"Wanton" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by the wishing-gate Nina's wanton desire to provoke to wrath the monster to whom she was chained died a sudden and unnatural death. She was scrupulously careful of his feelings from that day forward, and he treated her with a freezing courtesy, a cynical ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the Girl not quite so comely. They were both very young, and happened one day to be playing near the looking-glass, which stood on their mother's toilet. The Boy, pleased with the novelty of the thing, viewed himself for some time, and in a wanton, roguish manner observed to the Girl how handsome he was. She resented the insult, and ran immediately to her father, and, with a great deal of aggravation, complained of her brother, particularly for having acted so effeminate a part as to look in a glass, and meddle ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... it had exhausted itself and passed away by its own processes, no effort of mine could have overcome or banished it. I stalked apart, under its influence, a gloomy savage—scornful and sad—stern, yet suffering—denying myself equally, in the perverse and wanton denial to which I ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... could distinguish mutilated forms writhing in agony, while ever and anon one and another rose convulsively from out the mass, endeavoured to stagger towards the wood, and ere they had taken a few steps, fell and wallowed on the bloody sand. My blood curdled within me as I witnessed this frightful and wanton slaughter; but I had little time to think, for the captain's deep voice came again over the water towards us: "Pull ashore, lads, and fill your water-casks." The men obeyed in silence, and it seemed to me as if even their hard hearts were shocked ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... thundering. On both sides there was still a vigilant guard kept up; the sentinels bristled the walls of Baza with their lances, and the guards patrolled the Christian camp, but there was no sallying forth to skirmish nor any wanton violence ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... forgiven, the old man's continued disrespect to his daughter's memory, his refusal to join even in the simplest ceremony of devotion, kept both him and old Mata chilled and distant. The one possible explanation,—aside from that of wanton cruelty,—was a thing so marvellous, so terrible in implied suggestion, that the boy's faint soul could make for it no present home; let it drift, a great luminous nebula of hope, a little longer ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... naval, rival of Italy in the Adriatic. The Italian delegates in private interviews showed great bitterness toward the Slavs, who, they declared, had, as Austrian subjects, waged war against Italy and taken part in the cruel and wanton acts attendant upon the invasion of the northern Italian provinces. They asserted that it was unjust to permit these people, by merely changing their allegiance after defeat, to escape punishment for the outrages which they had committed against Italians and actually to profit by being ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... of the shores of Chesapeake Bay, the burning of Washington, and a host of less remembered attendant evils. All these things might have been prevented by the timely maintenance of a navy of tolerable strength, deterring the warring powers from wanton outrage. ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... paper, no bitter expression passed his lips, but tears filled his eyes as he referred to the destruction of his place, that had been the cherished home of the father of the United States. He could forgive their cutting down his trees, their wanton conversion of his pleasure-grounds into a graveyard, but he could never forget their reckless plunder of all the camp equipment and other relics of General Washington ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... last thou art! Ere bud to rounded blossom change; Thou wilt for wanton lips and heart Most false, ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... called, and the other was a guzzling German. They were slave- drivers. To begin with, they bought their labour from Johnny Be-blowed, the most notorious recruiter in the Solomons. He is working out a ten years' sentence in Fiji now, for the wanton killing of a black boy. During his last days here he had made himself so obnoxious that the natives on Malaita would have nothing to do with him. The only way he could get recruits was by hurrying to the spot whenever ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... evidence it would seem that this poem was called forth by the Earl's bounty to its author. "My muse devorst from deeper (the Rawl. MS. reads deepest) care, presents thee with a wanton elegie;" and further on, the dedication promises "better lines" which should "ere long" be penned in "honour" of his noble patron. This promise ...
— The Choise of Valentines - Or the Merie Ballad of Nash His Dildo • Thomas Nash
... only and at that period no other mutilation was practiced. It was a small lock not more than three inches square, which was carried only during the thirty days' celebration of a victory, and afterward given religious burial. Wanton cruelties and the more barbarous customs of war were greatly intensified with the coming of the white man, who brought with him fiery liquor and deadly weapons, aroused the Indian's worst passions, provoking in ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... E. translates in wanton mood. Toller-Bosw. does not recognize sorrow as one of the ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... another shadow flits, Which shows a bolder aspect than the gay Impassioned votaries of Nature wear. Mark his majestic port, his eagle eye, The stern erection of his haughty brow, Partially shaded by the snowy plumes That lightly wave and wanton in the breeze.— Is this a pensioner of hope?—Is this A dreamer of wild dreams?—All eyes are turned To gaze upon him, as with measured step The weaponed warrior slowly passes by.— Oh, this is one of War's tremendous sons, Glory's intrepid champion: ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... wanton gales breathe through the shade, And shake the blooms, and steal their sweets, And swell the song of ev'ry glade, I range the ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... 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 Cliveden's proud alcove, The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love; There, victor of his health, of fortune, friends, And fame, the lord of useless ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... With nature, did an arber greene dispred, Fram'd of wanton yvie flowing fayre, Through which the fragrant eglantines did ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... after many traverses of thoughts, is grown to know what he may trust to, and stands now equally armed for all events; that hath got the mastery at home, so as he can cross his will without a mutiny, and so please it that he makes it not a wanton; that in earthly things wishes no more than nature, in spiritual is ever graciously ambitious; that for his condition stands on his own feet, not needing to lean upon the great, and can so frame his thoughts to his estate that when he hath least he cannot want, because he is as ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... frozen flesh with snow, So Spring will not her time forerun, Mix polar night with tropic glow, Nor cloy us with unshaded sun, Nor wanton skip with bacchic dance, But she has the temperance Of the gods, whereof she is one,— Masks her treasury of heat Under east winds crossed with sleet. Plants and birds and humble creatures Well accept her rule austere; ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... toward "Cliefden's proud alcove, the bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love," we find ourselves in a luxuriant rolling country, rural and slumberous. Cookham parish, which we should traverse, claims quite loudly American kinship on the strength of its including an estate once the property ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... it without ruin and harm to the natural life. For, as has been said, in the practice of fasting, watching and labor, we are not to look upon the works in themselves, not on the days, not on the number, not on the food, but only on the wanton and lustful Adam, that through them he may be cured of his ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther
... side was intended when they left Rhodes, to wit, that the darkness and the comfort and the warmth of the bed, forces of no mean efficacy, did so prevail with them that dead Antioco was forgotten alike as lover and as friend, and by a common impulse they began to wanton together, insomuch that before they were arrived at Baffa, where the Cypriote resided, they were indeed man and wife. At Baffa the lady tarried with the merchant a good while, during which it so befell that a gentleman, Antigono ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... come anigh you?" he cried. "Hath she ventured to disquiet my friends, the wanton jade, the scheming—" and so on, pouring horrid words upon her that chilled my blood. 'T was terrible in him, that he could so swiftly change to these furies with one he had favoured, and to ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... to continue her narrative. I am convinced that nothing would more powerfully preserve youth from irregularity, or guard inexperience from seduction, than a just description of the condition into which the wanton plunges herself; and therefore hope that my letter may be a ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... kinds. I found a great crowd surrounding a party who were dancing, by the light of some large fires, to the music of four drums, which were beat with great exactness and uniformity. The dances, however, consisted more in wanton gestures than in muscular exertion or graceful attitudes. The ladies vied with each other in displaying the most voluptuous ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... the brutal spoliations which have come to light in the realm of high finance and big business are the natural fruit of such a manner of life as many of our recent novelists have vividly portrayed. And the wanton extravagance of the House of Mirth would not exist if the majority of the people did not admire it. The outcry against it is oftener the voice of envy than of moral revulsion. The cure for this evil, as of most others, is found in public opinion; ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... pointed out by the Minister of General Police. I was fortunate enough to keep my friend M. Moreau de Worms, deputy from the Youne, out of the fiat of exiles. This produced a mischievous effect. It bore a character of wanton severity quite inconsistent with the assurances of mildness and moderation given at St. Cloud on the 19th Brumaire. Cambaceres afterwards made a report, in which he represented that it was unnecessary for the maintenance of tranquillity to subject ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... was well; but, on the other hand, in Kendal, a town nearly twenty miles distant, of necessity I was but imperfectly known; and though there was a pretty general expression of disgust at the character of the publication, and the wanton malignity which it bore upon its front, since, true or not true, no shadow of a reason was pleaded for thus bringing forward statements expressly to injure me, or to make me unhappy; yet there must have been many, in so ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... to read this out some day, got up sprucely with a new toga, all in white, with your birthday ring on at last, perched up on a high seat, after gargling your supple throat by a liquid process of tuning, with a languishing roll of your wanton eye. At this you may see great brawny sons of Rome all in a quiver, losing all decency of gesture and command of voice, as the strains glide into their very bones, and the marrow within is tickled by the ripple ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... near it that of a new love, Annette, and afterward on finding the tree he shed tears, melted toward her, and made an idyl. He was also seized with a passion of teasing her and dominating over her devotedness with wanton and tyrannical caprice, venting upon her the ill humor of his disappointments, and grew absurdly jealous and lost her after she had borne with him with incredible patience and after terrible scenes with her ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... true repose, Wherein the wise contemplate heaven aright, In thee no dread of war or worldly foes, In thee no pomp seduceth mortal sight. In thee no wanton cares to win with words, Nor lurking ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... motives which do not accord with this determination. Some exclude the seeking of pleasure as a permissible motive, some the love of beauty; some insist upon one's "being oneself" and prohibit or limit responses to exterior opinions. Most of such selections strike me as wanton and hasty. I decline to dismiss any of my motives at all in that wholesale way. Just as I believe I am important in the scheme of things, so I believe are all my motives. Turning one's back on any set of them ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... There was a wanton light in her eyes. The change that had come over her was startling; and Lawler found himself watching her, trying to associate this new side of her character with that she had shown before she had ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... Socorro, in New Mexico, has been the scene of a fearful tragedy. A band of desperadoes had gradually collected there, who indulged in the most wanton acts of outrage and barbarity, upon the Mexican residents, finally ending in more than one deliberate murder. A few members of the Boundary Commission who had been left there, headed an organization which captured a number of the gang, of whom three were tried and hung ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... cunning of the sharper. 3. As poverty waits upon the steps of indolence, so upon such poverty brood equivocations, subterfuges, lying denials. 4. Falsehood becomes the instrument of every plan. 5. Negligence of truth, next occasional falsehood, then wanton mendacity—these three strides traverse the whole ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... choose, to ignore, to punish. His to receive, not to seek; to dispense, not to stand waiting for his portion; his the freedom of the forbidden, of everything beyond him, of all withheld, denied by this bright, loose-robed, wanton-eyed goddess from whose invisible altar he had caught a whiff of sacrificial odours, standing there through the wintry years in the squalor and reek ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... fairest moulded of woman kind, Are gathered in groups on the level ice. They look on the robe and its beauty gladdens, And maddens their hearts for the splendid prize. Lo the rounded ankles and raven hair That floats at will on the wanton wind, And the round brown arms to the breezes bare, And breasts like the mounds where the waters meet, [4] And feet as fleet as the red deer's feet, And faces that glow like the full, round moon When she laughs in the luminous ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... that one could turn off at will, like gas or water in our houses. Only there were rather too many specifics in those days. For if one has "an excellent approved remedy" that never fails, it seems unnecessary to print a list of twenty others for the same purpose. This is wanton excess; it is gilding the golden pill, and throwing fresh ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... slowly up Grange Lane, steeling himself for the encounter, and trying to forgive aunt Dora in his heart. It was not very easy. Things might have turned out just the same without any interference—that was true; but to have it all brought on in this wanton manner by a kind foolish woman, who would wring her hands and gaze in your face, and want to know, Oh! did you think it was her fault? after she had precipitated the calamity, was very hard; and it was with a very gloomy countenance, accordingly, that the Curate of ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... fall, shamelesse, wanton, subtyle, paynted Femme impudicque, lubricque, affrontee, ...
— An Introductorie for to Lerne to Read, To Pronounce, and to Speke French Trewly • Anonymous
... woo me now, Will to the wanton sorc'ress say, "Begone! Respect the cypress on my mournful brow, Lost Happiness hath left regret—but thou Leavest ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... her "claes" on the grass by the burn near the little stone bridge; the wild partridges whirring about in pairs; the farm-boy seated on the clean straw in the bottom of his cart, and cracking his whip in mere wanton joy at the sunshine; the pretty cottages, and the gardens with rows of currant and gooseberry bushes hanging thick with fruit that suggests jam and tart in every delicious globule. It is a love-colored ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... gods ere now, And Dardan Paris, have made the woods their home. Let Pallas keep the towers her hand hath built, Us before all things let the woods delight. The grim-eyed lioness pursues the wolf, The wolf the she-goat, the she-goat herself In wanton sport the flowering cytisus, And Corydon Alexis, each led on By their own longing. See, the ox comes home With plough up-tilted, and the shadows grow To twice their length with the departing sun, Yet me love burns, for who can limit love? Ah! Corydon, ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... feather, from thy wanton wing, Young God of dimples! in thy roguish flight; And let thy Poet catch it, now, to sing The beauty of the Dame who won ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... The power of removal from office belonged, Mr. Madison believed, rightfully to the chief magistrate, and, if by some unhappy chance the wrong man should find his way to that position and abuse the power intrusted to him, "the wanton removal of meritorious officers would," he said, "subject the President to impeachment and removal from ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... all—conscience, imagination, memory, will, intellect. How many a man listening to me now has his nature like the facade of some of our cathedrals, with the empty niches and broken statues proclaiming that wanton desecration and destruction have been ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... Around the stone, or from the hollow'd bank Reverted plays in undulating flow, There throw, nice-judging, the delusive fly; And as you lead it round in artful curve, With eye attentive mark the springing games Straight as above the surface of the flood They wanton rise, or urged by hunger leap, Then fix, with gentle twitch, the barbed hook: Some lightly tossing to the grassy bank, And to the shelving shore slow-dragging some, With various hand proportion'd to their force. If yet too ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... people all,' said he, 'this is wanton waste of time. Let the girl understand the fact. Let her take it from me, if you like, who have been run away from, myself. Here, what's your name! Your father has absconded - deserted you - and you mustn't expect to see him again ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... no matter what the issue. Furthermore, I should like to be given charge of the palace, in order to see that his wants are properly provided for. We cannot afford to have our movement discredited at the outset by unnecessary bloodshed or by any wanton outrages." ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... perfectly congenial to their usual habits, and perhaps feeling no remorse of conscience in departing from those principles which must always accompany men of education, carry into effect their scheme of wanton, atrocious, and deliberate falsehood. And accordingly, in pursuance of their infernal piece of villainy, one of them being sensible of being held in contempt and ridicule by an enlightened public—whose ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... in this matter by the same process of illogical reasoning of which, later, the Puritans were guilty when they banished music from the churches. In view of the fact that music was used to heighten the charms of wanton Roman festivities or Pagan rites, St. Jerome condemned the art itself, ignorant of the fact that music can never be immoral in itself, but only through evil associations. St. Augustine took a different view of music from St. Jerome. When he first heard the Christian chant at Milan he exclaimed: ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... more than sorrow—for it was remorse—it was never quite thrown off. It was not that her conscience reproached her for the fate of Dr. Grimshaw, which was brought on by his own wrongdoing, but Marian's fate—that a wild, wanton frolic of her own should have caused the early death of one so young, and beautiful, and good as Marian! that was the thought that nearly drove poor Jacquelina mad with remorse, whenever she realized ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... all, and glorious for evermore. The cruelty of the great would fain be feared; but who is to be feared but God alone, out of whose power what can be wrested or withdrawn? when, or where, or whither, or by whom? The tendernesses of the wanton would fain be counted love: yet is nothing more tender than Thy charity; nor is aught loved more healthfully than that Thy truth, bright and beautiful above all. Curiosity makes semblance of a desire of knowledge; ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... he had been telling to unlistening ears the tale of how the blacks had speared, in wanton mischief, a mob of two hundred cattle on Jinfalla, not fifteen miles from the home station, "old man, you see it would be just ruination to let this go on. Either they or we must clear out. We can't ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... instances Hazlitt was consciously the aggressor, but his attacks were never wanton. He denounced Wordsworth and Coleridge and Southey because they were renegades from the cause which lay nearest to his heart. Their apostasy was an unforgivable offence in his eyes, and his wrath was proportioned ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... beggar. Perhaps you thought I was playing the piano—yes, and teaching Rosie—for my amusement; perhaps you thought I sat up writing half the night out of—sleeplessness," he smiled at the phrase, "or a wanton desire to burn Mrs. Leadbatter's gas. No, Mary Ann, I have to get my own living by hard work—by good work if I can, by bad work if I must—but always by hard work. While you will have fifteen thousand pounds a year, I shall be glad, overjoyed, to get fifteen ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... so violently affect the Reputation of Wits, that not a French Journal, Mercury, Farce, or Opera, can escape their Pillaging: yet the utmost they arrive at, is but a sort of Jack-a-lanthorn Wit, that like the Sun-shine which wanton Boys with fragments of Looking-glass reflect in Men's Eyes, dazles the Weak-sighted, and troubles the strong. These are the Muses Black-Guard, that like those of our Camp, tho' they have no share in the Danger or Honour, yet have the greatest in the Plunder; that indifferently strip ...
— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay
... D'Avenant. It being forbidden him in the rebellious times to act tragedies and comedies, because they contained some matter of scandal to those good people, who could more easily dispossess their lawful sovereign, than endure a wanton jest, he was forced to turn his thoughts another way, and to introduce the examples of moral virtue, writ in verse, and performed in recitative music. The original of this music, and of the scenes which adorned his work, he ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... at jeists. And wanton when he came to feists, He scorn'd the converse of great beasts, O'er a sheep's head; He laugh'd at stones ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... upon a tunne of wine, when the grapes hang shaking about his eares; but, since the catholike liquor is taken from him, he is much wasted, so that he hath looked very thin and ill of late; but the wanton women that are so mad after him, do not know how he is metamorphised, so that he is not now like himselfe, but rather ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... bringing her mistress with her. Ts'ui, this time, was languid and flushed, yielding and wanton in her air, as though her strength could scarcely support her limbs. Her former severity had ...
— More Translations from the Chinese • Various
... doubt at variance with the world; but it does seem to me, that many of these warfares by sea and land are the most unjust, wanton sacrifice of life and property, recorded in the annals of history. I know that there are times and occasions when it is necessary to do battle with foreign powers in self-defence, or to relieve the oppressed and defenceless of other nations; such was the glorious object of the battle ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... evoked, the poetry of the Pleiad has found its place. At first, with Malherbe, you may think it, like the architecture, the whole mode of life, the very dresses of that time, fantastic, faded, rococo. But if you look long enough to understand it, to conceive its sentiment, you will find that those wanton lines have a spirit guiding their caprices. For there is style there; one temper has shaped the whole; and everything that has style, that has been done as no other man or age could have done it, ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... the craven in his presence, avenged himself as soon as he was gone by complaining of his having made a wanton attack upon him, and by making coarse comments upon ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... the woes of others, and even compassionates their weakness and wickedness. It will desire, therefore, as much as possible, to hide them from the public gaze, unless the good of others should require their exposure; and even then, will not do it with wanton feelings. But these remarks apply with much greater force to the practice of Christians speaking of one another's faults. Where is the heart that would not revolt at the idea of brothers and sisters scanning each other's faults, in the ears of strangers? Yet ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... difficult to distinguish one's self among the cross-breedings of the Mahes and the Floches. Rouget assuredly had an ancestor of fiery blood. As for Fouasse and Tupain, they were called thus without knowing why, many surnames having lost all rational meaning in course of time. Well, old Francoise, a wanton of eighty years who lived forever, had had Fouasse by a Mahe, then becoming a widow, she remarried with a Floche and brought forth Tupain. Hence the hatred of the two brothers, made specially lively by the question of inheritance. At the Rouget's they beat each ...
— The Fete At Coqueville - 1907 • Emile Zola
... was speaking the thoughts that had been drifting through his mind in whiskey-lit ruminations. That he was a wanton killer she had always heard. If he could persuade himself it could be done with safety, he would not hesitate to make ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... my certie, I shall ghaist them—if they had their heads as muckle on their wark as on their daffing they wad play na sic pliskies—it's the wanton steed that scaurs at the windlestrae. Ghaists! wha e'er heard of ghaists in an honest house!"—St ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... easy, only too easy, on the surface to feel that if she wanted to be gay and wanton, living for the hour, it was no one's affair but her own. She fought the question out in her mind. She fixed her determination on the young and, in one sense, inexperienced newspaper man whose ambitions pleased her fancy and whose ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... round them only breathe: Yet ruined splendour still is lingering there. And yonder towers the prince's palace fair: There thou, too, Vathek! England's wealthiest son, Once formed thy Paradise, as not aware When wanton Wealth her mightiest deeds hath done, Meek Peace voluptuous lures was ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... wanton taste no flesh nor fowl can choose, For which the grape or melon it would lose, Though all th' inhabitants of earth and air Be listed in the ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... majority of Americans are so accustomed to consider their own expansion across the continent, and beyond, as one of the finest episodes in the march of human progress (as it is) and the growth of the British Empire as a mere succession of wanton and brutal outrages on helpless and benighted peoples, that the immediate impulse of the vast majority of American readers will be to treat a comparison between the two with ridicule. Minnesota Massacres ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... arrived when a continued severity could only defeat its own work. He felt that the country could not be rendered more abject, the spirit of patriotism more apparently extinct. A show of clemency, which would now cost nothing, and would mean nothing, might be more effective than this profuse and wanton bloodshed. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... her his wife. Why not? Although there was a flaw in it, his rank was high, and therefore she was beneath him; but for this her loveliness would atone, and she had wit and learning enough to fill any place that he could give her. Also, great as was his wealth, his wanton, spendthrift way of life had brought him many debts, and she was the only child of one of the richest merchants in England, whose dower, doubtless, would be a fortune that many a royal princess might ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... opinion, as is the fact that such legislation has already been enacted in two states, which are only now putting into action the recommendation made centuries ago by such social philosophers as Plato and Sir Thomas More. A sense of justice outraged by the wanton destruction of new-born children, may in time unite with that ardent tide of rising enthusiasm for the nurture of the young, until the old barriers of silence and inaction, behind which the social evil has so long intrenched itself, shall ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... enters Palamon The gate of Venus, and the rising Sun; Waved by the wanton winds, his banner flies, All maiden white, and shares the people's eyes. From east to west, look all the world around, Two troops so match'd were never to be found; Such bodies built for strength, of equal age, In stature sized; so proud in equipage: ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... Nature plays that wanton game And Nature's hierophants may smile, Contented with their lore; no blame To rhymers if they ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... improvident recklessness, sometimes killing hundreds of them merely for the sake of the sport, the tongues, and the marrow bones. In the bloody hunt described in the last chapter, however, the slaughter of so many was not wanton, because the village that had to be supplied with food was large, and, just previous to the hunt, they had been living on somewhat reduced allowance. Even the blackbirds shot by the brown-bodied urchins before mentioned had been thankfully put into the pot. Thus ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... 