"Callous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with such an angel by his side, it seemed but too certain that he never would be—that, on the contrary, returning health would bring returning lust and villainy, and as he grew more certain of recovery, more accustomed to her generous goodness, his feelings would become more callous, his heart more flinty and impervious to her persuasive arguments—but God knew best. Meantime, however, I could not but be anxious for the result of His decrees; knowing, as I did, that (leaving myself entirely out of the question), however ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... parties were duly and fully qualified for performing the conjugal act. In order to invalidate this report the lady affirmed that if she was not a virgin it was in consequence of the brutal efforts of one whose impotency rendered him callous as to the means he employed to satisfy himself. The Chevalier de Langey, much incensed at this imputation, demanded the Congress; the judge granted the petition, the wife appealed from the sentence, but it was confirmed by ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... flutter the young persons at the bureau. If your nervous breakdown be (as it more likely is) due to merely intellectual distinction, these young persons will mete out to you no more than the bright callous civility which they mete out impartially to all (but those few) who come before them. To them you will be a number, and to yourself you will have suddenly become a number—the number graven on the huge brass label that depends clanking from the key put into the hand of the summoned chambermaid. ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... woman's sob, the groan of a despairing man, had power to move him so strangely that he had more than once allowed a long-sought opportunity to slip from his grasp rather than sear his own soul by displaying callous indifference to the sufferings ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... both 'Fyttas' I have been again shocked with a death, and have lost one very dear to me in happier times; but 'I have almost forgot the taste of grief,' and 'supped full of horrors' till I have become callous, nor have I a tear left for an event which, five years ago, would have bowed down my head to the earth. It seems as though I were to experience in my youth the greatest misery of age. My friends fall around me, and I shall be left a lonely tree before I am withered. Other men can always take refuge ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... social reciprocation of kindness and demeanor that ought to exist among Teachers;—and, in a word, that they should be like the sun and moon—receptacles of each other's light. But these malicious, ignorant, callous-hearted traducers finding it 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, ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... came over me, and the rest was merely one sensation of becrawled misery; so that, notwithstanding great previous loss of sleep, I went again unrefreshed. I asked an old filibuster who lay near me, how he could sleep through it. "Oh," said he, "I've got my skin dirty and callous, and this easy-walking species, that can't bite, never troubles me." On this subject I read the following in Mr. Irving's "History of Columbus" with some emotion:—"Nor is the least beautiful part of animated ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... The veriest wretch on earth? What have I lost? Oh, what a pearl have I not cast away! What bliss celestial madly dashed aside! She's gone, a spirit purged from earthly stain, And the despair of hell remains for me! Where is the purpose now with which I came To stifle my heart's voice in callous scorn? To see her head descend upon the block With unaverted and indifferent eyes? How doth her presence wake my slumbering shame? Must she in death surround me with love's toils? Lost, wretched man! No more it suits thee now To melt away in ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... without effort! I had an unreasonable, instinctive feeling of shame at being so weak compared to her. I knew that I was leaving her badly off; we were both good spenders, and all my spare profits had gone into the manufactory; but I did not trouble about that. I was almost quite callous about that. I thought to myself, in a confused way: "Anyhow, I shan't be here to see it, and she'll worry through somehow!" Nor did I object to dying. It may be imagined that I resented death at so early an age, and being cut ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... of all things, ought to be tenderly handled; for if you do not, you injure not only the conscience, but the whole moral frame and constitution is injured, recurring at times to remorse, and seeking refuge only in making the conscience callous. But the conscience of faction,—the conscience of sedition,—the conscience of conspiracy, war, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... other, or both, for the sheer reason that it was human. She chose to consider it merely the sort of coarse food for male mental digestion. A man's nature was not fine and intricate; rather his emotional qualities must be like stubby, blunt, callous fingers, unskilled and not highly sentient. A man lacked the psychical and spiritual and intellectual development which was that of a maid like Gloria; his joys were chiefly physical. So he cared to blaze trails like the explorer; the impact of a storm's buffeting ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... accounts are not the creations of fancy; the facts do exist, and are but too common in Ireland. Were one of them transferred to canvas by the hand of genius, and exhibited to English humanity, that heart must be callous indeed that could refuse its sympathy. I have seen the cow, the favourite cow, driven away, accompanied by the sighs, the tears, and the imprecations of a whole family, who were paddling after, through wet and dirt, to take their ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... I feel just as sure as I'm sure that my name Isn't Willow, titwillow, titwillow, That 'twas blighted affection that made him exclaim "Oh, willow, titwillow, titwillow!" And if you remain callous and obdurate, I Shall perish as he did, and you will know why, Though I probably shall not exclaim as I die, "Oh, willow, ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... assurance of method it certainly has, controlled also by a fine sobriety of feeling, so that no part of the ensemble impinges upon the due importance of the other parts; it is a balanced, dignified picture. But in its lack of intimacy it is positively callous. One has met these ladies on many occasions, but with no increase of acquaintanceship or interest on either side—our meetings are sterile of any human interest. So one turns with relief to Miss Beaux's other picture of 'Dorothea and Francesca'—an older girl leading a younger one in the steps ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... Julia saw the affair With other people's eyes, or if her own Discoveries made, but none could be aware Of this, at least no symptom e'er was shown; Perhaps she did not know, or did not care, Indifferent from the first or callous grown: I 'm really puzzled what to think or say, She kept her counsel in so close ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... for money, was willing to undertake the most revolting offices, and who, without remuneration, was so hardened, by her constant familiarity with disease and death, that she was callous and insensible to the most earnest supplication, woke up at the noise which the curtain-rings had made, and opened the curtain to ascertain what was required. Long experience told her at once that all would soon be over, and she ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... bit ashamed of it," murmured Aunt Caroline in what she fondly hoped was a whisper. "Utterly callous! Benis," in a wavering voice, "I had ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... be sharp and eager, 'tis no great matter whether it be prudent or no: do but observe how he goes reeling, tripping, and playing: you put him in the stocks when you guide him by art and wisdom; and he is restrained of his divine liberty when put into those hairy and callous clutches. ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... after the first infuriating check of Liege and before the final turning of the German line at the battle of the Marne. We have supped full of horrors since, and by an insensible process grown something callous. But we never came near to realizing the Belgian agony, and Raemaekers does us service by helping to make us see it mirrored in the eyes of this poor raving girl. This indeed is a later incident, but will serve for reminder of ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... he, half aloud, while certain hard lines appeared on his face that changed its entire expression to one of callous severity, "my good cousin wants me to put this lad through. What is there about the boy that he dislikes? Well, Theodore has done me more than one good turn. What is a lad ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... was but short, as the under-sheriff, at the request of her friends, had prepared such excellent fuel that she was in a few minutes overwhelmed with smoke and flame. The case of this lady drew a tear of pity from every one who had a heart not callous to humanity. ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... sympathy in his kindly eyes. Little Tessa had won a very warm place in his heart. He marvelled at her mother's attitude of callous indifference. ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... a man, And didn't stay To cherish his wife and his children fair. He was a man. And every day His heart grew callous, its love-beats rare, He thought of himself at the close of day, And, cigar in his fingers, hurried away To the club, the lodge, the store, the show. But—he had a right to go, you know. ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... thee, BOWLES! for those soft strains, That, on the still air floating, tremblingly Wak'd in me Fancy, Love, and Sympathy! For hence, not callous ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... brothers, true unto a man, Will sing the old song yet; Away with him who ever can His Prince or Land forget! A human heart glowed in him ne'er, We turn from him our hand, Who callous hears the song and prayer, For Prince and ...
— The Dutch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... giving active help to the rich, the workingmen argued, the government was too callous to the suffering of the poor and pointed to the practice of imprisonment for debt. The Boston Prison Discipline Society, a philanthropic organization, estimated in 1829 that about 75,000 persons were annually imprisoned for debt in the United ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... motionless figures on the wall—a little old man, dressed in a shabby overcoat, a silk waistcoat, renewed twice in a score of years, and a very dirty pair of trousers, with a bald head, a face full of deep hollows, a wrinkled, callous skin, a beard that had a trick of twitching its long white bristles, a menacing pointed chin, a toothless mouth, eyes bright as the eyes of his dogs in the yard, and a nose like an obelisk—there he stood in his gallery smiling at the beauty called into being by genius. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... sweetest, was suspected. She was first of all invited to come and see the child in the hope that sympathy might change the influence she was supposed to be exerting; but as the old woman appeared quite callous to the sufferings of the child, the mother, as the old woman was leaving the house, scratched her with her nails across the brow, and drew blood. This circumstance raised quite a sensation in the village. Whether the child ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... said Mark enigmatically, hardly able to restrain a callous laugh, "I am going to the bath-house before I have my supper, as I haven't been able to undress here. I have changed my quarters, and now live with a ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... these and other tricks are not to be looked on as the results of natural defects, but as habitual defences against the pain caused by a hard, harsh bearing on the horse's bars; with a smooth and gentle bearing he will not take to them, or will discontinue them. For callous bars Xenophon prescribes gentle friction with oil! and the practice of the Augustan age of the manege, recommended by Berenger was to amputate that part of the tongue which a horse protruded or ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... pride at his insensibility to certain impressions which used to influence him at home. First, he begins to scoff, and there is no truth in his views nor depth in his laugh. But by and by, from mere pretending, it becomes real. He grows callous. After that he goes to the devil ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... said Constantia, still with that awful callous smile, and Josephine followed just as she had that last time, when Constantia had pushed Benny into ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... glorious Annunciata! In thy humble disguise thou art nevertheless a goddess, and thy majestic simplicity shames the shrill and artificial graces of thy sisters of the so-called good society. But surely, child, thou art agitated. Do not waste those magnificent gestures on the aged and callous priest! ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... of his mind, he envies those whom he has sent to peace. "Duncan is in his grave; after life's fitful fever he sleeps well."—It is true, he becomes more callous as he plunges deeper in guilt, "direness is thus rendered familiar to his slaughterous thoughts," and he in the end anticipates his wife in the boldness and bloodiness of his enterprises, while she for want of the same stimulus of action, "is troubled ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... subjects, having no oratorical art or power of dealing skilfully and forcibly with a question. It was a very damaging night to the Government as far as reputation[8] is concerned, but in no other way, for they are perfectly callous, and the public entirely apathetic. Melbourne was very smart in reply to Brougham, but did not attempt to deal with the question. The case, after all, is not a very strong one, and, though Normanby was much to blame in releasing prisoners and commuting sentences ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... received some strain or hurt: the pain of it continues to be great, and the inflammation is not abated. The bruises on my arms have increased in blackness, and their tension is not in the least diminished. The hands of those bad men must have been as rough and callous as their hearts: they had no mercy ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... are harsh and indifferent. I want to apply discipline to the brutal, not to brutalise the sensitive. If discipline simply made people brave and patient, it would be different, but it often makes them callous and unpleasant." ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... girl, left cruelly alone, draws its own picture, but the reason for the callous and ill-mannered behavior of the average dancing man, may perhaps need a word ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... when he came upon a sight which is calculated, whenever seen, to arouse sentiments of interest in the most callous beholder—a young lady painting! It would be wrong to say he was surprised, but he was decidedly pleased, to judge from the expression of his handsome face. He knew who the lady was, for by that time he had studied the face and figure of Milly Moss until they had been indelibly ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... in the asylum, or conversing in Egeria's hallowed grove; not in thumping and pummelling king Amulius's herdsmen. I was sometimes troubled with a rough creature or two from the plough; one, that one should have thought, had worked with his head, as well as his hands, they were both so callous. One of the most agreeable circumstances I can recollect is the Triumvirate, composed ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... him waiting. Days passed; but his hour of crisis postponed itself, and all things combined to enervate him. Above all, the callous immensity of London oppressed his mind. His case, that had been so important down there in the village, was absolutely of no account up here in the city. Not a single sympathizer among these millions of ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... he had introduced himself, shot up the roller shade, peered out into the courtyard, yanked the shade down again with a callous jerk that almost tore it from its fastenings, and strode over toward the easel, contemptuously kicking a chair that happened to be in his way over onto the floor. Reaching the easel he picked up ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... or ignored may crush him, or what is worse, may crush what is nearest and dearest to him in the world. It does it with a certainty which not even the physician who sees syphilis all the time as his life-work can get callous to. It is gambling with the cards stacked against one to let a syphilitic infection go untreated, or treated short of cure. It is criminal to force on others the risks to which an untreated syphilitic subjects those in intimate ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... in the line were not all of this calibre. Some were poor, wretched beasts, inarticulate and callous, but for all of that, in many ways very human. I remember a carter, evidently returning home after the day's work, stopping his cart before us so that his young hopeful, who had run to meet him, could climb in. But the cart ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... nothing in common but Whiggism. The Lord- Lieutenant was not only licentious and corrupt, but was distinguished from other libertines and jobbers by a callous impudence which presented the strongest contrast to the Secretary's gentleness and delicacy. Many parts of the Irish administration at this time appear to have deserved serious blame. But against Addison there was not a murmur. He long afterwards asserted, what all the evidence which we have ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... It had never happened; soon he would see from his window Carfax's hulking body cross the court. No, it was real enough, only it did not concern him. He watched it, as a spectator, indifferent, callous. There was a change in his life, but it was a change of another kind. In the strange consciousness that he now had of some vast and vital Presence, the temporal fact of the thing that he had done lost all importance. There was something that he had got to find, to discover. If—and the ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... going on in the crowded court; he felt that these country folk, always quick to form suspicions, were beginning to ask themselves if there was not something dark and sinister behind the mystery of Kitely's murder, and he was callous enough—from a purely professional standpoint—to care nothing if they began to form ideas about Miss Pett. For Brereton knew that nothing is so useful in the breaking-down of one prejudice as to set up another, and his great object just then was to divert primary prejudice ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... undressed at all, but he had taken out his false teeth "to rest his jaws a spell," as he was in the habit of doing, and the result was startling. His cheeks were fallen in to such an extent that the blinking red eyes above looked larger; it was as though the old rascal's crimes of callous selfishness and greed had suddenly ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... on Gallipoli was, however, so monotonous that men became callous to all dangers. They carried on the long day's routine and the numberless little jobs included in the term "trench duties," as if nothing else mattered. Such tasks are familiar to-day to so many millions of Europeans that they need no description. Gas ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... possible as legal proceedings are conducted nowadays, and there is nothing to be wondered at in it. People who have an official, professional relation to other men's sufferings—for instance, judges, police officers, doctors —in course of time, through habit, grow so callous that they cannot, even if they wish it, take any but a formal attitude to their clients; in this respect they are not different from the peasant who slaughters sheep and calves in the back-yard, and does not notice the blood. With this formal, soulless attitude to human ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... things. I never heard him speak spitefully of any author. He thought that every one should have a clear stage, unobstructed. His heart, young at all times, never grew hard or callous during life. There was always in it a tender spot, which Time was unable to touch. He gave away greatly, when the amount of his means are taken into consideration; he gave away money—even annuities, ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... 130 With the cold caution of a coward's spleen, Which fears not guilt, but always seeks a screen, Which keeps this maxim ever in her view— What's basely done, should be done safely too; With that dull, rooted, callous impudence, Which, dead to shame and every nicer sense, Ne'er blush'd, unless, in spreading Vice's snares, She blunder'd on some virtue unawares; With all these blessings, which we seldom find Lavish'd ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... weapons still tightly grasped in his clenched hands, and his sightless eyes still glaring defiance at the foe, I could pause to gaze upon the beauty of a South African moonrise! I could not understand it then; I was surprised and horrified at what I stigmatised as my callous heartlessness: but I know now that a merciful Providence has so ordered matters that when human suffering, whether mental or physical, reaches a certain degree of acuteness, partial insensibility sets in—I have known cases where men have slept ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... resented as a public injury; but Mr. Hyde had disappeared out of the ken of the police as though he had never existed. Much of his past was unearthed, indeed, and all disreputable: tales came out of the man's cruelty, at once so callous and violent; of his vile life, of his strange associates, of the hatred that seemed to have surrounded his career; but of his present whereabouts, not a whisper. From the time he had left the house in Soho on the morning of the ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... for the province a minute feudal constitution, but it was too cumbersome to work. Rule by the proprietaries proved radically bad. They were ignorant, callous to wrongs done by their governors, and indifferent to everything save their own profits. Many of the settlers too were turbulent and criminals, fugitives from the justice of other colonies. The difficulty was aggravated by Indian and Spanish wars, by negro ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... sweating system, and she adores Ossian and Fiona Macleod, so she probably won't appeal to Atlas in his present state, which, to my mind, is unnecessarily intense. The service of humanity renders a young man perfectly callous to feminine charms. It's the proverbial safety of numbers, I suppose, for it's always the individual that leads a man into temptation, if you notice, never the universal;—Woman, not women. I have studied Atlas profoundly, and he is nearly as blind as a bat. He paid no attention to my new ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... this colony has stood us in a sum of not less than seven hundred thousand pounds. To this day it has made no repayment,—it does not even support those offices of expense which are miscalled its government; the whole of that job still lies upon the patient, callous shoulders of the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... "Enter into thy closet," and "shut the door," is unknown; or if known, neglected. The soil, trodden by all comers, is never broken up and softened by a thorough self-searching. A human heart may thus become marvellously callous both to good and evil. The terrors of the Lord and the tender invitations of the Gospel are alike ineffectual. Falling only upon the external senses, they are swept off by the next current; as the solid grain thrown from the sower's hand rattles on the smooth hard road side, and lies ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... you see in Philadelphia, New York; aye, in Boston at this hour. I will add with Mr. Quincy, "Is it possible this should not rouse us and drive us not to desperation but to our duty! The blind may see; the callous must feel; ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... hundreds passing through the Lahore Gate every day for a whole week. We were told that provisions had been collected for their use at a place some miles distant, and it is to be hoped the poor creatures were saved from starvation; but we had our doubts on the subject, and, knowing how callous with regard to human suffering the authorities had become, I fear that many perished from ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... the pride of his life. Poor as to purse and impoverished in his household; his cupboard bare, his last penny spent on a bread crust, he is not humbled; no, he merely stretches out his ten fingers and two callous palms, exactly as a proud king extends his diamond-tipped sceptre, to show you that which upholds him in his birthright. 'My skill is my portion given to the world,' he says. 'I shall not want. ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... surface of enjoyment and the substance of woe, for beneath those painted cheeks was the pallor of despair and broken health, and beneath those whitened bosoms, half veiled with gaudy silks, were hearts that were aching with remorse, or, yet more unhappy, benumbed and callous ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... alienation between these two so complete as to block out natural sympathy? Had the separation of years rendered them callous to every mutual impression? She dwelt in tenderness upon the bond uniting herself and Reuther and could not believe in such unresponsiveness. No parent could carry resentment or even righteous anger so far ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... casuists. I have looked through volume after volume of the most approved casuists,—and still I find disquisitions whether this or that act is right, and under what circumstances, to a minuteness that makes reasoning ridiculous, and of a callous and unnatural immodesty, to which none but a monk could harden himself, who has been stripped of all the tender charities of life, yet is goaded on to make war against them by the unsubdued hauntings of our meaner ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... Roberts was coming, and he was a "great" soldier—far greater than Wellington, or even Napoleon (a mere Corsican!) We hungered for news of his plans. Roberts, we took it, was not the man to sanction the alleged intentions of his subordinates—the callous mediocrities who would let Kimberley work out its own salvation. It was reported at this time—for the better security of our peace of mind—that a grand march was to be made on Bloemfontein, while Kimberley was to live on ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... was not yet callous to the proprieties of life; and the intrusion on the Ashtons, which her mother confessed to, half frightened, half shamed her. But the dowager's wrath at having been misled bore down everything. Dr. Ashton ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... "Always cold and callous and indifferent to the feelings of others," Beatrice said. "Not even one single thought for the poor people that you have ruined. ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... not feel. No one could read her soul; she stood there like some Niobe carved in marble. For a few intimate friends there was a tinge of satire in her smile; but no scrutiny saw any change in her, nor had she looked otherwise in the days of the glory of her happiness. The most callous of her guests admired her as young Rome applauded some gladiator who could die smiling. It seemed as if society had adorned itself for a last audience of ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... panted for the time when he might have a chance of sharing in the fame of such achievements. By degrees he lost all regard for Mr Barlow, and all affection for his friend Harry. At first, indeed, he was shocked at hearing Mr Barlow mentioned with disrespect, but becoming by degrees more callous to every good impression he at last took infinite pleasure in seeing Master Mash (who, though destitute of either wit or genius, had a great taste for mimicry) take off the parson in the ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... something of his death, judging the manner of it from the condition in which his poor body was discovered the next day by our advance. Yet, even these have shrunk from writing any but the most general details, because the horror of the truth is indescribable, and not even the most callous mind ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... surface she was a child bent on getting out of life all life had to give, and underneath the surface she was perhaps a cold, calculating woman, with no other aim but her own gratification, utterly callous of the sorrow and ruin ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... and the least profitable to their parents; and the practice is most frequent in crowded cities, where not only poverty more commonly prevails, but so many examples daily occur of inhumanity, of summary punishments, acts of violence and cruelty, that the mind becomes callous and habituated to scenes that once would have shocked, and is at length scarcely susceptible of the enormity ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... be hurt, no heart to be broken, and is not worthy even of the consideration which in ordinary life is to be accorded to a widow who has received those awful tidings which generally must awaken many emotions, and call for some consideration, even in the most callous hearts. ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to the world's callous eye must be the transport of that moment. Still do I feel her graceful form press against my full-fraught heart—still does sight, and pulse, and breath sicken and fail, at the remembrance of that first kiss. Slowly and silently we went to meet ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... we had got him. He did not want to work, of course; that goes without saying. He had had a hard time in the City, so he explained. Harris, who is callous in his nature, and ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... that," she went on. "We pass through it lightly enough, but Heaven only knows the number of little tragedies against which our skirts must brush. Sometimes they leave impressions, sometimes we grow callous, but the horror of that man's voice will stay with me always.... Shall we go back now? You would ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... unavoidable, inasmuch as my stay would have put me in the possession of State things that I ought not to know. Certainly, I might have stayed a month or two, and had a pain in the head and gone quickly; but the whole duties were so distasteful that I felt—being perfectly callous as to what the world says—it was better to go at once, and ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... greatest joy to give my sister to my friend, but now—it is the same for all of us—we must take the chance of these horrid times; and could they be taught to quench the warm feelings of their young hearts, it were well for both of them. The cold, callous disposition would escape much misery, which will weigh down to the grave the loving and ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... can feel it; and the monotony of existence becomes to them exactly what it would have been had they never inflicted a pang upon the unfortunate spectators, whose unaccustomed eyes shrink daily from the impression to which they have not been rendered callous by custom, or lenient by ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... telegraphed to her and she had come at once. But how callous and unsympathetic she was. If people knew what she was, no one would speak to her. If Owen knew that she had desired his mother's death ... But had she? She had only thought that, if Lady Asher were not to recover, it were better that she died ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... rub out the grain between and under their feet; supporting themselves in common for the more easy performance of this labour by holding with their hands a bamboo placed horizontally over their heads. Although, by going always unshod, their feet are extremely callous, and therefore adapted to the exercise, yet the workmen when closely tasked by their masters sometimes continue shuffling till the blood issues from their soles. This is the ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... a case of temporary spasms for a minute, the salts spillin' out over her face, but when the accident evaporated, an' she opened her eyes, rational, I thought to myself, 'Maybe she don't know she's keeled an' would be humiliated if she did,' so I acted callous, an' I says, offhand like, I says, pushin' her apron around behind her over its vice versa, so's to cover up the eggs, which I thought had better be broke to her gently, I says, 'I just called in, Mis' Morris, to borry your recipe for angel-cake—or maybe get ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... Callous—I think not; merely a total incapability to realise a thing so stupendous. It has been the same all through the war: the tragedies have been too big for human minds to grasp. It is the little things that tell; the isolated thumb-nail impressions that ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... your bones may never lie Beneath dear Albion's hallow'd sod, Spurn the base wretch who dare defy, In arms, his country and his God! Whose callous bosom cannot feel That he who acts a traitor's part, Remorselessly uplifts the steel To plunge ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... the wearer to purchase them, and on the ankles they have silver, brass, copper or iron shackles. A pair of silver ones were seen, which weighed one hundred and twenty-eight ounces, but these ponderous ornaments produce a callous lump on the leg, and entirely deform the ankle. The poorest people have only the jereed and sandals. Both men and women have a singular custom of stuffing their nostrils with a twisted leaf of onions or clover, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... truly so much of an old fogey now in the society of which he had once been such a distinguished ornament that his disappearance was long unnoticed. And when at last someone noticed it, in Deb's hearing, the light and callous way in which his trouble was referred to went to her heart—knowing all she knew. One of her generous impulses came to her on the spot, and an hour later she was at the door of his chambers, inquiring ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... then, the mild torture of the goat's-hair cilice did the office I required of it. But towards December, my skin having grown tough and callous from the perpetual irritation, and inured to the fretting of the sharp hair, my mind once more began to wander mutinously. To check it again I put off the cilice, and with it all other undergarments, retaining no more clothing than just the rough brown monkish habit. Thus I exposed myself to ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... as ladies of yore did look on when knights slaughtered each other for their smiles. And perhaps of yore the hearts of those who did look on were as cold and callous as was hers. For one moment of enthusiasm she had thought she loved, but now again she was indifferent. It might be settled as well this ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... and exercised on the whole an elevating influence. The humble submission of the boy Isaac to the will of God and of his earthly father, the yearning devotion of Mary the mother of Jesus, and the infinite love and pity of the tortured Christ himself, must have struck into even callous hearts for at least a little time some genuine consciousness of the beauty and power of the finer and higher life. A literary form which supplied much of the religious and artistic nourishment of half a continent ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... had conquered, and thus secure their common frontier. In May 1913 a military convention was concluded between them, and the Balkan League, the relations between the members of which had been becoming more strained ever since January, finally dissolved. Bulgaria, outraged by this callous disregard of the agreements as to the partition of Macedonia signed a year previously by itself and its ex-allies, did not wait for the result of the arbitration which was actually proceeding in Russia, but in an access of indignation ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... perfect creature, man? What a devil was man, who could yet rise to such sublime heights of love and heroism! What a ferocious brute, the most ferocious and cold-blooded brute that lived! Of all creatures most to be stampeded by fear into a callous torturer! 'Fear'—thought Felix—'fear! Not momentary panic, such as makes our brother animals do foolish things; conscious, calculating fear, paralyzing the reason of our minds and the generosity of our hearts. A detestable thing Tryst has done, a hateful act; but his punishment ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... wuz I ollers teched ten shillins), There's sutthin' gits into my throat thet makes it hard to swaller, It comes so nateral to think about a hempen collar; It's glory—but, in spite o' all my tryin' to git callous, I feel a kind o' in a cart, aridin' to the gallus. But wen it comes to bein' killed—I tell ye I felt streaked The fust time ever I found out wy baggonets wuz peaked; Here's how it wuz: I started out to go to a fan-dango, The sentinul ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... origin. The incessant adding of notes, incorporation of glosses, and piling of explanations one on the other, has increased the confusion. And to add to our bewilderment, the scribes were usually quite callous about errors in a writing which was never to be seen or used by living eyes; and the corruptions, which have been in turn made worse, have left hardly any sense in many parts. At {78} best it is difficult to follow the illusions of a lost faith, but amid all the varieties of idea ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... women, gaudily, if not gorgeously dressed, looking plump and well; and others, who had apparently lately been imported, in a most miserable state of starvation. The sight was sufficient to excite the feelings of the most callous observers. Many were little more than skeletons, with their skins, often covered with sores, drawn tight over their distorted bones; their eyeballs protruding hideously, evidently in consequence of the falling away of the flesh on ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... you see that young lady over there beside Anna Baldwin?" Roderick looked and saw the latest arrival in Algonquin, a very handsome and well-dressed young lady who was visiting the Misses Baldwin. "Yes," said Roderick in a very callous manner, "I see her." He drew Roderick away a little distance from the ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... the community—and especially in the press—throughout the length and breadth of the land. To such, in an alarming degree, the public turns, in protest, as it were, against the tyranny and turpitude of this "learned profession," with its kindred corporations and its studied callous disregard of scientific advancement in any direction which might tend to jeopardize or reduce the profitable exercise of its own obsolete methods, its system of poisonous medicaments, and dangerous operations ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... chained to the chief, Voalavo. Many others whom they did not know were also there. These all trudged along with bowed heads and eyes on the ground, like men who, having gone through terrible mental and physical agony, have either become callous or ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... at the presents. The presents are numerous and costly. Having discovered my own I stand a little way back and listen to the opinions of my neighbours upon it. On the whole the reception is favourable. The detective, I am horrified to discover, is on the other side of the room, apparently callous as to the fate of my egg stand. I cannot help feeling that if he knew his business he would be standing where I am standing now; or else there should be two detectives. It is a question now whether it is safe for me to leave my post and search for food... Now he is coming round; I can ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... who depends for scanty subsistence on the caprice of his more fortunate inferiors, whose minds, unexpanded by liberal feeling, and absorbed in the love of self, and the sordid consideration of interest, are callous to the impression of benevolence!—But let us hope that few such cases of genius in adversity occur, even in this widely extended and ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... no intention of allowing his lady-love to escape. With his fore-legs, using a special notch placed at the juncture of the leg and the tarsus, he seizes both her antennae. The tarsus folds back; and the antennae are held as in a vice. The suitor pulls; and the callous one is forced to raise her head. In this posture the male reminds one of a horseman proudly sitting his steed and holding the reins in both hands. Thus mastering his mount, he is sometimes motionless and sometimes frenzied in his demonstrations. Then, with his long abdomen, he lashes ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... how many generations a man must be removed from Scotland before he becomes callous to the disposition of the family name. I own that I squirmed inwardly, but with outward composure asked Belle where Mary got ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... car, legs far apart, heaving over great rocks with his bare hands. Two bohunks, unsuccessfully tussling with a huge piece, he unceremoniously pushed aside, to grip it with his callous hands. Slowly it tilted, balanced a moment, and bounded away to ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... their wisdom, their genius, their skill, their valour, their devotion to country, etc., but never until this age, was quietness deemed a quality to be extolled. It would be no difficult matter to show that the quiet, fireside gentry are the most callous and cruel, and, therefore, the most wicked part of the nation. Amongst them it is that you find all the peculators, all the blood-suckers of various degrees, all the borough-voters and their offspring, all the selfish and unfeeling wretches, who, rather than risk the disturbing of ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... more and more as circumstances became more adverse, turning sadness into slavery: he had been brought up to hate it. His father, who, as a clergyman doing his endeavour for the welfare of his flock, found himself greatly thwarted by its deadening influences, rendering men callous not only to the special vice itself, but to worse vices as well, had banished it from his table and his house; while the mother had from their very childhood instilled a loathing of the national weakness and its physical means into the ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... reply, "but that is why I've come to you. Don't be gulled by Tristram into any investigations in that house. Enthusiasm for his research work makes him unconsciously callous, and if he once got you there he might, even against your better judgment, persuade you to sleep on the left ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... Church militant for which she labored; she regarded it rather as a half-baked body of territorials than a regular army equipped for the field. Still it served a purpose, gave useful occupation to many, and stood for the time being against unreasoning panic or callous desertion of duty; nor would she surrender its few poor healing virtues for any of the nostrums he sought to set in their place. "It does more than you with all your talking," she said quietly, and, as they passed by, took him into a mission church where he might see—a ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... you," he said, with a callous upraising of his shoulders. "You've talked a good deal to me here, and you've made your talk sound right. But talk doesn't put these men in the penitentiary. You've made a mess of this job so far. Guess it's up to you to make good. You've got your chance now. See you ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... of human life among the leaders of the Ottoman Turks at this time which is almost incredible; to attain their end in war they sacrificed thousands upon thousands of men with an absolutely callous indifference. In no chapter of the bloodstained history of their Empire was this trait more in evidence than it was at the siege of Malta. There was, however, a reason for this, which developed itself more ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... be if the callous crew take it into their heads at some or other to show restiveness? Will they deal gently or thoughtfully with those against whom their enmity is turned? Certainly their education by no means tends to foster gentleness ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... could see any thing more incongruous in the confessions and petitions of handsomely dressed people than of ragged ones. That any sinner can be "miserable" in satin, seems impossible, or at least offensive, to some minds; perhaps to those who know least of the reckless, callous light-heartedness of the most ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... The callous half-breed was disturbed by the utter abandon of her grief. In his brutal nature there was a stirring of unusual compunction, and after watching her for a moment, he strove to console her, speaking in a ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... occupied by the Germans who quartered an army and an administration with their wives and their families and all their expensive paraphernalia on the unfortunate country until the whole nation was reduced to the verge of famine, and the appointment of every new official meant the callous death sentence on a thousand men and women to pay his salary, then if you went to Berlin and wrecked a train you would be hailed a patriot. What Boadicea did and—and Samson, so have I. If they ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... in a tone she deemed most hideously callous. "It was not my business to hold him back. He was wanted. There would have been no rescue but for him. They needed a man to lead them, or they wouldn't ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... her knees, covered her face with her hands, and broke into a passion of weeping. With a look of infinite pity he stooped and would have touched her shoulder, but he suddenly restrained the impulse. Something had hardened this man. It cost him an effort to be callous, but he succeeded. His mouth tightened and his ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... face to the callous Architect as she said And what has any honest person to dread from so kind a ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... prison influence have succeeded in incasing a man with the sort of moral hardbake that renders him callous to those feelings which at first so gall the raw spots, he finds himself watching with curiosity the shapings of newcomers. Some announce immediately on arrival that they cannot possibly be there more than a month or two; their arrest was a mistake, and their uncle, the member of Parliament, ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... Mother. To mould me into thine own likeness thou hast sent me hither. Thou dost compel me to behold this man on the verge of the yawning grave, in the grasp of an arbitrary doom, that I may experience the profoundest anguish; that thus, rendered callous to every fate, I may henceforth meet every ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... way of answering misfortune's challenge—an Elizabethan way, the knack of which we believed we had lost! "Business as usual" was written across our doorways. It sounded callous and unheeding, but at night the lads who had written it there, tiptoed out and stole across the Channel, scarcely whispering for fear they should break our hearts by ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... of the Roman Catholic Church has been sadly Callous and inhuman in this matter of ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... affecting emblem of the boldness of human hope, venturing near, and, as it were, leaning over the brink of the grave. Indeed, the whole vale, its every light, its every sound, must needs impress every mind not utterly callous with the thought—Who would be, who could be an Atheist in this valley of wonders! If any of the readers of the MORNING POST [Those who have P. R.] have visited this vale in their journeys among the Alps, I am confident ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... getting none, shook his fist at the callous devils who ignored him; he inspected his charge, who looked as pure as a child in her swoon, all her troubles forgotten and sins blotted out; he inquired of the skies, as if hopeful that the ravens, as of old, might bring him help; at last, ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... denunciations against Sir Robert Peel, the government, and free trade. The manufacturers—the creators of wealth, and who sustained so large a portion of the public burdens—were represented as a selfish, callous set of men, eager only to acquire riches, even at the expense of all other classes of the community. They were described as disloyal and revolutionary, and bent upon the destruction of throne and constitution. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... a simple but beautiful custom, and is intended to remind people of their duty to God in whatever occupation they may be engaged. It may often do good; but unless people are possessed of the true spirit of piety, custom will make them callous, and it will fail ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... continued to sit on the porch; at intervals he mechanically rolled and lit cigarettes, which glowed for a moment and went out, unsmoked. The feeling of depression that had cloaked him during the few days past changed imperceptibly to one of callous indifference toward existence in general. The seeds of revolt, of instability, which Clare and a measure of worldly position, of pressure, had held in abeyance, germinated in his disorganized mind, his bitter sense of injustice and injury. He hardened, grew defiant ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... happened; but (Gilbart groaned) why had it happened to him? In his stupefaction he returned again and again upon this, catching in the flood at that one little straw of self; not inhumanly, as callous to the ruin of others; but pitifully, meanly, because it was the one thing familiar in the roar and din. He cursed Casey; cursed him for betraying his friendship. The man had no right— He pulled up suddenly, with a laugh. After all, ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard and callous. But behind sorrow there is always sorrow. Pain, unlike pleasure, wears no mask. Truth in art is not any correspondence between the essential idea and the accidental existence; it is not the resemblance of shape to shadow, or of the form mirrored in the crystal to the form itself; it is no echo ...
— De Profundis • Oscar Wilde
... their willingness to be led under the canopy. But Mordecai, anxious that he should fulfil the law, according to which to be celibate is to live in sin, found him a second mate, even more beautiful; but the youth remained silently callous, and was soon restored afresh to his ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... apparent to their minds—a feeling of pity for the unfortunate party on the mainland took possession of them. It was quite possible that the Osprey might be recaptured, in which case five useless murders would have been committed; and however callous in bloodshed were the majority of the ten, not one among them could contemplate in cold blood, without a twinge of remorse, the death of the harmless child of ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... own pleasure-loving disposition as the one law of her life. In another, a mere child, hasty and uncontrolled in temper, is the dread of the whole household, and at last becomes its tyrant, because every wish is gratified rather than that a scene should be provoked. In yet another a grown-up son is callous about his mother's anxiety and his father's counsels; and gladly ignores his home associations as he drifts away upon the sea of vice, and there becomes a miserable wreck. With each of these it might have been otherwise. ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... resigned from the Investigating Committee, now defunct anyway, its voluminous and inconclusive report buried in the state archives. Injunctions issued from local courts like ashes from a stirring volcano, but the militia were impervious and hustled the freeholders from their homes with callous disregard for the sacred ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... country in the world where a letter of introduction from a man quite entitled to give it could be wholly ignored as it sometimes is in the United States. The writer has had experience of both results. No more fundamental contrast can well be imagined than that between the noisy, rough, crude, and callous street-life of some Western towns and the quiet, reticence, delicacy, spirituality, and refinement of many of the ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... even after the first shot had pierced his lungs, and the blood was choking in his throat, he had still run a step or two farther, with his hand uplifted deprecatingly, and made one more effort to speak before he fell to the ground dead. Callous as Farrar was, and clear as it was in his mind that killing an Indian was no harm, he had not liked to recall the pleading anguish in Alessandro's tone and in his face as he fell. He had not liked to recall this, ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... have profited by the discipline of the last twelve hours," cried Arthur, "and it was most severe, for one of your temperament and early habits. I have heard it said," he added, thoughtfully, "that those who follow my profession, become callous and indifferent to human suffering—that their nerves are steeled, and their hearts indurated—but I do not find it the case with me; I never approach the bedside of the sick and the dying without deep and solemn emotion. I feel nearer the grave, ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... is useless and canting to say that peccant women are worse than men. If we are kind we say so merely because we are more apprehensive for them. Safe women, with but rare exceptions, are notably callous about their sisters astray, and the "we'' I have used must be taken generally to signify men. We see the danger for erring women, danger economic and physical. Thinking in terms of the phrase that "a woman's place ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... glad that it hez been done," said Shif'less Sol. "It'll save me a lot o' work hereafter. It would be jest like you fellers to make me git callous spots all over the inside o' my hands, when the hide on Jim Hart's is already so thick it wouldn't hurt him to do all his rowin' ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... that, had I the power, as I have the will, I would resist this transfer to the knife. I am, however, a poor man, have no soldiers to cope with yours, and must submit. God's will be done." This was a bold, straight-forward speech; but it was thrown away upon the callous ears of the hearers. Delivered in pure Malay, it sounded stronger than in this translation. The speaker was an old man, with whose power and will for mischief, in former days, the British had good ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... made use of Stacey, whose callous attitude was less remarkable. Gad, Petrie! I nearly bagged our man the first night! The elaborate plan—Marconi message to get you out of the way, and so forth—had miscarried, and he knew the port-hole trick would be useless once we got into the open sea. He took a big ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... "till almost every point of that wide horizon, over which the Sun of Righteousness had diffused his cheering rays, was enveloped in a darkness more awful and more portentous than that which of old descended upon rebellious Pharaoh and the callous sons of ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... hard. But we feel it time for you to understand thoroughly your situation, in order that you may determine what your future is to be. You have been reared all your life on stolen, or what is worse, extorted money. We hope you have not inherited the callous nature of your mother, and that this information will not leave you unashamed. Not a gown you have worn, nor a possession you have enjoyed, but has been yours through theft. That you may verify this statement, open the steel safe, back of the ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... Louis XV.—Meantime the gross vice and licentiousness of the king was beyond description, and the nobility retained about the court by the system established by Louis XIV. were, if not his equals in crime, equally callous to the suffering caused by the reckless expensiveness of the court, the whole cost of which was defrayed by the burghers and peasants. No taxes were asked from clergy or nobles, and this latter term included all sprung of a noble line to the utmost generation. ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Laocoon and its Minerva, its bare commonplace walls like those of a railway-station waiting-room, between which all the scramble of the century passed, though apparently without even warming the lofty ceiling. Never had paler and more callous light entered by the large glazed doors, behind which one espied the little slumberous garden with its meagre, wintry lawns. And not an echo of the tempest of the sitting near at hand reached the spot; from the whole heavy pile there fell but death-like silence, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... odor of her hair, a charming feminine perfume, sweet, heavy, enervating, came to his nostrils, so penetrating, so delicious, that his flesh pricked and tingled with it; a veritable sensation of faintness passed over this huge, callous fellow, with his enormous bones and corded muscles. He drew a short breath through his nose; his jaws suddenly gripped ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... of the train the patient rustic came, Whose callous hand had form'd the scene, Bending at once with sorrow and with age, With many a tear and many a sigh between; 30 'And where,' he cried, 'shall now my babes have bread, Or how shall age support its feeble fire? No lord will take me now, my vigour fled, Nor can my strength perform what ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... damning all beside, And shows his callous knees with pious pride, Speaks with half-knowledge, for no man e'er scorns His own possessions, be they coins or corns. You've money, neighbor; had you gentle birth You'd know, as now you never ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... the calm pluck of Hayward touched even his murderers, callous as they are to bloodshed It makes a sensational picture: a solitary figure in the foreground standing alone on the edge of a pine wood high up in the lonely grandeur of the everlasting hills, the first flush of dawn reddening the snow on peak after peak, changing ...
— With Kelly to Chitral • William George Laurence Beynon
... what repays the gamester's nightly toil, Can hell itself more hideous woes impart? Can glitt'ring heaps of ill-begotten spoil, Appease the cravings of his callous heart? For this alone he severs every tie, For this he marks unmov'd the orphan's tear, E'en nature's charms, a smile from beauty's eye No longer can his blasted prospects cheer. But now prevails the dice's rattling sound, The loud blaspheming ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 284, November 24, 1827 • Various
... backsheesh; the mud hovels in which they manage to live, and the coarse food upon which they exist; the mass of greasy, unwashed rags which hang loosely upon them—such things no longer excite our wonder, or even our pity. We have seen so much of such misery before that I fear we begin to grow callous. ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... the efforts of the poor old man, sundry twitchings and screwings of the muscles of the face denoted the exquisite sensibility of these shutters to the windows of his soul, which he was now having repainted. But the artist, with a heart as callous as that of an army surgeon, continued his performance, enlivening his labours with a wild chant, tapping away the while as merrily ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... monkeys, being about three feet standing upon its hind-legs, with a tail of immense length, thick and strong near the root, and tapering to a point. On its under side, for the last foot or so from the end, there is no hair, but a callous skin, and this is the part used for holding on to the branches. The marimonda is far from being a handsome monkey. Its long, thin arms and thumbless hands give it an attenuated appearance, which is not relieved by the immense disproportioned tail. It is reddish, ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... my sons certainly gave me some pleasure as well as latent hope, for as little children they were lovable and lovely; but as boys—as men—what bitterness they brought me! Were they the heirs of Love? Nay!—surely Love never generated such callous hearts! They were the double reflex of their mother's nature, grasping all and giving nothing. Is there no such virtue on earth as pure unselfish Love?—love that gives itself freely, unasked, without hope of advantage or reward—and without any personal ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... in my duties; but ever feeling deep attachment for this adorable princess, I hastened to Saint Cloud directly news reached me of her illness. To my horror, I saw the sudden change which had come over her countenance; her horrible agony drew tears from the most callous, and approaching her I kissed her hand, in spite of her confessor, who sought to constrain her to be silent. She then repeatedly told me that she was dying ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... the Hudson Bay Company, as being unfit for the laborious work of a canoeman in one of those large canoes. The fact was that it was only the most vigorous and muscular men who could perform the tremendous task assigned them by that tyrannical man, who drove his men on and on with all the cruel, callous persistency of a slave-driver. No wonder poor, weak Pasche gave out where many a stalwart man has also failed. He had been a sailor for some years on the St. Lawrence, and had the agility of a monkey in climbing up to the top of the masts. The unfortunate fellow was left stranded in ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... existence I brought the large airs of the world, freighted with the lusty smells of sweat and strife, and with the tangs and odors of strange lands and soils. And right well I scratched their soft palms with the callous on my own palms—the half-inch horn that comes of pull-and-haul of rope and long and arduous hours of caressing shovel-handles. This I did, not merely in the braggadocio of youth, but to prove, by toil performed, the claim I had ...
— The Road • Jack London
... wags were there who had witnessed the Rebellion—at the moment, had I not become callous, another might have seemed imminent—and were looked up to by the crowd as heroes of a horrid past, being listened to with rapt attention as they described what it was the crowd looked at and whence it came. Had I been a wild animal let loose from its ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... hardly, Margaret," she said. "I know you think me selfish and callous, and utterly without any decent feelings at all to be deliberately keeping you out of your own name, and to be taking everything that ought by rights to belong to you. But you don't know what this chance means to me. You can't ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... transport into the interior were well assimilated to the dreariness of the country through which they passed. Two common pack horses, lean, galled by the saddle, and callous from long acquaintance with the admonitory influence both of whip and spur, had been selected by Captain Jackson as the best within the fort, and, as a first evidence of the liberality ascribed to him by his Commander, the fastest of these (if a choice there was) he selected for his own use. ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... your faces set towards the south. Does the Black One live in the south? Well, you will journey to another kraal presently," answered the jovial-looking captain of the party with a callous laugh. ...
— Black Heart and White Heart • H. Rider Haggard
... Poor, callous-footed Mrs. Schum, with her spotted bombazine bosom and her loosely anchored knob of gray hair! She was the color of cold dish water at that horrid moment when the grease begins to float, her hands were ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... and Polonius thought Hamlet really insane. 8. The President and the Senate appoint certain men ministers to foreign courts. 9. Shylock would have struck Jessica dead beside him. 10. Custom renders the feelings blunt and callous. 11. Socrates styled beauty a short-lived tyranny. 12. Madame de Stael calls beautiful architecture frozen music. 13. They named the state New York from the Duke of York. 14. Henry the Great consecrated the Edict of Nantes as the very ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... the sky above it greener and bluer than other trees or sky, and who feels a pang, yes, an actual pang, of mingled hope, and joy, and expectation, and terror, when he emerges from Guilford street, descending from the hights of Islington, into those sacred precincts; this very Jones is hard and callous toward the torments of Smith, who adores Miss Robinson, and cannot imagine what the infatuated fellow can see in the girl. So it was with Sir Michael Audley. He looked at his nephew as a sample of a very large class ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... whose restoration had formed almost the most sacred part of her prayers), no more than a man, and not a good one. She thought misfortune might have chastened him; but that instructress had rather rendered him callous than humble. His devotion, which was quite real, kept him from no sin he had a mind to. His talk showed good-humor, gayety, even wit enough; but there was a levity in his acts and words that he had brought from among those libertine devotees with whom he had been ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... mother," she said, "but you've seen her a poor old woman. She had everything in the world once. She gave it up for love. I've seen what love comes to. I've seen my mother with her hands callous with work and her temper sharp as a razor edge nagging my father, and my father cursing out us children. She had a whole city in love with her and she gave up everything to run away with my father. He was jealous and wanted her for himself. He ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various |
