"Wanton" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... each—the click of the cock they had heard—the finger close to the trigger they saw—they were made to mount—in momentary apprehension that the backwoodsman, whose determined character was sufficiently seen in his face, might yet change his resolve, and with wanton hand, riddle their bodies with his bullets. It was only when they were mounted, that they drew ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... superhuman power upon the person against whom they are uttered. Anathema is a solemn ecclesiastical condemnation of a person or of a proposition. Curse may be just and authoritative; as, the curse of God; or, it may be wanton and powerless: "so the curse causeless shall not come," Prov. xxvi, 2. Execration expresses most of personal bitterness and hatred; imprecation refers especially to the coming of the desired evil upon the person against whom it is uttered. Malediction is a general wish of evil, a less ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... man had it, unless it be directed to some useful end, is but a wanton, frivolous quality; all that one should value himself upon in this kind is that he had some ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... The "wanton, ragged garments of the Muse," which you abandon with strict generosity, make a show and please almost everywhere. Her sensual charm is not unknown to me; yet I think I may say that it was given me to ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... history in this light, we may justify God for many a heavy blow, and fearful judgment, which seems to the unbeliever a wanton cruelty of chance or fate; while at the same time we may feel deep sympathy with—often deep admiration for—many a noble spirit, who has been defeated, and justly defeated, by those irreversible laws of God's kingdom, of which it ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... must not be ridiculed too much for his fears. The terrors that visit childhood are not the less real and overpowering from being unreasonable; and to excite them is wanton cruelty. Moreover, he was but a little lad, and had been up and down Yew-lane both in daylight and dark without any fears, till Bully Tom's tormenting suggestions had alarmed him. Even now, as he reached the avenue of yews from which the lane took its name, and passed into their gloomy shade, ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... nearer ruin than his room. Great green stains were on the walls; plaster was lying here and there in a heap; the floors, rotted everywhere with damp, were sinking in all directions. Yet there had been no wanton destruction, for the glass in the windows was little broken. Merest neglect is all that is required to make of both man and his works a heap; for will is at the root of well-being, and nature speedily resumes what the will of man does ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... dangers of a German war. The death of Theophilus, consular of the province of Syria, who in a time of scarcity had been massacred by the people of Antioch, with the connivance, and almost at the instigation, of Gallus, was justly resented, not only as an act of wanton cruelty, but as a dangerous insult on the supreme majesty of Constantius. Two ministers of illustrious rank, Domitian the Oriental praefect, and Montius, quaestor of the palace, were empowered by a special commission * to visit and reform ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... is concerned, we are far richer than the patriarchs. But their devotion to a comparatively inferior revelation was greater; they were lovers of the bridegroom. We, on the other hand, are that fat, bloated, wanton servant, Deut 32, 15; for we have the Word and are overwhelmed by the abundance ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... break up your life in this wanton way? Who, in God's name, is injured if you keep your living? It is the business of the thinker and the scholar to clear his mind of cobwebs. Granted. You have done it. But it is also the business of the practical man to live! If I had your altruist emotional temperament, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... worser part to view— Of wanton waste and reckless gambling, What darker paths shall he pursue With sacrilegious step and shambling? What coarse defiance, haply, hurl At lights beyond his comprehension— An attitudinising churl Who struts with ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Jan. 9, 1892 • Various
... mouth to every kiss, Seeing the blossom of this bliss By gathering doth grow, certes! By Godd-es fay, by Godd-es fay! Thy brow-garland pushed all aslant Tells—but I tell not, wanton May! ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... prospect was soon to be overcast. England and France had long been at war; and, at the period of which we are treating, France had become the ruthless bandit of the land, and England the wanton pirate of the sea. Each desired the cooperation of the United States in the war—and each determined, in the event of our refusal to take part in the controversy in its favor, to cripple our commerce by all means within its reach. That commerce, fostered by our accidental position as neutrals when ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... pain that I saw, soon after I got on board the Niagara, the flag of the Lawrence come down, although I was perfectly sensible that she had been defended to the last, and that to have continued to make a show of resistance would have been a wanton sacrifice of the remains of her brave crew. But the enemy was not able to take possession of her, and circumstances soon permitted her flag again to be hoisted. At 45 minutes past 2 the signal was made for "close action." The Niagara being very ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... the people; but that if she would not, she should go before the court next day, and she might guess herself how it would fare with her, seeing that he had many witnesses to prove that she had played the wanton with Satan, and had suffered him to kiss her. Hereupon she was silent, and only sobbed, which the arch-rogue took as a good sign, and went on: "If you have had Satan himself for a sweetheart, you surely may love me." And he ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... think Du Sang was shooting him down. It was wanton. Du Sang stood in no need of the butchery; the escape could have been made without it. His victim had pulled an engine throttle too long to show the white feather, but he was dying by the time he had dragged a revolver from his pocket. Du Sang did the ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... need, madame, to pay me this last attention, so worthy of your habits. 'Au revoir, madame!'" And with a profound and mocking reverence the wanton cavalier slowly retreated, leaving Rose to sink, half fainting, into a stone seat ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... those warm evenings in the month of July, when scarcely a zephyr played upon the wanton wave, and the red sun had sunk to rest behind the Castle turrets, giving full promise of another sultry day, that our little band had attracted a more than usual display of promenaders on the walk extending from the Fort point to the Marine Hotel. With the report of the evening ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... from the careful handwriting to the horizon beyond his window. Why had he fished out the poem from its drawer? She, the writer—his child—was a wanton. ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... behind a Cheapside-Counter, and talk to her of Agues, Agonies and Agitations, when I have no more Notion of Love, than a Lawyer has of the next World: Her Estate indeed wou'd put a Man into a Conflagration, but a fine Woman is to me like a fine Race-Horse, admir'd only by Fools, very costly, very wanton, and very apt to run away—Madam, your Ladiship's incomparable Perfections, which are as much talk'd of, as if they had been publish'd in the Flying-Post, Post-Boy, and Post-Man, have stirr'd up all my Faculties to admire, ev'ry ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... the same way, people may now know what customs it is orthodox to find among ghosts, and may pretend to find them, or may simulate them by imposture. The white sheet and clanking chains are forsaken for a more realistic rendering of the ghostly part. The desire of social notoriety may beget wanton fabrications. In short, all studies have their perils, and these are among the dangers which beset the path of the inquirer into things ghostly. He must adopt the stoical maxim: "Be sober and do not believe"—in ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... fine shot, for the tiny moving thing was fully thirty yards from them and looked hardly the size of a dollar. Talbot glanced at her with startled admiration. He himself never shot except for food or other necessity, and wanton killing rather annoyed him than otherwise, but here the skill and the correctness of wrist and eye were so obvious that they compelled ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... "old Rowley, the king," led the brawls. He was young when society was most scandalously diverting. He had a pretty wife, "poor wretch," of whom he stood in some awe; and yet this inconsistent naval secretary liked to flit from flower to flower. He was vain, greedy, wanton, fond of the delight of the eye and the pride of life; he was loving and loose in his manners; he was pious, repentant, profligate; and he deliberately told the whole tale of all his many changes of mood and mistress, of piety and pleasure. One cannot ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... a tragic room, but it had never seemed that to Becky. She came of a race of men who had hunted from instinct but with a sense of honor. The Judge and those of his kind hated wanton killing. Their guns would never have swept away the feathered tribes of tree and sky. It was the trappers and the pot-hunters who had done that. There had motored once to the Judge's mansion a man and his wife who had raged at the brutes ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... while the veins of nature swell, Eternal recompense to human toil. And when the sunset's final shades depart The aspiration to completed birth Is sweet and silent; as the soft tears start, We know how wanton and how little worth Are all the passions of our bleeding heart That vex the awful patience ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... this man was wanton, and entirely unprovoked on the part of McIntire, not only from his relation of the circumstance, but from the account of those who were with him, and who bore testimony to his being unarmed, the governor determined to punish the offender, who it was understood ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... is expected to-day. I have spent my time however very agreably. I know not what the winter may be, but I am enchanted with the beauty of this country in summer; bold, picturesque, romantic, nature reigns here in all her wanton luxuriance, adorned by a thousand wild graces which mock the cultivated beauties of Europe. The scenery about the town is infinitely lovely; the prospect extensive, and diversified by a variety of hills, woods, rivers, cascades, intermingled ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... darkness which might cover any pilfering approach, nevertheless every sunrise found the doubloon where the sunset left it last. For it was set apart and sanctified to one awe-striking end; and however wanton in their sailor ways, one and all, the mariners revered it as the white whale's talisman. Sometimes they talked it over in the weary watch by night, wondering whose it was to be at last, and whether he would ever live to ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... a wanton wastrel, and he well deserves the pillory. But, Rebecca, I've a mind to see what observance these people will give the varlet. Last time I saw one pilloried, alas! they slew him with shards and paving-stones. This fellow is liker to be pelted with ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... which had reigned there had been done. There was a kind of childish spitefulness in the sword thrusts through the few pictures which hung on the walls. The German genius for destruction and wanton vandalism was evident in broken knick-knacks and mottoes of hate and bloody vengeance ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... rubber trees. This was formerly a large village, known as Hillet-el-dolape, but it has been entirely destroyed by the governor of Fashoda. After much difficulty, I induced some natives to come to me, with whom I at length made friends: they all joined in accusing the Koordi governor of wanton atrocities. ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... on April 12 by a party of Tories in the British service, commanded by Captain Lippencott, and hanged in the broad light of day on the heights near Middletown. Testimony and affidavits to the fact, which was never questioned, were duly gathered and laid before Washington. The deed was one of wanton barbarity, for which it would be difficult to find a parallel in the annals of modern warfare. The authors of this brutal murder, to our shame be it said, were of American birth, but they were fighting for the crown and wore the British uniform. England, which for generations ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... length thy pinion fluttered in Broadway,— Ah, there were fairy steps, and white necks kissed By wanton airs, and eyes whose killing ray Shone through the snowy veils like stars through mist; And fresh as morn, on many a cheek and chin, Bloomed the bright ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... social control is to be regarded, not as a necessary protection against the monopolic power of individuals, but as necessary for the security of individual property within the limits prescribed by social welfare. Modern machine-evolution, as is seen, permits and encourages the wanton invasion and destruction of forms of capital by the competition of new savings employed in an anti-social way. It likewise tends to the frequent destruction of the value of that labour power which is the sole property of the ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... that through the time of darkness went With wanton winds, now, heavy-hearted, came And fell upon the sunshine, penitent, And ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... the natives, to be friendly and give them presents, and by no means to pursue them into the wood. I suspected, indeed, that our people must have been the aggressors; but told the master, if the Indians had made a wanton attack, to bring off their canoe by way of punishment; intending myself to take such steps on the following day, as ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... and unboastful fortitudes; while the divine laws of seed-time which cannot be recalled, harvest which cannot be hastened, and winter in which no man can work, compel the impatiences and coveting of his heart into labour too submissive to be anxious, and rest too sweet to be wanton. What thought can enough comprehend the contrast between such life, and that in streets where summer and winter are only alternations of heat and cold; where snow never fell white, nor sunshine clear; where the ground is only a pavement, and the sky no more than the glass roof of an arcade; ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... sword and thrust it through the unfortunate lord. The barbarism of the times is most shockingly displayed in the brutal manner in which he treats the dead body; but for the honour of the Danish prince, we must suppose that it was not merely a wanton act, but done the more decidedly to convince the king, when the strange situation of the corpse was seen, how absolutely he must be divested of reason. Being assured he was now alone with his mother, in a most awful manner he turns ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various
... blood. Alas! and in my parent's heart—the old, the blind, and hardly fed, In the wild wood, hath pierced the dart—that here hath struck their offspring dead. Ah, deed most profitless as worst—a deed of wanton useless guilt; As though a pupil's hand accurs'd[146]—his holy master's blood had spilt. But not mine own untimely fate—it is not that which I deplore, My blind, my aged parents state—'tis their distress afflicts me more. That sightless pair, for many a day—from me their scanty food have earned, ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... make puns are like wanton boys that put coppers on the railroad tracks. They amuse themselves and other children, but their little trick may upset a freight train of conversation for the sake of a ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... bringing. What dreams beguile you on your poet's height? What puts a full house in a merry mood? More closely view your patrons of the night! The half are cold, the half are rude. One, the play over, craves a game of cards; Another a wild night in wanton joy would spend. Poor fools the muses' fair regards. Why court for such a paltry end? I tell you, give them more, still more, 'tis all I ask, Thus you will ne'er stray widely from the goal; Your audience seek to mystify, cajole;— To satisfy them—that's a harder task. What ails thee? ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... He committed these extravagances, he would say, in order to irritate his audience into a condition of mental alertness. As a matter of fact, he generally made his readers more sorry than angry, and he did not realise that even if he had been successful it was but a poor reward for the wanton spoiling of much good work. He proclaimed himself to be above criticism, but he was only too often beneath it. Revolting against the dignity, not infrequently pompous, of his fellow-men of letters, he played the part of clown with more enthusiasm than skill. It is intellectual arrogance in a clever ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... distinction pertaining to old Sherwood, perhaps the most famous, and certainly the least picturesque, is the "Parliament Oak", which may be seen to the right of the Mansfield road as it approaches Edwinstowe. To this venerable ruin, which an iron palisading protects from wanton hands, clings the tradition that Parliaments of King John and Edward the First met under its shade, the last in October, 1290. Queen Eleanor was ill—she died in the following month at Harby near Lincoln—and thence was made the most notable ...
— The Dukeries • R. Murray Gilchrist
... to us to see the whole system of civil authority in the province, yielding to this most dangerous power; and at the very time when the interposition of the civil magistrate was of the most pressing necessity, to check the wanton and bloody career of the military, the Lieutenant-Governor himself declared, as Governor Bernard had before, that "he had no authority over the King's troops in the province," and his Majesty's representative in Council became an humble supplicant ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... and must be considered to imply a real cruelty of disposition, such as is observable in Sargon and Asshur-bani-pal. Nebuchadnezzar, it is plain, was not content with such a measure of severity as was needed to secure his own interests, but took a pleasure in the wanton infliction of suffering on those ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... of loving care on every detail, the monuments of architecture belonging to the earlier Renaissance have a poetry that compensates for structural defects; just as its wildest literary extravagances—the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, for instance—have a charm of wanton fancy and young joy that atones to sympathetic students for ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... rending and crushing those who cross their path. Destruction and waste, greed and lust mark their course." When a house is not prepared against their coming, "by chimney and door alike they swarm in, and make havoc of the home; in sheer wanton mischief they overturn and break all the furniture, devour the Christmas pork, befoul all the water and wine and food which remains, and leave the occupants half dead with fright or violence." Many like or far worse pranks do they play, until ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... unfaithfulness. Yet shall they not with him take But of wilful heart his liberal grace forsake. Which will compel me against man for to make In my displeasure, and send plagues of correction Most grievous and sharp, his wanton lusts to slake, By water and fire, by sickness and infection Of pestilent sores, molesting his complexion; By troublous war, by dearth and painful scarceness, And after this life by an extreme heaviness. I will first begin with Adam for his lewdness ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... troops of memories, each one a fiend with a whip of fire; the words of anger that he had spoken, the acts of cruelty that he had done! The times when he had made her weep, and had not comforted her! Oh, what a fool he had been—what a blind and wanton fool! And now—if he were to find her dead, and never be able to tell her of his shame and sorrow—he knew that he would carry the memories with him all his days, they would be like blazing scars upon ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... Abolitionist, and his father, as a Henry Clay Whig, had both been opposed to the annexation of Texas (which the boy heard talked of without knowing in the least what annexation meant), and they were both of the mind that the war growing out of it was wanton and wicked. His father wrote against it in every number of his paper, and made himself hated among its friends, who were the large majority in the Boy's Town. My boy could not help feeling that his father was little better than a Mexican, and whilst his filial love was hurt ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... a house could have escaped. But it was the lesson, not the loss, that told. As it was, enough damage had been done to demonstrate—as Paul had declared to the wise man of Paris—that the disasters caused by the wanton fires and assaults on the American coasts, could be easily brought home to the enemy's doors. Though, indeed, if the retaliators were headed by Paul Jones, the satisfaction would not be equal to the insult, being ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... fingers. "She has enchanted him with her glamour. Foul is fair! Foul fair thee, young springal, if thou go to the nets. Shadow and goblin to goblin and shadow! Flesh and blood to blood and flesh!"—and dancing round him, with wanton looks and bare arms, and gossamer robes that brushed him as ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... congratulation that Congress and the country had the virtue and firmness to bear the infliction, that the energies of our people soon found relief from this wanton tyranny in vast importations of the precious metals from almost every part of the world, and that at the close of this tremendous effort to control our Government the bank found itself powerless and no longer able to loan out its ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... draperies that had been hurriedly tossed down in the hall: it was an old army-blanket. She wrapped it round her, and went out on the verandah. It was nine o'clock; but the darkness was filled with light. A great wanton wind—the ghost of the raw blast which travels by day—had arisen, bearing long, soft gusts of inland spring. Scattered clouds were hurrying across the white sky. The bright moon, careering in their midst, seemed to have wandered forth in frantic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... varlet! I say let him not come near my doors. I say, he is a wanton young Levite, and pampereth himself up with dainties, that he may look lovely in the eyes of women. Sincerely, I am afraid he hath already defiled the tabernacle of our sister Comfort; while her good husband is deluded by his godly appearance. I say that even lust doth sparkle ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... tell you is a perfect lady, a nice, innercent young thing, and when the feller she's engaged to calls 'er an 'approved wanton,' you naturally claps yer 'ands to yer swords. A wanton is a kind of—well, you know she ain't what she ought ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... Hague, on conclusion of the Truce, to defray expenses incurred by them for board and lodging of servants, forage of horses, and the like-which had accidentally stopped at Barneveld's door and was forthwith sent on to John Spronssen, superintendent of such affairs. Passing over this wanton bit of calumny with disgust, he solemnly asserted that he had never at any period of his life received one penny nor the value of one penny from the King of Spain, the Archdukes, Spinola, or any other person connected with ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... sexual "brutality" is at all common, and even there it is chiefly the result of ignorance. If we go as low as the insects, who have been disciplined by no family life, and are generally counted as careless and wanton, we may sometimes find this attitude towards the female fully developed, and the extreme consideration of the male for the female whom yet he holds firmly beneath him, the tender preliminaries, the extremely gradual approach to the supreme sexual ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... effect on the public mind which can not be described. General Sherman had heard of the assassination when the capitulation was made, and could not have been ignorant of the feeling it had aroused. On the face of the proceeding his action seemed a wanton betrayal of the country to its enemies; but when this betrayal followed so swiftly the frightful tragedy which was then believed to have been instigated by the Confederate authorities, the patience of the people became perfectly exhausted. ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... pleasant diversions. The dislike of the "commoners" to the work of the "participants" led to frequent riots, and many of Vermuyden's Flemings were maltreated. He endeavoured to allay discontent by employing local labour at high wages; and was courageous enough to pursue his task despite loss of money, wanton destruction, and many other discouragements.* (* See Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, for 1619, 1623, 1625, 1638, 1639 et seq; and White's Lincolnshire page 542.) Ebullitions of discontent on the part of fractious ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... man learneth, so much the better doth he become, and so much the more love doth he win for the arts and for things exalted. Wherefore a man ought not to play the wanton, ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... especially the lower classes, greedy for spoil, sacked and destroyed their houses, and pulled down and burned their towers and palaces with such outrageous fury, that the most cruel enemy of the Florentine name would have been ashamed of taking part in such wanton destruction. ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... you that I have written two noble and excellent plays setting forth the advancement of women of high nature and fruitful industry even as your Majesty is: the one a skilful physician, the other a sister devoted to good works. I have also stole from a book of idle wanton tales two of the most damnable foolishnesses in the world, in the one of which a woman goeth in man's attire and maketh impudent love to her swain, who pleaseth the groundlings by overthrowing a wrestler; whilst, in the other, one of the same kidney ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... beams of theological moonshine, fantastical catechism-making, intermingled with scenes of riot and wantonness, which drove old John of Nassau half frantic; with banquetting and guzzling, drinking and devouring, with unchristian flaunting and wastefulness of apparel, with extravagant and wanton dancing, and other lewd abominations; all which, the firm old reformer prophesied, would lead ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... over me for wanton lying. I remember how I sneaked home and upstairs to hide the marks of my blubbering. But when I cried myself to sleep at last it wasn't for Carnaby, but for the garden, for the beautiful afternoon I had hoped for, for the sweet friendly women and the waiting playfellows, ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... past twelve all was over, and "The Bower" stripped of every article of furniture or consumption for which the money was owing. And yet, to the honour of Troy, no single theft or act of wanton destruction was perpetrated. Save for the trampled flowers and marks of dusty boots upon the carpets, the house was left as it stood on the day when Mr. and Mrs. Goodwyn-Sandys arrived. It should be mentioned, perhaps, that Seth Udy's little boy was detected with his fist in a jar ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... had a fair companion of his way, A goodly Lady clad in scarlet red, Purfled with gold and pearl of rich assay, And like a Persian mitre on her head She wore, with crowns and riches garnished, The which her lavish lovers to her gave; Her wanton palfrey all was overspread With tinsell trappings, woven like a wave, Whose bridle rang with golden bells and ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... Through the wanton breath of the depths that assail me I see, far below, the seashore dawning. The ghostly strand that I glimpse while I cling to my own body is bare, endless, rain-drowned, and supernaturally mournful. Through the long, heavy and concentric mists that the clouds make, my eyes go searching. On the shore ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... beauty hath enchanted heaven; And, had she liv'd before the siege of Troy, Helen, whose beauty summon'd Greece to arms, And drew a thousand ships to Tenedos, Had not been nam'd in Homer's Iliads,— Her name had been in every line he wrote; Or, had those wanton poets, for whose birth Old Rome was proud, but gaz'd a while on her, Nor Lesbia nor Corinna had been nam'd,— Zenocrate had been the argument Of every epigram or elegy. [The music sounds—ZENOCRATE dies.] What, is she dead? Techelles, ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... not intentional, nor extending to life or limb, a mere accidental hurt, for which the injurer is to pay a sum of money; and yet our translators employ the same phraseology in both places. One, an instance of deliberate, wanton, killing by piecemeal. The other and accidental, and comparatively slight injury—of the inflicter, in both cases, they say the same thing! "He shall surely be punished." Now, just the difference which common ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Twirling-stick Mike to repent him suddenly of his wanton cruelty. The scoffing words of the dwarf rang in his ears, and he felt by no means easy. To make what amends he might to the deceased, he had him sumptuously buried at his own expense, with funeral oration, psalms, prayer, and benediction; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... nuns, to the number of eleven or twelve, including three lay sisters, also possessed, into the choir of the said church, accompanied by a great many monks, Carmelites, Capuchins, and Franciscans; and by three physicians and a surgeon. The sisters on entering made some wanton remarks, calling Grandier their master, and exhibiting great ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... he dealt with the occasional outbreaks in the college was very interesting. If it was a case of wanton defiance of the habitual order, there was a very slight probability of its being overlooked. A favorite prank of the stealing of the college bell was invariably punished, first by having a hand-bell rung a little earlier ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... laughed, and Hortense demanded if I had as much skill with the lyre as with the sword. She had heard that I was much given to chanting vain airs and wanton songs, ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... hospitable times, and so sweetly environed with those delicious streams and venerable woods, as in the judgment of Strangers as well as Englishmen it may be compared to one of the most tempting and pleasant Seats in the Nation, and most tempting for a great person and a wanton purse to render it conspicuous. It has rising grounds, meadows, woods, and water in abundance. The distance from London (is) little more than 20 miles, and yet (it is) so securely placed as if it were 100; three miles from Dorking, which serves it abundantly with ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... feel what we think, without balancing and comparing. It's a great rest, too, and a great luxury. That, as I say, was the case with the feeling excited in me by this happy idea of Ambrose Tester's. Cruel and wanton I thought it then, cruel and wanton I thought it later, when it was pressed upon me. I knew there were many other people that did n't agree with me, and I can only hope for them that their conviction was as quick and positive ...
— The Path Of Duty • Henry James
... by the Indians, Thomas Bosomworth at last repented of his folly. He wrote to the president and council, apologizing for his wanton conduct. He acknowledged the title of his wife to be groundless, and relinquished all claim to the lands of the Province. Though his offense had been serious, the colonists pardoned him, and thus ended the career of Coosaponakesee as ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... How noble to set the daring example of living up to the belief in peace! Will we say: "See our hands; we bear no bludgeons. Search us; we carry no concealed weapons. Militarism we have thrown to the scrap heap of practices discredited and vicious. We have stopped war's wanton waste of men and treasure; we rejoice in the growing wealth of peace ideals realized"? Thus shall we speed the steadily growing public opinion of the world, to the bar of which must finally come every nation which does aught to break or hinder the ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... 'Susanna,' Act III, Sc. 4: Having been menaced with death by the wanton judges, Susanna tells her father, mother, and ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... her messenger was treated with courtesy only because he represented a lady, and that, had he come from a king, the language with which he would have been greeted would have befitted the perfidy manifested on the occasion. God would punish this shameless violation of faith, and this wanton interruption to the friendship of two great nations. With this the herald was dismissed from the royal presence, but treated with great distinction, conducted to the hotel of the English ambassador, and presented, on the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... I seek the shades, I presently do see The god of love forsake his bow and sit me by; If that I think to write, his Muses pliant be; If so I plain my grief, the wanton boy will cry. If I lament his pride, he doth increase my pain If tears my cheeks attaint, his cheeks are moist with moan If I disclose the wounds the which my heart hath slain, He takes his fascia off, and wipes ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... abhorrent to the generous sympathies of the whole American people. Every possible kindness compatible with the necessity of removal must therefore be shown by the troops; and if in the ranks a despicable individual should be found capable of inflicting a wanton injury or insult on any Cherokee man, woman, or child, it is hereby made the special duty of the nearest good officer or man instantly to interpose, and to seize and consign the guilty wretch to the severest penalty of the laws. The major ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... greater actress than a singer; and she had been advised to dispense with her voice and challenge a verdict on her speaking voice in one of Shakespeare's plays. Owen would have liked her to risk the adventure, but she dared not. It would seem a wanton insult to her voice. She had imagined that it might leave her as an offended spirit might leave its local habitation. Her Margaret had been accepted in Italy, so she must sing it as well as she acted it. But when she had asked the Marquis d'Albazzi if she ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... regain her into your keeping, cast her to infamy and vice—never, never! She is now with no powerless, miserable convict, for whom Law has no respect. She is now no helpless infant without a choice, without a will. She is safe from all, save the wanton, unprofitable effort to disgrace her. O Jasper, Jasper, be human—she is so delicate of frame—she is so sensitive to reproach, so tremulously alive to honour—I am not fit to be near her now. I have been a tricksome, shifty ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... delivered with an air of amorous despotism, flattered my vanity. I made up my mind to submit gaily, called her wanton, and said I was not worth the pains she was taking ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... gem-surpassing eyes, Outsparkling every star that gilds the skies. Necks whiter than the iv'ry arm bestow'd 60 By Jove on Pelops, or the Milky Road! Bright locks, Love's golden snares, these falling low, Those playing wanton o'er the graceful brow! Cheeks too, more winning sweet than after show'r, Adonis turn'd to Flora's fav'rite flow'r! Yield, Heroines, yield, and ye who shar'd th'embrace Of Jupiter in ancient times, give place; Give place ye turban'd Fair of Persia's coast, And ye, not less ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... contributes to the enjoyments in which they themselves participate. In England, where wealth has a monopoly of amusement as well as of power, complaints are made that whenever the poor happen to steal into the enclosures which are reserved for the pleasures of the rich, they commit acts of wanton mischief: can this be wondered at, since care has been taken that they should ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... parents are sorry they have neglected their education, bemoaning bitterly when it is too late their sons' debasement. For some of them keep flatterers and parasites in their retinue—an accursed set of wretches, the defilers and pest of youth; others keep mistresses and common prostitutes, wanton and costly; others waste their money in eating; others come to grief through dice and revelling; some even go in for bolder profligacy, being whoremongers and defilers of the marriage bed,[14] who ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... time Ja-khaz was on his feet again, purple with rage. With uplifted scimitar he sprang toward our host. The old man stepped between. Ja-khaz, with wanton cruelty, brought his steel upon the ancient head, and stretched him upon the floor. For an instant the younger one stood horror-stricken, then snatching from the floor the patriarch's staff—a heavy stick with an iron end—he jumped forward, and, ...
— The Last American - A Fragment from The Journal of KHAN-LI, Prince of - Dimph-Yoo-Chur and Admiral in the Persian Navy • J. A. Mitchell
... of those days, which seem to be credible, state that he floated down the Dnieper with ten thousand barges, and spread his sails upon the waves of the Euxine. Entering the Bosporus, he landed on both shores of that beautiful strait, and, with the most wanton barbarity, ravaged the country far and near, massacring the inhabitants, pillaging the towns and committing all the buildings ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... especially to notice that a separate tower or range of apartments was built for this purpose, in order to clear the government of the accusations so constantly made against them, by ignorant or partial historians, of wanton cruelty to prisoners. The stories commonly told respecting the "piombi" of the Ducal Palace are utterly false. Instead of being, as usually reported, small furnaces under the leads of the palace, they were comfortable rooms, with good flat roofs of larch, and carefully ventilated. [Footnote: ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... that single, exceptional, but upon the whole sufficiently well attested cases of malarial trouble have been known. But they were always brought from abroad, probably from that losel Yankee-land from which most of the woe of New York has proceeded. While, therefore, it is a wanton calumny—and the corroboration of all suburban property-holders is invited to the statement—to assert that any portion of the neighborhood of New York, or of any other great city, let it be Philadelphia, Chicago, or St. Louis, Boston, Baltimore, or Savannah, is subject to malaria, or is otherwise ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... quaking earth was in little better case. Only was the scene here in closer touch with human understanding. Here the terror was of earth, here disaster was of human making. Here the rack of heart was in destruction by wanton fire. Shrieking, hissing, crackling, only insignificant by comparison with the war of the greater elements, flames licked up and devoured with ravening appetites the tinder-like structures of ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... sea, to sea! the calm is o'er; The wanton water leaps in sport, And rattles down the pebbly shore; The dolphin wheels, the sea-cows snort, And unseen Mermaids' pearly song Comes bubbling up, the weeds among. Fling broad the sail, dip deep the oar: To sea, to ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... may take it, in kind, from the lawless and ruthless savagery which characterizes the warfare of the Teutons against the Entente Powers. A civilizing mute would deaden the resonance of bestial passion; and even private property—in especial that of Germany—would be safe from confiscation and wanton destruction, and when peace is restored the rich mercury mines of Italy will again belong to the Kaiser and his advisers. Last summer[30] a series of private meetings was held for three days running ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... she was, she stole Edith's former recklessness, and added to it something of her own dash and verve. Lethway, standing in the wings, knew she was not and never would be Edith. She was not fine enough. Edith at her best had frolicked. Mabel romped, was almost wanton. He cut out the string music at the final rehearsal. It did ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... posterity (in spite of all palliatives) as one whose example, if followed, would be attended with the most pernicious consequences to society: a female who could brave the opinion of the world in the most delicate point; a philosophical wanton, breaking down the bars designed to restrain licentiousness; and a mother, deserting a helpless offspring disgracefully brought into the world by herself, by an intended act of suicide." Here follows a short sketch of the incidents recorded by Godwin, and then the article ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... on earth could he have put perfect confidence. He regarded them as born to perpetual pupilage. Not that their inclinations were necessarily wanton; they were simply incapable of attaining maturity, remained throughout their life imperfect beings, at the mercy of craft, ever liable to be misled by childish misconceptions. Of course he was right; he himself represented the guardian ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... imagination heated, and his passions roused. The next morning he rises. He remembers what he has seen and heard, the scenery, the language, the sentiments, the action. He continues in the same excited state for the remainder of the day. The extravagant passions of distracted lovers, the wanton addresses of actors, are still fresh upon his mind. Now it is contended by the Quakers, that a person in such an excited state, but particularly if the excitement pleases, must be in a very unfavourable ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... Master Nicholas came home sooner than he was expected. He found the bolt drawn, and heard his wife on the other side of the door exclaiming, 'My heart! my angel! my love!' Then suspecting that she was shut up with a gallant, he struck great blows upon the door and began to shout 'Slut! hussy! wanton! open so that I may cut off your nose and ears!' In this peril, the jeweller's wife besought St. Orberosia, and vowed her a large candle if she helped her and the little page, who was dying of fear beside the bed, ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... however, that the author of those statements did not contemplate that reliable parties[29] would see the Donner camps before prowling beasts, or time and elements, had destroyed all proof of his own and his party's wanton falsity. ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... and falls into an apologetic tone; it was Electra's father who, by his injustice to Iphigenia, was the real cause of Electra's trouble. This leads to the usual judicial disputation: Clyt. pleading that this sacrifice of her daughter was done not for a good cause, but for the wanton Helen; this sacrifice she had avenged, and to avenge it must join an enemy, not a friend, of Agamemnon.—Electra, getting permission, replies: Helen was not the only wanton one of her family; if no motive but vengeance, why begin to adorn as soon as Agamemnon was out of the way, why rejoice ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... all! Can it be that Thou disdainest Only man? 'Gainst him, poor thrall, Wanton Fortune plays her vainest. Guilt's deserved punishment Falleth on the innocent; High uplifted, the profanest On the ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... husband get up and go out of the room; his steps sounded going upstairs, in the direction of his study. She went and drew the chair up to the hearthrug, and sat down, resting her elbows on the arms and holding her head between her hands. It was very wanton that a chance allusion of his should have brought about this scene between them. Perhaps she could have put him off with excuses, but that had not occurred to her. The scene had told her nothing new, but it had torn away the last of the veil from before ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... his mercy towards repentant women who washed his feet with their tears might not be taken as softness towards sin, came back from heaven to say in the Book of Revelation, that he will "cast into great tribulation" and "kill with death" wanton women and the men who visit them. Of these iniquities the compassionate Redeemer says, "Which things I also hate." Rulers cannot claim any consent or condonement of their regulation of vice from the Head of all human ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... a promise of Racy vintage rare as love)— With his merry, wanton air, Mirth and vanity and folly Why should he be made to bear Burden of some melancholy Song that swoons and sinks with care? Cease to call him sad or sober,— He's ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... believed at the time, that the Kuklux were banded together for serious mischief; although, as I afterward learned, a plot was laid, in those days, by the Randolph county Kuklux, to take Mr. Bulla out and whip him. Had this been done it would have been a wanton outrage. Mr. Bulla never knew of the plan. The scheme was prevented by the interference of a mere youth, Tom Worth, from whom ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... gold, The organ, in whose tones the ocean rolled, The crypts, of mighty shades the dwelling places, The Virgin's gentle hands, the Saints' pure faces, All, even the pardoning hands of Christ the Lord Were struck and broken by the wanton ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Smolensk, things were even worse as they left the ruined town behind them and resumed their journey towards Moscow. It seemed that the hatred with which they were regarded by the Russian peasantry was now even more than reciprocated. The destruction they committed was wanton and wholesale; the villages, and even the towns, were burnt down, and the whole country made desolate. It was nothing to them that by so doing they added enormously to the difficulties of their own commissariat; nothing that they were destroying the places where ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... time she cast on her brother a look so wanton that the young man blushed under it: but as at the moment he had to think of other things than his illicit loves, he ordered that four servants should be awakened; and while they were getting armed to accompany him, ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... man never marry, nor have children, What takes that from him? Only the bare name Of being a father, or the weak delight To see the little wanton ride a-cock-horse Upon a painted stick, or hear him chatter Like ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... General Stoessel wrote to his Imperial Master: "Great Sovereign, pardon us! We have done everything humanly possible. Judge us, but be merciful!" He then goes on to state the conditions which would make further resistance a wanton sacrifice of the lives of ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... disposition was a shade more gentle than that of his companions, felt certain qualms of compassion, as he looked upon this exhibition of feelings and affections that appeared almost human. Ivan was even touched; and certainly neither he nor his brother would have slain these creatures out of mere wanton sport. They would not have thought of such a thing under ordinary circumstances; and it was only from the necessity they were under of procuring the skin that they thought of it at all. Perhaps they would even have passed this group; and taken their chances of finding another, ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... being, like a whirlwind, caught me up and bore me away into a large room, where he made himself visible to my eyes in human form, appearing like a young man whose beard is just growing, with a face of indescribable beauty, but austere, not wanton. He bade me look around the room, and said: "The crowd of men thou seest in this place are all those who up to this day have been born and afterwards have died upon the earth." Thereupon I asked him why he brought me hither, and he answered: "Come with me and thou shalt ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... burned to the ground vengefully with incendiary bombs, as at Sermaize-les-Bains, where of nine hundred buildings less than forty were left standing after the Germans retreated. These instances are the saddest of all because so wanton! There was scarcely a single collection of houses in that fifty miles which I traversed which did not bear its ugly scar of fire and shell, scarcely a farmhouse that was not crumbled or peppered with machine-gun bullets. Miles of desolation ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... cushions and rich carpets, on which sat the ladies; and on the second, their slaves behind them, but without any distinction of rank by their dress, all being in the state of nature, that is, in plain English, stark naked, without any beauty or defect concealed. Yet there was not the least wanton smile or immodest gesture amongst them. They walked and moved with the same majestic grace, which Milton describes our general mother with. There were many amongst them, as exactly proportioned as ever any goddess ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... a wide range; they were willing to eat almost anything that they could shoot, even blackbirds, which were so abundant and so easy to shoot. But there were some things which they would have thought it not only wanton but wicked to kill, like turtle-doves, which they somehow believed were sacred, nor robins either, because robins were hallowed by poetry, and they kept about the house, and were almost tame, so that it seemed a shame to shoot them. They were ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... They got possession of the symbols of imperial power, the garment and the staff of Mahomet, and proceeded to make and unmake Caliphs at their pleasure. In the course of four years they had elevated, deposed, and murdered as many as three. At their wanton caprice, they made these successors of the false prophet the sport of their insults and their blows. They dragged them by the feet, stripped them, and exposed them to the burning sun, beat them with iron clubs, and left them for days without food. At length, however, the people of Bagdad were ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... biting her words before she foamed them from her, "if you weren't a daughter of mine, I'd—I'd say you were a wanton woman. You know in your heart, as your father always taught you—as you could read in the Bible now—if you ever do read your Bible—that the sins of the fathers, yes, and the mothers too, will fall on the children until the ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... but all the while I was nearly a beggar. Perhaps you thought I was playing the piano—yes, and teaching Rosie—for my amusement; perhaps you thought I sat up writing half the night out of—sleeplessness," he smiled at the phrase, "or a wanton desire to burn Mrs. Leadbatter's gas. No, Mary Ann, I have to get my own living by hard work—by good work if I can, by bad work if I must—but always by hard work. While you will have fifteen thousand pounds a year, I shall be glad, overjoyed, to get ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... sentiment might throw her into his power; or possibly he hoped to make my addresses the means of separating her from the real object of her attachment, without contemplating a farther result, and thus the same wanton selfishness which rendered him regardless of every tie of moral feeling towards Theresa, led him to prepare a life of misery and dishonour for his early friend ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... six years before—the town from which his family had originally come. Her memory worked rapidly, constructing the story. The blood dyed her face at the thought of her obtuseness. Then she set her lips firmly. She had done her best; if a wanton fate chose to interfere now and make Millicent slave to the phantom of her early, radiant love, she, Anna, could ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... a new nationality was forced on the Colonies by wanton aggressions on the local self-government. There was far from unanimity of opinion as to the acts, much less as to the ascribed purposes of the Ministry. Setting aside a class of no-party men in peace ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... born;" that he then lay down on his bed in a state of stupor, and that Judith, taking advantage of his torpid condition, "approached" and cut off his head at her leisure with his own "fauchion." The decency of this arrangement is easily apparent; it obviated the necessity for wanton allurements on the part of Judith and amorous advances on the side of the Commander-in-Chief. Incidentally it is more reasonable to assume that so virile a warrior would yield to nothing short of intoxication than that he would be persuaded, while still remaining sober, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... of Phil. Backus, an auctioneer of considerable prominence in mercantile and social circles. Rod. Backus had shot dead a man whose face he had never seen until the moment before he shot him, a dozen paces distant. It was in Stout's alley. It was a murder, a wanton murder, without provocation, excuse, extenuation or palliation whatever. Rod. Backus was a frequent visitor at a house of the demi-monde in the alley, and one Jennie French was his favorite. As he came to visit her one evening, at dusk, she was standing ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara
... thing to say, but let it goe: The Sunne is in the heauen, and the proud day, Attended with the pleasure of the world, Is all too wanton, and too full of gawdes To giue me audience: If the midnight bell Did with his yron tongue, and brazen mouth Sound on into the drowzie race of night, If this same were a Churchyard where we stand, And thou possessed ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... exceedingly useful in destroying insects. So of toads and bats. No one should ever be wantonly killed. Boys, old or young, should never be allowed to shoot birds, or disturb their nests, only as they would domestic fowls, for actual use. A wanton recklessness is exhibited about our cities and villages, in killing off small birds, that are of no use after they are dead. Living, they are valuable to every garden and fruit-orchard. In every state, stringent laws should be made and enforced against their destruction. Even the crow, without ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... great that we could not sufficiently resist it without ruin and harm to the natural life. For, as has been said, in the practice of fasting, watching and labor, we are not to look upon the works in themselves, not on the days, not on the number, not on the food, but only on the wanton and lustful Adam, that through them he may be cured of his ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther
... against men or women, and learn very little about them. You may decide that a lady is good-tempered, when any amount of trampling on the skirt of her new silk dress brings no cloud to her brow. But is it good temper, or only wanton carelessness, which cares nothing for waste? You can see that a man is not a gentleman who squares his back to ladies at the supper-table, and devours boned turkey and pate de fois gras, while they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... judicial functionaries. It will readily be understood that by connecting the censorship of the laws with the private interests of members of the community, and by intimately uniting the prosecution of the law with the prosecution of an individual, legislation is protected from wanton assailants, and from the daily aggressions of party spirit. The errors of the legislator are exposed whenever their evil consequences are most felt, and it is always a positive and appreciable fact which serves as ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... this wanton waste were terrible. Five of the boys died, and after several days, when Burnham found water in abundance, the tongues of the others were so swollen that their ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... Siddons's was empty air, on pain of instant death enforces silence from a man unable for his life to utter a single word; and after pulling off all the bed-clothes, and then clothing you with curses, the ruffians, whose accent betrays them to be Irishmen, inflict upon you divers wanton wounds with a blunt instrument, probably a crow-bar—swearing by Satan and all his saints, that if you stir an inch of your body before daybreak, they will instantly return, cut your throat, knock out your brains, sack you, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... less fortunate the man who falls to-day. Not all the wealth in the world shall purchase him a monument so glorious. At the right instant I will strike the keynote of the paean; then, with an invocation to the God of battle, (9) and in return for the wanton insults they put upon us, let us with one accord wreak vengeance ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... some powerful cause had not blinded and misled them; this cause was their mythology, which, peopling the universe with graceful phantoms, robbed creation of its solemnity, of its sublime repose. Christianity came—and fauns, satyrs, and wanton nymphs disappeared; the grottos regained their holy silence; the dim woods their mystic reveries; the vast forests their vague and sublime melancholy; the streams overturned their petty urns to drink only from the mountain tops, to pour ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... was typical of France itself, which was harried by human wolves intent on rapine and wanton plunder. There were great schools of theology, but the students who attended them fought and slashed one another. If a man's life was threatened he must protect it by his own strength or by gathering about him a band of friends. ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... fees, Will have twa ells beneath their knees. Kittock that cleckit[153] was yestreen, The morn, will counterfeit the queen: And Moorland Meg, that milked the yowes, Claggit with clay aboon the hows,[154] In barn nor byre she will not bide, Without her kirtle tail be syde. In burghs, wanton burgess wives Wha may have sydest tailis strives, Weel bordered with velvet fine, But followand them it is ane pyne: In summer, when the streetis dries, They raise the dust aboon the skies; Nane may gae near them at their ...
— English Satires • Various
... way of a joke, put powder into a pipe which the beneficiary was accustomed to smoke and covered it with tobacco, so that when he lighted it the powder exploded and injured his eyes. The report of the Senate committee states that it does not appear that "any notice was taken of this wanton ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... struggling clouds repel the rising ray. Yet nought disturb'd my unprophetic soul; Resign'd to joy, impatient of control, I seem'd new-born: Creative Hope again Restored the sense of pleasure, and of pain; Tumultuous transport, now no more suppressed, Shone from my eyes, and wanton'd in my breast. ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... of a contemplative man I had made no mention of your rivers as delightsome places where our noble art might be carried to a brave perfection, but indeed in that day when I wrote—more years ago than I like to think on—your far country was esteemed a wild and wanton land. Some worthy Pennsylvania anglers with whom I have fished this water of Styx have even told me of thirty and forty-inch trouts they have brought to basket in that same Pocono stream, from the which fables I know that the manners of our ancient sport have altered not a whit. ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... acted foolishly. But for mercy's sake, father, don't desert me, if I have done wrong in my folly. Wanton desires possessed me, and I couldn't control my eyes, I was induced to do what I am now ashamed of doing." Well, prudence then, rather than shame now, would have been ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... proof?" urged the Notary seriously, for the other's voice had been so well masked that he did not catch its satire. "But see my peril, and mark the ground of my interest in this poor wanton! Yet a woman—a woman-frail creatures, as we know, and to be pitied, not made more pitiable by the stronger sex. . . . But, see now! Why should I have perilled mine own conjugal peace, given ground for suspicion even—for I am unfortunate, unfortunate in ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... "Enough of this wanton folly," she said with a touch of sternness. "Listen, Holly. Thou art a good and honest man, and I fain would spare thee; but, oh! it is so hard for woman to be merciful. I have said I am not for thee, therefore let thy thoughts pass by me like an idle wind, ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... ceased its thundering. On both sides there was still a vigilant guard kept up; the sentinels bristled the walls of Baza with their lances, and the guards patrolled the Christian camp, but there was no sallying forth to skirmish nor any wanton violence ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... and it must have been beautiful before the luxuriant forest was felled for fuel, and the land was burnt for plantations which were never planted. A few noble trees linger beside and behind the lighthouse, filling one with regret for the wanton destruction of their kind. Lighthouse Hillock, which commands the approach to the port, and which would sweep the waters as far as the Sa Leone River, will be provided with powerful batteries before the next maritime war. And we must not forget that ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... rue Saint-Honore, Paris, towards the end of the eighteenth century; about 1793 she took in hand the amorous education of Cesar Birotteau, the little Tourraine peasant just employed by the Ragons as errand-boy. Ill-natured, wanton, wheedling, dishonest, selfish and given to drink, Ursule did not suit the candid Cesar, whom she abandoned, moreover, two years later, for a young Picardie rebel, who owned a few acres of land. He found concealment in Paris, and let her ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe |