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 ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... injustice done them; and, if such a man, when the grey hairs, and tottering knees, and piping voice come, look round him in vain for a prop, let him, at last, be just, and acknowledge that he has now the due reward of his own wanton cruelty to one whom he had solemnly sworn to love and to cherish to the last hour of ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... however, as an average illustration of life in that age of England. The five hundred years before the Conquest do not equal, in the bloody character of their annals, the like period succeeding it. Barbarous enough the Anglo-Saxons were, but wanton cruelty does not seem to have been one of their traits. To produce it some access of religious fury was usually requisite. It was on the church doors that the skins of their Danish ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... bent, my lyttyl wanton eye, My fedders freshe as is the emrawde grene, About my neck a cyrculet lyke the ryche rubye My lyttyl leggys, my feet both fete and clene, I am a mynyon to wayt uppon a quene; My proper parrot my lyttyl prety foole, With ladyes I lerne and go with ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... travelled, the sailor died; and they came at last through innumerable hardships to the Kimash Hills, the hills of the Mighty Men, and there they stayed. It was not an evil land; it had neither deadly cold in winter nor wanton heat in summer. But they never saw a human face, and everything was lonely and spectral. For a time they strove to go eastwards or southwards but the mountains were impassable, and in the north and west there was no hope. Though the buffalo ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the case of the cuckoo to the instinctive love of their offspring observable in almost all birds! After the eggs are laid the parent bird has no further trouble with them; no period of incubation to bare the breast of the brooding bird; no anxiety about her young ones, as some idle, wanton lad hunts amongst the trees and bushes, destroys both nest and eggs, or tortures the helpless fledglings! "But, papa," said Willy, "how does it happen that the young birds hatched in the same nest with the young cuckoo always get turned ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... its dense timber, feverishly disembowelled, and was now become a bald protuberance strewn with gravel and clay. The whole scene had that strange, repellent ugliness that goes with breaking up and throwing into disorder what has been sanctified as final, and belongs, in particular, to the wanton disturbing of earth's gracious, green-spread crust. In the pre-golden era this wide valley, lying open to sun and wind, had been a lovely grassland, ringed by a circlet of wooded hills; beyond these, by a belt of virgin forest. A limpid river and more than ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... reached the precious cluster, Five bold sparrows pertly stood, Pecking at the grapes beside them, Chattering in a wanton mood. ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... different from what Campbell had expected, for Le Succes of fifty guns appeared in sight; and, after a desperate engagement with her, in which Walsingham was severely wounded, and every other officer on board killed or wounded, Walsingham saw that nothing was left but to make a wanton sacrifice of the remainder of his crew, or ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... Occasionally she ferreted out a trembling wretch in the rear and drove him to the front with taunts; or, if he were too panic-stricken to get up, she had no compunction in thrashing him with a stick until he did so. The little savage was beside herself as she danced and sang like a wanton child in the rain—a rain of Martini and Lee-Remington balls stinging the air ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... "scent the morning air"! How they leave in our hearts nought but the dim consciousness that we are capable of an existence ineffably deeper and vaster than that which we lead in the visible world! Nought but this? Alas, poor human nature! do we leave the casket of Pandora open in wanton carelessness, and let all escape but the mere scent of the roses? Or does there not remain, behind an indefinable presence to comfort and console us,—the precious ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... and he gazed at her befuddled. His illogical belief in her guilt was illogically converted to a profound conviction of her innocence. The wanton whom he had accused was metamorphosed into a slandered angel who would not, could not sin. In his eyes she was ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... some unexampled gale might make them seem to shine with such a movement in the veritable sky; yet nothing but deep water, seeming still in its incessant flight and rebound, could really show such altered stars. The flood lets a constellation fly, as Juliet's "wanton" with a tethered bird, only to pluck it home again. At moments some rhythmic flux of the water seems about to leave the darkly- set, widely-spaced Bear absolutely at large, to dismiss the great stars, and refuse to imitate the skies, and all the water ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... mentioned in the records of the Inns of Court, the most magnificent and costly was the famous Anti-Prynne demonstration, by which the lawyers endeavored to show their contemptuous disapproval of a work that inveighed against the licentiousness of the stage, and preferred a charge of wanton levity against those who encouraged ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... a husband, who consents to take back his wife twice over, spite of her wanton love for a ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. V. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... employed by Ragon, perfumer on rue Saint-Honore, Paris, towards the end of the eighteenth century; about 1793 she took in hand the amorous education of Cesar Birotteau, the little Tourraine peasant just employed by the Ragons as errand-boy. Ill-natured, wanton, wheedling, dishonest, selfish and given to drink, Ursule did not suit the candid Cesar, whom she abandoned, moreover, two years later, for a young Picardie rebel, who owned a few acres of land. He found concealment in Paris, and let her marry ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... gopher is only a little bigger than a chipmunk, and usually pokes nothing more than his head out of his hole, so when I got thirteen out of fifteen shots I began to feel that I was a sharp-shooter. But don't regard this as wanton cruelty, for the gopher is worse than a rat, and in this country the government agents supply homesteaders with an annual allowance of free strychnine to ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... as much of her as I said I did," cried the boy, "why don't you believe me when I assure you that she loved you? What more should you demand? I meant everything I said, and more—your wife was nothing but a licensed wanton, and you knew it! You ask me who and what I am—so long as she loved you, who are you, and what are you, to ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • 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, ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman
... white stuff" that was a nuisance among folks, and sell it for something he could put in his pocket. In this way Romescos accumulated several hundred dollars; but avarice increased, and with it his ferocity. It belonged to the trade, a trade of wanton depravity. He became the terror of those who assumed to look upon a negro's sufferings with sympathy, scoffing at the finer feelings of mankind. Twice had his rapacity been let loose-twice had it nearly brought him to the ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... is continual spring, and harvest there Continuall, both meeting at one tyme: For both the boughes doe laughing blossoms beare. And with fresh colours decke the wanton pryme, And eke attonce the heavy trees they clyme, Which seeme to labour under their fruites lode: The whiles the ioyous birdes make their pastyme Emongst the shady leaves, their sweet abode, And their trew loves ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... be sorry to think that Bob Bangs was influenced by sheer spite and cruelty of heart, or by a wanton delight in witnessing and contributing to the suffering of others; yet so one was often forced to believe. It is bad enough when one fellow stands by and, without lifting a finger to help, lets another suffer; but ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... the way, is to blame for much wanton destruction. Young hemlocks, from four to six inches in diameter, are felled, stripped of their bark, and left cumbering the ground, to invite fire and to make of the woods an unkempt cemetery. The fall of a tree from natural ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... Thine unknown will. In nets' default, Finch-like me seem'd thou might'st be ta'en with salt; And here—and how thou mad'st me start!— Thou art.' 'O Mortal, by Immortals' cunning led, Who shew'd you how for Gods to bait your bed? Ah, Psyche, guess'd you nought I craved but to be caught? Wanton, it was not you, But I that did so passionately sue; And for your beauty, not unscath'd, I fought With Hades, ere I own'd in you a thought!' 'O, heavenly Lover true, Is this thy mouth upon my forehead press'd? Are these thine arms about my bosom link'd? Are these thy hands that tremble ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... 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 plague-spot must ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... refined old clergyman to Miss Norah Hood, he found himself shaking hands with a grave young person of unassertive beauty. Hers was the loveliness of the violet, which is apt to pall in this modern day—to aggravate, and to suggest wanton waste. For feminine loveliness is on the wane— marred, like many other good things, by over-education. Norah Hood was a typical country parson's daughter, who knew the right and did it, ignored the wrong and ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... see my lady's hair Coiled low like Clytie's—with no wanton curl.' But I, like any silly, wilful girl, Said, 'Donald likes it high,' and ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... of gallantry and courtship, specimens are these,—"With your ambrosiac kisses bathe my lips;" "You are a white enchantress, lady, and can enchain me with a smile;" "Midnight would blush at this;" "You walk in artificial clouds and bathe your silken limbs in wanton dalliance." What could Milton do, so far as such a production came within his knowledge, but shake his head and mingle smiles with a frown? Clearly the elder nephew too had slipped the Miltonic restraints. He had ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... Herod of wanton flesh, degenerate victim of the sensuous filth and fermentation of self-indulgence, is ever striving to exile and suppress, from the wilderness of sin, the warning cry of the Nazarite voice by intriguing with the cunning, ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... man was composed was only fused into greater firmness by being subjected to such fiery tests. On leaving Trinidad, this eminent ruler left as legacies to the Colony he had loved and worked for so heartily, laws that placed the persons and belongings of the inhabitants beyond the reach of wanton aggression; the means by which honest and laborious industry could, through agriculture, benefit both itself and the general revenue. He also left an educational system that opened (to even the humblest) a free pathway to knowledge, to [62] distinction, ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... whileom heard the Romaine state, And Quirinus, whose strong puissant arme, Did shild the tops and turrets of proud Rome, Do now conspire to wracke the gallant Ship, Euen in the harbor of her wished greatnesse. And her gay streamers, and faire wauering sayles, With which the wanton wind was wont to play, To drowne with Billows of ...
— The Tragedy Of Caesar's Revenge • Anonymous
... nights shrouded with thick darkness which might cover any pilfering approach, nevertheless every sunrise found the doubloon where the sunset left it last. For it was set apart and sanctified to one awe-striking end; and however wanton in their sailor ways, one and all, the mariners revered it as the white whale's talisman. Sometimes they talked it over in the weary watch by night, wondering whose it was to be at last, and whether he would ever ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... do not know the meaning of your words, madame.' His calmness only served to madden Frau von Graevenitz further. She turned away from him, and seizing Wilhelmine roughly by the shoulder, she hissed in her ear: 'Give me the letter, you wanton!' Wilhelmine started violently, and Monsieur Gabriel made a step forward, as though to defend her; his face flushed deeply, and he said in a steady voice: 'Madame de Graevenitz, such an accusation, even from a mother's lips, is a thing to which no woman has the right to submit.' But ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... anything that they did not want to eat. To be sure, they gave themselves a wide range; they were willing to eat almost anything that they could shoot, even blackbirds, which were so abundant and so easy to shoot. But there were some things which they would have thought it not only wanton but wicked to kill, like turtle-doves, which they somehow believed were sacred, nor robins either, because robins were hallowed by poetry, and they kept about the house, and were almost tame, so that it seemed a shame to shoot them. They ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... the question was addressed, straightened his stout form, and held up a number of flannel shirts, which he was taking to the mines on a venture. They had been cut with knives in the most wanton manner, and hardly a square ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... had they settled near the bank, than they were seized upon by a Fisherman, (who was lying in wait for them,) and completely plucked of their feathers, an operation to which they very quietly submitted, and were then suffered to depart. Upon inquiring his motive for what appeared to me a wanton act of cruelty, he told me his intention was to stuff his bed with the feathers; 'or,' added he, 'if you vill, to feather my nest.' Being myself an admirer of a soft bed, I saw no reason why I should not employ myself in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 358 - Vol. XIII, No. 358., Saturday, February 28, 1829 • Various
... I sung of the Giants, and the victorious thunderbolts scattered over the Phlegraean plains.[24] Now is there occasion for a softer lyre; and let us sing of youths beloved by the Gods above, and of girls surprised by unlawful flames, who, by their wanton desires, have ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... natural for Twirling-stick Mike to repent him suddenly of his wanton cruelty. The scoffing words of the dwarf rang in his ears, and he felt by no means easy. To make what amends he might to the deceased, he had him sumptuously buried at his own expense, with funeral oration, psalms, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... the desert Are born by the simoon's wrath, And in wanton and fleet confusion, Are strewn on its trackless path; So our lives with resistless fury, Insensibly and unknown, With a restless vacillation By the winds of fate are blown; But an All-Wise Hand May have changed the sand, For a purpose ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... that they were all young, and that none of them might be called ungoodly, and some were full fair. They were bright and fine of array. Most bore gold and gems on fingers and neck and arms; they were clad in light, or it may be said wanton raiment of diverse colours, which had only this of their fashion in common, that they none of them hid over-much of their bare bodies; for either the silk slipped from the shoulder of her, or danced away from her flank; and she ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... moral man in the presence of the "brazen" woman lies in the threat to his purposes of respectability and faithfulness; he is angered that this creature can arouse a conflict in him. The bitterness of the "saint" against the wanton originates in the ease with which she tempts him, and his natural conclusion is that the fault lies with her and not with his own passions. The respectable woman inveigles against her more untrammeled sister, not so much through her concern for morality, as through the anger felt against an ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... green slope before us, glowing warm, Came Alfred, tugging at his mother's arm; Willing she seem'd, but he still led the way, She had not walk'd so fast for many a day; His hand was lifted, and his brow was bare, For now no clust'ring ringlets wanton'd there, He threw them back in anger and in spleen, And shouted "Jennet" o'er the daisied green. Boyish impatience strove with manly grace In ev'ry line and feature of his face; His claim appear'd resistless as his choice, And when he caught the sound of Jennet's ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield
... therein; for a compliance will discommend me to Mr. Coventry, and a discompliance to my Lord Chancellor. But I think to let it alone, or at least meddle in it as little more as I can. From thence walked toward Westminster, and being in an idle and wanton humour, walked through Fleet Alley, and there stood a most pretty wench at one of the doors, so I took a turn or two, but what by sense of honour and conscience I would not go in, but much against my will took coach and away, and away to Westminster Hall, and there 'light of Mrs. Lane, and plotted ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys |
