"Callous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been described in a previous chapter, was one of those who died in a sense of guilt and terror. His was a nature of some sensitiveness, not callous like that of Boone Helm. Plummer begged for life on any terms, asked the Vigilantes to cut off his ears and hands and tongue, anything to mark him and leave him helpless, but to leave him alive. He protested that he was too wicked to die, fell on his knees, cried aloud, promised, besought. ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... of callous indifference pervaded all that he said and did; and making a gesture to Kornicker, forbidding all farther remark, he threw himself on the bed, and drew the clothes about his head, as if determined to shut out ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... during my stay in America I was continually attacked in the American Jewish papers as the callous denier of the Jews. It was nonsense, as is most of that which appears in print, but it proves at least that it is not on behalf of my blood but on behalf of my mind that I speak on this occasion. My sympathy is not with the Jews as Jews, but ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... torture upon their deserted islets. For here, many a hapless political prisoner languished for years in abject misery, a prey to the heat and glare of summer and to the fierce gales of bitter winter nights. Rock-cut steps and ruined towers still remain as mementoes of those dark days, when callous human gaolers worthily filled the places of the absent Sirens. It was in a chamber of yonder turret, still standing, that the Doge Mansone II., blinded by a brother's vengeance, dragged out years of utter misery in pain and darkness, until the ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... But, for myself, I have grown callous to all such allusions. The repetition of the Scriptural phrase for the natural term of life is so frequent that it wears ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... school; in the gulches, and on the street corners. And upon the last day of the memorable period to which legal action under the Gilson will was limited, the sun went down upon a region in which the moral sense was dead, the social conscience callous, the intellectual capacity dwarfed, enfeebled, and confused! But Mr. Brentshaw was victorious all along ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... old kingdom entirely vanish in later copies, while others appear which are obviously late in origin. The incessant adding of notes, incorporation of glosses, and piling of explanations one on the other, has increased the confusion. And to add to our bewilderment, the scribes were usually quite callous about errors in a writing which was never to be seen or used by living eyes; and the corruptions, which have been in turn made worse, have left hardly any sense in many parts. At {78} best it is ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... and began retracing his steps. People bred in the city might be callous to the miseries of their fellows; those provided with plenty might be content to live their lives side by side with such hopeless poverty, might even apply to their own profit the necessities of others; but his was the hospitality and consideration of the frontier, the democracy ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... faces set towards the south. Does the Black One live in the south? Well, you will journey to another kraal presently," answered the jovial-looking captain of the party with a callous laugh. ...
— Black Heart and White Heart • H. Rider Haggard
... Revolution to awaken the natural feelings of affection that had so long slumbered supinely in the enervated hearts of the higher classes in France, corrupted by long habits of indulgence in selfish gratifications. The lesson at once awoke even the most callous; while those, and there were many such, who required it not, furnished the noblest examples of high courage and self-devotion to the objects dear ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... mysterious. Go where he would, the convert's imagination was so pervaded with the mystic tuition that he came to regard his tutor as a being above common humanity. The feeling of dread reverence which he instilled into the hearts of the most callous secured to him even immunity from the violence of brigands, who carefully avoided the man of God. In the State official the native saw nothing but a man who strove to bend the will of the conquered race to suit his own. ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... But those who do come back are changed utterly. I recognise no more the young men and maidens whom I confirmed in their faith, and laid my hands on in blessing ere they fared forth to other lives and scenes. The men are grown callous and worldly; without a heart,—without a thought,— save for the gain or loss of gold. ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... way is comforting. If only I could accept her as a human creature. But when I think of her callous reception of the tidings of the unhappy boy's death, my spirit fails me. Such a being would run a carving-knife into you, as you slept, without any compunction, and when you squeaked, she would laugh. Look at her base ingratitude to the good Hamdi Effendi, who took her ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... still with that awful callous smile, and Josephine followed just as she had that last time, when Constantia had pushed Benny ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... on, but stopping the moment he perceived her, he sternly called out "Are you proud? are you callous? are you hard of heart ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... still possessed him; therefore, when he mounted his horse he pretended not to see the figure chained to the window-grating. Sebastian's affection for his master was doglike and he had taken his punishment as a dog takes his, more in surprise than in anger, but at this proof of callous indifference a fire kindled in the old fellow's breast, hotter by far than the fever from his fly- blown scores. He was thirsty, too, but that was ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... coldness. Was it possible to glance at her as he had glanced when he came into the room for the guarantee?—to look at her, see her heart was breaking with despair, and go out without a word with that face of callous composure? He was not merely cold to her, he hated her because he ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... in the history of civilised diplomacy of such trickery and such callous jugglery with the highest interests ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... him a friend of the weak and helpless, and the champion of women, not only of those whose sheltered lives had kept them fair and pure, but of those others as well, sad-eyed and soul-stained, the cruel sport of lustful men. For his open scorn of their callous lust some hated him, but all with true men's hearts ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... few pages in Life's Handicap describing the City of Lahore by night. There is great heat in these pages; there is distance also, and the breathless air of streets where the formic swarming of India, her callous fecundity, the tyranny of her skies, and her old faith, prepare us for the House of Suddhu and the return ...
— Rudyard Kipling • John Palmer
... retrogression) was rapid. His muscles became hard as iron, and he grew callous to all ordinary pain. He achieved an internal as well as external economy. He could eat anything, no matter how loathsome or indigestible; and, once eaten, the juices of his stomach extracted the last least particle of nutriment; and his blood ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... which some women bestow upon their husbands. Still, when Colonel Preston's lifeless form was brought into the house, she did experience a violent shock. To have the companion of nearly twenty years so unexpectedly taken away might well touch the most callous, and so, for a few minutes, Mrs. Preston forgot herself and ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... took a little path leading from my window through the garden to the pier where the boats were moored, and here I sat down to consider. Experience had taught me to be chary of entering matters that did not concern me, but it had not made me sufficiently callous to preserve my equanimity in face of a discovery so serious ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... canting to say that peccant women are worse than men. If we are kind we say so merely because we are more apprehensive for them. Safe women, with but rare exceptions, are notably callous about their sisters astray, and the "we'' I have used must be taken generally to signify men. We see the danger for erring women, danger economic and physical. Thinking in terms of the phrase that "a woman's place ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... be hard to fix him,—that is, if you'll only be steady. He's not sharp and hard and callous, like some of them. He doesn't mean any harm, and if he once speaks out, he isn't one that can't be kept to time. His manners are nice. I don't think the property is involved; but I'll find out from papa; and he's just the man to think his wife the pink ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... was resting himself by the fire, enjoying a thumbed football almanac. He had not risen when the visitors entered, and while his grandmother was speaking his lips still moved dumbly, as he went on adding up the football scores. He was a sickly, rather repulsive lad with a callous expression. ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... hurry for some unknown destination; and some fell down in their excitement. And there were monkeys, learning tricks of all kinds, another source of amusement. Some were most tenderly loved and even kissed extravagantly, as they nestled against the callous bosoms of their masters, gazing fondly at them with womanish ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... refused to listen to his anti-slavery prophets and priests; and its sad, weird, and heart-touching descriptions and dialogues restored the milk of human kindness to a million hearts that had grown callous in an age of self-seeking and robbery of ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... known that there was something in his past, some cloud of which he would never speak openly. But I never dreamed—never guessed—" She broke off with a sharp shudder. "Besides, he has offered no explanation, no excuse, no denial. He lets me believe the worst, and he doesn't care. He is utterly callous—utterly brutal. That is how I know that the worst is true." She rose abruptly, as if inaction had become torture to her. "Oh, I must leave him!" she cried out wildly. "I am nothing to him. My feelings are less than nothing. He doesn't really want me. Any woman could ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... doctor," said Sir James, grasping him by the hand. "I could not help thinking you were dreadfully callous and cool over what has been agony to me. I am afraid I was ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... for little fanatics like Erkel can never imagine serving a cause except by identifying it with the person who, to their minds, is the expression of it. The sensitive, affectionate and kind-hearted Erkel was perhaps the most callous of Shatov's would-be murderers, and, though he had no personal spite against him, he would have been present at his murder without-the quiver of an eyelid. He had been instructed; for instance, to have a good look at Shatov's ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... prisoner's dole. That was the simplicity of asking that the moon and the sun still rise. Give beauty to women, and grace to children, and songs for poets to sing. Let not the green tree wither, but send it rain. And give a little softness to the hearts of callous men. And remind us that widows live, and that there are fatherless. Teach us how to heal sickly children, and be easy on horses. And give us gentleness. And when roses grow on the walls in June, put a ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... commenced, goes on with such rapid development, that, in a short time, it loses all form, depositing such an amount of fat, that it in fact ceases to have any refuse part or offal, and, beyond the hair on its back and the callous extremity of the snout, the whole ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... down from the wall by Hippicus and, speeding silently but with moving lips and shining eyes through alleys and byways, came finally to an angle in Agrippa's wall that stood out toward Gareb. Here was built the Tower of Psephinos. Dumb and callous as beasts to the blows and commands of the sentries there mounted, the citizens clambered up on the fortifications and, with their chins on the battlements that stood shoulder-high, gazed avidly at the ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... finessing and trick; He cast off his friends, as a huntsman his pack, For he knew when he pleased he could whistle them back. Of praise a mere glutton, he swallowed what came; And the puff of a dunce, he mistook it for fame; Till his relish grown callous, almost to disease, Who peppered the highest was surest to please. But let us be candid, and speak out our mind: If dunces applauded, he paid them in kind. Ye Kenricks, ye Kellys, and Woodfalls so grave, What a commerce was yours, while ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... had a long conversation; but, alas! the gist of his father's conversation was this, that it behoved him, Frank, to marry money. The father, however, did not put it to him in the cold, callous way in which his lady-aunt had done, and his lady-mother. He did not bid him go and sell himself to the first female he could find possessed of wealth. It was with inward self-reproaches, and true grief of ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... that takes place to-day,' said Caleb, 'is with a stern, sordid, grinding man. A hard master to you and me, my dear, for many years. Ugly in his looks, and in his nature. Cold and callous always. Unlike what I have painted him to you in ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... direction; but there was no sign of recognition. I leaned from the car-window, and called softly, "Baby!" But he did not heed. I closed the window. The car was just moving on, when he suddenly turned, and, either by accident or design, thrust a callous ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... No child followed, with God's grace in its little hands, to create a mother's feelings and soften the callous heart of La Corriveau. She cursed her lot that it was so, and her dry bosom became an arid spot of desert, tenanted by satyrs and dragons, by every evil passion of a woman without conscience and ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... words, and the more because of the dull, seemingly callous accent with which they ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... Smarting follows the edge of a knife in making a wound, and seems to be owing to the distention of a part of a fibre, till it breaks. A smarting of the skin is liable to affect the scars left by herpes or shingles; and the callous parts of the bottoms of the feet; and around the bases of corns on the toes; and frequently extends after sciatica along the outside of the thigh, and of the leg, and part of the foot. All these may be owing to the stimulus of extension, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... sleep for seven years on a bedstead, without any mattress, the whole surface of which was studded with points of iron resembling nails, but not so sharp as to penetrate the flesh. Sir George saw him in the fifth year of his probation, and his skin then was like the hide of a rhinoceros, but more callous. At that time, however, he could sleep comfortably on his bed of thorns, and remarked that at the expiration of the term of his sentence, he should most probably continue that system from choice, which he had been obliged ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... miserable hours. Light broke through the little round windows, and outside he could see the appalling waste of water, foaming, seething, rising to engulf him. He couldn't recall mounting to that high place where he had slept. He wondered if the callous steward would sometime come to take him down. Perhaps ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... Beaulieu in the New Forest. Indeed, these were the true miracles which recommended Hugh to the English people, so that they regarded him as a saint indeed, and clamoured for him to be called one formally—the miracles wrought upon character, the callous made charitable, liars truthful, and the lechers chaste; the miracles of justice, of weak right made strong against proud might, and poor honesty made proof against rich rascality; the miracle of England made the sweeter and the handsomer ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... thought of the over-weighted patrol-wagon probably sticking in the mud some safe distance in the rear, failed to cheer him, and the excitement that had so far made him callous to the cold died out and left him ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... Tauranga. Protected, indeed helped, thus on both flanks, he devoted his life to harassing the dwellers by the lower Thames and the Hauraki Gulf. One great victory he won over them with the aid of his Waikato allies. Their chief pa, Mata-mata, he seized by a piece of callous bad faith and murder. After being admitted there by treaty to dwell as friends and fellow-citizens, his warriors rose one night and massacred their hosts without compunction. Harried from the north by Hongi, ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... Instead of arousing fear the tumult acts as an anaesthetic. With forests uprooted, houses smashing about them, and unseen express-trains hurtling through space, they are too stunned to be afraid. And in time they become fed up on battles and to the noise and danger grow callous. On the Aisne I saw an artillery battle that stretched for fifteen miles. Both banks of the river were wrapped in smoke; from the shells villages miles away were in flames, and two hundred yards in front of us the howitzer shells were bursting in black ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... may never lie Beneath dear Albion's hallow'd sod, Spurn the base wretch who dare defy, In arms, his country and his God! Whose callous bosom cannot feel That he who acts a traitor's part, Remorselessly uplifts the steel To plunge it ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... accents morbid This limp maternal bore bid Her callous son affectionate and lachrymose good-bys. She never granted Jack a day Without some long "Alackaday!" Accompanied by ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... through its agency he may attend the training camps which lead to industrial, business, political and social success. Universal military education for me and mine and all other Americans is his slogan, and his aim is to recreate the America of the early Seventies, which became hardened and callous through the years by reason of resistance to the German menace of autocracy, but ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... not seem to have taken much of his attention. In a letter dated October 5, 1826, he says: "We have had much bustle in Paris of late, between the death of one king and the succession of another. I have become a little callous to public sights, but have, notwithstanding, been to see the funeral of the late king, and the entrance into Paris of the present one. Charles X. begins his reign in a very conciliating manner, and is really popular. The Bourbons have gained great accession of power within ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... bonnet of the confounded car, only held on by a cord which I expected to break and send me flying into the next world every time we touched a stone, or crossed a rut. My heart was in my mouth for the next hour or so, but afterwards I think I grew careless or callous. He had pulled the cord round my arms pretty tightly; that numbed me all over, and the exposure to the air did the rest. I fell into a dreamy condition. I only know that never for a moment were we still. There was always the drone of the wheels in my ears, and ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... selfish, and at all times magnificently arrogant. He had neither patience nor toleration for natural human weakness. While selfish, he was not self-conscious, and it never occurred to him, it was impossible for him to see that he was a giant among men. His heart was callous; his whole nature and character hard and flinty from the buffetings he gave ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... artists and naturalists have fallen into by putting his fore-feet in the same position as those of other quadrupeds, for you will perceive that the whole outer side of his foot is not only deprived of hair, but is hard and callous: proof positive of its being in perpetual contact with the ground. Now, on the contrary, the inner side of the bottom of his foot is ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... a tip. But in the Irishman there is a natural delicacy of feeling which expresses itself in lofty kinds of courtesy. An Englishman, compelled by a sense of duty to see the ticket of a passenger, would have asked for it with callous bluntness. The Irishman, knowing that his victim was in pain, approached the subject of tickets obliquely, hinting by means of an anecdote of great interest, that people have from time to time been known ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... loyal to the institutions of old and who desired to conduct their lives in accordance with the precepts of their religion, became estranged from Judaism and suffered themselves to be swept along by the tide. Thus the immigrant Jew in America has frequently become callous and indifferent, and sometimes cynical and antagonistic to everything pertaining to Judaism." While they are thus lost to Judaism they are not won to Christianity, but they ought to be. The older people become reconciled with difficulty to this irreligious ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... collectively Lanyard accounted that quartet uncommonly clever, resourceful, audacious, unscrupulous, and potentially ruthless, utterly callous to compunctions when their interests were jeopardised. But it was inconceivable that he should fail to outwit and frustrate them, who had the love and faith of Eve de Montalais to ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... the Undertaker's Apprentice, a grim, saturnine figure with his grey face, protuberant eyes, and obsequious solemnity, in which lurked a callous smile. The burial of the great, the execution of the wicked, were alike to him. In him Fate seemed to personify life's revenges, its futilities, its calculating ironies. The flag-draped coffin was just about to pass, and the fanatical barber harked ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... ever such callous heartlessness in human creature? Was there ever such madness in sane woman? You ask me to prove my convictions, you ask me for the one method by which even you can be convinced, and when I show you how far my new faith has carried me you ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... from sheer mortification, as I once saw the skipper of an Italian barque do because his duffer of a mate got into a mess with his anchors when making a flying moor in a roadstead full of ships. I asked myself, seeing him there apparently so much at ease—is he silly? is he callous? He seemed ready to start whistling a tune. And note, I did not care a rap about the behaviour of the other two. Their persons somehow fitted the tale that was public property, and was going to be the subject of an official inquiry. ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... was moved by the man's evident feeling. He had not struck me as an emotional man,—rather, at first, he gave me the impression of being somewhat hard and callous. His deep-set eyes, high cheek-bones, and tall gaunt form, suggested one of those men who was as hard as nails, and who could see his own mother die without a quiver ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... the authors of double misery to their wives. Like their masters, they are not permitted to partake of those ineffable sensations with which nature inspires the hearts of fathers and mothers; they must repel them all, and become callous and passive. This unnatural state often occasions the most acute, the most pungent of their afflictions; they have no time, like us, tenderly to rear their helpless off-spring, to nurse them on their knees, to enjoy the delight of being parents. Their paternal fondness is embittered by considering, ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... women who have suffered from man's inconstancy are disposed afterwards to revenge themselves by inflicting pain such as they have themselves endured, and delight in all the cruelty of coquetry. It was not so with me. Mine was too deep a wound— skinned over—not callous, and all danger of its opening again I dreaded. I had lovers the more, perhaps, because I cared not for them; till amongst them there came one who, as I saw, appreciated my character, and, as I perceived, ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... missed it for any consideration. That morning she had felt more pain than usual, and had been obliged to have recourse to restoratives; but once more to join the gay and fashionable throng—the very idea braced her nerves, rendered her callous to suffering, and indifferent ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... most bloody, callous savages I know; one puts a scarlet feather from a parrot's tail on the ground, and challenges those near to stick it in the hair: he who does so must kill a man ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... taking a flavour from the food. His hours of ease and pleasure were haunted by grim recollections of toil and dreariness which he had once endured, and which others, like him, were still undergoing. He never forgot, never became callous; but as time went on and success became more certain, he learned to estimate the value of utilizing his chances and economizing his strength and powers. As in the old days of preparation among the hills, he put in safe keeping his earnings, never counting them; never trusting himself to the encouragement ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... the pot with the fork, and stabbed it firmly—there was a suggestion of ruthlessness about her action that made Simpson shudder again—into a slab of meat, which she dropped on a plate, using a callous thumb to disengage it from the tines. She covered it with gravy and began to eat without further ceremony. The cripple followed her example, slobbering the gravy noisily; some of it ran down his chin. Neither of them paid any ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... Philip could not help a shudder, as he listened to the cynical, callous manner in which his companion spoke of their proximity to a dreadful death. Then, bidding him follow, he went on along the gloomy maze towards where he could hear the rumble of trucks laden with coal, the sound of the ...
— Son Philip • George Manville Fenn
... he is dead by now," said Chaldea, looking with a callous smile at the burning cottage, ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... attack all these sorts of Carbuncles by Scarification, making the Incision to the Right and to the Left, in the Middle, and on the Edges, to the Quick; and if the Escarr is Thick and Callous, we take away all the Thickness, and what is Callous, as much as the Situation of the ...
— A Succinct Account of the Plague at Marseilles - Its Symptoms and the Methods and Medicines Used for Curing It • Francois Chicoyneau
... explosives: his inquisitors did their best to wring such an admission from him or to entrap him into the use of some technical phrase, some slip of the tongue which would verify their suspicions. They even examined his hands with minutest care, as if to find some telltale callous or chemical discoloration which would convict him. Then finally, to give him the lie absolute, the aggressive colonel seized a nickel- plated atomizer from the table and brandished it triumphantly before the young ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... Scorpion? Are men so spiritually blind that they can perceive nothing but the symbol of maturing vegetation and the long summer's day in the glorious splendor of Castor and his starry mate and brother, Pollux? It would, indeed, seem so, so dead is the heart and callous the spiritual understanding of our own benighted day. To the initiate of Urania's mysteries, however, these dead, symbolic pictures become endowed with life; these emblems of rural labor or rustic art transform themselves from the hard, chrysolitic shell ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... said, "Mr. Herbert Wain is not a man of vision. He is a cockney, brought up in the streets of a callous city. To him life is a hard struggle, and immortality naturally appears in a poor light. You must have patience. It will take some time before the significance of this immortality is grasped by the people. But when it is grasped, all the conditions of life will change. Life will become ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... what you want of me," she remarked. She went back to her place on the fountain's edge, sitting amidst the flowers and crushing them under her hands. The pose appealed to him as expressively callous, and yet it was innocent too, the pose of a child or an animal who destroys ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... your troubles. I know all you say, but I cannot answer you!" There is something touching in the silent sympathy of the dog, to which only the hard-hearted and depraved can be quite insensible. I remember once hearing of a felon, who had shown the greatest obstinacy and callous indifference to the appeals of his relations, and the clergyman that attended him in prison, whose heart was softened by the sight of a little dog, that had been his companion in his days of comparative innocence, forcing its way through the crowd, till it gained the ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... not try and find out?" he asked. "Surely your husband would not be so callous towards ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... the neighbourhood, whose temper was not of the sweetest, was suspected. She was first of all invited to come and see the child in the hope that sympathy might change the influence she was supposed to be exerting; but as the old woman appeared quite callous to the sufferings of the child, the mother, as the old woman was leaving the house, scratched her with her nails across the brow, and drew blood. This circumstance raised quite a sensation in the ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... unfeeling tone; but few if any of the others evinced the like tenderness; for it must be remembered, in the first place, that the Romans, inured to sights of blood and torture daily in the gladiatorial fights of the arena, were callous to human suffering, and careless of human life at all times; and, in the second, that Stoicism was the predominant affectation of the day, not only among the rude and coarse, but among the best and most virtuous citizens of the republic. Few, therefore, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... In her callous but uncalculated desire to use this man as a lever wherewith to heave aside the mountain of trouble which threatened to overwhelm Jan Cuxson; and, with the inexplicable cruelty of the woman who loves, and will blissfully put a whole community ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... frontier. In May 1913 a military convention was concluded between them, and the Balkan League, the relations between the members of which had been becoming more strained ever since January, finally dissolved. Bulgaria, outraged by this callous disregard of the agreements as to the partition of Macedonia signed a year previously by itself and its ex-allies, did not wait for the result of the arbitration which was actually proceeding in Russia, but in an access ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... of Time opposite me there, that weariless sexton whose callous hands bury our rosy hours in the irrevocable past, is even now reaching forward to a moment as rich in life, in character, and thought, as full of opportunity, as any since Adam. This little isthmus that we are now standing on is the point to which martyrs in their triumphant ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... were! But John Morton would marry her to-morrow if he were well,—in spite of all her ill usage! Of course he would die and so she would again be overwhelmed; but yet she would go and see him. As she determined to do so there was something even in her hard callous heart softer than the love of money and more human than the dream of ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... to the steward with a sensation of pleasure, feeling that he had done the suave and gentle-voiced Kwang an injustice in imagining him to be like most Chinese officials—utterly indifferent and callous to human suffering. Then he stepped along the deck towards the bridge just as two of the braves lifted the prisoner to his feet, which a third had freed from a thong of hide, bound so tightly around them that it had literally cut into the flesh. His hands were tied in the same manner, and round ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... At heart he was conscious of kindred emotions. A child's cry, a woman's sob, the groan of a despairing man, had power to move him so strangely that he had more than once allowed a long-sought opportunity to slip from his grasp rather than sear his own soul by displaying callous indifference to ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... to be the last excitement of the night, as I saw for myself before Raffles joined me at Vauxhall. An arch-traitor like Daniel Levy might at least be trusted to play the game out with loaded dice; no single sportsman could compete against his callous machinations; and that was obviously where I was coming in. I only wished I had not come in before! I saw now the harm that I had done by my rash proceedings in Gray's Inn, the extra risk entailed already and a worse one still impending. ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... grown still more official; and instead of using it to express genuine sentiments, which in another language might deserve expression well enough, the characters are constantly suspected by the callous modern reader or elaborately, though perhaps unconsciously, feigning the sentiments which the jargon seems to imply that they ought to have. This is somewhat less noticeable in the work of Madame de Tencin than elsewhere, because ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... with hearts overcharged with sorrow, often appear cold and callous to those who seem to them to feel no interest in their afflictions. An instance of this kind I will here mention; it is one of thousands that I have met with in my Indian rambles. It was mentioned to me one day that an old 'fakir',[14] who lived ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... it is," the novelist commented, "Francis Ledsam isn't callous enough to be associated with you money-grubbing dispensers of the law. He'd be all right as Public Prosecutor, a sort of Sir Galahad waving the banner of virtue, but he hates to stuff his pockets at the expense of the ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... taken in boyhood from this life before it had wrought any change in him. For in due time the farm boy, however fine his spirit may be, must harden and grow patient and stolid in heat and cold and wet, like the horse that draws the plough or cart; and as he hardens he grows callous. In his wretched London garret if any change came to him it was only to an increased love and pity for the beasts he had lived among, who looked and cried to him to be fed. He describes it well, the frost ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... again felt the grip of the madman at his throat. He saw, at once, that Cesarini had dogged him; he resolved the next morning to change his hotel, and to apply to the police. It was strange how sudden and keen a fear had entered the breast of this callous ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book XI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... and not the strength of the love which would tell in a strait like this. Would it prove of a generous kind? Should I have to combat her desire to take upon herself the full blame of her deed, with all its shames and penalties? Or should I have the still deeper misery of finding her callous to my position and welcoming any chance which diverted suspicion from herself? Either supposition might be possible, according to my judgment in this evil hour. All communication between us, in spite of our ardent and ungovernable passion, had been so casual ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... that would be a cruel kindness, and I dare not do it. What would be your surprise, my son, when you expected a happy and glad welcome, to behold, on the contrary, tears and wretchedness? And how, Victor, can I relate our misfortune? Absence cannot have rendered you callous to our joys and griefs; and how shall I inflict pain on my long absent son? I wish to prepare you for the woeful news, but I know it is impossible; even now your eye skims over the page to seek the words which are to convey ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... sensibility, and of which an incredible number are spread over the inner membrane of the nostrils. This membrane is lubricated by a secretion, which has a tendency to preserve the sense. By the almost caustic acrimony of snuff, the mucus is dried up, and the organ of smelling becomes perfectly callous. The consequence is, that all the pleasure we are capable of deriving from the olfactory organs, the omnis copia narium, as Horace curiously terms it, is totally destroyed. Similar effects are also produced upon the ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... whom social circumstances make his enemies because his slaves, that a despot usually grows ferocious, and that the urgings of suspicion create the reign of terror. Besides the political necessity of a strict and unrelaxed slavery, a Spartan would also be callous to the sufferings, from his contempt for the degradation, of the slave; as he despised the employments abandoned to the Helot, even so would he despise the wretch that exercised them. Thus the motives ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Holmes, kindly; "it is human to err, and at least no one can accuse you of being a callous criminal. Perhaps it would be easier for you if I were to tell Mr. Soames what occurred, and you can check me where I am wrong. Shall I do so? Well, well, don't trouble to answer. Listen, and see that ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... other trees or sky, and who feels a pang, yes, an actual pang, of mingled hope, and joy, and expectation, and terror, when he emerges from Guilford street, descending from the hights of Islington, into those sacred precincts; this very Jones is hard and callous toward the torments of Smith, who adores Miss Robinson, and cannot imagine what the infatuated fellow can see in the girl. So it was with Sir Michael Audley. He looked at his nephew as a sample of a very large class of young men, and his daughter as a sample of an equally extensive class ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... bind the stubborn will, Wound the callous breast, Make self-righteousness be still, Break earth's stupid rest. Strangers on a barren shore, Lab'ring long and lone— We would enter by the door, And ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy
... circumstances, the endless battle with poverty, render men and women both callous to others' feelings, and particularly strict to those over whom they possess unlimited authority. But the labourer must not be judged too harshly: there is a scale in these matters; a proportion as in everything else; an oath from him, and even a slap on the ear, ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... tell whether Julia saw the affair With other people's eyes, or if her own Discoveries made, but none could be aware Of this, at least no symptom e'er was shown; Perhaps she did not know, or did not care, Indifferent from the first, or callous grown: I'm really puzzled what to think or say, She kept her counsel ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... forward to help. The wounded soldier's face lay on the officer's breast, and she saw only his hair, matted and very white, from which a rusty brown wig had partly fallen. But more to the purpose she saw that he was bleeding, and the callous warriors there knew that the angels of the siege had ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... I never was good at hiding my feelings. He treats me shamefully. Come, now, you take me for an abandoned profligate woman, a callous wanton. That is what the world takes me for; and, perhaps, I have deserved no better of the world. But whatever I am 'twas he made me so. If he had been true, I could have been constant. It is the insolence of abandonment that stings; the careless slights, scarce conscious that ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... it was a ditty rather too dolefully appropriate for a company that had met such cruel losses in the morning. But, indeed, from what I saw, all these buccaneers were as callous as the sea ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gets callous to death, a mediaeval callousness. When we hear that the best of our friends have gone West, we have a moment of the keenest regret; but how soon again we find the heart to laugh! The saddest part of loss, I think, is that one ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service |
