"Wanton" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... over the succeeding events of the story of Florinda, about which so much has been said and sung by chronicler and bard: for the sober page of history should be carefully chastened from all scenes that might inflame a wanton imagination; leaving them to poems and romances, and such-like highly seasoned works ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... 'The wanton! ay, I have; and if you can whisper in his ear that matter of Malcolm and the signet, it might lessen his inclination. But,' he sighed, 'I have little hope, James; I see nothing for Lancaster but that which the old man at York invoked ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... last thou art! Ere bud to rounded blossom change; Thou wilt for wanton lips and heart Most false, thy ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... means impeach the general rule of man's being a social animal; especially when it appears (as is sufficiently and admirably proved by my friend the author of An Enquiry into Happiness) that these men live in a constant opposition to their own nature, and are no less monsters than the most wanton ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... Montreal. The utmost compassion and consideration should be felt for the families of the sufferers plunged into affliction by the reckless conduct of their relatives; every house injured or destroyed at St. Benoit was a wanton destruction, perpetrated in defiance of guards placed to protect property." Thus writes Lord Seaton. Colonel Hanson, after quoting the above, proceeds to state that the evidence before the commissioners proves that "immediately after Lieut.-Col. Townsend assembled his ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... bedside Barkley swearing that he and others had lain with her often But I think I am not bound to discover myself But we were friends again as we are always Cure of the King's evil, which he do deny altogether Duke of York and Mrs. Palmer did talk to one another very wanton First time I had given her leave to wear a black patch First time that ever I heard the organs in a cathedral Gentlewomen did hold up their heads to be kissed by the King Have her come not as a sister in any respect, but as a servant ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Diary of Samuel Pepys • David Widger
... men of peace," returned his uncle gravely. "William Penn founded his colony on the cornerstones of peace and equity, and all we ask is to live undisturbed and away from carnal pleasures and the wanton fripperies of the world. And it pains me to see Philemon Henry's son come among us in the habiliments of war. Still I suppose thou must do thy duty to thy Master, the King, since thou hast strayed from thy father's faith. There ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... carries with her an infectious grief That strikes all her beholders, she will sing The mournful'st things that ever ear hath heard, And sigh, and sing again, and when the rest Of our young Ladies in their wanton blood, Tell mirthful tales in course that fill the room With laughter, she will with so sad a look Bring forth a story of the silent death Of some forsaken Virgin, which her grief Will put in such a phrase, that ere she end, ...
— The Maids Tragedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... The reckless and wanton destruction of forests has ruined some of the richest countries on earth. Syria and Asia Minor, Palestine and the north of Africa were once far more populous than they are at present. They were once lands "flowing with milk and honey," according to the picturesque ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... with wanton glee The breezes play caressingly, Catch up stray locks with cunning grace, And as she turns aside her ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... praise one, sire, whom now the wanton world Has learnt to cease from praising! But such words From such a quarter are ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... 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 ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... with cushions and rich carpets, on which sat the ladies, and on the second, their slaves behind them, but without any distinction of rank in their dress, all being in a 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 among them. They walked and moved with the same majestic grace which Milton describes of our general mother. I am here convinced of the truth of a reflection I had often made, that if it was the fashion to go ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... 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 ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... through the obedience claimed by parents of an elder day, but from hot jealousy and the pique inevitably born of it. Laurie Morse had kept the singing-school that winter. He had loved Amelia; he had bound himself to her by all the most holy vows sworn from aforetime, and then, in some wanton exhibit of power—gone home with another girl. And for Amelia's responsive throb of feminine anger, she had spent fifteen years of sober country living with a man who had wrapped her about with the quiet tenderness of a strong nature, but who ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... thing they could lay hands upon; others scattered along the beach to find turtle eggs, or, if fortune favored them, the turtle itself. They laughed, they sang, they swore, until the isle rang to their merriment. Like wanton children, they called to each other, to the screaming birds, to the ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... with ceaseless dip And pause, and rise and dip again, had borne The trackless trade winds. Tui Tua Kau, "King of the Reefs," had ventured over far From Tonga's shore. Caught by a wanton gale, His idle racing, lengthened in a whim To cheat his laughing mates, grew a wild flight. The frail canoe seemed, on the angry sea, A sweet rose petal blown across the night. Yet wisely now the winds had mind to crown Their joyous undertaking, and upon The shores of Fiji's isles they drew ...
— The Rose of Dawn - A Tale of the South Sea • Helen Hay
... wore a crupper, each squire a pigtail, Ere Blue Cap and Wanton taught greyhounds to scurry, With music in plenty—oh, ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... as I remember, we were at Balbec, I saw him one day make an almost tasteless preparation out of pure black nicotine, which in mere wanton lust he afterwards gave to some of the dwellers by the Caspian to drink. But the fiend would surely never dream of giving to me that browse of hell—to me an aged man, and a thinker, ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... thirteen or fourteen houses arranged so as to form a rough square, with one large and several small courtyards. The outside dimensions of the compound are about 160 feet by 145 feet. The builders showed the familiar Inca sense of symmetry in arranging the houses, Due to the wanton destruction of many buildings by the natives in their efforts at treasure-hunting, the walls have been so pulled down that it is impossible to get the exact dimensions of the buildings. In only one of them could we be sure that there ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... 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 ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... strongest advocate of a broad construction of the impeachment power. He argued that incapacity, negligence, or perfidy of the Chief Magistrate should be ground for impeachment.[480] Again, in discussing the President's power of removal, he maintained that the wanton removal from office of meritorious officers would be an act of maladministration, and would render the President liable to impeachment.[481] Hamilton thought the proceeding could "never be tied down by such strict rules, either in the delineation of the offense ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... seemd, and all thir study bent To worship God aright, and know his works Not hid, nor those things lost which might preserve Freedom and Peace to men: they on the Plain Long had not walkt, when from the Tents behold A Beavie of fair Women, richly gay In Gems and wanton dress; to the Harp they sung Soft amorous Ditties, and in dance came on: 580 The Men though grave, ey'd them, and let thir eyes Rove without rein, till in the amorous Net Fast caught, they lik'd, and each his liking chose; And now of love they treat till th' Eevning Star Loves Harbinger appeerd; ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... February 1865. As usual, all that could be of possible value to the enemy was destroyed and, by some accident, the town itself was burned. Sherman, like Sheridan, was much criticized for his methods of reducing opposition, but it does not seem that his "bummers" were guilty of wanton cruelty and destructiveness, at least in general, though the cavalry naturally gave more ground for the accusation than the main body of the army. And the methods of the Confederates had on occasion been somewhat similar. The Confederate general Hardee ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... hast no cause to say so yet, But thou shalt haue: and creepe time nere so slow, Yet it shall come, for me to doe thee good. I had a thing to say, but let it goe: The Sunne is in the heauen, and the proud day, Attended with the pleasures of the world, Is all too wanton, and too full of gawdes To giue me audience: If the mid-night bell Did with his yron tongue, and brazen mouth Sound on into the drowzie race of night: If this same were a Church-yard where we stand, And thou possessed with a thousand wrongs: Or if that surly spirit melancholy Had ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... back of the house; but they were paying little heed to us for the moment, being engaged in watching their companions, who were running from cottage to cottage, firing them by thrusting torches under the thatch, and shouting and chattering to each other, as if these acts of wanton destruction were so much amusement in ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... thou, my child, to whom harsh fate has dealt A captive's birthright—thou wilt never scamper With winged feet across the windy veldt, Where are no crowds to stare nor bars to hamper; Thou wilt not ring upon the rhino's pelt In wanton sport. But there—why put a damper On thy young spirits by recounting what Africa is but ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 10, 1917 • Various
... saw herself as a little rosy-cheeked girl sitting at his side on the beach fifteen years ago. But the music gathered strength from her glance, and onward it rushed through the noisy years of boyhood, shouting with wanton voice in the lonely glen, lowing with the cattle on the mountain pastures, and leaping like the trout at eventide in the brawling rapids; but through it all there ran a warm strain of boyish loyalty and ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... not much! but let th' "dank wynd" moan, "Shimmer th' woold" and "rive the wanton surge;" I ask not much; grant but an "eery drone," Some "wilding frondage" and a "bosky dirge;" Grant me but these, and add a regal flush Of "sundered hearts upreared upon a byre;" Throw in some yearnings and a "darksome hush," And—asking nothing ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... and it seemed to me as though there were a spring of water there, though the water was very near dried up. But looking closer, I saw that it was quite full; so I bethought me that I would drink thereof, and I leaned over, when lo! that Evil-wanton (I mean the Devil) caught me by the beard and would not let me go. I begged and prayed, but still he held me tight. 'Give me,' said he, 'what thou hast at home, or I'll never let thee go!'—And I said ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... a wanton; In the whole world, there is scant one ——Such another: No, not his mother. He hath pluck'd her doves and sparrows, To feather his sharp arrows, And alone prevaileth, While sick Venus waileth. But if Cypris once recover ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... upon a period of slaughter, of wanton massacre, which was to form one of the bloodiest pages in the ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... women would speak evil of our love. No one would believe, nor is it natural that they should do so, the truth of the matter. Who would believe that I have thus, all to no purpose, evaded and escaped from your uncle still a maid? I should be regarded simply as wanton and dissolute, and you would be thought mad. It is well to remember and observe the injunction of St. Paul: if any one is unwilling to live chaste, St. Paul counsels him to act so that he shall receive no criticism, or blame, or reproach. [238] It is well to stop evil mouths, and therefore, ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... all the possessed 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 delight at ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... saints and patriarchs used. Here Love his golden shafts employs, here lights His constant lamp, and waves his purple wings, Reigns here and revels; not in the bought smile Of harlots, loveless, joyless, unendeared, Casual fruition; nor in court-amours, Mixed dance, or wanton mask, or midnight ball, Or serenate, which the starved lover sings To his proud fair, best quitted with disdain. These, lulled by nightingales, embracing slept, And on their naked limbs the flowery roof Showered roses, which the ...
— Love—Marriage—Birth Control - Being a Speech delivered at the Church Congress at - Birmingham, October, 1921 • Bertrand Dawson
... these things we wondered how our men would behave now that the tables were turned and they in a position to loot the treasures of many German farms and plantation houses. Of course, divisional orders against looting and wanton destruction were very strict. Where houses were at the mercy of small patrols and bodies of our men under non-commissioned officers, far from the path of the main advancing army, the temptation to all must have been immense, and it speaks volumes for the natural ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... when a continued severity could only defeat its own work. He felt that the country could not be rendered more abject, the spirit of patriotism more apparently extinct. A show of clemency, which would now cost nothing, and would mean nothing, might be more effective than this profuse and wanton bloodshed. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... breathed sharply, and a ripple struck with a faint slap on the yacht's side. Then: "One can't allow that," he continued in a lower voice, as if arguing with himself; "arbitrary, wanton; impossible to accept ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... of antiquity. His adversaries answer him with commonplaces that signify nothing. The partisans of Bayle and his enemies have almost always fought without making contact. They all agree that Jupiter was an adulterer, Venus a wanton, Mercury a rogue. But, as I see it, that is not what needs consideration. One must distinguish between Ovid's Metamorphoses and the religion of the ancient Romans. It is quite certain that never among the Romans or even among the Greeks, was there a temple ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... bespoke the man, without roughness, and without ferocity. In one hand he bore a crystal goblet full of every potent enchantment, and which rendered him who drank for ever a slave to the most menial offices and the most wanton caprices of his seducer. In the other hand he held loosely, and as if it had been intended merely to give a completeness to his figure and a gracefulness to his step, that irresistible wand by which the majesty of man had often been ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... rede to take good heed What men will think and say: Of young and old it shall be told, That ye be gone away, Your wanton will for to fulfil, In green wood you to play; And that ye might from your delight No longer make delay. Rather than ye should thus for me Be called an ill woman, Yet would I to the green wood ...
— The Book of Old English Ballads • George Wharton Edwards
... were rather too many specifics in those days. For if one has "an excellent approved remedy" that never fails, it seems unnecessary to print a list of twenty others for the same purpose. This is wanton excess; it is gilding the golden pill, and throwing fresh perfume on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... sheep.—Levit. xix: 20 to 22, inclusive. Again, there was a law which guarded his people, whether free or bond, from personal violence. If in vindictiveness, a man with an unlawful weapon, maimed his own slave by knocking out his eye, or his tooth, the slave was to be free for this wanton act of personal violence, as a penalty upon the master.—Exod. xxi: 26 to 27, inclusive. But for the same offense, committed against a free person, the offender had to pay an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, as the penalty.—Levit. xxiv: 19, 20, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... all this, and that you have sought to act for the best," was Wells's comment; "but I fail to realize how you hoped to appease those same Indians by the wanton destruction last night of the liquor thrown into the river. It was done in direct opposition to the orders you have just read, and is bound to increase the hatred of the savages. You may be sure they are not ignorant of the contents of your despatch, ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... there was one who looked with disapproving eyes upon so much wanton cruelty, as he marched along silently with his brows knit in disgust. At length, seeing that the guard, not satisfied with the branch, was kicking the prisoners that fell, he could no longer restrain himself but cried out impatiently, ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... no good will result, as is even now evident that the world is worse than it has ever been and that there is no government, no obedience, no fidelity, no faith, but only daring, unbridled men, whom no teaching or reproof helps; all of which is God's wrath and punishment for such wanton contempt of this ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... solicitude for results, that lack of inner harmony and ease, in short, by which with us the work is so apt to be accompanied, and from which a European who should do the same work would nine times out of ten be free. These perfectly wanton and unnecessary tricks of inner attitude and outer manner in us, caught from the social atmosphere, kept up by tradition, and idealized by many as the admirable way of life, are the last straws that break the American camel's back, ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... be navigable, and abandons itself for a short time to irregular and wanton habits, before finally sowing its wild mountain oats, and becoming the staid and sedate Jhelum of the Plains. Unlike some rivers, the Jhelum contains more water in the middle of summer than at other times. Its principal resources are the snows, and these mighty masses are ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... with ocean in a summer mood. Hanging above the high, wide open door, It brings to us in quiet, firelit room, The freedom of the earth's vast solitudes, Where heaping, sunny waves tumble and roll, And seabirds scream in wanton happiness. ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... for children has the advantage that its discipline is the discipline of impersonal necessity, not that of wanton personal coercion. The eagerness of children in our industrial districts to escape from school to the factory is not caused by lighter tasks or shorter hours in the factory, nor altogether by the ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... same as the second writer, I am afraid that the little Section XV." [i.e. the reply to Mr. Martineau in 1st edition of the "Defence"] "must have offended the amour propre more deeply than it ought to have done, considering the wanton and outrageous assault to which it was a very lenient reply, and that the critic affords another illustration of the old maxim, that there are none so implacable as those who have done ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... bungalow, which, we afterwards learned, had been the commissioner's house, and as I went with my companion from room to room, which at one time must have been furnished in exquisite taste, there were traces of the wanton destruction of a savage mob. Furniture had been smashed, the floor was littered with the remains of mirrors and ornaments; curtains and carpets were torn to shreds, and everything that could be battered and destroyed ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... to know what he had heard. He was very unwilling to tell me, but it came out at last that Dermot and Harold—being, he feared, in an improperly excited condition—had insisted on going to the den with the keeper, and had irritated the animal by wanton mischief, and he was convinced that this could not have taken place ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... last breaks. He who trembled at a profane word, becomes an accomplished swearer; he whose modesty was most retiring is foremost to glory in early depravity; he whose hand was ever ready to relieve the poor, while his heart sympathized in their sorrows, becomes the wanton spoiler and marauder for the sake of a bold vaunt; he who shrunk from the approach of profligate misleaders, now volunteers to harden new comers in the ways of sin. The youth who with noiseless step ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... the desert Are born by the simoon's wrath, And in wanton and fleet confusion, Are strewn on its trackless path; So our lives with resistless fury, Insensibly and unknown, With a restless vacillation By the winds of fate are blown; But an All-Wise Hand May have changed the sand, For a purpose ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... not count, the words that had to be said had risen to his lips. But they had never crossed them—in spite of the wanton greenness of the woods, which should have been the very frame in which to tell a woman you loved her. But not one drop of her nervous exaltation was meant for him: she had never shown, by the least sign, that she cared a jot for him; and daily he became more convinced that ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... create a manner peculiarly her own. You received from the hands of Hymen only one woman, awkward and innocent; the celibate returns you a dozen of them. A joyful and rapturous husband sees his bed invaded by the giddy and wanton courtesans, of whom we spoke in the Meditation on The First Symptoms. These goddesses come in groups, they smile and sport under the graceful muslin curtains of the nuptial bed. The Phoenician girl ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... shepherd of the church let this suffice To save you. When by evil lust entic'd, Remember ye be men, not senseless beasts; Nor let the Jew, who dwelleth in your streets, Hold you in mock'ry. Be not, as the lamb, That, fickle wanton, leaves its mother's milk, To dally with itself ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... in the satisfaction of merely animal wants, in eating, drinking, and slumber. When they survey the history of mankind as a whole, they find the record chequered and stained by folly and crime, by broken faith, insensate ambition, wanton aggression, injustice, cruelty, and lust, and seldom illumined by the mild radiance of wisdom and virtue. And when they turn their eyes from man himself to the place he occupies in the universe, how are they overwhelmed by a sense of his littleness and ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... it no solid advantage. It was undertaken at too late a period to save Burgoyne, and though the passes in the Highlands were acquired, they could not be retained. The British had reduced to ashes every village and almost every house within their power, but this wanton and useless destruction served to irritate without tending to subdue. A keenness was given to the resentment of the injured, which outlived the contest ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... being. Life, they said, is not all duty. Indeed, the true spiritual life is quite other, not harsh and constrained, but free and spontaneous—a wealth of feeling playing about a constantly shifting centre. Spirit is not consecutive and law-abiding, but capricious and wanton, seeking the beautiful in no orderly progression, but in a refined and versatile sensibility. If this be the nature of spirit, and if spirit be the nature of reality, then he is most wise who is most rich in sentiment. The Romanticists ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... them, for they are the very paradises of the great trout, who frequent the old brickwork and timber foundations. The water in its rush through the arches, had of course worked for itself a deep hole, and then, some twenty yards below, spread itself out in wanton joyous ripples and eddies over a broad surface some fifty yards across, and dashed away towards a little island some two hundred yards below, or rolled itself slowly back towards the bridge again, up the backwater by the side ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... Spaniels as "delicate, neate, and pretty kind of dogges, called the Spaniel gentle or the comforter," and further said: "These dogges are little, pretty, proper, and fyne, and sought for to satisfie the delicatenesse of daintie dames and wanton women's wills, instruments of folly for them to play and dally withall, to tryfle away the treasure of time, to withdraw their mindes from their commendable exercises. These puppies the smaller they be, the more pleasure they provoke as more meete ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... 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 sheweth her ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... part of the affair was that I construed Angelique's wanton insult into a declaration of love. I was astounded. Lucrezia, remarking the state I was in, touched my arm, enquiring what ailed me. I told her, and she said ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the spectators, the contest was continued until all three were well-nigh mingled with the fleecy clouds, from which was occasionally heard the harsh and plaintive cry of the quarry, appealing as it were to the heaven which he was approaching, against the wanton cruelty of those by ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... which had hitherto kept up an incessant uproar, now 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 or carnage.* ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... particularly shone in, were Sir Martin Marrall, Gomez in the Spanish Friar, Sir Nicolas Cully in Love in a Tub, Barnaby Brittle in the Wanton Wife, Sir Davy Dunce in the Soldier's Fortune, Sosia in Amphytrion, &c. &c. To tell you how he acted them, is beyond the reach of criticism: but to tell you what effect his action had upon the spectator, is not impossible: this then is all ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... Did he expect her to say there that she wished nothing of the sort? Her stedfast eyes spoke as much: but misery is wanton, and will pull all down to it. Even Harry was checked by his tone, and Laxley sat silent. The fact that something more than a tailor was speaking seemed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... France have bombarded the straits of the Dardanelles, and the British fleet has shelled the harbor of Akbah on the Red Sea. In the face of such successive proofs of wanton hostility we have been forced to abandon the peaceful attitude for which we always strove, and now in common with our allies, Germany and Austria, we turn to arms in order to safeguard our ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... that the movement is a plea for justice, and I assert that the equal rights of women, not as citizens, but as human beings, have never been acknowledged. There is no audacity so insolent, no tyranny so wanton, no inhumanity so revolting, as the spirit which says to any human being, or to any class of human beings, "You shall be developed just as far as we choose, and as fast as we choose, and your mental and moral life shall be subject ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... golden-haired, as she sat in the arbor this morning. Her light morning dress of softest texture fell in graceful folds about her exquisite form. She held a Book of Hours in her hand, but she had not once opened it since she sat down. Her dark eyes looked not soft, nor kindly, but bright, defiant, wanton, and even wicked in their expression, like the eyes of an Arab steed, whipped, spurred, and brought to a desperate leap—it may clear the wall before it, or may dash itself dead against the stones. Such was the temper ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... well done! well done for you! Ah! the dolt! To trust a wanton! To trust Warcolier! To trust everybody! To trust ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... tons of bombs. On the contrary we leave a salutation and the flag with its colors of liberty. We Italians do not make war on children, the aged and women. We make war on your government, which is the enemy of the liberty of nations,—on your blind, wanton, cruel government, which gives you neither peace nor bread, and nurtures you on hatred and delusions. People of Vienna, you have the reputation of being intelligent, why then do you wear the Prussian uniform? Now ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... "great"—or was a consequence, at any rate, if not a cause; yet she had not perhaps altogether announced herself as straining so hard at the cord. It was familiar, it was beautiful to Mrs. Stringham that she had arrears to make up, the chances that had lapsed for her through the wanton ways of forefathers fond of Paris, but not of its higher sides, and fond almost of nothing else; but the vagueness, the openness, the eagerness without point and the interest without pause—all a part of the charm of her oddity as at first presented—had ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... him as he remembered the wanton slaughter of his sheep, more because of the helpless agony of the poor dumb brutes than because of the monetary loss, although the latter was no trifling consideration, since nearly eight thousand dollars had been wiped out in less than half ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... She laughed, and the lurking echoes clasped the music of that laughter in their wanton arms and hurried ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... livres he had substituted crowns, and that in lieu of 'whenever she shall desire it,' he had inserted 'when the King shall desire it.' I remonstrated against this treachery, but I remonstrated in vain; Louis pronounced against me, and the Cardinal established his wanton niece in my desecrated mansion, where she has held a Court more brilliant than that of the mother of her sovereign. Nay," continued the Queen, with increasing agitation, "the lingering atmosphere of royalty which yet clings to the old halls has so increased the greatness of the low-born ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... in the publication of this volume, to be understood as encouraging the wanton destruction of poor innocent animals. Like all kindred sports, hunting and fishing for example, the sport of Trapping may be perverted and carried to a point where it becomes simple cruelty, as is always the case when pursued for the mere ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... high rafters, huge and jagged; and we pickaxed the way continuously. By noontime, we found ourselves alongside of a lead covered by a film of young ice. We forced the dogs and they took it on the run, the ice undulating beneath them, the same as it does when little wanton boys play at tickley benders, often with serious results, on the newly formed ice on ponds and brooks down in civilization. Our tickley benders were not done in the spirit of play, but on account of urgent necessity, and as it was I nearly ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... steadily, throwing into the strokes a wanton exuberance that showed how high his spirits ran. After a time, when they were well out from the shore, he took ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... grey-eyed daughter, who persisted in the hate which they had ever borne towards Ilius with Priam and his people; for they forgave not the wrong done them by Alexandrus in disdaining the goddesses who came to him when he was in his sheepyards, and preferring her who had offered him a wanton to his ruin. ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... God's justice is so rigorous toward the wanton, His mercy is never so great as toward those who need it most, who desire it and ask it. The most touching episodes in the Gospels are those in which Christ opened wide the arms of His charity to sinful but repentant creatures, and lifted them out of their iniquity. That same charity ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... myself with these no doubt wanton reflections on the unfair division of opportunities in human life, I was leisurely crossing the common, and presently I came up with a pedestrian who, though I had little suspected it as I caught sight of him ahead, was destined by a ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... laughed over it so happily if I had my baby," she sobbed to Marilla. "But when I haven't it just seems like wanton cruelty—though I know Phil wouldn't hurt me for the world. Oh, Marilla, I don't see how I can EVER be happy again—EVERYTHING will hurt me all ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Indianapolis, quoted Mr. Storey's articles, and said, with great regret, that it was only too true of Indianapolis also, judging by the wanton manners of troops of the girls attending Public ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... said Mr Haredale, 'those walls. You see those tottering gables. You see on every side where fire and smoke have raged. You see the destruction that has been wanton ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... from this life, but he is waiting for us beyond this life. He is waiting beyond this life and this world of wicked war and wanton cruelty and slaughter. And we shall come, some day, his mother and I, to the place where he is waiting for us, and we shall all be as happy there as we were on this earth in the ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... was so soft and warm, the honeysuckles along the wall were so languid sweet, the bees and the hollyhocks up to the walk so fat and lazy, the smell of the orchard was so rich, the south wind from the fields was so wanton! Moreover, I was only twenty-six. As it chances, I was this sort of a man: thick in the arm and neck, deep through, just short of six feet tall, and wide as a door, my mother said; strong as one man out ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... wished, I asked so often, till I made thee answer in such a voice as I would wish to hear it; all this had been impertinent and foolish in any thing but love, to any but a lover: but oh—give me the impertinence of love! Talk little nonsense to me all the day, and be as wanton as a playing Cupid, and that will please and charm my love-sick heart better than all fine sense ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... safe in their brushy covert. Suddenly the whirlwind struck their hiding place with a clang and clatter, sending the birds in a wild panic in every direction. They did not seem to know what had struck them, and, as the wanton breezes tossed them this way and that, they expressed their astonishment in loud and frightened chirping. All over and no harm done, the bird lover burst into a peal of laughter at the discomfiture of his feathered neighbors, who looked at him as if they did not know ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... The wanton cruelties committed upon these people by the commanders and crews of many of the vessels that have been of late years in the habit of resorting to their shores, are testified to, by too many evidences, to allow us to doubt the enormous extent to which they have been carried; and they are, at the ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... came and took possession of his house, and his splendid collections of jewels, laces, furniture, curios and pictures were sold at auction. The fine dresses that once belonged to Saskia were seized: they even took her wedding-gown: and wanton women bid against the nobility for the possession of these things. Rembrandt was stripped of his sketches, and these were sold in bundles—the very sweat of his brain for years. Then he ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... further in luminous conjectures. Even with her present mind, Alma could not conceive of Mary Abbott as a wanton, of Harvey Rolfe as a shameless intriguer; but it stung her keenly to think that for years there had been this secret between them. Probably the matter was known to Mrs. Abbott's husband, and so, at his death, it had somehow become possible for Harvey to suggest ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... this State from any other State or Country whatsoever, ought to be prohibited under certain Restrictions; and that such as are under Servitude in the State ought to be protected by Law from those Exercises of Wanton Cruelty too often practiced upon them; and that every unnecessary Obstruction in the Way of freeing Slaves ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... the words be spoken, or ioyned together, that they may be wronge into a fylthye sence. Of thys it nedeth not to put any example, when lewde wanton persons wyl soone ...
— A Treatise of Schemes and Tropes • Richard Sherry
... 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 ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... 'in which were many towres and castels set;' while, in another work from the same hand, it figures as a 'gentle river,' is characterized as 'christall Thamis,' and is lauded for its 'pure streames' and 'sweete waters.' Chapman, in his 'Ovid's Banquet of Sense,' discourses eloquently of the 'wanton Thamysis that hastes to greet The brackish ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... the court of Palermo when prince Alfonso came among them once more. He forgave the queen for her wickedness, and rebuked his father for having stirred up such a wanton ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... scented orange-groves, of waving palms, of dark dwarf pines—black shapes in many a cloud of green—of the rose, the camellia, the oleander, the passion-flower. Island of wild flowers, that grow and wanton everywhere, that have their home in the woods, that carpet the earth with colour, that clothe the rocks, that hang head downwards in masses over many a foaming cataract, that climb the trees and repose like living, sentient beings ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... too small for the purpose. When Wilson remonstrated, and urged that the pain distracted his thoughts from those spiritual reflections which were now so peremptory, Porteous is said to have replied with wanton ruffianism that such reflections would matter very {61} little, since Wilson would so soon be dead. The prisoner is reported to have answered with a kind of prophetic dignity that his tormentor did not know how soon he might in his turn have to ask for himself the mercy which he now refused ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... Hazlitt was consciously the aggressor, but his attacks were never wanton. He denounced Wordsworth and Coleridge and Southey because they were renegades from the cause which lay nearest to his heart. Their apostasy was an unforgivable offence in his eyes, and his wrath was proportioned to the admiration which he otherwise entertained ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... sent in vain. The Magic-mill that grinds the gran'nams young, Close at the side of kind Godiva hung; She, of her favourite place the pride and joy, Of charms at once most lavish and most coy, By wanton act the purest fame could raise, And give the boldest deed the chastest praise. There stands the stoutest Ox in England fed; There fights the boldest Jew, Whitechapel bred; And here Saint Monday's worthy votaries live, In all the joys that ale and skittles give. Now, lo! on Egypt's ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... perceive something of the infernal cold in the lovingness of the spendthrift, and in your own civility to your customers, whilst any thing remained with them—in the drollery of the buffoons, in the praise of the envious and the backbiter, in the promises of the wanton, or in the shanks of the good companions freezing beneath your tables? Art thou unacquainted with Hell, when the house thou didst keep was Hell? Go, hell-dog, to ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... had two or three happy walks about the Chexington woods; that year the golden weather of October had flowed over into November, and except for a carpet of green and gold under the horse-chestnuts most of the leaves were still on the trees. Gleams of her old wanton humour shone on him. And then would come something else, something like a shadow across the world, something he had quite forgotten since his idea of heroic love had flooded him, something that reminded him of those long explanations with Mr. Rathbone-Sanders ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... all," said he, "this is wanton waste of time. Let the girl understand the fact. Here, what's your name! Your father has absconded, deserted you—and you mustn't expect to see him again as long as ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... mask, who came behind him, gave him a gentle tap upon the shoulder, and asked him if he would drink a bottle of mead with her? But the Knight, being startled at so unexpected a familiarity, and displeased to be interrupted in his thoughts of the widow, told her, She was a wanton baggage, and bid ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... forgives, and in whose malignant brain there are always hatching new atrocities to perpetrate upon those who have thwarted or offended him. To say that Nikolas Rokoff is a devil would be to place a wanton affront upon ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... that factitious interest which she had felt at times last year, born of this man's hostility, was gone long since, effaced by a tide of stronger feelings. So his sudden exhumation of the topic as a cause of war now came upon her with the harshest discordance. It seemed almost like a wanton wounding of her, somehow like sheer disloyalty in him. Surely if there were need of articles, this man might leave them to somebody else ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... inventing practical jokes; and perhaps to startle me with a false alarm in the very skin of the old Bruin which had so nearly done for him, he had thrown it round him on finishing its cleaning, and so, in mere wanton fun, had crept on deck at the hour of his watch. The head of the bear-skin, and the fog, must have prevented him from seeing ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... is filled up with mud; And the quaint mazes in the wanton green, For lack of tread, ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... fall, shamelesse, wanton, subtyle, paynted Femme impudicque, lubricque, affrontee, mignarde, ...
— An Introductorie for to Lerne to Read, To Pronounce, and to Speke French Trewly • Anonymous
... the captives to torture, in order to make them reveal their treasures; sold their persons to slavery; and set fire to their houses, after they had pillaged them of every thing valuable. The fierceness of their disposition, leading them to commit wanton destruction, frustrated their rapacity of its purpose; and the property and persons even of the ecclesiastics, generally so much revered, were at last, from necessity, exposed to the same outrage which had laid waste ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... straight down the throat of the monster, no dark passage now, but with all the glorious day playing into it, and spent a good part of my stay at Cortona lying there at my length and observing the situation over the top of a volume that I must have brought in my pocket just for that especial wanton luxury of the resource provided and slighted. In the afternoon I came down and hustled a while through the crowded little streets, and then strolled forth under the scorching sun and made the outer circuit of the wall. There I found tremendous uncemented blocks; they ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... power, or else go and dwell alone amongst them. It is clear, from the rape of the Sabine women, that the citizens of Alba would not admit these outcasts into their own body, since that deed was caused, not by wanton insolence, but by necessity, as they could not obtain wives by fair means; for after carrying the women off they treated them with the greatest respect. Afterwards, when the city was once founded, they made it a sanctuary ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... personal business, this short visit to Berlin was memorable for my meeting with Franz Liszt, which afterwards proved of great importance. It took place under singular circumstances, which placed both him and me in a situation of peculiar embarrassment, brought about in the most wanton ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... at jeists. And wanton when he came to feists, He scorn'd the converse of great beasts, O'er a sheep's head; He laugh'd at stones about ghaists; Blythe ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... things there; and yet they lived. Our wanton accidents take root, and grow To vaunt themselves God's laws, until our clothes, Our gems, and gaudy books, and cushioned litters Become ourselves, and we would fain forget There live who need them not. [Guta offers to robe her.] Let be, beloved— ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... witch of evil fame, And Petulengro it is their name; Within their tent each lass and youth Is a wanton or thief—I tell ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... said her father sternly. "You only encourage him in his wanton mischief, and no one takes any heed how ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... her hands out of his grasp and ran away out of the room; which so exasperated Chia Lien that as he bent his body, he exclaimed, full of indignation: "What a dreadful niggardly young wench! she actually sets her mind to stir up people's affections with her wanton blandishments, and then, after all, she ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... drave the salvages from their houses, and took the spoil of them, as they would have done of us." After this exploit they returned to the ship and set sail immediately. It does not appear from the journal that the natives had ever offered them any harm or given any provocation for so wanton an act. The writer only asserts that they would have done it if they could. No plea is more commonly used to justify tyranny and cruelty than the supposed bad ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... III, Sc. 4: Having been menaced with death by the wanton judges, Susanna tells her father, mother, and sister of ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... church, From some strange ship-of-war, far out at sea, There came a sudden tiny puff of smoke— And then a dull strange throb, a whistling hiss, And scarce a score of yards away a shot Ploughed up the turf. None knew, none ever knew From whence it came, whether a perilous jest Of English seamen, or a wanton deed Of Spaniards, or mere accident; but all Her maids in flight were scattered. Bess awoke As from a dream, crying aloud—"'Tis he, 'Tis he that sends this message. He is not dead. I will not pass the porch. Come home with me. 'Twas ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... to go further to their work, and the stones would have to be drawn further. The priest held that the extra labour was of secondary importance. He said that to make two roads running parallel with each other would be a wanton humiliation to ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... Hsia seasons, drive in the chariot of Yin, wear the head-dress of Chou, take for music the Shao and its dance. Banish the strains of Cheng and flee men that are glib; for the strains of Cheng are wanton and glib speakers ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius
... that the Constitution was a "covenant with hell," which stood as the caption of a leading abolitionist paper of Boston. That signs of coming danger so visible, evidences of hostility so unmistakable, disregard of constitutional obligations so wanton, taunts and jeers so bitter and insulting, should serve to increase excitement in the South, was a consequence flowing as much from reason and patriotism as from sentiment. He must have been ignorant of human nature who did ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... Goods a-shoar: Where soon repair'd a numerous Crew, In Shirts and Drawers of (d) Scotch-cloth Blue With neither Stockings, Hat nor Shooe. These Sot-weed Planters Crowd the Shoar, In hue as tawny as a Moor: Figures so strange, no God design'd, To be a part of Humane kind: But wanton Nature, void of Rest, Moulded the brittle Clay in Jest. At last a Fancy very odd Took me, this was the Land of Nod; Planted at first, when Vagrant Cain, His Brother had unjustly slain; Then Conscious of the Crime he'd done From Vengeance dire, he hither ...
— The Sot-weed Factor: or, A Voyage to Maryland • Ebenezer Cook
... which these haughty nobles talk with so much urbanity, were wrung from the wretched provincials by every kind of extortion and excess; that bribes of untold value passed from the hands of cringing monarchs into those of violent proconsuls, to minister to the lust and greed, or at best to the wanton luxury, of a small governing class. In Varro's pleasant dialogue we see the bright side of the picture; in the speeches of Cicero the dark side. Doubtless there is a charm about the lofty pride that brooks ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... pasture-lands on towards the brilliant "city enthroned in wickedness," which sparkles like a jewel on the borders of the Seine as gloriously as ever Babylon sparkled on the shores of Euphrates. As godless, as hollow to the very core of rottenness, as her sister of ancient days, wanton "Lutetia" shines,—with the ghastly and unnatural lustre of phosphorescent luminance arising from old graves—and as divinely determined as the destruction of the old-time city splendid, is the approaching downfall of the modern ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... framework of creation did not invalidate its Divine authorship, so neither did the evil or imperfection in the symbol invalidate its Divine message. And thus, sometimes, the designer at last became wanton in his appeal to the piety of his interpreter, and recklessly poured out the impurity and the savageness of his own heart, for the mere pleasure of seeing them overlaid with the fine gold of the sanctuary, by ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... garbage-can, almost at the entrance. At the sight of this misshapen figure, the irritating memory of the Italian and his impossible music recurred to Suvaroff. A sudden sinister cruelty came over him; he felt a wanton ruthlessness that the sight of ugliness sometimes engenders in natures sensitive to beauty. He went up to the hunchback and looked searchingly into the man's face. It was a strangely handsome face, and its incongruity struck Suvaroff. Had Nature been weary, or merely ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... "I think I mind you threatened it before myself, and Doom is to be rouped at last to pleasure a wanton woman." ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... Nachitochy, just at the very time that the Comanches were attacking the last Caddoe village upon the banks of the Red. River. These poor savages yelled with terror when the strange mass passed thus before them, and, either from wanton cruelty or from fear of an attack, the boat fired four guns, loaded with grape-shot, upon the village, from which they were ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... departure for Osborne.[11] I hope that you will not have been alarmed by the account of the occurrence which took place on Saturday, and which I can assure you did not alarm me at all. This time it is quite clear that it was a wanton and wicked wish merely to frighten, which is very wrong, and will be tried and punished as a misdemeanour. The account in the Times is quite correct. The indignation, loyalty, and affection this act has called forth is very ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... the Water! The merry, wanton brook That bent itself to pleasure me, Like mine old shepherd crook. The Water! the Water! That sang so sweet at noon, And sweeter still all night, to win Smiles from the pale proud moon, And from the little fairy faces That gleam ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... bleeds it; as with the grapes, he carries none away with him, but wounds them all. He is welcome to all the fruit he can eat, but why should he murder every cherry on the tree, or every grape in the cluster? He is as wanton as a sheep-killing dog, that will not stop with enough, but slaughters every ewe in the flock. The oriole is peculiarly exempt from the dangers that beset most of our birds: its nest is all but impervious to the rain, and the squirrel, or the jay, or the crow cannot rob it ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... barefoot on the embers; the circle of grunting figures, leaning forward, hatchet and musket in hand, moving slowly around the fire with a shuffling, hopping step; the outer circle of sitting or lying figures, men, women, and children, drunken, wanton, quarrelsome, dreaming of the blood that should be let before the sun had gone; and at one side the little group of old men, beating their drums of wood and skin with a rhythm that ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... Lead him away, guards, and strangle him! Take him away! Be silent, wretch! never will I listen to that smooth, hypocritical tongue again, or look at those treacherous eyes. They come from the Divs and delude every one with their wanton glances. Off ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... But, alas! some wanton hand had pulled out the nails; and this person was none other then Juan's second brother. "I am a lost man," ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... suckling with delight her tender foal. Boreas, enamor'd of no few of these, The pasture sought, and cover'd them in form 280 Of a steed azure-maned. They, pregnant thence, Twelve foals produced, and all so light of foot, That when they wanton'd in the fruitful field They swept, and snapp'd it not, the golden ear; And when they wanton'd on the boundless deep, 285 They skimm'd the green wave's frothy ridge, secure. From Ericthonius sprang Tros, King of ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... to the farthest limits of the kingdom am I persuaded the same spirit spreads, and possesses and fills every soul. The attempt of Aurelian to control us in our affairs, to dictate to us concerning the limits of our empire so far removed, is felt to be a wanton freak of despotic power, which, if it be not withstood in its first encroachment, may proceed to other acts less tolerable still, and which may leave us scarcely our name as a distinct people—and that covered ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... which Funfeng, AEgir's servant, had won for the dexterity with which he waited upon his master's guests, Loki suddenly turned upon him and slew him. At this wanton crime, the gods in fierce wrath drove Loki away once more, threatening him with dire punishment should he ever ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... ye muses guide, Where nature wanton's in her virgin pride, To mossy banks, edg'd round with op'ning flow'rs, Elysian fields and amaranthian bow'rs; T' ambrosial founts, and sleep-inspiring rills, To herbag'd vales, gay lawns, ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... his oppressors of their expected perquisite; and so the dead Jew remained exposed his full time. Few excepting those of the true faith ventured to approach the spot, fearful that the Mohamedan authorities would, in their wanton propensities to heap insults upon the Giaours, oblige some one of them to carry the carcass to the place of burial; and thus the horrid and disgusting object was left abandoned to itself, and this ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... Mamise footed it with a young officer who also knew how to compel her to his whim. Davidge wondered if Mamise could be responding to this fellow as keenly as she responded to himself. The thought was intolerable. She could not be so wanton. It would amount to a hideous infidelity. Moorish jealousy smoldered in his heart, and he cursed public dancing as an infamous, an unbelievable promiscuity. Yet when he had Polly Widdicombe for the next dance, her husband had no cause for jealousy. Polly was a ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... Prince; She that hath snow enough about her heart, To take the wanton spring of ten such lines off, May be a Nun without probation. Sir, you have in such neat poetry, gathered a kiss, That if I had but five lines of that number, Such pretty begging blanks, I should commend Your fore-head, or your cheeks, and ...
— Philaster - Love Lies a Bleeding • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... you have heard this wanton insult," continued Captain Truck, suppressing his wrath as well as he could: "in what mariner ought ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... had to mourn, because it appeared carried to a wanton and heedless extent, was the havoc everywhere making with barbarous and indiscriminate zeal amongst the neighbouring timber. I looked about upon the nearest hills, many of which are already bare, denuded of every shrub; and sorrowed to think that even such others as yet rejoiced in their rich ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... 1876 had rent the Liberal party once; the Irish Question of 1886 had rent it again; and now for the third time it was rent by the South African Question. Holding that the South African War was a wanton crime against freedom and humanity, I wished that my leader could declare himself unequivocally against it, but he felt bound to consider the interests of the Liberal party as a whole rather than those of any particular section which he ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... settled Wheeling, [95] were also men of enterprise, tempered with prudence, and directed by sound judgment. Ready at all times, to resist and punish the aggression of the Indians, they were scrupulously careful not to provoke them by acts of wanton outrage, such as were then, too frequently committed along the frontier. Col. Ebenezer Zane had been among the first, to explore the country from the South Branch, through the Alleghany glades, and west of them. He was accompanied ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... 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 by things that he heard ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... was thrust from a side window and the refuse in a smoking iron spider was dumped upon the snow. Simultaneously it was shown that more than one person tenanted the building: a man, bareheaded, but with a shaggy mat of roached hair that served in lieu of a hat, issued from the door. The wanton luxuriance of the hair would have stirred envy in any baldheaded man; but Tasper Britt exhibited a passion that was ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... way. They are the kind of people who would provide pigeon-cotes and dog-collars for the use of ferrets. I grant that the condition of many London streets is appalling; but make a house-to-house visitation, and see how the desolation is caused. Wanton, brutish destructiveness has been at work everywhere. The cistern which should supply a building cannot be fed because the spring, the hinge, and the last few yards of pipe have been chopped away and carried to a marine-store dealer; the landings and ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... he himself combined an almost womanly gentleness with a quiet determination that unflinchingly faced all obstacles. With a high sense of personal honour, unassuming and even-tempered, he was only roused to anger by acts of oppression or wanton cruelty. Then his indignation, though not loud, was very real, and he acted with a promptitude which would hardly have been expected from his usually placid demeanour. A story is told of how one day sitting at table he saw through the window a man belabouring ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... corrected by royal proclamation,(1487) their conduct would have met with universal approbation. Instead of this they again set to work pulling down roods, smashing up ancient tombs and committing to the flames vestments and service books—the work of years of artistic labour(1488)—until the wanton destruction was restricted, if not altogether stopped, ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... feet] Murderess! Monster! She-devil! Unnatural, inhuman wretch! You deserve to be hanged, guillotined, broken on the wheel, burnt alive. No sense of the sacredness of human life! No thought for my wife and children! Bitch! Sow! Wanton! [He picks up the pistol]. And missed me at five yards! Thats a woman ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... hunting. In vain Papillette sought him in the park, in the garden, and near the favourite orange-tree. But his nephew, taking advantage of his absence, began chasing the pretty butterfly. The courtiers knew that he would one day be in power, and, eager to gratify his whims, assisted in the wanton sport: ministers the most pompous, members of council the most profound, climbed on trees, and capered through the meadows,—one would have supposed them mad. But the royal insect, so familiar with the king, was for all others the most capricious ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... seemed simple enough, at first, to draw a warrant for old Zack's arrest, but legal difficulties arose. He could not well be taken for assault, for it was the lawyer that had attacked him; or for wanton mischief, for his intent in going to school was not mischievous; or yet for trespass, for he had offered to ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... by one and the same act. "By traffic in benefices, sale of indulgences, exercise of the right of spoils, and taxes for the Turkish war, as well as by the murder of rich or troublesome persons, Alexander was seeking to scrape together as much money as possible to support the wanton luxury and shameful licentiousness of his court, and provide treasures for his children." In their correspondence men who had dealings with him would refer to him in such terms as these: "That monstrous head—that infamous beast!" ("Hoc ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... corner of the nearest street, With aching eyes and tottering knees intent, Loose leathery neck and worm-like lip outstretched, Fix long the ken upon one form, so swift Through the gay vestures fluttering on the bank, And through the bright-eyed waters dancing round, Wove they their wanton wiles and disappeared. Meantime, with pomp august and solemn, borne On four white camels tinkling plates of gold, Heralds before and Ethiop slaves behind, Each with the signs of office in his hand, Each on his brow the sacred stamp of years, The four ambassadors ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... simple convenience of a porter's knot, but carry their burden upon their heads. They appeared to be a miserable race, worn out by the united operation of excessive labour and ill usage; and Mr. Cook was sorry to observe, and to say, that instances of wanton cruelty were much more frequent among his countrymen at St. Helena, than among the Dutch, who are generally reproached with want of humanity, both at Batavia and the Cape of Good Hope. It is impossible for a feeling mind to avoid being concerned that such ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... horses are subjected, for we deprive them for ever of their caudal appendage, and the ridiculous stump sticking up where the tail ought to be, is as ungraceful as it is indecent, especially in the case of mares. Our friend, the late Dr. George Fleming, says in The Wanton Mutilation of Animals, "nothing can be more painful and disgusting to the real horseman and admirer of this most symmetrically formed and graceful animal than the existence of this most detestable and torturing fashion; and those who perform the operation ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes |
