"Callously" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... His followers trooped callously back into the house and he himself remained there, on watch, only until with the stiffness of a sleep walker Dorothy Thornton appeared for a moment in the open door and came slowly to the ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... supplies. The girl's thoughts and emotions were the product largely of this isolation. She brooded over the mystery of her father's past till it became an obsession in her life. To be brought into close contact with dishonor makes one either unduly sensitive or callously indifferent. Upon June it ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... is now the minister of the Portmoak parish. But it is a poor business. 'I began my ministry,' he says, 'without much zeal, callously and mechanically, being swallowed up in unbelief and in rebellion against God.' He feels no enthusiasm for the Bible; indeed, the New Testament positively wearies him. His sermons are long and formal; he learns them by ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... billows of the desert, in quest of the Sphinx. Sir Marcus was entitled to call himself the pioneer, but we needed no one to show us the way. It was but too clearly indicated by the bands of pilgrims, going or returning. And among the latter were those whom Monny callously referred to as "poor Lord Ernest's crowd." Miss Hassett-Bean and the Biddell girls made us linger, with sand trickling over the tops of our shoes, while they poured into our ears their impressions ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... although I deemed it sound diplomacy to allow them to believe that their endeavours in this direction were meeting with perfect success, I could not forget that, in the prosecution of their own selfish plans, they had shown themselves to be callously criminal, and utterly indifferent to all the hardship and suffering, mental and bodily, that they were inflicting upon a young, delicately-nurtured, sensitive woman—to say nothing of what they had caused me to endure; and I determined ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... than our high intellectual desire. There are ugly rebels and born rascals, cheats by instinct, and liars to women, swinish unbelievers who would compromise us with their erratic pursuit of a miscellaneous collection of strange fancies and betray us callously at last. Because a man does not find the law pure justice, that is no reason why he should fake his gold to a thieves' kitchen; because he does not think the city a sanitary place, why he should pitch his tent on a dust-heap amidst pariah dogs. ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... was the strangest appeal to his pity. Her seducer had apparently left her; she was in dire straits, and there was, it seemed, no one but Sandy in all London on whose compassion she could throw herself. She asked him, callously, for money to take her back to some Nice relations. They need only know what she chose to tell them, as she calmly pointed out, and, once in Nice, she could make a living. She would like to see her children, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... warned him callously, "you'll have to take me home, you know! Tired or not. It feels as if it might, any minute. I never used to ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... life still before him. The houses recede, the cart moves on—oh, that's nothing, it's still far to the turning into the second street and he still looks boldly to right and to left at those thousands of callously curious people with their eyes fixed on him, and he still fancies that he is just such a man as they. But now the turning comes to the next street. Oh, that's nothing, nothing, there's still a whole street before ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... all very well to take death philosophically, or fatalistically, or callously, or whatever you liked to call it, out there, where such an attitude was the only stand against raving madness; but at home, beneath the grey mass of the cathedral, folks met Death as a strange and cruel horror. The new glory of life that ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... parents. and these he is sure to disregard. I do not think that a proper allowance has been made for this true cause of suffering in youth; but by the mere fact of a prolonged existence, we outgrow either the fact or else the feeling. Either we become so callously accustomed to our own useless figure in the world, or else - and this, thank God, in the majority of cases - we so collect about us the interest or the love of our fellows, so multiply our effective part in the affairs of life, that we need to entertain no longer the ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... become mentally unable or unwilling to offer resistance, because of its obvious futility. So it is with the black in pursuit of a fish or turtle in shallow water. By noise and bluster he works on the senses of the fish until it becomes semi-paralysed. Then he proceeds callously to the killing, which, in the case of fish, if his right hand is encumbered, he generally accomplishes by a crunching bite into the back-bone at ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... profanity;" and worse still, "uncleanness, adultery, carnal debauchery." For not venial sins only, but mortal sins likewise were rife in Deadham, as he averred, matters of common knowledge and everyday occurrence—tolerated if not openly encouraged, callously winked at. The public conscience could hardly be said to exist, so indurated was it, so moribund through lack of stimulation and through neglect. Yet such wickedness, sooner or later, must call down the vengeance of an offended ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... there should be anything in it,' said Mrs. Crowley. 'We all know the circumstances under which George went out with him. It's inconceivable that he should have sacrificed him as callously as this man's letter ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... used before. But this was a vastly different, and far more significant matter. Then it had been an attempt to foist the identity of the Gray Seal upon a poor, miserable devil in order to secure a reward—here it was a crime, murder, coolly, callously laid to the Gray Seal, that the guilty man might escape without a breath of suspicion. Just another crime credited to the Gray Seal! No one would dispute it; no one would question it; no one would dream that it had been ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... and its viceroy will be, in what does not concern France, its despot—and will be content too! I shall not pity the country; I shall feel only for those who grieve with me at its abject state; or for posterity, if they do not, like other degraded nations, grow callously reconciled to ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... and whatever she contributes privately toward it is strictly her own affair. If this article appears on the school and college page, some of these girls are sure to hear of it and feel humiliated and resentful, particularly if the rest of the article is as callously cruel as its beginning." ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... houses were safely shut against the foxes every evening. Norah's chief part in the management lay in looking after the setting hens. At first she firmly checked the broody instincts by shutting them callously under boxes despite pecks and loud protests. Later, when their mood refused to change, she loved to prepare them soft nests in boxes, and to imprison them there until they took kindly to their seclusion. Then it was ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... and where roads passed through them. The four principal entrances along the main high-roads were defended by the four Bars, or fortified gateways. These, with their Barbicans, three of which were so needlessly and callously destroyed in the last century, were magnificent examples of noble permanent military architecture. The outer facade of Monk Bar to-day, spoiled as it is, expresses a noble strength. There was formerly only the single way, both for ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson
... seemed to you that Harry Forsyth took the death of the Egyptian soldier rather callously, seeing that he was not used to such scenes, and that he ought to have been a little more impressed. But you see he had resided in Egypt, and been some way up the Nile before; and in hot countries people not only live ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... proving how sacred the Fourth Estate holds the duty of providing it with accurate reports, shows the whole of the building draped with the habiliments of woe and the staff in deep mourning on learning that the secrecy of the secret session is to be callously and rigorously enforced by the Government. And in this state of prostration the personnel is left. So ends one of the most enthralling films that this country ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 3, 1916 • Various
... retain the manner of youth. His claims to social distinction rested on the solid basis of fear. He was a walking bureau of information, a daily newspaper. When the harsh vituperation of those who, having nothing more to lose, had nothing more to gain, occasionally assailed him, he had been heard callously to assert that he preferred being dangerous to being ineffective, and that he would infinitely rather be a menace to society than its victim. In short, the profession of scandal-mongering he pursued with concentration, finesse, and infinite tact. If for himself he achieved ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... sure of himself, so fashionably blas, so carelessly clever, so daringly frank, with all the finished air of the modern smart man, basking callously in the assured fact of his own brilliance and superiority. She knew that most women would envy her the attentions of such a one, and that his interest was undoubtedly a great compliment, as such compliments go; but to-night she found herself remembering all ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... remote—like a dream at the waking moment. The vision of her inevitable loneliness came to replace it, clear and acute. She saw herself alone and small in a huge desolation—infinitely pitiful, Lewisham callously receding with "some shop girl." The tears came, came faster, until they were streaming down her face. She turned as if looking for something. She flung herself upon her knees before the little arm-chair, ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... fought against me to your last man in the attempt to overthrow and destroy me. To satisfy your unlawful ambition and greed of gain, you five men, all holding positions of high authority and trust, would have set callously tribe against tribe, regiment against regiment, and man against man, until the people had fallen and strewed the ground like leaves of autumn and the land was drenched in their blood. It is enough; you are a menace and danger to the nation, and you must ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... condition—a difficult knowledge to communicate to people who spoke rarely, and then only of trivial affairs. As yet he had not decided as to when he would set out, for he hesitated between the manfully fulfilling of his new responsibility and the callously accomplishing of his old purpose; if he should choose the latter, he had provided for Peggy so that she would not be left too long by herself, by the promise which he had exacted from her brother and father to ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... callously. Nevertheless he followed Aunt Caroline's horrified gaze and saw, with a thrill of more normal interest, a pair of dainty moccasins whose beaded toes protruded from the flap of one of ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... nearly at the spring of behaviour than in many more ornate and delicate societies. I say delicate, where I cannot say refined; a thing may be fine, like ironwork, without being delicate, like lace. There was here less delicacy; the skin supported more callously the natural surface of events, the mind received more bravely the crude facts of human existence; but I do not think that there was less effective refinement, less consideration for others, less polite suppression ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... seen me in London; he won't be able to imagine me. It's all in the past, only the past—for both of us. Is there anybody so unhappy?' And the town's voices-wheels, and passing feet, whistles, talk, laughter—seemed to answer callously: 'Not one.' She looked at her wrist-watch; like his, it had luminous hands: 'Half-past ten' was greenishly imprinted there. She got up in dismay. They would think she was lost, or run over, or something silly! She could not find an empty taxi, and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... steel trap," the German suggested, callously. "But I don't know where you'd set it. Best way to get a wild dog is to shoot him, and he isn't much good dead. Or would this one be worth something—dead?" A swift sidelong glance accompanied ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... Her clean, brave spirit was throwing a glamour over the man. She saw him with other eyes than Elliot's. The Government official admired him tremendously. Macdonald was an empire-builder. He blazed trails for others to follow in safety. But Gordon could guess how callously his path was strewn with brutality, with the effects of an ethical color-blindness largely selfish, though even he did not know that the man's primitive jungle code of wolf eat wolf had played havoc with Sheba's ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... as if no human being could have performed the feats which came easy to the robber. The hard earning of good men went to the rascal's store; the cherished household gods, the valued keepsakes of innocent women were transferred callously to the melting-pot. He went coolly into bedrooms where the inmates were asleep; had any one awaked, there would have been murder, and the murderer would have decamped long before the door could be broken open. Now my point is this—the wretch whom I have ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... grotto were two small spotted sharks (Wobbegong, CROSSORHINUS sp.) notoriously sluggish and averse from eviction from their quarters during daylight. The larger callously disregarded the tickling of a light fish spear, but lashed out vigorously when a decisive prod was administered. In its flurry it must have disturbed one of the dye-secreting molluscs, which had escaped my notice, for in a few seconds the water was richly imbued. ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... Never, in any novel that she had read, had a defenceless young woman been confronted with a situation like this. Sir John, the Hugo of her imagination, was, if anything, rather more depraved and despicable than Robert Bludward. He was mean, evasive, callously indifferent to his country's interests, a cheat, a man who habitually broke his word, and who was responsible, with his associates, for most of the poverty, misery, crime, and national degradation with which the country was ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... servants wait at table as usual and the family eat off silver plate; the ruin is still on paper. But in a year's time everything is dispersed to the winds, and men have changed along with their utensils. When one sees for what trivialities people are fighting to-day one begins to understand how callously and shamelessly they gave up a thousand times over that which they had sworn to defend with the last drop of their blood; then none of them know what has really happened. In a few years' time they will know; and then they will fight no more for things that no longer exist; ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... shout through the window. I callously observe them through my peep-hole. The man is of a fine American type, sinewy, resolute, hawk-eyed. The mountain sunshine provides me with Roentgen rays, and I see Wall Street inside his brow. "Dew lait," they yell. As there is no answer, they hammer at the door. The ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... and experienced bachelor is always useful to a young grass-widow, and, moreover, the attendant hopeless adorer nourishes her hungry egotism as nobody else can. G.J. thought these thoughts, clearly and callously, in the same moment as, mounting the next flight of stairs, he absolutely trembled with sympathetic anguish for Concepcion. His errand was an impossible one; he feared, or rather he hoped, that the very look on his face might betray the dreadful news to that undeceivable intuition which ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... was not the end. Suppose there was some kind of a God? If there were, it wasn't unreasonable to think that the Being who was capable of creating such a world as this and who seemed so callously indifferent to the unhappiness of His creatures, would also be capable of devising and creating the other Hell that most people ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... man in a green baize apron whom I had never seen, carrying on an enormous tray three Argand lamps fitted into vases of Pompeiian form. Rose distributed them over the room. In the flood of soft light the winged youths and the butterfly women reappeared on the panels, affected, gorgeous, callously unconscious of anything having happened during their absence. Rose attended to the lamp on the nearest mantelpiece, then turned about and ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... breakfast from what was ready cooked in his pack, dispensing with the fire, which would inevitably tell Brodie of his presence. For Brodie, callously brutish as he was, must be something less than human not to turn his chill blue Icelandic eyes toward the spot where he had ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... tiled garret, lay tossing on a straw mattress. And suddenly, with a jolt that jerked him sleeping like a beast of burden. And now why couldn't he take life as it came, like his mates, who just went through it anyhow, without any calculating, callously and cheerfully, something like a machine which, when the sun comes out and it is daylight, begins to move arms and legs, to twist and turn the whole day long and, when it is evening again and dark, falls down and ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... ate much. How callously we sent the greater part of it away! Afterwards we remembered it. At present we could think of nothing but the ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... shall not see each other again!" He spoke quite coolly, almost callously, and he left her cowering on the sofa and weeping hysterically. He felt a free man again. The abominable shackles ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... wrong, then, I determined on a quiet course. All that night I denounced and reasoned with the erring pastor, twitted him with his ignorance and want of faith, twitted him with his wretched attitude, making clean the outside of the cup and platter, callously helping at a murder, childishly flying in excitement about a few childish, unnecessary, and inconvenient gestures; and long before day I had him on his knees and bathed in the tears of what seemed a genuine ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... say," she flamed, and bit her lower lip with small white teeth to keep from telling the squaw-man what she thought of him. The Cree girl he had taken to wife was going down into the Valley of the Shadow to bear him a child while he callously repudiated her. ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... injustice so determined, it was only humiliating for Ambrose to attempt to defend himself. His face hardened. He set his jaw and shrugged callously. ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... children slowly left their houses, and followed the soldiers at a distance. They saw them throw down their victims on the grass before the old man, and callously kill them with lance and sword. During this, men and women leaned out of all the windows of the blue house, and out of the barn, blaspheming and flinging their hands to heaven, when they saw the red, pink, and white frocks of their motionless little ones on the grass between the trees. The soldiers ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... which the hunger of the woman for love was a greater factor than the not deeply stirred passion of the man. Then, with the appearance of the destined mate, beauty and youth and desire carry the day against duty, but neither callously nor flippantly. The insight and sympathy displayed in the analysis of motive are remarkable. The author has a real gift for portraiture. In particular he touches in his minor folk with extraordinarily deft defining lines. Perhaps in general there is a little hesitancy in craftsmanship, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 10, 1917 • Various
... visions. If you took small quantities very discreetly you might get a temporary quickening. But the swift result of all repeated drug-taking is, I can assure you, moral decay—rapid moral decay. To touch drugs habitually is to become hopelessly unpunctual, untruthful, callously selfish and insincere. I am talking mere textbook, mere everyday common-places, to you ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... belief that he would expiate with his life the folly he had committed in permitting her to love him. In the loftiest sense he would be true to her. He could not be selfish and shameless enough to set forever aside the desolation that his hands had callously wrought. As her sorrow could never be mitigated it should always be shared. He would do everything for her. She should be educated, and inducted by gentle degrees into the refinement of civilization—he ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam |
