"Heartlessness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... without extenuation and without condemnation. Until the papers, mentioned with such insistence by Lady Shelley and Mr. Garnett, are given to the world, it is impossible that the poet should not bear the reproach of heartlessness and inconstancy in this the gravest of all human relations. Such, however, is my belief in the essential goodness of his character, after allowing, as we must do, for the operation of his peculiar principles ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... always, unless you are ill, at home or in church, and the Litany on Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. You will find this a greater help than almost anything else—a help against superstition, narrowness, bigotry, {60} heartlessness. If you decide not to do so, do it with some really good reason, and not because others do the same, or because it ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... later a number of men were in the kitchen of Cap'n Jack's house, and from the way they talked I knew they meant that the vessel which they had been watching should that night be destroyed. Never until then did I realise the utter heartlessness of the gang. They seemed to care nothing for the lives of those on the ship which they had decided to wreck. In their lust for gain nothing was sacred to them. As far as I could gather, their plan was that I should lead Cap'n Jack's horse along the edge of the cliffs with a lantern ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... report of Raoul's scandalous behavior, he became very indignant, and swore that he would soon make him repent of his heartlessness. ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... man Pickwick I will say little; the subject presents but few attractions; and I, gentlemen, am not the man, nor are you, gentlemen, the men, to delight in the contemplation of revolting heartlessness, and ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... plaintive cry may be heard among the hills answering back again the voices of those who laugh and sing. But now the nymphs were angry with the loveless youth, and prayed the gods to punish him for his heartlessness. ...
— The Enchanted Castle - A Book of Fairy Tales from Flowerland • Hartwell James
... woman, without enough desire of any kind to impel her to trample over feelings, creeds and codes. If she died that moment, it would be said of her that she was beautiful, and that was all. Reginald, with his greed, his heartlessness, his indifference to all that did not serve him, would not be forgotten: people would sigh and smile at the mention of his name, hate him and wish him back. She envied him; she wished she could feel in swift, passionate gusts as he had done, with the force and the forgetfulness ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... the Roydamna, or successor, should be chosen alternately from the Northern and Southern Hy-Nial; and, subsequently, when Nial, son of his predecessor, assumed that onerous rank, Flan gave him his daughter Gormley, celebrated for her beauty, her talents, and her heartlessness, in marriage. From these several family ties, uniting him so closely with Ossory, with the Scots, and with his successor, much of the wars and politics of Flan Siona's reign take their cast and complexion. A still more fruitful source of new complications was the ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... with a friendly serenity and composure that had something almost motherly about it, and it was free from all suggestion of frivolity or of heartlessness. In a few weeks the company had to leave Lauchstadt to proceed to Rudolstadt and fulfil a special engagement there. I was particularly anxious to make this journey, which in those days was an arduous undertaking, in Minna's company, and if only I had succeeded ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... an evidence of your high-minded heartlessness, that in the same letter where you sue for love you also introduce a philosophical discussion and show even more heat in maintaining it than you do in your amorous petition? Why I cannot take warning and fly to the ends of my earth ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... in which he describes his engagement, the opposition of his father, and the resignation with which he 'sighed as a lover, but obeyed as a son.' M. d'Haussonville has published from the archives at Coppet some melancholy letters which show clearly that Gibbon exhibited more heartlessness and inflicted more suffering than might be gathered from his own stately narrative. But no lasting scar remained. After a few years of poverty and hardship, during which she was obliged to earn a livelihood ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... man, came to his house to beg the clemency of the great British mandarin. With him was his wife and the brother of the murdered man. All three begged upon their knees that the girl should be released because she was innocent. But he only shook his head, and with callous heartlessness signed the death-sentence and ordered them to be ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... better than remaining there; and Mrs. Williams, who was somewhat overawed by the Italian's determined eye, gave up what she saw was a vain attempt. She shut the door after them with expressive force, and then went up-stairs to discourse to her daughter on the incredible ingratitude and heartlessness of such creatures. ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... did they perpetrate, connive at, or tolerate such atrocities as were brought to light during the Andover inquiry, such cold blooded heartlessness would at once be laid to the account of their principles. Oh yes, Christians are forward to judge of every tree by its fruit, ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell
... their happiness, and in this glory they may see the graves of their children. This is not patriotism: It is a far lower principle. It is produced by national pride, vanity, thoughtlessness, a contempt or ignorance of domestic happiness, and all this allied to an unconquerable levity and heartlessness of disposition. It is not therefore that severe but noble principle, the silent offspring between thought and sorrow, which soothes at least where it cannot cure, and alleviates the acuteness of individual ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... of ideals has been shown, all through the drama, by the contrast of the pompous heartlessness of the king's court and the natural purity of the forest hermitage. The drama opens with a hunting scene, where the king is in pursuit of an antelope. The cruelty of the chase appears like a menace symbolising the spirit ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... witcheries had been too potent for the man of pleasure. He was himself caught in the net he spread for another. The adroit bird-catching of Angelique was too much for him in the beginning: Bigot's tact and consummate heartlessness with women, might be too much for her in the end. At the present moment he was fairly dazzled with her beauty, spirit, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... he exclaimed: "Tired? Yes, I am tired! Tired of such heartlessness and carelessness! And," he added, "think of the condition of things. Here are at least one thousand wounded men; terribly wounded, five hundred of whom cannot live till daylight without attention. That two-inch of candle is all I have, or can get. What can I do? ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... slaves of their daughters; some are slaves to them; some even find rivals in them. Some are prevented from forming friendships, by tyranny on one side or by insubordination on the other; by selfishness there or by heartlessness here. Envy, vanity, fickleness, spite, festering incompatibilities of character, often prove fatal in these veiled and intimate relations. But when the characters of mother and daughter are happy accords, or accurate ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... the details of the mission to England, on which the Baron d'Ombre was to start that very night; but not even to him had been confided Angelot's escape and Monsieur Joseph's further plans. He was one of the many guests who had been struck by the heartlessness of the Sainfoys in giving a ball at this moment, but who came to it for reasons of their own. He came with the object of hoodwinking the local police, who were watching him and his friends, of scattering the Chouan party and giving Cesar d'Ombre more ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... bottle, Atkinson became communicative, and his history not only made me feel better inclined towards him, but afforded me another instance, as well as Carbonnell's, how often it is that those who would have done well, are first plundered, and then driven to desperation by the heartlessness of the world. The cases, however, had this difference, that Carbonnell had always contrived to keep his reputation above water, while that of Atkinson was gone, and never to be re-established. We had just ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... That sort of little creature has no duty—the word doesn't apply to it. Evie is the most skilful mixture of irresponsible impulse and shrewd calculation you'll find in New York. She'll use both her gifts with perfect heartlessness, and yet in such a way that even her guardian angel won't know just where ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... cruelty and heartlessness of my punishment, however, made every one who heard the story vehement in censuring it, so that those who had a hand therein were soon eager to disclaim all responsibility, shouldering the blame on others. Nay, matters came to such a ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... the treacherous heartlessness and sat the dance out—stood it out, rather, among the superfluous men on the side-lines. A morose and ridiculous gloom possessed him at seeing still a fourth stranger with his arms about Mamise, her breast to ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... could bring no words to my lips. Finally I stammered out: "Nancy knows. I told her everything last night. I broke my word with you, Bob, but I could not help it She was crying again over what she thinks to be your heartlessness. I had ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... menials that throng the halls of fashionable town residences, they equally reflect the character of the establishments to which they belong; and I know no more complete epitomes of dissolute heartlessness and pampered inutility. ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... a child's education, the neglect of this principle is seriously and painfully felt. It is the cause of acute mental suffering to well affected and zealous pupils; and it is the chief origin of all the heartlessness, and idleness, and apathy, which are found to pervade and regulate the conduct of those that are less active. A careful appliance of this principle of individuation, therefore, is always of importance ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... his bowels yearned so over the poor deserted cherub, that the tears of pure tenderness stood in his eyes, and still, beneath the crime of the mother, he saw the divine goodness, which had so directed her heartlessness as to comfort His ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... Disgusted with the selfish heartlessness of society, Joab shambled off and was passing the scratching-post without noticing her. (Her name was Arabella Cliftonbury Howard.) Suddenly she kicked away a multitude of pigs who were at her feet, and called to the rolling ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... to me, I cannot waver between you and my mother!" so she had obeyed, without one farewell word to him. Confess, Rodin was a more dextrous man than his late master! In the pages that ensue farther proofs of his superiority in baseness and satanic heartlessness ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... on, with the heartlessness of a small man, for large men respect woman with a deeper chivalry than every puny knight yet compassed, "and you did not trouble to inquire. You did not even give me six months' grace to ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... his word, and spared his guests no detail of the vast stronghold, until at last poor Sister Gabrielle could go no farther. Giovanni had anticipated that she would be tired, and with the heartlessness of a lover seeking his opportunity, he had secretly longed for the moment when she should, be obliged ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... and generosity, almost at the very moment of his death, deeply affected me; and, at the same time, I could not help feeling disgusted with the heartlessness displayed by Sargent, who regarded the tragical death of his partner merely as an event calculated to advance his ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... 'There was the rub. London is the cruellest town in Europe. For sheer cold blood and heartlessness give Londoners the palm. I had connections enough for the first month or so, and then people found out things that didn't concern them. They found out some things that were true, and they imagined other things that were false. They wouldn't have my wife; they told the most infamous ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... of these left renew the dance, you see. I cannot stop them; but with memory hot Of those late gone, of where they are gone, and why, It smacks of heartlessness! ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... wind goes by machinery, and is, after a given interval, invariably at such o'clock,—adding, that it is his aim, not to keep up, but to keep down, correspondence. If accused of "owing a letter," he repudiates the obligation, and affirms that he will go to jail sooner than pay it off. If taxed with heartlessness, he retorts by asking whether it can be the duty of a moral being to insult a man by writing to him when there is nothing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... whereas Shakespeare directly charges him with it, or rather makes Gaunt do so, and the accusation is not denied, much less disproved. At the close of the first act we are astonished by the revelation of Richard's devilish heartlessness. The King hearing that his uncle, John of Gaunt, is "grievous sick," ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... indeed, given him much pain, and was softened, and anxious for him to be comforted by seeing that her fault, at least, was not the vanity and heartlessness that he supposed. ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Archibald, and then Archibald became somebody else, what shall we say became of her heart? Must it not have been irretrievably lost, and shall we be surprised if we hereafter detect in her a tendency to heartlessness? ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... that he might be in Babbiano on the third day to take the throne his cousin treats so lightly. Sainted God!" he cried out. "I think this is the most diabolically treacherous plot that ever mind of man conceived and human heartlessness executed." ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... man were dumb with depression as the train rolled out. To them the desertion seemed an act of appalling heartlessness. But the mountain man had overcome Daddy John's scruples by a picture of their own fate if they delayed and were caught in the early snows of the Sierras. The girl could do nothing but trust in the word that was already law to her. He rode beside ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... Madelon's birth and Madame Linders' death. It was a story she was fond of telling; it had been a little romance in the ordinary routine of hotel life, and one in which, when she had duly set forth M. Linders' heartlessness and her own exertions, she felt that she must shine in an exceptionally favourable light; and indeed it was so pitiful a tale the her hearers could not but share the indignation and compassion she felt and expressed when she ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... and the other a Cambridge student, declare that, Glenroy and M'Dow are exquisite originals.' My own favourite, 'Molly Macaulay,' preserves her good-humour to the last, though I thought you rather unmerciful in shutting her up so long in Johnnie's nursery. The fashionable heartlessness of Lady Elizabeth and her daughter is coloured to the life, and the refreshment of returning to nature, truth, affection, and happiness at Inch Orran is admirably managed. Mary tells me you have returned from Fife ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... her engagement; scrupulously, however, refunding to Mr Maddocks every penny which he had spent upon her. This second instance on her part of jilting a fiance confirmed many people in the belief of her heartlessness; but the reason which probably determined her action on this latter occasion was that she had already met the one man, who, she recognised, could enchain her fickle affections ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... fine outside appearance is regarded almost in the light of a virtue?—that to be rich, or to have the appearance of riches, is esteemed as a merit of a high order;—whereas, to be poor, or to seem so, ranks as something like an unpardonable offence? Nay, such is the heartlessness of this class spirit, that a young woman, belonging to the better class, who, by misfortune or family reverses, has been thrown upon her own resources, and who endeavours, by her own honest hands, to earn her honest bread, immediately loses caste, ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... Better have less learning, less mental power, than increase these possessions only to desecrate them in the service of iniquity. Ignorance is always a less evil than guilt. No amount of literary acquisitions can atone for the want of a spiritual mind, for frivolity, heartlessness, and irreligion. Let then the desire to be useful, to be holy and heavenly, crown and consecrate the education of woman. Let her ponder on wisdom and learning, and "lay all ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... moment that a man of genius could have made this revolting blunder? It is beyond comparison the densest bit of stupidity in dealing with the emotions I have encountered anywhere. Anybody but Mr. Crockett can see where the point of the story lies. It lies in the cool impertinence and heartlessness of his visitors. To put the emphasis on the rejection of their proposal—to make a point of that—is to insult the reader. Of course it was rejected. How should it possibly, by any stretch of poltroonery and baseness, ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... the winter had been open and warm, and very little snow had fallen. This was much in Phemy's favour, and by the new year she was quite well. But, notwithstanding her heartlessness toward Steenie, she was no longer quite like her old self. She was quieter and less foolish; she had had a lesson in folly, and a long ministration of love, and knew now a trifle about both. It is true she wrote nearly as much silly poetry, but it was not so silly as before, partly because ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... fact and law to human feeling which creates drama. It is the deus ex machina who, by suspending that resistance, makes the fall of the curtain an immediate necessity, since drama ends exactly where resistance ends. Yet the introduction of this resistance produces so strong an impression of heartlessness nowadays that a distinguished critic has summed up the impression made on him by Mrs Warren's Profession, by declaring that "the difference between the spirit of Tolstoy and the spirit of Mr Shaw is the difference between the spirit of Christ and the spirit ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... I have witnessed, this night, a proof of their heartlessness and bad faith, that hath caused me to look forward to my own fate. The delusion is over; from this hour ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... characterized by many instances of cruelty and heartlessness, in marked contrast with the boasted clemency and culture of the age, of which two prominent illustrations may be given. The first occurred at Plataea in the year 427, soon after the execution by the ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... order to test the courage of her suitor, threw her glove into the enclosure in which a captive lion stood; and describes the suitor—one De Lorge—as calmly rescuing the glove, but only to fling it in the lady's face; this protest against her heartlessness and vanity being endorsed by both the King and Court. But at this point Mr. Browning departs from the usual version: for he takes the woman's part. The supposed witness and narrator of the incident, the poet Ronsard, sees ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... no longer. The heartlessness of her sister-in-law overcame her prudence, and she interrupted the scornful mistress of the house, her eyes blazing, but her voice under perfect control. Her tall young figure was tense, and her fingers clasped the back of Miss Folsom's chair ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... might have denominated as "dirty work" he accepted with heavy impassivity, consoling himself with the contention that its final end was cleanness. And one of his most valuable assets, outside his stolid heartlessness, was his speaking acquaintanceship with the women of the underworld. He remained aloof from them even while he mixed with them. He never grew into a "moll-buzzer." But in his rough way he cultivated them. He even helped some of them out of their troubles—in consideration for "tips" which ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... organism I now employ to speak to you. You would know of my life, after I withdrew from the world of fashion. At some other time it shall be given you; enough for the present, that I became world-weary, and, possessing what is called second-sight, drifted through life, caring naught for the heartlessness around me. The life which makes up three-fourths of the so called happiness of humanity I could not adopt as my own; therefore I was alone, and a wanderer. I was, of course, called strange and weird. What cared I, when ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... he had a nose like a bottle of port-wine; and would stand for a whole hour, with his legs straddling apart, and his hands deep down in his breeches pockets, as if he had two mints at work there, coining guineas. He was an abominable looking old fellow, with cold, fat, jelly-like eyes; and avarice, heartlessness, and sensuality stamped all over him. He seemed all the time going through some process of mental arithmetic; doing sums with dollars and cents: his very mouth, wrinkled and drawn up at the corners, looked like a purse. When he dies, his skull ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... and gentle reader. There are more of such symbolical trains lost than real ones, even by the most travelled mortals, Odysseus or a bag-man. And such losing of trains is not inevitably a blessing. I have often written about life with optimistic heartlessness, because life, on the whole, has been uncommonly kind to me, and because one is nearer the truth when cheerful than when depressed. But this is the place for a brief interlude of pessimism. For it is all very well to make the best of losing ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... hollow, and suspected threats of consumption in my cough. So I was to go to the Mediterranean, and try its milder air. I liked the change. Paris, with its gloss of noisy gayety and its substance of sceptical heartlessness, was repugnant to me. Perhaps it was because of this that Brother Sebastian had been mured up in the capital two-thirds of his life. If our surroundings are too congenial we neglect the work set before us. But no matter; to ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... in her eyes to procure her freedom and restore her to her rights. Her story enlisted the better feelings of a man, while her self-respect, the earnestness with which she pleaded her deliverance, and the heartlessness of the act, strongly rebuked the levity of those who had made her an orphan outcast in her own village. She was then in the theatre of vice, surrounded by its allurements, consigned to its degradation, a prey to libertinism-yet ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... would be to say that a neglectful father, who takes not the trouble to study the nature and character of his son, who shuts his eyes to sinful tendencies, and rests in careless indifference as to the probable future, will by his very heartlessness be benefitting his child, because his lack of forethought cannot operate as a contributory cause ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... contrary, the folly, the vanity, the meanness, the heartlessness, the vulgarity, have only been condensed and concentrated, if we are to believe Mr. Pulitzer; and I don't see why we should doubt him. Did you say you hadn't seen his very shapely little study? It takes, with all the unpitying sincerity of a kodak, the likeness of our best society in its three ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... sir; for who is there that could be indifferent to the good opinion of one so simple and yet so cultivated; with a mind in which nature and knowledge seem to struggle for the possession. One, Mr. Effingham, so little like the cold sophistication and heartlessness of Europe on the one hand, and the unformed girlishness of America, on the other; one, in short, so every way what the fondest father or the ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... last moment he begged her to accompany him. "Together, we can bring the man to his senses," he pleaded, and he secretly thought that not even the hardness and heartlessness of John Ward could withstand the sorrow in her face. But she ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... him down by the river. He saw, as he sat there, all the furniture, his father's clothes hanging at the foot of the bed, the stove in disorder; and then he realized that in the whole town not one hand was held out to him. He was a child, yet the heartlessness of it all cut him to the quick. This thought overwhelmed him, again and again, each time with more agonizing force, like an increasing wave, and as one flood washed over him with fiercer passion than the others, the boy rose hurriedly, ran around the barn, ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... fair average specimens for heartlessness and falsehood of the lower classes of Mohamadans in East Africa. When we were on the Shire we used to swing the ship into mid-stream every night, in order to let the air which was put in motion by the water, ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... triumph of vanity, and it is deemed respectable to be 'well settled in the world;' but that it is a necessary sacrifice of her freedom and her gayety. And then how many affectionate dispositions have been trained into heartlessness, by being taught that the indulgence of indolence and vanity were necessary to their happiness; and that to have this indulgence, they must marry money! But who that marries for money, in this land of precarious fortunes, can tell ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... duties of training devolve upon the father as much as on the mother. A father's wider experience and worldly wisdom prove valuable contributions to the mother's simpler knowledge in the raising of their children. A father's continuous absence, or neglects, or severity, or unkindness, or heartlessness, has made more reprobates and scamps and criminals in this world than all the failings of women combined. Think less of your dignity and more of your duty. Rather that your child should love you than fear you. You can maintain your authority and dignity ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... that I have been used to. Why do these persons interest me? They feel and they think: two habits that have quite gone out of fashion, if ever they existed, among my friends. And that polish of manners, that studied and factitious refinement, which is to compensate for the heartlessness or the stupidity we are doomed to—is my host of last night deficient in that refinement? If he do want our conventional discipline, he has a native breeding which far excels it. I observe no word or action which is not prompted by that fine feeling which is the sure source ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... sensation-paragraphists sometimes do, of stealing the pennies off the eyes of a dead grandmother to play at pitch-and-toss, or forging the name of a buried father to a note and then allowing it to go to protest,—it is idle to talk of these as the extreme of criminal heartlessness: the men who could thus trade—the men who have thus traded, during the whole war—on the public patriotism and the public necessity, would deserve the lowest deep in the pit of perdition, following upon leprosy in life and deaths on dunghills—if there was not a still deeper guilt on ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... spoke, the Christian knelt at the Pagan's feet. It was terrible to see the man of affection and integrity thus humbled before the man of heartlessness and crime. ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... her heart out over the thing. There were the bitter letters which Lida had found among her mother's papers after Sylvia died. The mother had torn the name from the bottoms of those letters; it was as if she had endeavored to shield Echford Flagg from the signed proof of utter heartlessness. ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... the first circumstances that opened my eyes to the cruelty and wickedness of slavery, and the heartlessness of my old master, was the refusal of the latter to interpose his authority, to protect and shield a young woman, who had been most cruelly abused and beaten by his overseer in Tuckahoe. This overseer—a Mr. Plummer—was ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... all the men in the house (and a good many outside) made covert. stealthy, and indirect steps in the same direction; for Trix (as her friends called her) was, if not wise, at least pretty and witty, displaying to the material eye a charming figure, and to the mental a delicate heartlessness—both attributes which challenge a self-respecting mans best efforts. But then came the fatal obstacle. From heiresses in reason a gentleman need neither shrink nor let himself be driven; but when it comes to something like twenty thousand a year—the reported amount of Trix's ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... meant to be its crowning glory. Behind me on this island are crowded vile and wicked men, the murmur of whose ribaldry riseth continually like the smoke and fumes of a lower world. Oh! Father of Mercies, forgive the hard heartlessness and blindness and scarlet sins of my ...
— The Record of a Quaker Conscience, Cyrus Pringle's Diary - With an Introduction by Rufus M. Jones • Cyrus Pringle
... I never gave a thought to it until I saw Mr. Fielding. The illness isn't serious,' and Mrs. Willoughby laughed, with peculiar heartlessness thought Clarice. They were, however, not thinking of ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... risen the memory of her wrongs, of her saddened youth, her darkened womanhood—of the selfishness with which he had wedded her; of the heartlessness with which he had deserted her; of her long years of trial and contempt. And her eye might speak reproach, although the lips were closed and there was no voice. Should we not rejoice to believe that the patriarch whispered some regret for ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... The love that he had now for Clare was something more tender, more devoted, than he had ever felt for any human being. His mind flew back fiercely to that night of his first quarrel when she had told him. Now he was to be punished for his heartlessness and cruelty ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... have been flattered at this. But her speech seemed to him only an echo of the general heartlessness. "I found Miss Eversleigh very sympathetic over the fate of the unfortunate man, whom nobody else here seems to ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... even use their friends for their own selfish purposes, and so never have true friends. Some men shed friends at every step they rise in the social scale. It is mean and contemptible to merely use men, so long as they further one's personal interests. But there is a nemesis on such heartlessness. To such can never come the ecstasy and comfort of mutual trust. This worldly policy can never truly succeed. It stands to reason that they cannot have brothers born for adversity, and cannot count on the joy of the love that loveth at all times; for they do not possess the quality which ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... for affording us, even in these latter days, the sight of an honest man! Amidst the heartlessness, the double-dealing, the evasions, the prevarications, the shameful treachery and falsehood, of political men of both parties, in respect to the question of slavery, how refreshing is it to listen to words like these! They renew our failing faith in human ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... unsophisticated, and from knowledge of the world could gauge him at his true worth? Not even a sentimental girl would show her heart to such a man. And yet with the blind egotism of selfishness he smiled grimly at their apparent heartlessness and said, "Such ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... was great. It was chronicled in the newspapers and letters of the day in cold, heartless language that plainly spoke the indifference of the public to the trade and its awful consequences. I have never seen in any Southern newspapers advertisements of negro sales that surpass in heartlessness and viciousness the advertisements of our New England newspapers of the eighteenth century. Negro children were advertised to be given away in Boston, and were sold by the pound as was other merchandise. Samuel Pewter advertised in the Weekly Rehearsal in 1737 that he would sell horses for ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... for them. Hottentots used to put decrepit old people on pack oxen and take them out into the desert, where they were left in a little hut prepared for the purpose with a little food. They now show great heartlessness towards helpless old people.[1022] Bushmen abandon the aged with a little food and water.[1023] In the Niger Protectorate the old and useless are killed. The bodies are smoked and pulverized and the powder is made into little ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... he had received at Malta, nor of Caroline's visit to him at Fawley; for to do so, even to Fairthorn, was like a treason to the dignity of the Beloved. And Guy Darrell might rail at her inconstancy—her heartlessness; but to boast that she had lowered herself by the proffers that were dictated by repentance, Guy Darrell could not do that;—he was a gentleman. Still there was much left to say. He could own that he thought she would now accept his hand; and when Fairthorn ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... society would dissolve in some incredible fashion. To prevent this imaginary and impossible result, they insist upon regulating one another's lives from outside with the strictest taboos, like those which hem round the West African kings, and punish with cruel and relentless heartlessness every man, and still more every woman, ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... wistfully at the plant, and a sense of fairness to Smith's memory caused her a pang of regret that Knight should have asked for that very one. It seemed exceeding a common heartlessness to let ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... hearts; they, I suppose, must put up with their wretchedness too,' said Mrs. Woodward; 'and their wives, also, and children, who have been looking forward for years to this vacancy as the period of their lives at which they are to begin to be comfortable. I hate such heartlessness. I hate the very ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... a generous fever In a noble heart to give, Still an equal fire may live In the heart of the receiver. Heartlessness is something hateful, I would boast a liberal name; Thus I put my highest claim In the fact of being grateful. Then to me that title leave,— Gentle birth breeds gentleness; For the honour is no less To bestow than ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... shocked by this speech; yet she knew that its apparent heartlessness did not really denote the state of her aunt's mind. It was merely bred of the lady's shallowness, and ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... pride, masquerading in the dun garb of 'religious duty'. Mine is self-love, pure and simple, the worldly weal of Alma Cutting; but nominally it is dubbed 'grateful requital of a life of devotion' in my lover! You grieve over my heartlessness? That is the one compensation time brings, when men and women have killed the best in our natures. Teeth ache fiercely; then the nerve dies, and we have surcease from pain, and find comfort in knowing that ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... middle-aged man, with an expression of countenance so cherubic that no one would have suspected him of being a lawyer; and the other was a tall, large-boned, parchment-faced personage, of whom almost any degree of heartlessness might have been believed. The two lawyers rose and bowed as "Cobbler" Horn was ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... abrupt conclusion. Nobody knew so well as she did how utterly useless it was to remonstrate or complain. She dropt into the nearest chair, and began with hasty tremulous hands to smooth down the cuffs of her black sleeves. In the bitterness of the moment it was not the sudden deliverance, but the heartlessness and domestic treachery that struck Nettie. She, the champion and defender of this helpless family for years—who had given them bread, and served it to them with her own cheerful unwearied hands—who had protected as well as provided for them in her dauntless ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... success here. By the enclosed, which is as true and as like as I could make it, you will see that he was a very brilliant and charming person. I believe that next to having been heart-broken by the committee and the heartlessness of his pupil ——, and enraged by the passion for that miserable little wretch, Tom Thumb, that the real cause of his suicide was to get his family provided for. It succeeded. By one way and another they had ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... shared, took the opportunity of paying off certain old scores he had standing against Clem. Mr. Marple, the cab-driver, was very loud and very hoarse in condemnation of such barbarity. Mrs. Hewett, looking as if she had herself risen from a coffin, cried shame on the general heartlessness with which Jane ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... peculiarly unfortunate in the impressions she had made upon him. Her attendant at the concert-garden had been a fool; and now he was associating her with a man whom he more than despised. She believed that he pitied her father as the victim of a wife's heartlessness and a daughter's selfishness and frivolity, and that he felt a repugnance toward her mother which his politeness could not wholly disguise. He was probably learning to characterize them in his mind by her ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... must put heart into the people by taking the heartlessness out of politics, business, and industry. We have got to make politics a thing in which an honest man can take his part with satisfaction because he knows that his opinion will count as much as the next man's, and that the boss ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... he was angry at the selfish heartlessness of the other Outcast. It seemed hardly a fair recognition of the service he had rendered the Dog-Wolf when he prodded the ...
— The Outcasts • W. A. Fraser
... this second burden on to Opdyke? However, self-forgetfulness comes best by focussing all one's energy upon the victim next in line; and Reed Opdyke, just at the present crisis, needed nothing else one half so much as self-forgetfulness. Nevertheless, the pity of it all, the seeming heartlessness, surged in on Whittenden. It would have been far easier for him to have tried to lighten Opdyke's burden than to increase its heaviness. But ease was not the ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... suspense, was almost in despair. The most puzzling feature of the whole affair was the fact that Azalia apparently evinced no concern. This was surprising in view of the affection which Bright-Wits knew her to cherish for the missing Brahman. When he chided her for this seeming heartlessness, she but smiled at him; nor would tell ...
— Bright-Wits, Prince of Mogadore • Burren Laughlin and L. L. Flood
... wholesale; he would take only a portion of a character that pleased him and work it up in combination with another distinct character. It was thus he dealt with Leigh Hunt, borrowing his amusing, airy frivolity, and combining it with the meanness and heartlessness of Skimpole. I have always fancied that Dowler in "Pickwick" was founded—after this composite principle—on his true-hearted but imperious friend, Forster. Forster was indeed also a perfect reproduction of Dr. Johnson and had the despotic intolerance—in conversation certainly—of ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... your eyes, Sylvie," she said, "You are suffering for this man's heartlessness and cruelty. For it IS heartless,—it is insulting, and selfish, and cruel to offer you nothing but dishonour if he knows you ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... self by contrasting the feelings, character, and temperament of others and one's own feelings, character, and temperament. Insensibility has been justly noted by M. Bergson as an essential characteristic of him who laughs. But this insensibility, this heartlessness, gives very much the effect of a positive and real ill nature, and M. Bergson had thus simply repeated and expressed in a new way, more precise and correct, the opinion of Aristotle: the cause of laughter is malice mitigated by insensibility or the ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... creature, the only one from whom he had experienced devotion. To conclude: a season of extraordinary dissipation, to use no harsher phrase, had somewhat exhausted the nervous powers of our hero; his energies were deserting him; he had not heart or heartlessness enough to extricate himself from this dilemma. It seemed that if this being to whom he was indebted for so much joy were miserable, he must be unhappy; that if she died, life ought to have, could have, no charms for him. He kissed away her tears, ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... without a break to the day of his death. He looked with strained eyes into the darkness, and it seemed to him that through the thousand miles of that mist he could see home, could see his native province, his district, Progonnaya, could see the darkness, the savagery, the heartlessness, and the dull, sullen, animal indifference of the men he had left there. His eyes were dimmed with tears; but still he gazed into the distance where the pale lights of the steamer faintly gleamed, ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... repose. No doubt the world knows; and the omission is only remarkable or important from its being at variance with the custom of the country, from the injury which it has caused to art, and from the idea which it creates of heartlessness in the survivors; not one of whom has expended a shilling on what would appear to be the most natural ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan |
