"Wanton" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the library with Boag's Dictionary open in his hand. "'Minx: A pert, wanton girl. A she-puppy.' Do you hear that, Caroline? He calls his sister a wanton she-puppy." But Mamma had gone back ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... hair is soft brown and sweeps back from a low white forehead. She has tried to make it straight and simple, as every woman should, but the angels seem to have curled it here and mussed it there, so that all her care cannot hide its wanton waves. Her face is full of life and health, so open, so candid, that there you read her heart, and you know that it is as good as ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... a wanton wastrel, and he well deserves the pillory. But, Rebecca, I've a mind to see what observance these people will give the varlet. Last time I saw one pilloried, alas! they slew him with shards and paving-stones. This fellow is liker to ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... been justified in burning Newark, under more humane conditions, because this village undoubtedly interfered with the defensive fire of Fort George. But, as he was giving up Fort George, his act was an entirely wanton deed of shame. ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... laughed, and the lurking echoes clasped the music of that laughter in their wanton arms and ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... wanton killing of a Negro has come to be regarded in some Southern communities is brought out by an incident of the week at Memphis, which hardly needs comment. An inoffensive Negro was hawking chickens about the street, when ——, who was not in uniform ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... saw the Kembles twice,—in "Much ado about Nothing," and "The Stranger." The first night I felt much disappointed in Miss K. In the gay parts a coquettish, courtly manner marred the wild mirth and wanton wit of Beatrice. Yet, in everything else, I liked her conception of the part; and where she urges Benedict to fight with Claudio, and where she reads Benedict's sonnet, she was admirable. But I received no ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... narrative without mentioning an act of bravery performed by a lone woman which stopped the vulgar and inhuman searching of women in our section of the city. The most atrocious and unpardonable act of the mob was the wanton disregard for womanhood. Lizzie Smith was the first woman to make a firm and stubborn stand against the proceeding in the southern section. It was near the noon hour when Lizzie, homeward bound, reached the ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... blood that runs into song, chiefly because song is the voice of a joy. And no doubt, when I look back on the past years I must own that I have too often been led astray from the objects set before my reason, and cherished at my heart, by erring impulse or wanton fancy." ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a wanton and mirth-making middle-aged man, who would not seem to have much domestic feeling, took a chief part on the occasion, assisting in taking the coffin from the wagon and in lowering it into the grave. There being some superfluous earth at ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to applaud greatly any amorous wanton Dance; and be no less favourable to those Scenes where the Business of Love is transacted, and almost brought to a Conclusion on the Stage: Many of which occur in Congreve, Vanbrugh, ...
— The Lovers Assistant, or, New Art of Love • Henry Fielding
... careless of their charge, And wanton, in full ease now live at large: Unguarded leave the passes of the sky, And all dissolved in ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... ordered all the French captives who had been collected into the city to be cruelly murdered, and binding Father Vacher, the French Resident, hand and foot, had him tied to a mortar and fired off like a bomb against the French fleet. This wanton piece of atrocity so exasperated Duguesne, that, laying his fleet as near land as possible, he continued his cannonade until he had destroyed all their shipping, fortifications, buildings; in short, almost the whole of the lower town, and about ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... was the rapidly rising wind, which fortunately arose directly behind them. It was at first different from any ordinary breeze. It seemed to come along like a thing of life, now catching up a handful of water and scattering it like sand, then bounding up in wanton sport, and then once more trailing on the waters and making it ripple in lines or lanes, as in mad sport it now more rapidly ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... arrival of the princess, Rana Bahadur’s wife. The unprincipled chief had connected himself with one of these frail but pure beauties, (Gandharbin,) with which the holy city abounds, had stript his wife of her jewels to bestow them on this wanton companion, and finally had turned his wife out of doors. As the slave regent had the meanness to seize on the income of the town, assigned for the princess’s dowry, the poor lady was reduced to the utmost distress, ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... wanton mood to-night, and of late a voice had been desperately urging her to grasp at what she could, that she might, as long as possible, delay her ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... greater imminence of the danger, in having to contend with armed men instead of ferocious brutes, and in the higher value of the prizes which they would obtain in case of success. The idea of there being any injustice or wrong in this wanton and unprovoked aggression upon the territories of a neighboring nation seems not to have entered the mind either of the royal robber himself ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... before. But that which made me tremble from head to foot with more and worse than cold, was the little white figure that danced about his bed—for all the world like a crisped leaf in late autumn which whirls and turns, skipping this way and spinning that in the wanton breezes. It was the Little Playmate. But I could not form a word wherewith to call her. My tongue seemed ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... speaks as positively as that, I am not in the habit of talking back and getting into trouble. Situated as I am, I would not be able to understand, now, how you could pass by this town without feeling that you were running a wanton risk and doing a daredevil thing. I consider it settled that you are to come in March, and I would be sincerely sorry to learn that you and Mrs. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... young man unreservedly agreed—"like a wanton meddling ass!" His candour, his freedom had decidedly a note of their own. "But my conviction, after those moments with your picture, was too strong for me not to speak—and, since you allow it, I face the danger and risk ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... 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 kind providence to make more entertaining talk for ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... her words before she foamed them from her, "if you weren't a daughter of mine, I'd—I'd say you were a wanton woman. You know in your heart, as your father always taught you—as you could read in the Bible now—if you ever do read your Bible—that the sins of the fathers, yes, and the mothers too, will fall on the children ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... and Timur betrayed a design of leading his royal captive in triumph to Samarkand. An attempt to facilitate his escape, by digging a mine under the tent, provoked the Mongol Emperor to impose a harsher restraint; and in his perpetual marches, an iron cage on a wagon might be invented, not as a wanton insult, but as a rigorous precaution. But the strength of Bajazet's mind and body fainted under the trial, and his premature death might, without injustice, be ascribed to the severity ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... 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 naked, the face would be hardly observed." (Letters and Works, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... 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 ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... shall, round another sighing, (Forgot the serpents stinging at my breast,) Gaily, when I in the dumb grave am lying, Pour the warm wish, or speed the wanton jest, Or play, perchance, with his new maiden's tresses, Answer the kiss her lip enamour'd brings, When the dread block the head he cradled presses, And high the blood his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... spirits are attentive: For do but note a wild and wanton herd, If any air of music touch their ears, You shall perceive them make a mutual stand, Their savage eyes turn'd to a modest gaze, By the sweet power of music. Therefore, the poet Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones, and floods; Since nought ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare
... his right hand markedly behind him, her unbound hair streaming over her shoulders, she made a beautiful and arresting picture. A kimono of softest apricot, over which sprawled vivid embroideries, here in the guise of parti-coloured dragons, there in that of a wanton butterfly, swathed her from throat to foot. From the mouths of its gaping sleeves her shapely wrists and hands thrust out snow-white and ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... violent disturbances had broken out, and were marked by all the ferocity and terrorism characteristic of luddism in the manufacturing districts. They spread from Kent, Sussex, and Surrey into Hampshire, Wiltshire, Berkshire, and Buckinghamshire. In these four counties there was a wanton and wholesale destruction of agricultural machinery, of farm-buildings, and especially of ricks, as if the misery of labourers could possibly be cured by impoverishing their only employers. The rioters moved about in large organised ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... teachers. When I was a boy I should have been glad to get hold of a brief account of the War for Independence that would have suggested answers to some of the questions that used to vex me. Was the conduct of the British government, in driving the Americans into rebellion, merely wanton aggression, or was it not rather a bungling attempt to solve a political problem which really needed to be solved? Why were New Jersey and the Hudson river so important? Why did the British armies make South Carolina their chief objective point after New ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske
... Griffith, still staring at the horizon. "Stay me not; my hands itch for their throats; my heart thirsts for their blood; but I'll not hang for a priest and a wanton." Then he suddenly turned on Leicester, "Let thou go, or—" and he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... goose to the small marsh-bird, and of every conceivable variety of dismal note. Off they moved, in wild and alarmed rout, like a people going into exile; filling the air, far and wide, with their reproachful lament at the wanton cruelty which ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... the sun! See, see, he shakes His big red hands at me in wanton fun! A glorious image that! it might be Blake's; As in my critical capacity I took occasion to remark elsewhere, When heaping praise On this exceptionally happy phrase, Although I made it up myself. But I and Blake, we really constitute a pair, Each being ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman
... saved him at Taimur. Now, Maitland was a born pantomimist, continually 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
... and therefore like to sticke fast in the flesh, for as it is said, Quod noua testa capit inueterata sapit) at least wise (as the French king suspected) began to fantasie the yoong ladie, and by such wanton talke and companie-keeping as he vsed with hir, he was thought to haue brought hir to consent to his fleshlie lust, which was the cause wherefore he would not suffer his sonne to marrie hir, [Sidenote: ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (5 of 12) - Henrie the Second • Raphael Holinshed
... readily be understood that by connecting the censorship of the laws with the private interests of members of the community, and by intimately uniting the prosecution of the law with the prosecution of an individual, legislation is protected from wanton assailants, and from the daily aggressions of party spirit. The errors of the legislator are exposed whenever their evil consequences are most felt, and it is always a positive and appreciable fact which serves as the ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... Reign we live in. For surely 'tis but affected Softness of Heart, and Mock, Sickly Sentiment, to maintain that Highwaymen, Horse-stealers, and other hardened villains, do not deserve the Tree, and do not righteously Suffer for their misdeeds; or that wanton women do not deserve bodily correction, so long as it be done within Bridewell Walls, and not in front of the Sessions House, for the ribald Populace to stare at. Truly our present code is a merciful ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... on the march from Furrah, comes scrambling on the roof, and in loud tones of complaint addresses himself to Kiftan Sahib's peacefully snoozing proportions. His midnight eruption consists of some grievance against his fellows; perhaps some such wanton act of injustice as appropriating his blanket or stealing ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... the 1st ed. In the account given of St Helena in the narrative of my former voyage, I find two mistakes. Its inhabitants are far from exercising a wanton cruelty over their slaves, and they have had wheel-carriages and porters' knots ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... street, where cheap vaudevilles are strung together as glass-pearls on the throat of a wanton. Gaudy bill-boards, drenched in clamorous red, proclaimed the tawdry attractions within. Much to the surprise of the doorkeeper at a particularly evil-looking music hall, Reginald Clarke lingered in the lobby, and finally even bought a ticket ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... pursues is nothing but the removal of a dissatisfaction, and vanishes at once when the longing is stilled, to be replaced by fresh wants, that is, by new pains. In view of the indescribable misery in the world, to favor optimism is evidence not so much of folly and blindness as of a wanton disposition. The old saying is true: Non-existence is better than existence. The misery, however, is the just punishment for the original sin of the individual, which gave itself its particular existence by an act ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... 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 to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... more than conquer others—he has conquered himself: and in the midst of the blaze and flush of victory, surrounded by the homage of nations, he has not been betrayed into the commission of any act of cruelty or wanton offence. He was as cool and self-possessed under the blaze and dazzle of fame as a common man would be under the shade of his garden-tree, or by the hearth of his home. But the tyrant who kept Europe in awe is now a pitiable object for scorn to point ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to seize any property necessary for an army provided receipts are duly handed over to the persons from whom the goods are obtained. The Germans invariably acted in this way during the Franco-Prussian war, and no historian has ever described them as "savages" for this reason. Of course the wanton destruction of property which appears to have been perpetrated by the Boers in Natal is ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... penalties. Maybe you know nothing of the meaning of crime, as we understand it. Maybe you think us just paid machines, without feelings, without sentiment, cold, ruthless creatures who are here to run down criminals, as the old-time Indians ran down the buffalo, in a wanton love of destroying life. Believe me, it isn't so. We're particularly humane, and would far rather see folks well within the law and prospering, the same as we want to prosper ourselves. We don't fancy the work of shutting up our fellow creatures from all ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... Knowledge and Experience do not enter. They stay without, together with the dull, dead clay of which they form a part; while the freed brain, released from their narrowing tutelage, steals softly past the ebon gate, to wanton at its own sweet will among the mazy paths that wind through ...
— Dreams - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... he said angrily. "I am going to talk plain to you. You are a fool, a downright, empty-headed silly fool. What you have destroyed in wanton carelessness would have kept the life in a man a whole day. Haven't you sense enough to see it's going to be nip and tuck if we ever get out of this? You've shown yourself, from start to finish, a miserable ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... ye west society in ye time of ye forenoone service on s'd Day by her rude and Indecent Behaviour in Laughing and Playing in ye time of ye s'd Service which Doinges of ye s'd Tabatha is against ye peace of our Sovereign Lord ye King, his Crown and Dignity." Wanton Tabatha had to pay three shilings sixpence for her ill-timed mid-winter frolic. Perhaps she laughed to try to keep warm. Those who laughed at the misdemeanors of others were fined as well. Deborah Bangs, a young girl, ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... protection of the Church. It sounds somewhat like a paradox to assert that the exclusion from churches of all that is not distinctly connected with the service of religion was mainly due to the Puritans, of whose wanton irreverence in sacred buildings we hear so much. Yet this seems certainly to have been the case. Traces of the older usage lingered on, as we have seen, into the middle of the last century; but from the time of the Commonwealth they ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... severally, because we would not pester one another; and now they being all grown up, and gone, and married after our manner (except some two or three of the youngest) for (growing my self into years) I liked not the wanton annoyance of young company. ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville
... withal She rather took than got a fall, The wanton ambler chanc'd to see Part of her legs' sincerity: And ravish'd thus, it came to pass, The nag (like to the prophet's ass) Began to speak, and would have been A-telling what rare sights he'd seen: And had told all; but did refrain Because his tongue ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... contracting your sight to a narrower scope, it lighteth on the faire and commodious hauen, where the tyde daily presenteth his double seruice, of flowing and ebbing, to carry and recarry whatsoeuer the Inhabitants shall bee pleased to charge him withall, and his creekes (like a young wanton louer) folde about the land, with ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... shivered with the horror of it, but for the first time it came to him: Briscoe had provoked his own death. He had physically attacked the Lhari—threatened them, goaded them to shoot him down in self-defense! "I've been on shipboard with them for months. They're not wanton murderers." ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... our country down here is worth singing about like that!" continued the glazier, as the Scotchman again melodized with a dying fall, "My ain countree!" "When you take away from among us the fools and the rogues, and the lammigers, and the wanton hussies, and the slatterns, and such like, there's cust few left to ornament a song with in Casterbridge, or the ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... incident in war-stricken Europe. It was only a few months ago and during the terrible campaign in Eastern Poland, even while shells were bursting and men were dying, that the Central Powers stopt, as it were, in the mad rush of wanton destruction, to re-establish and reorganize the old University of Warsaw. More than that, they added to the old institution two new faculties, or colleges, as ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... 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 School Education • Michael Mueller
... Ruined and living narrowly on the remains of his great fortune, he let himself be gradually devoured by the countess, who ate up the husks Nana had rejected. Sabine was indeed ruined by the example of promiscuity set her by her husband's intercourse with the wanton. She was prone to every excess and proved the ultimate ruin and destruction of his very hearth. After sundry adventures she had returned home, and he had taken her back in a spirit of Christian resignation and forgiveness. ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... debauchery, their early marriages, etc.? All these vices and excesses are only the cloak of pauperism; but the cause, the original cause which inexorably holds four-fifths of the human race in disgrace,—what is it? Did not Nature make all men equally gross, averse to labor, wanton, and wild? Did not patrician and proletaire spring from the same clay? Then how happens it that, after so many centuries, and in spite of so many miracles of industry, science, and art, comfort and culture have ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... beautiful buildings and other evidences of Roman civilization. There seem to be vandals in almost every community, and sometimes they seem to be especially numerous in small communities, perhaps because of the lack of police protection. Sometimes vandalism is wanton,—that is, it results from an apparent love of being destructive. Most often it is purely thoughtless. Few people would knowingly injure the property of another if they would stop to think of their feelings if another should injure THEIR property. ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... are like wanton boys that put coppers on the railroad tracks. They amuse themselves and other children, but their little trick may upset a freight train of conversation for the sake ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... flourishing under just laws, liberty grown wanton embroiled the city, and license relaxed the reins of ancient discipline. Upon this, the partisans of factions conspiring, Pisistratus the Tyrant[2] seized the citadel. When the Athenians were lamenting their sad servitude (not that he was cruel, but because every burden is grievous to those who ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... constitutional Government in the world present so portentous a monument of Parliamentary failure, so vivid an example of a moral and material ruin "paved with good intentions"? Therein lies the pathos of it. Not from malice, not from cruelty, not from wanton injustice, not even from callous indifference to suffering and wrong, does our misgovernment of Ireland come. If the evil had its root in deliberate wrong-doing on the part of England it would probably have been cured long ago. But each generation, ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... regulations for the sports and shows formerly held in the Middle Temple on Childermas Day, where he had his officers, a marshal, constable, butler, &c. See DUGDALE'S ORIGINES JURIDICIALES, p. 247.—Ray says, the interpretation of the word Cockney, is, a young person coaxed or conquered, made wanton; or a nestle cock, delicately bred and brought up, so as, when arrived a man's estate, to be unable to bear the least hardship. Whatever may be the origin of this appellation, we learn from the following verses, attributed to Hugh Bigot, ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... I sing, To profit wherewithal, Clip folly's wanton wing, And keep her within call: I've little else to give, What thou canst easy try, The lesson how to live, Is ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... table, apart from the revellers, but evidently listening with attention to all the news of the hour, sat a friar, gravely discussing a mighty tankard of huffcap, and ever and anon, as he lifted his head for the purpose of drinking, glancing a wanton eye at ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of Phil. Backus, an auctioneer of considerable prominence in mercantile and social circles. Rod. Backus had shot dead a man whose face he had never seen until the moment before he shot him, a dozen paces distant. It was in Stout's alley. It was a murder, a wanton murder, without provocation, excuse, extenuation or palliation whatever. Rod. Backus was a frequent visitor at a house of the demi-monde in the alley, and one Jennie French was his favorite. As he came to visit her one evening, at dusk, she was standing in the doorway, at the ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara
... forced itself on their notice. They felt it might be a being partially benighted in the vale of ignorance, but it could not be one who would willingly devote his rich natural gifts to the purposes of wanton treachery. The ingenuous Alice gazed at his free air and proud carriage, as she would have looked upon some precious relic of the Grecian chisel, to which life had been imparted by the intervention of a miracle; while Heyward, though accustomed to see ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... these same ardent days of first true love the giant city exposed herself to my now enlightened eyes in all her disharmony. And I, who in wanton Paris had passed as an innocent child through a hotbed of sensuality and a hailstorm of seduction, on a single twilight eve in London had four or five encounters the particulars of which remained in my memory as barbed arrows remain imbedded in the flesh, ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... silence from a man unable for his life to utter a single word; and after pulling off all the bed-clothes, and then clothing you with curses, the ruffians, whose accent betrays them to be Irishmen, inflict upon you divers wanton wounds with a blunt instrument, probably a crow-bar—swearing by Satan and all his saints, that if you stir an inch of your body before daybreak, they will instantly return, cut your throat, knock out your brains, sack you, and carry you off for sale to a surgeon: Therefore ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... tavern spend the longest day, While others hawk and hunt the time away. Here one his mistress courts; another dances; A third incites to lust by wanton glances. This wastes the day in dressing; the other seeks To set fresh colours on her with red cheeks, That, when the sun declines, some dapper spark May take her to Spring Garden or the park. Plays some frequent, and balls; others their prime Consume at dice; ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... would not be surprised at anything happening in Garlock —where it would seem a wanton waste of imagination to look forward to anything happening—yet at about noon of the day that Harley P. Hennage looked over the rail fence into the feed corral at San Pasqual and discovered that Bob McGraw's ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... aside The veil upon thy brow! Who held the King and all his land To the wanton will of a harlot's hand! Will the white ash rise from the blistered brand? Stoop ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... 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
... such is by no means their object; but, as the weaker Power in North America, Great Britain considers itself entitled to claim the use of the lakes as a military barrier."[394] The declaration of war by the United States was regarded by most Englishmen as a wanton endeavor to overthrow their immemorial right to the services of their seamen, wherever found; and consequently the invasion of Canada had been an iniquitous attempt to effect annexation under cover of an indefensible pretext. To guard against the renewal of such, ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... unjustly enter into and invade the country of the Rohillas, and did there make war in a barbarous and inhuman manner, "by an abuse of victory," "by the unnecessary destruction of the country," "by a wanton display of violence and oppression, of inhumanity and cruelty," and "by the sudden expulsion and casting down of an whole race of people, to whom the slightest benevolence was denied." When prayer was made not to dishonor the Begum (a princess of great rank, whose husband had been killed in ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... 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 ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... deep love—on the men whether the relation into which marriage betrays them be decent or indecent. What I should like to be able to discover is—what provision does either man or civilization propose to make for the woman whom Fate, in wanton irony, reduces, even in marriage, to the self-considered level of ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... and hide their pride. Because they commit no sins of the flesh which can be noticed, they are full of piety in their outward ceremonies, but within full of arrogance. These are the members of the devil, for the devil neither eats, drinks, nor sleeps, he is neither a miser nor a wanton, but is within full of pride as are these. By the ass we are to understand the simple people. They are led in the way of sin by the ceremonies of the lazy, since they are not thought fit for the worship of the heart, and must be led by masses, penance, and indulgences, and they ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... unconfined wings hovers within my gates; And my divine Althea brings to whisper at the grates; When I lie tangled in her hair and fetter'd to her eye; The gods that wanton in the air, know no ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... on the 1st July came news of the terrible massacre of the Cawnpore garrison,—men, women and children slain in one wanton, heartless slaughter, which still makes the blood run ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... PILLAGE. Wanton and mostly iniquitous plunder. But an allowed ancient practice, both in this and other countries, as shown by the sea ordinances of France, and our black ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... disgraced our foes during the last two years. The best elements in us rise in irrepressible repugnance before such pageants of wickedness as have clothed the famous name of Wittenberg with infamy and made the story of naval warfare a continuing record of wanton crime. No man can think, without shame, of the so-called civilisation and culture which could palliate such perversions of justice as those recalled by the fate of ...
— No. 4, Intersession: A Sermon Preached by the Rev. B. N. Michelson, - B.A. • B. N. Michelson
... of cruelty and wanton destruction abated I counted on being free to seek Fenice and my sister, but greatly to my disgust, I was constituted the warden of the Pope, who was confined a close prisoner in the castle ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... heart is torn, to think of the necessity so dear a creature is driven to of hiding herself! Devilish fellow! He must have been sportive and wanton in his inventions—yet that cruel, that savage sportiveness has saved you from the sudden violence to which he has had recourse in the violation of others, of names and families not contemptible. For such the villain always ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... The wanton acts of the Haitian authorities, their hostility to whites and lighter colored mulattoes, their opposition to the Spanish language and customs, and their neglect of the country's development, caused much discontent, and the idea of separating from Haiti began ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... Lord said, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched-forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet: in that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their cauls, and their round tires like the moon, the chains, and the bracelets, and the mufflers, the ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... praise of man naturally begins to praise himself. As a result of self-esteem arises (3) Censoriousness, since he who thinks well of himself is apt to think ill of others. As a system Pharisaism was wanton hypocrisy—a character of seeming righteousness, but too often of ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... government more consistent, it would mean war. I think that he has committed himself more openly and more unjustifiably than could have been expected, in the relation of the affair of the Little Belt, by accusing that poor little sloop of a wanton act of aggression by attacking a huge American frigate, when Commodore Rodgers himself admits that he was for nearly ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... life. These men deluged an Assiniboine Indian Camp with deadly whisky in return for every valuable thing the Indians had to trade. And when the Indian Camp was ablaze with the light of campfires and was a mad whirl of dancing drunkenness the miscreant traders from the South, in a spirit of utter wanton devilry, got under cover of a cut bank by the creek where the camp was, and proceeded to shoot the Indians who were defenceless in their orgy. A volley or two accounted for two score killed and many wounded, only a few escaping to the ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... it on purpose. I thought how good and sweet she was to that irritatingly silly old frump her mother, and wondered if it really were her mother, or only hired. I pictured her crown of gold-brown hair as I had last seen it with the sunlight kissing its wanton waves, and felt I would like to be quite sure that it were all ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... again treat me with harshness and severity? No,—never. I have often wondered why he manifested such unusual and wanton disregard of my feelings then, that one, only time. It is no matter now. It is a single ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... her a greater actress than a singer; and she had been advised to dispense with her voice and challenge a verdict on her speaking voice in one of Shakespeare's plays. Owen would have liked her to risk the adventure, but she dared not. It would seem a wanton insult to her voice. She had imagined that it might leave her as an offended spirit might leave its local habitation. Her Margaret had been accepted in Italy, so she must sing it as well as she acted it. But when she had asked the Marquis d'Albazzi if she sang it as ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... to us," said the one with the dagger. "For it was the vengeance of Heaven we were about to execute. Know that this is our sister, whom we have discovered to be a wanton creature, that must bring shame upon our learned house and into our God-fearing town. Whereupon we and her husband held a secret Beth-Din, and resolved, according to the spirit of our ancient Law, that this ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Emperor still insisted upon his most unjust demand, it would open the eyes of his country's representative to the situation and the true attitude of the German authorities. Besides, he was incensed at the wanton destruction of other people's property to satisfy the whims ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... 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
... George and Garter dangling from that bed, Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red, Great Villiers lies:—alas! how changed from him, That life of pleasure and that soul of whim! Gallant and gay, in Claverdon's proud alcove, The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love, Or, just as gay, at council in a ring Of mimic'd statesmen and their merry King. No wit to flatter left of all his store, No fool to laugh at, which he valued more, Then victor of his health, of fortune, friends, And fame, this ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... the complaints of Iroquois cruelties have descended to us; but the same historians have not omitted to inform us that the first acquaintance of the Iroquois with triese colonists was through two most wanton and butcherly assaults which Champlain and his soldiers, in company with their Indian allies, made upon their unoffending neighbors. No milder epithets can justly describe these unprovoked invasions, in which the Iroquois bowmen, defending their homes, were shot down mercilessly with firearms, ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... 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 ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... to the eyes of Alain Chartier. His Livre de l'Esperance, where the oratorical prose is interspersed with lyric verse, spares neither the clergy nor the frivolous and dissolute gentry, who forget their duty to their country in wanton self-indulgence; yet his last word, written at the moment when Joan of Arc was leaving the pastures for battle, is one of hope. His Curial (The Courtier) is a satire on the vices of the court by one who had acquaintance with its corruption. The large, harmonious phrase of Alain Chartier ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... tradition upon that farm for years afterwards that these two Mormons, after receiving charity, had made an open display of that wanton wickedness which ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... twelve all was over, and "The Bower" stripped of every article of furniture or consumption for which the money was owing. And yet, to the honour of Troy, no single theft or act of wanton destruction was perpetrated. Save for the trampled flowers and marks of dusty boots upon the carpets, the house was left as it stood on the day when Mr. and Mrs. Goodwyn-Sandys arrived. It should be mentioned, perhaps, that Seth Udy's little boy was detected with his fist in a jar of moist sugar; ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... for the loftiest things. Others might say what they chose, she knew him better. This man, from the first hour of their meeting, had loved her with the most ardent but also with the holiest passion; never, never had he sought her merely for wanton amusement. Her mother's last wish would be fulfilled. She need only trust him with her whole soul, and leave the "forge fire of life" to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... superiority: "There is but one decision here, if the morality of this noble city is to be preserved and the maiden daughters of her patrician families secured henceforward from the misfortune of being a plaything for the wanton levity of reckless heart breakers. But this decision, on which I firmly and resolutely insist, as lady and princess, in the name of my whole sex and of all knightly men who, with me, prize the reverence and inviolable fidelity due a lady, is: Sir Heinz Schorlin ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of the Teutons against the Entente Powers. A civilizing mute would deaden the resonance of bestial passion; and even private property—in especial that of Germany—would be safe from confiscation and wanton destruction, and when peace is restored the rich mercury mines of Italy will again belong to the Kaiser and his advisers. Last summer[30] a series of private meetings was held for three days running ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... 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 more—I'll smite ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... are the devil, whether they marry you or jilt you. Do you realise that women wear black evening dresses that have to be hooked up in a hurry when you are late for the theatre, and that, out of sheer wanton malignity, the hooks and eyes on those dresses are also ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... sleeve, and he tore the fuse from his weapon, and flung the gun—too heavy to be of use to us longer—to the ground. It was done in a moment. While the mob swept over the barricade, and smashed the rich furniture of it in wanton malice, we filed aside, and nimbly slipped under it one by one. Then we hurried in single file to the end of the room, no one taking much notice of us. All were pressing on, intent on their prey. We gained the door as the butcher struck his first blow on ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... wilds and complain of the hard heart of that fair and ungrateful one, the end and limit of all human beauty! Oh, ye wood nymphs and dryads, that dwell in the thickets of the forest, so may the nimble wanton satyrs by whom ye are vainly wooed never disturb your sweet repose, help me to lament my hard fate or at least weary not at listening to it! Oh, Dulcinea del Toboso, day of my night, glory of my pain, guide of my path, star of my fortune, so may Heaven grant thee in full all thou seekest ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... of red brick houses and terra cotta tiles, where every door is just like the one next to it and the whole place gives the impression of monotonous sameness relieved here and there by a shell-shattered roof, a symbol of sorrow and wanton destruction. In this place of an evening children may be seen out of doors listening for the coming of the German shells and counting the number that fall in the village. From our billets we went out to the trenches by Vermelles daily, and cut the grass from the trenches with reaping hooks. ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... phrase obscene. In fair and open dealing where's the shame? What nature dares to give, she dares to name. This honest fellow is sincere and plain, And justly gives the jealous husband pain. (Vain is the task to petticoats assign'd, If wanton language shows a naked mind.) And now and then, to grace her eloquence, An oath supplies the vacancies of sense. Hark! the shrill notes transpierce the yielding air, And teach the neighb'ring echoes how to swear. By Jove, is faint, and for ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... by the Governor-General of the Canadas to aid him in carrying into effect measures of retaliation against the inhabitants of United States for the wanton destruction committed by their army in Upper Canada, it has become imperiously my duty, in conformity with the Governor-General's application, to issue to the naval forces under my command an order to destroy and lay waste such towns and districts upon the ...
— The Star-Spangled Banner • John A. Carpenter
... foam-flakes from his mouth, or, kindlier task, With patient neck support the Belgian car. Then, broken at last, let swell their burly frame With fattening corn-mash, for, unbroke, they will With pride wax wanton, and, when caught, refuse Tough lash to brook or jagged curb obey. But no device so fortifies their power As love's blind stings of passion to forefend, Whether on steed or steer thy choice be set. Ay, therefore 'tis they banish bulls afar To solitary ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... with undergraduates, and usually had had the worst of it. At present, in the service of the blindfold goddess, these equitable men were no doubt taking out their vengeance for past favors. But under all this wanton display of violence, the gownsmen practised the severest forbearance. The pressure from behind made it impossible to forbear pressing ahead; crushed, you were obliged to crush; but, beyond that, there was no movement or gesture on our part to give any colorable warrant to the brutality of the ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... Was e'er a human mind, upon its lofty level, Conceived of by the like of thee? Yet hast thou food that brings satiety, Not satisfaction; gold that reftlessly, Like quicksilver, melts down within The hands; a game in which men never win; A maid that, hanging on my breast, Ogles a neighbor with her wanton glances; Of fame the glorious godlike zest, That like a short-lived meteor dances— Show me the fruit that, ere it's plucked, will rot, And trees from which new ...
— Faust • Goethe |
