages of time have suffered to remain of them, in those portions of the country from which they have been long expelled; have destruction dealt them by the ruthless hand of man. History may transmit to after ages, the fact that they once were, and give their "local habitation and their name." These will probably be received as the tales of fiction, and posterity be at as much loss to determine, whether they ever had an ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... fears Alarm this throbbing bosom, you will pardon A frail and tender sex. Should ruthless war Roam through our streets, and riot here in blood, Where shall the lost Euphrasia find a shelter? In vain she'll kneel, and clasp the sacred altar. O let me then, in mercy let me seek The gloomy mansion, where my father dwells; I die content, ...
— The Grecian Daughter • Arthur Murphy
... Assisi, of Subiaco, of Naples, and of Rome, and, remembering the methods by which Germany was beating and bludgeoning her way through the war, our hearts trembled and thrilled at a dreadful vision of the lovely and beloved Italian land under the heel of a ruthless aggressor—of the destruction of the history of Christendom as it had been written by great artists on canvas and by great architects in stone through the long calendar of nearly two thousand years. But we also thought of Savoy, of Palestro, of Cas-ale, of Caprera, ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... shone upon the beautiful green isle as brilliantly as if no ruthless invader had passed and laid it in ruins. The birds still chirped among the trees and the butterflies darted from flower to flower as happily as when the land was filled with ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum |
