"Soft-hearted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was too soft-hearted—but I will!" he cried, and flung a hand-grenade, and then a second, over the breastwork. The explosions were followed by agonized groans from the Grays hugging the lower side of the terrace. For this they had crawled across the road in the night—to ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... A soft-hearted, soft-headed man, a confirmed valtudinarian, a day- dreamer, who had wasted away his life in dawdling and maundering over Simple Poetry, and sighing over his unhappy attachment; no child, no babe, was more ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... T'an Ch'un proceeded laughingly, "we started a rhyming club; but the first meeting was not quite a success. Every one of us proved so soft-hearted! The rules therefore were set at naught. So I can't help thinking that we must enlist your services as president of the society and superintendent; for what is needed to make the thing turn out well is firmness and no favour. The next matter ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... always shall be awkward in my ways toward women. A woman's tears always unman me, and make me soft-hearted. So I knew not what to say to her, and for the life of me I could not be angry. In the providence of God all men love all women, only there must be one especially to stir the depths of each man's heart. And, verily, had not mine heart been taken captive, I should have ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... a possibility. If she's a sensible body I concur with your opinion she'll no come back, but women are a soft-hearted race and she'll maybe take pity on ...
— Hobson's Choice • Harold Brighouse
... his fortunes. Educated in the sweet order, and amid the decorous virtues of the roof of Besso, Fakredeen, who, from his susceptibility, took the colour of his companions, even when he thought they were his tools, had figured for ten years as a soft-hearted and somewhat timid child, dependent on kind words, and returning kindness with ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... as they marched steadily on through the forest. When he summed it up he found that he had fared well. His captors had really been soft-hearted. It was not usual for one serving as an intermediary and spy like himself to escape, when taken, with his life and even with freedom. Life! How precious it was! Young Lennox had said that the forest was beautiful, and it was! It was splendid, grand, glorious ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... soft-hearted people and would let us down agreeably if the Social-Democrats overturned the House of Hohenzollern and stretched out the imploring ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... glared at her soft-hearted sister. "You sound just like our Sunday school teacher when she reads: 'Come ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... no soft-hearted Saxon maiden, any more than she was a cold-blooded, cut-throat American girl, calculating her romance by the yard, booking her flirtations by double-entry and marrying at compound interest, with the head of a railway president and the heart of an Esquimaux. She ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... The soft-hearted shore-going critics of conduct themselves would not dare, The trivial cocksure belittlers of dangers they have not to share, Claim much—oh so much, from rough manhood,—unflinching cool daring in fray, And ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, Feb. 13, 1892 • Various
... "Come, come," said soft-hearted Mr. Fabian; "none of that nonsense. Place yourself in my hands, to be guided by me and to work for my interests, and none of these evils shall happen to you. You shall live and die in wealth and luxury, my father's honored wife, the mistress ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... which she knew he wanted generosity to give handsomely; and meeting him with a smile, which she forced, she cried, 'How now, Brilliard, are you so faint-hearted a soldier, you cannot see a lady die without being terrified?' 'Rather, madam,' (replied he blushing anew) 'so soft-hearted, I cannot see the loveliest person in the world fainting in my arms, without being disordered with grief and fear, beyond the power of many days to resettle again.' At which she approached him, who stood near the door, and shutting ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... Hill; and many of the writers appear, underneath the conventions of the period, to be genuinely moved. But what unpleasantly strikes a reader is, that these devout unfortunates found a revenue in their devotion. It is everywhere the same tale; on the side of the soft-hearted ladies, substantial acts of help; on the side of the correspondents, affection, italics, texts, ecstasies, and imperfect spelling. When a midwife is recommended, not at all for proficiency in her important art, but because she has 'a sister ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... princess had reason to rue the day when she listened to that glib and dangerous orator. Harry Warrington had not pious Aeneas's power of speech, and his elderly aunt, we may presume, was by no means so soft-hearted as the sentimental Dido; but yet the lad's narrative was touching, as he delivered it with his artless eloquence and cordial voice; and more than once, in the course of his story, Madam Bernstein found herself moved to a softness to which she had ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... mentioned flung a sum- merish dusk over the place, in which a few scattered remains of stout walls and big bastions looked vener- able and picturesque. A little boulevard winds round the town, planted with trees and garnished with more benches than I ever saw provided by a soft-hearted municipality. This precinct had a warm, lazy, dusty, southern look, as if the people sat out-of-doors a great deal, and wandered about in the stillness of summer nights. The figure of the elder town, at these ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... they have a baby now, and I've no doubt Pinney is a pattern to parents. He's always advising you to get married; but he's a born Bohemian. He's the most harmless creature in the world, so far as intentions go, and quite soft-hearted, but he wouldn't spare his dearest friend if he could make copy of him; it would be impossible. I should say he was first a newspaper man, and then a man. He's an awfully common nature, and hasn't the first literary instinct. ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... night. Both girls were excited by memories of the day that was past, and by thoughts of the day that was coming. Ida was brooding a little upon her disappointment in Brian Wendover. He had very pleasant manners, he seemed soft-hearted and sympathetic, he was very good-looking—but he was not the Brian of her dreams. That ideal personage had never existed outside her imagination. It was a shock to her girlish fancy. There was a sense of ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... to it? It will help just here to think of the man behind the work. No sensible human being, it would appear, can become aware of the life and personality of Thackeray without concluding that he was an essentially kind-hearted, even soft-hearted man. He was keenly sensitive to praise and blame, most affectionate and constant with his friends, generous and impulsive in his instincts, loving in his family, simple and humble in his spiritual nature, however questioning in his intellect. That is a fair summary of Thackeray ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... say women pray for husbands—"any, good Lord, any") and has let him into our house, and the chap has made off with your brooch, and m'appen many another thing beside. It's only saying that Norah is soft-hearted and doesn't stick at a white ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... comfortably against the wall, reading the sporting news from a pink paper to a friend from the Outward Bills Department who lay luxuriously on the floor beside him, did not rank among Mr Waller's pleasantest memories. But Mr Waller was too soft-hearted to interfere with his assistants unless it was absolutely necessary. The truth of the matter was that the New Asiatic Bank was over-staffed. There were too many men for the work. The London branch of the bank was really only a nursery. New men were ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... a case. It will be well for us all—for me, for her, for Pulcheria, and even our absent Philip, if the divinity selects her as its instrument. But who can see into darkness? If it is any comfort to you, Joanna, I can inform you that the soft-hearted Kadi and his Arab colleagues, out of sheer hatred of the Vekeel, who is immeasurably their superior in talent and strength of will, will do everything in their power. . . ." "To save her?" ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... whom Anna Vassilyevna had entrusted the finishing of her daughter's education—an education, we may remark in parenthesis, which had not even been begun by the languid lady—was a Russian, the daughter of a ruined official, educated at a government boarding school, a very emotional, soft-hearted, and deceitful creature; she was for ever falling in love, and ended in her fiftieth year (when Elena was seventeen) by marrying an officer of some sort, who deserted her without loss of time. This governess was very fond of literature, and wrote verses herself; she inspired ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... earth; And I will see a crown around her head, Or die in the attempt to place it there. I hazard all—all! and for this alone, To lift her into greatness. Yea, in this moment, in the which we are speaking [He recollects himself. And I must now, like a soft-hearted father, Couple together in good peasant fashion The pair that chance to suit each other's liking— And I must do it now, even now, when I Am stretching out the wreath that is to twine My full accomplished work—no! she is the jewel, Which I have treasured long, my last, my noblest, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... "It's his damn tender, soft-hearted ways that will win in the end. My old Indian guide used to say, 'Much stick, good squaw.' Ann Penhallow has never in her whole life had any stick. Damn these sugar plum husbands! I'd like to know what Miss Leila Grey thinks of this ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... earth be drunken with our blood: Ile kill my Horse, because I will not flye: Why stand we like soft-hearted women heere, Wayling our losses, whiles the Foe doth Rage, And looke vpon, as if the Tragedie Were plaid in iest, by counterfetting Actors. Heere on my knee, I vow to God aboue, Ile neuer pawse againe, neuer stand still, Till either death hath clos'd these eyes of mine, Or Fortune ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... of breeding-ground for princes. There is a strange process in history by which things that decay turn into the very opposite of themselves. Thus in England Puritanism began as the hardest of creeds, but has ended as the softest; soft-hearted and not unfrequently soft-headed. Of old the Puritan in war was certainly the Puritan at his best; it was the Puritan in peace whom no Christian could be expected to stand. Yet those Englishmen to-day who claim descent from the great militarists ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... straight brows, the ripe lips, the soft oval contour, the clear olive complexion. She had also lustrous brown eyes; but these were full of tears. She only turned them on him for a moment; then she resumed her apparently interrupted occupation of sobbing. Aristide was a soft-hearted ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... often met men in the course of his sordid work with whom he really wanted to shake hands. But somehow this great, soft-hearted, simple giant made him feel as he had never felt before. He abruptly thrust out a hand, forgetful of the previous handshakes he had endured, and, in a moment, it was seized in a second ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... house, in the accustomed way. And she tried to say by letter all that it behoved her to say, so that there need be no meeting. But in this she failed. One letter was stern and arrogant, and the next was soft-hearted, so that it might teach him to think that his love for Clara might yet be successful. At last she resolved to go herself to Hap House; and accordingly she wrote her letter and ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... difference could that make in her duty to restore it? Did she not well remember how eloquently and precisely Mr. Kennedy had, the very last Sunday, expounded the passage, "Thou shalt not respect the person of the poor." Right was right, whatever soft-hearted people might say or think. Anyone might give what was his own, but who could be right in giving away what was another's? It was time she had done it without thinking; but she had known, or might have known, well enough that to whomsoever it might belong, it was not hers. And now what ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald
... push you into this convent, when you might have come and dwelt with Ralph and me, and been such a darling grandmother to my little ones? There, now, I did not mean to make you look sorrowful. I will come and see you every year, if it be only for an hour's talk at the grating; and my Lady, who is soft-hearted as she is rough-tongued, will never ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... am not wholly surprised, for, as I remember him, he was a soft-hearted, Miss Nancy sort of a boy, who was always coddling sick kittens, or something of the kind, and never would go hunting because he couldn't bear to kill things. He apparently hadn't a drop of sporting blood in him, and I recall having to thrash him on one occasion because he objected ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... surrounded, the bright moon, light which illuminated the battle-field, the thought of the hard struggle of the past day, all acted strongly upon his feelings. The brave, daring soldier, Charles Henry Buschman, was once more transformed into the gentle, soft-hearted Anna Sophia Detzloff; now, when danger was past, she felt herself a weak, trembling woman. Deep, inexpressible emotion, earnest prayers to God, were busy ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... is soft-hearted about him because he has lost his fortune. And Gilbert Vane is like to lose his in the general settling up. So she can administer the same kind of ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... "I'm a soft-hearted fool or I'd ha'—" began Melissa, somewhat ominously, but checked herself after a quick glance at her mistress's face. "Try to go to sleep, Uncle Joe," she substituted. "I'll have some toast and tea for you when you wake up. You—you look as if you hadn't eat anything since ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... on, for nigh three hundred years. We're a good many Simlins'—and we're a good set, I'll say it! a pretty good set. Not thin-skinned, you know,—we can take a scratch without bein' killed—but we never would stand bein' trampled on. We're soft-hearted too; plenty o' what I may call tendrils, ready to take hold of anything; and when we take hold we do take hold. We cover a good deal of ground in the country, here and elsewhere—in the various branches. My mother was a Mush, and my grandmother was a Citron; a good families ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... of wooing der fair Sylva. When she sees you in torment, she kisses me sweetly for der prifilege of stopping der heat-ray. I count upon you, my friend, to plead with her to grant me der most extrafagant of concessions, when der heat-ray is searing der flesh from your bones. I feel that she is soft-hearted enough to ...
— Invasion • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... Dora Lee was soft-hearted. She named her girl-baby Daniel, and called her Danny, which was not, after all, so bad, and her old uncle loved the child as if she had been his own. Little Daniel—he always called her Daniel, or, rather, "Dan'l"—was the only reason for his descending into the village ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... peasant girl succeed in[2] hiring out? 4. Where did she visit? 5. Wasn't the lady's brain a little "off" (cracked)? 6. Why has the servant come back? 7. I like my profession better than yours. 8. That[3] is because you are a little soft-hearted. 9. When did the doctor put this book into your hands? 10. He has his mind full of the thing, hasn't he?[4] 11. The dog made a severe wound in my arm. 12. Is this cat yours or theirs? 13. I have a dog of my ...
— French Conversation and Composition • Harry Vincent Wann
... blur the man as they might have found him in his work. Booth and Jones have been taken for definite and complete reflections of the author of their being: the parts for the whole, that is—a light-minded captain of foot and a hot-headed and soft-hearted young man about town for adequate presentments of the artist of a new departure and the writer of three or four books of singular solidity and finish. Whichever way you turn, you are confronted with appearances each more distorted and more ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... always anxiously concerned about her. If Brangwen drove with his wife to Nottingham, Anna ran about happily enough, or unconcerned, for a long time. Then, as afternoon came on, there was only one cry—"I want my mother, I want my mother——" and a bitter, pathetic sobbing that soon had the soft-hearted Tilly sobbing too. The child's anguish was that ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... machine and was threshing out his wheat. Of course, the smoke of the engine attracted the Germans at once. The French are very much amused at this, I am told, for they do not allow any such things near their lines; but our Staff are soft-hearted. I had a very pleasant little dinner with Gen. Pinney last night, and played Bridge for an hour—the first game I have had time for since I left the transport at Liverpool. That will give you an idea of how busy I am. When I can, I sleep; otherwise I work ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... him a purse and presented him with a watch-ribbon. At the last moment she besought her brother, who was two years older, to watch over him, and soothed the moment of final agony by a promise to correspond. Had the innocent and soft-hearted girl been acquainted with, or been able to comprehend, the purposes of her crafty parents, she could not have adopted means more calculated to accomplish them. The young Duke kissed her a thousand times, and loved her ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... were few, and only a small flock of sheep kept just to provide the house with mutton. His poor relations living scattered about the district knew that he was not only an improvident but an exceedingly weak and soft-hearted man, in spite of his grand manner, and many of the poorest among them had been allowed to build their ranches on his land and to keep a few animals for their sustenance: most of these had built their hovels quite close to the estancia house, behind the plantation, so that it was almost ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... that soft-hearted she could not bring her mind to it, though they promised her not to touch him unless he spoke. But nigh on two years later, Master Robert was born, as fine and lusty and straight-limbed as a chrisom could be, while the other could not walk a step, but sat himself ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Volscians about what had taken place. Some blamed him severely, while others approved, because they wished for peace. Others again, though they disliked what he had done, yet did not regard him as a traitor, but as a soft-hearted man who had yielded to overwhelming pressure. However, no one disobeyed him, but all followed him in his retreat, though more out of regard for his noble character than ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... 'I'm not very soft-hearted,' muttered Gorman, 'but she gave me a sense of fulness in the throat, like choking, the other day, that I vowed to myself I'd never ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... without the countenance of a single friend. The girl's strength was not of that nature. But were she, the Countess, to yield an inch, then this evil might come upon them. She had heard that young people can always beat their parents if they be sufficiently obdurate. Parents are soft-hearted to their children, and are prone to yield. And so would she have been soft-hearted, if the interests concerned had been less important, if the deviation from duty had been less startling, or the ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... abstraction than was altogether usual with him, "now will Bill Hinkley beat about the bush without bouncing through it, until it's too late to do anything. He's mealy-mouthed with the woman, and mealy-mouthed with the man, and mealy-mouthed with everybody. —quite too soft-hearted and too easy to get on. Here's a stranger nobody knows, just like some crow from another corn-field, that'll pick up his provisions from under his very nose, and he doing nothing to hinder until ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... tolerably clean by dint of Israel's care, and thrust his long nose between the rails of his pen for grass, or fruit, or carrot- and beet-tops, with a knowing look out of his deep-set eyes that was never to be resisted by the soft-hearted spinster. Indeed, Miss Lucinda enjoyed the possession of one pet who could not tyrannize over her. Pink's place was more than filled by Fun, who was so oppressively affectionate that he never could leave his mistress ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... certain of that, you soft-hearted fool. I tell the truth sometimes, Roy—when it serves my purpose. And I want you to imagine the details of what is going to happen to her. Think of it, Roy—the Lady of the Golden Bough, the saintly Mrs. Swope, the sweet Mary Baintree that was—lying in Fitzgibbon's ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... and soft-hearted and full of splendid dreams he was, and what deliciously romantic times we had floating on the pond, while the frogs sung to his accordion, as he tried to say unutterable things with his honest blue eyes. It makes me shiver now to think of the ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... terrify me, at first. But now I know what a colossal old fraud and humbug this same soft-hearted and granite-crusted specimen of humanity can be. For last night, after the usual demonstration, I slipped out to the Blue Room and found big Dunkie kneeling down beside little Dinkie's bed, with Dinkie's small hand softly enclosed in his dad's big paw, ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... was very much more willing to talk on this subject with his soft-hearted landlady. Every time after that she praised the Curate to Mrs. Pendennis, she came away from the latter with the notion that the widow herself had been praising him. "Etre soul au monde est bien ouneeyoung," she would ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... goods on top. It is the nature of these goods to be cruel to their rivals. Nothing shall avail when weighed in the balance against them. They call out all the mercilessness in our disposition, and do not easily forgive us if we are so soft-hearted as to shrink from sacrifice in ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... wrong thing again, and she stood waiting at her kitchen door, hoping that Joseph would stop on his way out to tell her Jesus' decision, but he went away without speaking, and she began to think it unlikely that anything was decided. He is soft-hearted and without much will of his own, she said.... Jesus is going to stay with us, so we may all hang upon crosses yet, unless, indeed, Master comes to hear something in Jerusalem that will bring him round to my way of thinking. He believes, she continued, ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... mountains from hence?" "Yea," said David; "so hold up thine heart when that sight first cometh before thine eyes. As for us, we are used to the sight, and that from a place much nigher to the mountains: yet they who are soft-hearted amongst us are overcome at whiles, when there is storm and tempest, and ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... you're soft-hearted; it's no reflection on Annie!" Chris said, giving her her paper, and opening his own. But Alice did not ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... good report could be given by his masters and ushers of that thick-set, square-faced, black-eyed, soft-hearted little Irish boy. He was very idle. He was whipped deservedly a great number of times. Though he had very good parts of his own, he got other boys to do his lessons for him, and only took just as much trouble as should enable him to scuffle through his ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fiercely. "My boys died believing they were fighting for men who would keep their word. The war was to go on till victory was won.. They died happily, believing that those who had spoken for England would keep their word. You're very soft-hearted in that article, sir, about the living. Did you think, when you sat down to write it, about the dead?—about that wilderness of white crosses out in France? You're proposing in cold blood to let those devils ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... think he would send some message. As a rule he is soft-hearted, although to me he has become suddenly ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... his words, but could not check the red fury that was surging through Slaughter's overstrung brain. The man who, in the presence of Ailleen's sorrow, had been gentle and soft-hearted, was now, in the presence of the full force of embittered memory, swayed only by one impulse, conscious only of one thing. Hate, an unreasoning madness of hate, was upon him, and to soothe that hate, to satisfy the craving ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... tried to appear lively and unconcerned in order not to awaken any suspicions, and avoid any too curious questions. But I confess I had none of the coolness of which people boast who have found themselves in the same position. All that evening I felt inclined to be soft-hearted and sentimental. ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... Romola will kiss my cheek in that way?" thought Tito, as he walked along. It seemed a tiresome distance now, and he almost wished he had not been so soft-hearted, or so tempted to linger in the shade. No other excuse was needed to Bardo and Romola than saying simply that he had been unexpectedly hindered; he felt confident their proud delicacy would inquire ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... blessing of Heaven on us now departing from them over the wild seas. Kit took off his cap; and we all followed his example, as if impelled to it. It was really an affecting incident. Our hardy captain is not a soft-hearted man; but I saw him wipe a tear from his eye as the chant ceased. I have not sought to color the picture. There was a wonderful pathos about it. We had not heard the song before; and I am inclined to believe it extempore,—one of those musical efforts which persons ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... disagreeable day or two after his call upon the judge. He was dissatisfied with the ending of their interview. He felt that he had been foolishly soft-hearted in promising to call at the Fair Harbor, or, to consider for another hour the preposterous offer of management of that institution. He must say no in the end. How much better to have said it then and there. Fifteen hundred a year looked like a lot of money to him. ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... "You soft-hearted darling." ... He held her close, in all her gracious and supple warmth, which even the fierceness of her stays could not quite keep from him. Oh, she was the dearest thing, so crude and yet so soft ... how glad he was he had not drawn back at the beginning, as he had half thought of ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... time may be dated the better taste and greater chivalry that have since distinguished Punch, even in his most rampant moods. He has always had his butts—from the soft-hearted and, at the time, unpardonably hirsute Colonel Sibthorpe, to Sir R. Temple and Mr. McNeill, Mr. Newdegate, Mr. Roebuck, Edwin James, ex-Q.C. (who was disbarred for corruption and set up in New York, joining, as Punch put it, the "bar sinister"), Madame ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... my way, some of those whose stomachs are too nice for this work, and who profess to serve the King with their lips while they intercede for his worst enemies, should themselves have cause to remember Taunton assizes. Oh, most ungrateful rebels! Have ye not heard how your most soft-hearted and compassionate monarch, the best of men—put it down in the record, clerk—on the intercession of that great and charitable statesman, Lord Sunderland—mark it down, clerk—hath had pity on ye? Hath it not melted ye? Hath it not made ye loathe ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and Grace Davoren!" he exclaimed, in a voice of well-feigned astonishment. "You mean my brother Charles. Why, Caterine, that soft-hearted and softheaded idiot, for I can call him nothing else, has made himself a perfect fool about her, and what is worst of all, I am afraid he will break his engagement with Miss Goodwin, and marry this wench. Me! why, except that he sent ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... villains Have raised their usual fee to fifteen shillin's! Nor, to reduce their rates, will they engage (Sympathetically) For two poor orphans who are under age! So (as I'd give no more than half a guinea) I must myself get rid of TOM and JENNY. Yet, like an old soft-hearted fool, I falter, And can't make up my mind to risk a halter. (Looking off). Ha, in the distance, JANE and little TOM I see! These berries—(meditatingly)—why, it only needs diplomacy. Ho-ho, a most ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, May 3, 1890. • Various
... a more direct way, and with gross and palpable artifice, which yet the credulous Timon was too blind to see, would affect to admire and praise something that Timon possessed, a bargain that he had bought, or some late purchase, which was sure to draw from this yielding and soft-hearted lord a gift of the thing commended, for no service in the world done for it but the easy expense of a little cheap and obvious flattery. In this way Timon but the other day had given to one of these mean lords the bay courser which he himself ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... bought a steamboat passage to another city, but I didn't have enough left to buy a square meal. Then, by bull luck, I fell overboard and landed here. And here I found the solution. I'm dead. If the governor gets soft-hearted and gets private detectives on my trail, they'll find I disappeared from that steamer, that's all. Drowned, of course. SHE'LL think so, too. 'Good riddance to bad rubbish' is the general verdict. I can stay here a year or so, and then, being dead ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... be especially observed in justice to poor Kit that he was by no means of a sentimental turn, and perhaps had never heard that adjective in all his life. He was only a soft-hearted grateful fellow, and had nothing genteel or polite about him; consequently, instead of going home again, in his grief, to kick the children and abuse his mother (for, when your finely strung people are out of sorts, they must have everybody else unhappy likewise), he turned ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... you know. I'm such a soft-hearted, silly creature. Only think what he's gone through on my account! What if when I go home I feel sorry ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the last words which the god had spoken on the subject, and was not therefore called upon to be specially soft-hearted. "I never saw a poor devil look so sick in my ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... poor girl! [Pats Susan's head.] There, there! your feelings do you the greatest credit; but don't cry, because it makes your eyes red. Now, look here, Susan; there's only one thing more. You are very soft-hearted, I perceive, and it must be distinctly understood between us that you need never intercede with me in favor of that scoundrel Charles. I won't have it. You wouldn't succeed, of course, but if I ever happen to get fond of you—I mean foolishly fond ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... train arrivals. He posted letters and called every day at the post office for mail. Whether he got any or not Phil was unable to say definitely. But he got a sneaking suspicion after a while, that the soft-hearted, simple, big fellow was either answering letters through the Seattle Matrimonial Times, or corresponding with some lady friend. He felt convinced that Sol was badly, or rather, madly ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... the soft-hearted mistress, "used quite good language. It was really extraordinary for one of his class. And he carried a watch. And had lived in Boston. I don't believe they are all bad. They have always seemed to me to rather lack development. I always look upon them as children with whom ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... heard talking and so I ventured to come up too," said a timid voice, and Miss Delano tiptoed softly in. "Phebe, my dear child, my dear child!" and the soft-hearted little old maid stooped to kiss Phebe's pale cheek, ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... breathing heavily, she stood up, and with huge tears on her red and crumpled face she looked out upon the fields as if she had never seen them before. An immense sob shook her. The King stamped his foot with rage, and then, because he was soft-hearted to them that he saw in sorrow, he put his hand upon ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... of his own, no," Harris said; "only one that's going to be his later on. Did it ever strike you as queer that Slade, whose way is to crush every new outfit, should suffer a soft-hearted streak every year or so and befriend some party that had elected to start up for himself right in the middle of Slade's range? And later buy him out? That's the way he came into nearly every ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... only the widow, but that he had committed a real crime, or at least some very dishonourable action (of which he is, of course, incapable), I repeat that even in that case, if he were treated with what I may call generous tenderness, one could get at the whole truth, for he is very soft-hearted! Believe me, he would betray himself before five days were out; he would burst into tears, and make a clean breast of the matter; especially if managed with tact, and if you and his family watched his every step, so to speak. ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... cold. The man began with a plea for some "clodin." We began with a plea for some children. How many would he swap for a start in clothing and "tings for his winter"? He picked out and gave us Jimmie. The soft-hearted mate, on whose cheeks the tears were literally standing, grabbed Jimmie—as the latter did his share of the gull. But we were not satisfied. We had to have Willie. It was only when a breaking of diplomatic relations altogether was threatened that Willie was sacrificed on the altar of "tings." I ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... nurses, trying one change after another. It was duller than ever at the ranch. We sat down three at table in a dining-room forty feet long, Aunt Isabel Dwight, Fraeulein Henschel, and myself. Fraeulein was the resident governess. She was a great, soft-hearted, injudicious creature, a mass of German interjections, but she had the grand style on the piano. There had been weeks of such weather as we are having now. Exercise was impossible till after sundown. I had dreamed of a breath of freedom, but instead of the open ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... hands on it and I went out into the kitchen to laugh it over with the cat. I'm a soft-hearted boob and I hate to take a sucker, at that. But accordin' to my dope, that dough of friend Alex's was the same as in the bank ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... thus into the evening light, which dazed his blue eyes for a moment, Miss Dolly turned away to hide a smile, but Faith, upon her father's introduction, took his hand and looked at him tenderly. For she was a very soft-hearted young woman, and the tale of his troubles and goodness to his mother had moved her affection toward him, while as one who was forever pledged—according to her own ideas—to a hero beyond comparison, she was able to regard young men with mercy, and with pity, if they had none to love. "How hard ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... said soft-hearted Mr. Garland, moved by the boy's distress, "if you really mean to do better—Why, look out, child, you'd have fallen over that stump if I hadn't pulled you back. Where in the world ...
— The Twin Cousins • Sophie May
... Pennington cleared his throat. "A certain person whom we know has behaved very well of late; better than I thought was in him, but—unless you are pretty sure you can't live without him—Now this is rank treason on my part, but don't be too soft-hearted, Margaret Elizabeth." ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... on her husband's dead body, wringing her hands and moaning: "Oh, God! oh, God!" sobbing until even the gardener, a stolid, weather-beaten peasant, and anything but soft-hearted, could not restrain his own tears. Not until after several minutes had passed did the young wife raise herself to her knees, and ask in a voice choked with tears, what all this meant, what ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... down, and was weeping like any silly fool of a girl. It was real crying; not the shedding of the tears of sensibility which often stood in her generous eyes. Emmy moved gently across the room—she was a soft-hearted, affectionate woman—and knelt ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... "You are very soft-hearted, all of a sudden, senorita," he said, with a fairly well-defined sneer, when he could bear no more. "You won't enjoy the bull-fighting, then, to-morrow—for all you have been looking forward to it so anxiously, and ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... with the other. If so—why did they not at least go off together? Not for want of his beseeching. And no doubt, if she had survived Gyp's birth, they would have gone. But to face the prospect of ruining two men, as it looked to her, had till then been too much for that soft-hearted creature. Death stilled her struggle before it was decided. There are women in whom utter devotion can still go hand in hand with a doubting soul. Such are generally the most fascinating; for the power of hard and prompt ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... he to be killed off by a pack of jail vermin. Come to the wall as he told us to. Maybe we'll get a shot at those murderers before the day is done. Come along an' stop that blubberin'," and he grabbed the soft-hearted little darky by the arm and dragged ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... reappeared, condensed with an icy reality, even more paralysing than the burning presentation of them in the morning's sermon. She was spared questions herself, as she was a stranger; and sat to hear girls of her own age and older men and women who looked as soft-hearted as herself, utter definitions of the method of salvation and the being and character of God that compelled the assent of her intellect, while they jarred with her spiritual experience as fiercely as brazen ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... that if all his grandfather of Navarre's morals have not descended to him, this poor King has somehow inherited a share of the specks that were thought to dim the lustre of that great Prince—that Charles is a little soft-hearted, or so, where beauty is concerned.—Do not blame him too severely, pretty Mistress Alice; when a man's hard fate has driven him among thorns, it were surely hard to prevent him from trifling with the few roses he ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... he advised the other. "They're just being soft-hearted. I take it," he spoke over the other agent's sputtering to Rip, "that you're worried about leaving us fin down—That's ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... Harry Walmers, Junior, and gently draws it to him,—a sight so touching to the chambermaids who are peeping through the door, that one of them calls out, "It's a shame to part 'em!" But this chambermaid was always, as Boots informs me, a soft-hearted one. Not that there was any harm in that ...
— The Holly-Tree • Charles Dickens
... whether the punishment might be for six weeks or for two years, what should be done with the family? Where should they be housed? How should they be fed? What should be done with the poor man when he came out of prison? It was a case in which the generous, soft-hearted old Lady Lufton was almost beside herself. "As for Grace," said young Lady Lufton, "it will be a great deal better that we should keep her amongst us. Of course she will become Mrs Grantly, and it will ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... was a soft-cheeked, soft-handed, and soft-hearted girl of eighteen, stood, hat in hand, before her mother with a slight ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... no!" she replied. "I'm too soft-hearted to be a physician. I saw Mr. Shaw just after ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... she hurts," runs another passage in this letter; "like an unloved child at bay she means, to smash and kill. The pity of it! Never was there a more generous, soft-hearted, kindly people. Germany, the land of the Christmas tree and folk songs, and hearthsides and gay childish laughter, turned into a relentless fighting machine! But each individual is a cog firmly fixed in the machine, ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... to say. He was too busy speculating as to the true significance of the girl's presence. What did she want—money? These saloon floozies always did. He hoped she wouldn't want much. For he ruefully knew himself to be a soft-hearted fool that was never able to resist a woman's appeal. He glanced at her covertly. Her little chin was trembling. Poor kid. That's all she was. Just a kid. Helluva life ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... Joseph Lauff, Rudolf Herzog, Wilhelm Schaefer, Wilhelm Schmidtbonn, Herbert Eulenberg) has failed to try his hand at the drama. In Middle Germany emotions are more deep-seated and more responsive; people are more sentimental, more soft-hearted, more talkative, more visionary, have a finer sense of form, but a more conventional manner of speech. In this charming region of forests and mountains, to which the population is warmly attached and in which it finds protection, there is abundant occupation ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... moonlight, when toward twelve o'clock Graham came forth from his last visit for the night, and she lifted up her head and looked him dumbly in the face,—dumbly, yet imploring a word of hope or comfort,—and it was more than the soft-hearted Scot could bear. "Major," said he, as he gently laid a big hand upon the black and tangled wealth of hair, "that lad in yonder would have been beyond the ken of civilization days ago if it hadn't been for this little savage. I'm thinking he'll sleep none the worse ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... words were sensible and his whole demeanor honorable; it cannot possibly be all rascality. Who knows! They are clever intriguers; send into my house newspaper articles, letters, and these good-natured people, to make me soft-hearted; act in public as my friends, to make me confide again in their falseness! Yes, that is it. It is a preconcerted plan! They will ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... of the hour Margaret was too soft-hearted to rouse Jean, who had lain down in her clothes, trembling for her father. She went instead into Gavin's room to look admiringly at him as he slept. Often Gavin woke to find that his mother had slipped in to save him the enormous trouble of opening a drawer for a clean collar, ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... that I didn't feel THAT!" Thorpe put fervour into his voice. "I was never reconciled to it for a minute. I never ceased swearing to myself that I'd pull myself out of it. And that's what makes me sort of soft-hearted now toward those—toward those who haven't pulled ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... Thummim, and who laid hands on him and give him the Holy Ghost? And after all that trouble He's took, do you think He's going to let everybody in? Not much, Mary Ann! The likely men may come the roots on some of our soft-hearted Elders, but they won't fool the Lord's ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... ten o'clock in the morning, but midnight, or a trifle past it I fancy, and we are in a room more secluded and retired than the cave could have been where the treacherous and daring AEneas enjoyed the fair soft-hearted Dido. But give me your hand, senora; I require no better protection than my own continence, and my own sense of propriety; as well as that which is inspired by that venerable head-dress;" and so saying he ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... of you," said Garry, his voice changing, "salting the old man's fireplace with your own money so that his niece could come down here and study French and music! You wonderful, soft-hearted Irish lunatic! I love you ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... a knife, Haye adroitly probed the wound. Soft-hearted as he was, the action seemed to hurt him more than the patient; but his efforts were rewarded by the extraction of a small ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... disorder, as any modern writer might. There was something, however, about Mr. Pogram that reassured him. The small fellow looked a fighter—looked as if he would sympathize with Tryst's want of a woman about him. The tusky but soft-hearted little brute kept nodding his round, sparsely covered head while he listened, exuding a smell of lavender-water, cigars, and gutta-percha. When Felix ceased he said, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... guest, nor would he let the money go out of the country. And he knows well how much we need your cargo and longs to be able to state in his reports that he sold you a hold full of breadstuffs. Moreover, I think the time has come to tell him of the distress at Sitka. He is very soft-hearted and is now in that distracted state of mind when only one more argument is required. I hope I have given you good advice, Excellency. It is the best I can think of. I have given it much thought, and the terrible state of those miserable creatures has kept me ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... when Will (his brother) sailed in Sherman's expedition, it was a blue day enough: how his mother and the girls did carry on! (Nabbes and Will supported the family, by the way; and Nabbes, inside of his slang, billiards, etc., was a good, soft-hearted fellow.) However, the country was looking up now. There were our victories,—and his own salary was raised. Will was snug down at Port Royal,—sent the girls home some confoundedly pretty jewelry; they were as busy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... had loved her papa, who now sat in a darkened room, breathing with difficulty; she had loved her aunt who used to come every other year from Bryansk; and before that, when she was at school, she had loved her French master. She was a gentle, soft-hearted, compassionate girl, with mild, tender eyes and very good health. At the sight of her full rosy cheeks, her soft white neck with a little dark mole on it, and the kind, naive smile, which came into her face when she listened to anything pleasant, ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... invited the tribe to gather together to witness its performance. It is said that the heart of Leelinau, touched by so much constancy, was inclined to relent and excuse her lover the terrible ordeal, but this is probably the dream of some soft-hearted girl, and only indicates what she would have ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... These big, soft-hearted trappers were all crying now like women. No other thought occurred to them than that these ghastly remains were Bob's, for the toboggan and things on it ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... is an insidious and wily person, and often presents himself to the soft-hearted celebrity in such humble and pathetic guise that one really hasn't the courage to snub him. He has come such a long way for such a little thing! it is such a lowly function he plies at the foot of that tall tree ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... express view of "making arrangements" about this bill; and had he seen John Tozer, John would have been compelled to accord to him some little extension of time. Both Tom and John knew this; and, therefore, John—the soft-hearted one—kept out of the way. There was no danger that Tom would be weak; and, after some half-hour of parley, he was again left by Mr. Sowerby, without having evinced any symptom ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... always used to an atmosphere of praise, and revelling in glory, now disfigured in body and broken in spirit, does not know which way to turn; sees that to go on is dangerous, to return a betrayal of vacillation; has the loyalists his enemies, the disloyal themselves not his friends. Yet see how soft-hearted I am. I could not refrain from tears when, on the 25th of July, I saw him making a speech on the edicts of Bibulus. The man who in old times had been used to bear himself in that place with the utmost confidence and dignity, surrounded by the warmest affection of the people, ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... "I shouldn't hesitate. And, at all events, I should be civil to him at all times. Why, the way you treated that wretched young man to-day at Clonbree Barracks was, I consider, shameful! And you call yourself, I dare say, soft-hearted. To look at you, one would think you couldn't be unkind if you tried; and yet the barbarity of your conduct to-day, to a person who literally worships the ground you walk ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... tears. The memory of that terrible day swept over his soul. Something desperate was doing. Hard as the little man was to the world against which he had fought his way to his present position of distinction, to his niece he was soft-hearted as a mother. "There, there!" he exclaimed hastily. "We'll give the boy a chance. No mother, eh? And a confounded prig for a father! No wonder the boy goes all wrong!" Then with a sudden vehemence he cried, striking one hand into the other, "No, by—! that is, we will certainly give the lad the ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... he's troublin'," said Mrs. Benny. "Terrible soft-hearted he is; but you ought to know your father better by this time than to upset ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... but hardship ever since you went away," said Mayrose. "The horse has been a costly care all summer, for he has stood in the stable the whole time and not earned his feed. Your father is too soft-hearted to shoot him and he can't sell him. It was on account of the horse that both Star and Gold-Lily had ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... her head. "I do my best," she continued, "but that girl would not have stayed in the house for one week if I had had my way. Miss Phil is altogether too soft-hearted. Thank goodness, ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... in Scotland Yard is its demoralizing effect on the finer sentiments," he said sadly. "Men lose all human instincts when they become detectives or newspaper reporters. Now the ordinary policeman ofttimes remains quite soft-hearted. For instance, Police Constable Farrow, though preening himself on being the pivot on which this case revolves, was much affected by Hilton Fenley's first heart-broken words to him. 'Poor young gentleman,' said Farrow, when ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... The soft-hearted Slowboy trailed off at this juncture, into such a deplorable howl, the more tremendous from its long suppression, that she must infallibly have awakened the Baby, and frightened him into something serious (probably convulsions), if her eyes had not ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... should be, young hussey. A fine thing for her. Married and respectable. If that soft-hearted, simple little husband of hers knew all I know! Strange that I should have dropped on to her and that first lover of hers down in that quiet place. Strange, wasn't it? Now I daresay they thought they were as safe as at the ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... for you; and because I have burned my fingers in pulling your goose out of the fire, you must get into a passion. You have no need to smile, sir. I suppose it were finer to say chestnuts, but a goose she is, and always will be, and I love her like a child. Your soft-hearted Excellency was to see me last week, and saying that he had no children, I, that have no right to any, said I was as ill off, and we looked at each other and said nothing for a little, because God had given to neither the completeness ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... laughed Anne, looking up at the rough-speaking, soft-hearted man; "but you talk like the real captain. 'I give this for a law,' he said, 'that he who will not work ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... be no light affair, no purely nominal force, but a relentless iron-hand rule. Lenine is afraid that the proletariat is too soft-hearted and ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... boy, and sometimes stolen away to hunt with, he being one of the village-lads, shaved me as if it had been for my execution, and often I, somewhat dazed by the loss of blood, looking at him, saw the great tears trickling down his cheeks. A soft-hearted man he was, who had met with sore troubles, having lost his family, a wife and three little ones, after which he returned to England and entered my brother's service, though he had been brought up independently, being ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... what she said would haunt him somehow. Yet he couldn't help liking to look at her and listen to her, though he dreaded every moment that she would fix her eyes on him and address him in particular. She had already addressed Sandy Jim, who was now holding the baby to relieve his wife, and the big soft-hearted man had rubbed away some tears with his fist, with a confused intention of being a better fellow, going less to the Holly Bush down by the Stone-pits, and cleaning himself more ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... said Cripps, unfolding it and reading out, with his back to the boy, "'Three months after date I promise to pay George Cripps thirty-five pounds, value received. Signed, E. Loman.' That's about it, eh, young gentleman? Well, blessed if I ain't a soft-hearted chap after the doing you've given me over this here business. Look here; ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... "Soft-hearted philanthropists," thought I, "may sigh long for their peaceful millennium; for from minnows up to men, life is ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... for his ruthlessness, but no one can say that he was not effective. He bore on hard but with the belief that only such action could bring the war to a close. No one could come in contact with him without feeling that he was a soft-hearted man. It was one of the most interesting evenings of my life when, as a guest of N.O. Nelson, the philanthropic captain of industry in St. Louis, I was one of a company of a dozen to hear Sherman tell John Fiske his story of the war. We ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... nor Ben was willing to go to such extremes. Jake Bradley had had rough experiences, and he was no soft-hearted sentimentalist, but he had a natural repugnance to taking the life of ...
— Ben's Nugget - A Boy's Search For Fortune • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... one side and into the Seine on the other, his good genius might have counseled him to pitch himself into the water sooner than plunge into literature. After heart-searching hesitations, after a profound scrutiny of the various countenances, more or less encouraging, soft-hearted, churlish, cheerful, or melancholy, to be seen through the window panes, or in the doorways of the booksellers' establishments, he espied a house where the shopmen were busy packing books at a great rate. Goods were being despatched. The ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... very soft-hearted, was sorry for him: involuntarily she was filled with motherly compassion, and leaned over him, and spoke affectionately to him, and tried to make him sniff at her smelling-bottle. But he thrust her away in horror and got up so sharply that she was afraid. ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... earnestly, "we can't get soft-hearted now. Jerry ain't half as simple as he looks, take it from me. We got our work cut out for us, too. Your dad's over there in the jungle, remember, and them Malays have got 'most all the crew pris'ners. That's ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... to be ashamed of myself for bringing you here, Miss Sheila. You see, that's me. I'm so all-fired soft-hearted that I just don't think. I'm all feelings. My heart's stronger than my head, as the palmists say." He rose and came over to Sheila; standing beside her and smiling so that the wrinkle stood out sharply across his unwilling lip. "Did you ever go to one ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... he said, and clasped her by the hand, for, though he loathed her wickedness, being soft-hearted and but young, it grieved him to hear her words and see the anguish of her mind. For it is so with men, that they are easily moved by the pleading of a fair woman who loves them, even though they love ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... unicorn charging on the enemy together, not for England or France, but all for poor Turkey; and Mr. Tennyson could not have written his "Charge of the Light Brigade," which would have been a great loss to elocutionists. There were in Parliament a few poor- spirited economists and soft-hearted humanitarians who would fain have prevented that mighty drain of treasure and of the best blood of England- holding, with John Bright, that this war was "neither just nor necessary"; but they were "whistling against the wind." There ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... to observe, seriously. "Course it's goin' to be a hard blow to poor old Lu, after working his way up here all these months, and nearly coughing his head off at times, to find out that his only relation in the wide world ain't well off in this world's goods. But then Matilda she always was soft-hearted, and mebbe now she might find a hole in her humble home where her poor old brother could stay the short time he's got in this world of trouble and sorrow. I could do with less to eat if I had to, gents; and blood was ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... care could make it really dramatic. Yet it is undoubtedly Shakespearean in part, probably in great part; and it immediately reminds us of King Lear. Both plays deal with the tragic effects of ingratitude. In both the victim is exceptionally unsuspicious, soft-hearted and vehement. In both he is completely overwhelmed, passing through fury to madness in the one case, to suicide in the other. Famous passages in both plays are curses. The misanthropy of Timon pours itself out in a torrent of maledictions on the whole race of man; and these at once recall, ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... little ones, made her appearance; and these rosy urchins, springing forward, shouted affectionately, "Maman! Maman!" to the great astonishment and bewilderment of James Gann, who well-nigh fainted at this sudden paternity so put upon him. However, being a good-humoured, soft-hearted man, he kissed his lady hurriedly, and vowed that he would take care of the poor little things, whom he would also have kissed, but the darlings refused his caress ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... my way, mon Lieutenant, we would take no prisoners, hands up or hands down," he said; "we are too soft-hearted in this war." ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... character has been practically cleared of the former false charges. As one by one the friends who knew him personally have spoken, it has been discovered that this cynic was one of the tenderest and kindest men that our time has produced; this hater of his kind, a man so soft-hearted and full of sensibility that it was really a serious drawback to him in life; this misanthropist, one of the most genial and kindly companions in the world; this bitter satirist, a man who never made an enemy by his speech; this hard man, one who actually ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold |
