"Ruthless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that which is ethically best—what we call goodness or virtue—involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence. In place of ruthless self-assertion it ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... bones, and his hollow cheeks and shrunken jaws threw his massive forehead into striking prominence. His line of features was absolutely faultless in its statuesque regularity, but his face was saved from the insipidity of too great perfection by the imperious—rather ruthless—lines of his mouth and the penetrating lustre of his deep-set eyes. His dress—a black cassock edged and buttoned with crimson, with a crimson skullcap and biretta, and a pectoral cross of gold—enhanced ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... educated, was the ruling passion of his life, and involved the empire in constant warfare during his reign; an attempt on the part of Bohemia, restless under religious and political grievances, to break away from his rule, brought about the Thirty Years' War; by ruthless persecutions he re-established Catholicism in Bohemia, and reduced the country to subjection; but the war spread into Hungary and Germany, where Ferdinand was opposed by a confederacy of the Protestant States ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... known. The few memorials, which the ravages of time have suffered to remain of them, in those portions of the country from which they have been long expelled; have destruction dealt them by the ruthless hand of man. History may transmit to after ages, the fact that they once were, and give their "local habitation and their name." These will probably be received as the tales of fiction, and posterity be at as much loss to determine, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... her parentage, the Minister and myself? Could we rejoice in an act of infidelity which had embittered and darkened the gentle harmless life of the victim? Or could we, on the other hand, encourage the ruthless deceit, the hateful treachery, which had put the wicked Helena—with no exposure to dread if she married—into her wronged sister's place? Impossible! In the one case ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... you know for yourselves. We were sure that our enemies would be behind us like our own shadows. Gorgiano had his private reasons for vengeance, but in any case we knew how ruthless, cunning, and untiring he could be. Both Italy and America are full of stories of his dreadful powers. If ever they were exerted it would be now. My darling made use of the few clear days which our start had ...
— The Adventure of the Red Circle • Arthur Conan Doyle
... able to provide a definite and final explanation, perhaps because he had never considered it necessary. But his return home, the review of the army of memories, had brought him a solution—the solution. And he saw its ruthless logic. ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... he was to be the victim of Arden's cruel machinations, thought George, when he found himself alone. In spite of all Naoum's power he was unable to stay the hand of this ruthless enemy. Torture! The word was one of terrible significance; death was child's play compared with it. Pondering for a few moments on Arden's treacheries, his thoughts going back to the little petty theft at Constantinople, he tried to account for it all, but only came to the conclusion ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... glances shorewards, and sees the banks wheel past. The crowd of bathers is already far beyond hearing yet, frightened and tired, he wastes his remaining strength in fruitless shouts. Now the deceitful eddies, once so soft and friendly, whirl him down in ruthless exultation. He will never reach the shore, good swimmer ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... which characterised him had deserted his countenance, and he looked a changed man. Haughty sternness sat on his brow; his eye-brows were elevated; his eye glanced flame; his nostrils breathed fire; and he clenched and opened his hand excitedly, as if contemplating some ruthless deed, as he strode into the apartment and seized ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... Lucio. Why, what a ruthless thing is this in him, for the rebellion of a codpiece to take away the life of a man! Would the Duke that is absent have done this? Ere he would have hanged a man for the getting a hundred bastards, ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... be tough. Some of the people you'll run into are the most ruthless men in the universe. They are just the ones that might know something about ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... marked them across the ranks, and sprang on them with a shout, and the battalions of the Trojans followed him in their might: and Ares led them on and dread Enyo, she bringing ruthless turmoil of war, the while Ares wielded in his hands his monstrous spear, and ranged now before Hector's face, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... are rebuffed by plain words, and a ruthless analysis of the result of actions, not to ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... down and looked across to the other man. The low flame more deeply bronzed his face. His eyes looked preternaturally sunken. He sat, characteristically rigid, a figure in grey stone. There was about him a momentary air of an Indian, he looked so ruthless. If it was not that, thought Cleave, then it was that he looked fanatic. Whichever it might be, he perceived that he himself stood in arctic air. He had been liked, he knew; now he saw the mist of disfavour rise. Jackson's voice ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... carnal desire—a commodity of the exchange. Yes, Sophon, to be instructive, to become a teaching instrument, the art-edifice must be cleansed from its abominations; and, with them, must the artist sweep out the improvements and ruthless restorations that hang on it like formless botches on peopled tapestry. The multitude must be brought to stand face to face with the pious and earnest builders, to enjoy the severely simple, beautiful, aspiring, and solemn temple, in all its first purity, the same ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... to wring your neck for that!" he said. At the swift ruthless savagery in his tone the girl shrank back. Nicanor saw and laughed. "Since I may not, I'll take payment otherhow. As for the old man, let him squeal as best likes him. If they break him on the wheel, I shall go and tell them how to do it; if they boil him in oil, I shall go and ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... along the river front. The huge gray custom-house that stood at the foot of Canal Street no longer resounded with the rapid tread of sea-captains or busy merchants. From the pipes of the cotton-presses, the rush of the escaping steam, as the ruthless press squeezed the great bale into one-third its original size, was no longer heard. Most of the great towering steamboats that came rushing down the river with stores of cotton or sugar had long since been cut down into squat, powerful gunboats, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... and the immense number of cattle which were bred on those broad lands; and day after day intelligence was brought to her that one farm-house or another was burnt or pillaged, the flocks dispersed or destroyed, and the shepherds murdered by a ruthless soldiery. Terrified peasants made their escape into the city, and scared the inhabitants of the palace with dreadful accounts of the death of their companions, and of the destruction of property which was continually ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... de Osorio, with her mysterious sweetness and duplicity, these are among the salient points of characterisation which stand out in this powerful book. La Espuma was a cry from the desert to those who wear soft raiment in king's palaces. It was the ruthless tearing aside of the conventions by a Knox or a Savonarola. It was stringent satire, yet tempered with an artist's moderation, with a ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... seemed to be put out by the interruption. Muttering a string of oaths he strode from us to the window and back again. The cool cynicism, with which he was wont to veil his anger and impose on other men, while it heightened the effect of his ruthless deeds, in part fell from him. He showed himself as he was—masterful, and violent, hating, with all the strength of a turbulent nature which had never known a check. I quailed before ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... adaptability, his capacity to adjust himself to changing conditions, the lack of which would have meant swift and terrible death. It marked, further, the decay or going to pieces of his moral nature, a vain thing and a handicap in the ruthless struggle for existence. It was all well enough in the Southland, under the law of love and fellowship, to respect private property and personal feelings; but in the Northland, under the law of club and fang, whoso took such things ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... earlier utterances Bjoernson has been held up as Antichrist by the ministers of a narrow Lutheran orthodoxy, very much as the spokesmen of an antiquated caste-system of society have esteemed his ideas to be those of the most ruthless and radical of iconoclasts. But he is a stout fighter, and attacks of this sort only serve to arouse him to new energy. And so he toils manfully on for the enlightenment of his people, knowing that his cause is the cause of civilization ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... Dread wielder of the ivied rod! Yes, I may sing the Thyiad crew, The stream of wine, the sparkling rills That run with milk, and honey-dew That from the hollow trunk distils; And I may sing thy consort's crown, New set in heaven, and Pentheus' hall With ruthless ruin thundering down, And proud Lycurgus' funeral. Thou turn'st the rivers, thou the sea; Thou, on far summits, moist with wine, Thy Bacchants' tresses harmlessly Dost knot with living serpent-twine. Thou, when the giants, threatening wrack, Were clambering ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... of filial devotion to them that made me yearn for Overton. A terrible shadow, or rather several shadows, had hovered over hapless Deanery for a week before I packed my belongings and fled. Our humble home had been turned over to an aggregation of ruthless individuals who paint houses for a living. Darkest Deanery was once a timid shade of brown that grew even more retiring with years. Now it is a dazzling white, with still more dazzling gray trimmings. I can never forget that harmonious combination of gray and white, ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... trumped-up charge. Undoubtedly, this is only the first move in some complicated scheme directed against the Union. What it is, we do not yet know, but further observation of the actions of their own representative on this planet has convinced us that they are a clever, ruthless people, living in a society which would have put Machiavelli to shame. They are single-minded of purpose, and welded into a tight group whose major purpose in life is the service of the state in its major ...
— Citadel • Algirdas Jonas Budrys
... questions cropping up almost everywhere I went. In their dealings with the public and still more with their rivals, there was a ruthless vigor that swept old-fashioned maxims aside. And I liked this, for it got things done! I was bored to find, as I often did, these men in their homes quite old-fashioned again to suit sober old wives who ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... above the elbow were circled with dark marks, as if they had been squeezed by ruthless fingers. The two women looked at each other in horror; and under her breath ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... thing as a perfect love? Is YOURS a perfect love, my dear Martin, with its insatiable jealousy, its ruthless criticism? Has the world ever seen a perfect lover yet? Isn't it our imperfection that brings us together in a common need? Is Miss Grammont, after all, likely to get a more perfect love in all her ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... treetops, or should she cast him to the ground and thus be rid of him quickly and without trouble? No! She had longed for him, had risked her life to gain possession of him, and she would keep him against all odds. He did not fill the void left in her heart by the inroad of the ruthless eagle; he did drive her to the point of distraction; but he was new and interesting just as a doll or a mirror or a rubber ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... continued. "I was industrious; I wanted to repay my friends and to marry; I wanted work; I went in search of it; and before long I had more on my hands than anybody else. Bah! I had every soul in Mantes against me—attorneys, notaries, and even the bailiffs. They tried to fasten a quarrel on me. In our ruthless profession, as you know, madame, if you wish to ruin a man, it is soon done. I was concerned for both parties in a case, and they found it out. It was a trifle irregular; but it is sometimes done in Paris, attorneys in certain cases hand ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... affair, which at once removed all cause of shame from our species; and which, if it left reason for any to blush, by a noble act of disinterestedness, threw the entire onus of the obligation on himself. Instead of dwelling on the ruthless manner in which he and his friends had been seized, the worthy Doctor very tranquilly informed his listeners, that, finding himself, by hazard, brought in contact with another species, and that the means ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... No one came out to welcome the strangers and offer the rites of hospitality, as on their last visit to the land. For the white men were no longer regarded as good beings that had come from heaven, but as ruthless destroyers, who, invulnerable to the assaults of the Indians, were borne along on the backs of fierce animals, swifter than the wind, with weapons in their hands, that scattered fire and desolation ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... which you derive your titles, your importance, your influence, your wealth. Has confiscation been mellowed into the legal semblance of undisputed succession, only to bring about a state of things which the most ruthless ravagers of ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... The ruthless and oppressive power May triumph for its little hour; But soon, with all their vengeful train, The sullen Furies rise, Break his full force, and whirl him down Thro' life's dark paths, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... over his victim, his hands wet with the blood of his fellow man. We cry out in horror as we think of the lives these peoples sacrificed. We call it an inhuman glorification of a pagan deity. We call it a ruthless waste of wealth and human life. These practices we pronounce to be the result of a popular delusion—a false sense of obligation to the spirit of war. Yet from the time the Scythian drew the blood of his victim in homage to the great war god, ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... girl had been snatched suddenly from the harem of some palace, probably from the royal seraglio itself, off which we had been lying. And the horror depicted on her face, as well as the stains of blood on her abductor, told with what ruthless violence. Here then, I thought, in all human probability, was the royal maiden I had summoned; here was the wildest vagary of my imagination realized. But how different from the bright fancy was ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... STACPOOLE for present purposes assumes. I shall not examine the historical accuracy of the portraits of the Duc de Choiseul or of the Comtesse Dubarry, nor shall I question the human probability of villains so inept as Camus or martinets so infallible and ruthless as de Sartines. The most exacting connoisseur of vintage ports will in his expansive moments admit the merits of a light wine from the wood, offered him as such in due season; even so the most fastidious novel-reader may in a holiday mood allow himself to be merely entertained ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 5th, 1914 • Various
... the white head of Lilith close to mine. Was it the whiteness—was it the calmness of the creature—I cannot pretend to account for the fact, but the same instant before my mind's eye rose the vision of one standing speechless before his accusers, bearing on his form the marks of ruthless blows. I did not then remember that just before I came out I had been gazing, as I often gazed, upon an Ecce Homo of Albert Duerer's that hung in my room. Immediately my heart awoke within me. My whole being still trembling with passionate struggle and gratified hate, a rush of human ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... would be like visiting Japan without buying a kimono. The bird is usually sold entire, the prices ranging from twenty-five to thirty dollars, according to size and condition, though, owing to the ruthless slaughter of the birds to meet the demands of the European market, prices are steadily advancing. The Winsome Widow bought four of the finest birds I have ever seen—gorgeous, flame-colored things with plumes nearly two ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... abroad after the last days of September, and had sent men and women to the bleakness of Alexandrowski without a qualm; he who had to fortify himself to face an American dentist (his fees for missed appointments would have kept the average middle-class family in comfort for a year), was ruthless in his dealings with the half-crazed men and women who strayed across the frontier which divided ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... characters, adhere to fame, Or study keeping in the type you frame: If great Achilles figure in the scene, Make him impatient, fiery, ruthless, keen; All laws, all covenants let him still disown, And test his quarrel by the sword alone. Still be Medea all revenge and scorn, Ino still sad, Ixion still forsworn, Io a wanderer still, ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... pardon to any extent. The act of pardoning: what did it imply? Nothing more than that poor deluded mortals were ever in need of sympathy and guidance. Anybody could pardon. To pardon was not enough for a man of Mr. Heard's ruthless integrity. He must understand. How understand, how interpret, a dastardly deed like this? What could her motives have been? Of what act of proposal could the man have been guilty to merit, even in her eyes, a fate such as this? ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... grandame said, Lifting her head, "I think I can hear my mother's voice Above all other noise, Saying, 'Hearken, my child! There is nothing more destructive and wild, No wild bull with his horns, No wild-briar with clutching thorns, No pig that routs in your garden-bed, No robber with ruthless tread, More reckless and rude, And wasteful of all things lovely and good, Than a child, with the face of a boy and the ways of a bear, Who doesn't care; Or some little ignorant minx Who never thinks. Now I never knew so stupid an elf, That he couldn't think and care for himself. Oh, little ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... garden and kitchen, poking her small nose everywhere, gained much primary information on many subjects, from the growing of cabbages to the making sauerkraut—from the laying of eggs by ever-hopeful hens, to their final fulfilment of a ruthless destiny in a frying-pan. In return, she was not unwilling to impart to the good Hausfrau, and her troop of little ones and retainers, many details concerning her town life; and might sometimes be found, perched on the kitchen table, relating long histories to an admiring audience, in which the ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... would be prudent to believe in the possession, since the king, the cardinal-duke, and the bishop believed in it, and that continued doubt would lay them open to the charges of disloyalty to their king and their Church, and of complicity in the crimes of Grandier, and thus draw down upon them the ruthless punishment of Laubardemont. ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... he was detained for ten minutes. He was, in truth, making some last arrangements about executions and such ugly things; and though these duties were rootedly repulsive to him, he always performed them with precision. Ruthless in the pursuit of criminals, he was very mild about their punishment. Since he had been supreme over French—and largely over European—policial methods, his great influence had been honourably used for the mitigation of ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... wound in the shoulder was not dangerous, and the savages certainly intended to dress his wound, or they would have left him to die. Fritz, somewhat comforted, begged me to allow him to bathe, to divest himself of the colouring, which was now become odious to him, as being that of these ruthless barbarians. I was reluctant to consent; I thought it might still be useful, in gaining access to the savages; but he was certain they would recognize him in that disguise as the bearer of the thunder, and would distrust him. I now recollected to ask what had become of his gun, and was sorry ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... a new Helen, and how hopelessly unconvincing is your weary expression—as unconvincing as one's expression when, having weakly pretended acquaintance with a strange author, we feign ecstatic recognition of some passage or episode quoted by his ruthless admirer. There is this hope in the case of the photograph: that its amorous possessor will probably be incapable of imagining any one insensitive to such a Golconda of charms, and you have always in your power the revenge of showing him your own ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... discovering his mistake: but like a man suddenly awaking in some desart isle, to which his sea-mates have transported him in his sleep, he looked around, and discerning no known objects, he cast his hands to heaven for pity, and complained on those ruthless men who had beguiled him with a promise of conveying him home to his country, and perfidiously left him to perish in an unknown land. But then the rich presents of gold and silver given him by Alcinous, which he saw carefully laid ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... further remonstrances; he described the ruthless character of the Italian brigands, told Obed about the dangerous condition of the country, hinted that the old man and his wife were themselves possibly in alliance with the brigands, and again urged him to change his plans. But Obed was not moved in the slightest degree by these representations. ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... Brotherlin, Bryan, Irv. Withington, and the mighty McNair. The scrub team player at that time was pretty nearly any chap that was willing to take his life in his hands by going down to the field and letting those ruthless giants step on his face and generally muss ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... erudite, subtle, and picturesque historian grovels before the man and subscribes himself "Of your Holy Caesarean and Catholic Majesty the most humble and most devoted and most obsequious vassal and slave Pietro Gianone." What ruthless judgments posterity passes on once enormous reputations! In Gianone's admirable introduction we hear of "il celebre Arthur Duck, il quale oltro a' con confini della sua Inghilterra volle in altri a piu lontani Paesi andav rintracciando l'uso a l'autorita delle romane leggi ne' nuovi ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... And there by some strange instinct, oh, he felt God's answer there, as if he grasped a hand Across a gulf of twice ten thousand years; And he regained his lost magnificence Of faith in that great Harmony which resolves Our discords, faith through all the ruthless laws Of nature in their lovely pitilessness, Faith in that Love which outwardly must wear, Through all the sorrows of eternal change, The splendour of the indifference of God. All round him through the heavy purple gloom Sloped the soft rush of silver-arrowed rain, Loosening ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... conducts the siege, The town-destroyer; with him Lionel, The brother of the lion; Talbot, too, Who, with his murd'rous weapon, moweth down The people in the battle: they have sworn, With ruthless insolence to doom to shame The hapless maidens, and to sacrifice All who the sword have wielded, with the sword. Four lofty watch-towers, to o'ertop the town, They have upreared; Earl Salisbury from on high Casteth abroad his cruel, murd'rous glance, And marks ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... upon the faithful discharge of their own duties, he succeeded, by the force of his own earnest personality, by searching investigation into the workings of all the departments of city affairs, by the ruthless exposure and denunciation of various corrupt schemes of jobbery and plunder, and by the persistent recommendation of measures and methods which commended themselves to his judgment, in accomplishing much in the way of the reform for which his election had been ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... tavern, led him astray by inducing him to read the bible. Many things the Church condemns are sacred to him. He thinks the Netherlanders a free, noble nation. Your King Philip he considers a tyrant, oppressor, and ruthless destroyer. You who have served him and Alba—are in his eyes; but I will not wound you. . ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... he was beginning to believe everything again. There had been times, when he'd been working with the little old lady, when he had been firmly convinced that he was, in fact, the swaggering, ruthless swordsman, Sir ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... time since. We should know by this time that these things are a matter of law. Patrick found her essentially in pralaya, essentially under the influence of centrifugalism; and you cannot turn the ebbing tide, and make it flow before its time. There was a queer mixture of intensive culture and ruthless barbarism: an extreme passion on the one hand for poetry and the things of the spirit,—and on the other, such savagery as continual warfare always brings in its train. The literary class was so strong that in the little kingdom of Tir Conall in Donegal alone ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... when the silence was interrupted by wild shrieks and cries. We all full well knew the meaning of those sounds. The ruthless enemy had surprised the village, and burning to avenge their late defeat, would spare no one ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... as thoroughly the King's courts as the temporal courts at Westminster. The enslavement of the clergy, the dissolution of the monasteries, and the gagging of the pulpits followed, the years of Cromwell's administration being an English reign of terror. But the ruthless manner in which he struck down his victims sickened the English people, and they exhibited their disapprobation in a manner which arrested the attention of the King. The time of Cromwell himself was coming, for the block was the goal to which Henry's favourite minister was surely ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... a humourist who was satisfied to laugh silently at his own humour; a diplomatist who used the mask of frankness with great effect; Lord Skye was one of the most popular men in Washington. Every one knew that he was a ruthless critic of American manners, but he had the art to combine ridicule with good-humour, and he was all the more popular accordingly. He was an outspoken admirer of American women in everything except their voices, and he did not even shrink from occasionally ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... Subjected to a little untroubled contemplation, it would, I am confident, have ceased long ago to be matter of controversy; but the dust of prejudice and passion, which so distempers the intellectual vision of theologians and politicians, is seen to make, with ruthless impartiality, no exception of the perspicacity ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... I have offered should seem a true or highly probable one, it will, I feel sure, prove acceptable to many lovers of animals, who, regarding tins seemingly ruthless instinct, not as an aberration but as in some vague way advantageous to animals in their struggle for existence, are yet unable to think of it without pain and horror; indeed, I know those who refuse to think of it at all, who would ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... maintain the dynasty and the Junker domination, took the issue out of Mr. Wilson's hands. Ten days after his "peace without victory" address the German autocracy put into effect its cherished programme of ruthless submarine warfare. The only possible answer on the part of the United States was the dismissal of Count von Bernstorff the German Ambassador, and from that time war between the United States and Germany ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... was a nice plot to face, and countermine! A plot that was only to be defeated by subtlety and strategy; for, at the most, there were but three of us, all told, against thirteen ruthless, treacherous men; and it was not to be forgotten that no dependence whatever was to be placed upon the man Harry; his scruples apparently drew the line at cold-blooded murder, but on the hither side of that, consideration for his own safety might tempt him to any conceivable ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... translate into simple English the terms of the Covenant. It denies the claim of Ireland to self-government and the capacity of Irishmen to govern Ireland. It asserts that the Catholics of Ireland are the spawn of the devil; that they are ruthless savages and dangerous criminals with only one object in life—the wiping out of Protestants. It claims for the Protestant Unionist majority of four Ulster counties a monopoly of Christianity, public and private morality, and clean successful business enterprise. In the ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... heart, whose downfall dates from their introduction to the chit. A visitor can read no announcement more pathetic than that conspicuously displayed in the waiting-rooms of the Kowloon ferry, saying "Positively no chits received"—and this ruthless pronouncement in connection with a trip costing but the equivalent of three ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... freezing hair. You weep to hear his woes, and ask me why, When sorrows gathered and no aid was nigh, He sought not then the cottage of his birth, The peace and comforts of his father's hearth? That also thou shalt hear. Scarce had he left His parents' home, ere ruthless fortune reft His friend and father of his little all. Crops failed, and friends proved false; but, worse than all, The wife of his young love, bowed down with grief For her sole child, like an autumnal leaf Nipped by the frosts of night, drooped day by day, As a fair morning cloud dissolves ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... banks of Tweed, Where the lone streams of Ettrick glide, 625 And from the silver Teviot's side; The dales, where martial clans did ride, Are now one sheep-walk, waste and wide. This tyrant of the Scottish throne, So faithless, and so ruthless known, 630 Now hither comes; his end the same, The same pretext of silvan game. What grace for Highland Chiefs, judge ye By fate of Border chivalry. Yet more; amid Glenfinlas' green, 635 Douglas, thy stately form was seen. This by espial sure I know: ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... so with cruel threats. She would never quite yield, though she had then no strength of purpose sufficient to enable her to declare that she would not yield. We know how she was banished to Bedford Square, and transferred from the ruthless persistency of her mother, to the less stern but not less fixed manoeuvres of Mrs. Bluestone. At that moment of her existence she was herself in doubt. In Wyndham Street and at Yoxham she had almost more than doubted. The softness ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... questions. But, if this be granted, do they not maintain doctrines as hideous, when calmly examined? It is blasphemous, we are told, to say with Edwards, that God holds the 'little vipers,' whom we call 'helpless innocents,' suspended over the pit of hell, and drops millions of them into ruthless torments. Certainly it is blasphemous. But is an infant really more helpless than the poor savage of Australia or St. Giles, surrounded from his birth with cruel and brutal natures, and never catching one glimpse of celestial light? Nay, when the question is between God and man, does not the ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... a man who, beginning as a reactionary of an extreme type, advocating the most ruthless measures toward convicts, finally felt the pressure of the wave of prison reform which is gathering force just now, and adjusted his reports and addresses so as to make himself appear as a leading ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... to decide what work and why that work. Laissez-faire, a blessed release from stupid officialdom, assumes that men will move by spontaneous combustion towards a pre-established harmony. Collectivism, an antidote to ruthless selfishness, seems, in the Marxian mind, to suppose an economic determinism towards efficiency and wisdom on the part of socialist officials. Strong government, imperialism at home and abroad, at its best deeply ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... beautiful, the murdered Queen of Scots, is only parted from the "Maiden Queen," who sealed her doom, by the interposition of the blood-stained ruthless wretch (England's Eighth Harry), to whom ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... have been thoroughly justified in treating me as a common spy in possession of vital military secrets, but it courteously contented itself in insisting on plucking out the heart of the journalistic mystery. All attempts at evasion and humor were vain—here was the ruthless reality of war. It was the mailed Prussian eagle against the bluff American bird of the same species, and the unequal contest was soon ended when Major Nikolai, Chief of Division III. of the Great General Staff, stood up very straight and dignified ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... regenerated; the conquests of the French carrying in their train the means and agencies which have, at length, aroused that glorious portion of the earth to some of its ancient spirit. Mexico, in certain senses, is the Italy of this continent; and war, however ruthless and much to be deplored, may yet confer on her the inestimable blessings of real liberty, and a religion released from "feux d'artifice," as ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... Scheepers, had long been a thorn in the side of the British. He had infested the southern districts for some months, and he had distinguished himself both by the activity of his movements and by the ruthless vigour of some of his actions. Early in October a serious illness and consequent confinement to his bed brought him at last within the range of British mobility. On his recovery he was tried for repeated breaches of the laws of war, including the murder of several natives. He was condemned ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that brow no idle rouge is there, The dubsman's ruthless hand has cropped her once luxurious hair; [3] She teases hemp in solitude, and there is no one near, To press her hand within his own, and call for ginger-beer. I saw her but a moment, yet methinks I see her now, With the card and heckle ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... antagonism, their shameless greed for the red man's land revealed to me once and for all the fomenting spirit of each of the Indian Wars which had accompanied the exterminating, century-long march of our invading race. In a single sentence these men expressed the ruthless creed of the land-seeker. "We intend to wipe these red sons-of-dogs from the face of the earth." Here was displayed shamelessly the seamy side of ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... the beginning's of these various degenerate and illiterate attempts at book-work we have only to watch the last expiring gleams of classic art beneath the ruthless footsteps of the barbarian invaders of ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... ruthless an example provoked a desperate resistance at Norba. It was betrayed to Lepidus by night; but the citizens stabbed and hung themselves or each other, and some locking themselves inside their houses, set them in flames. A wind was blowing and the town was consumed. So ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... nay, a bloody light in its gloom; and his face flushed—olive cheek and hueless forehead received a glow, as from spreading, ascending heart-fire; and he stirred, lifted his strong arm; he could have struck Mason—dashed him on the church floor—shocked by ruthless blow the breath from his body; but Mason shrank away, and cried faintly, "Good God!" Contempt fell cool on Mr. Rochester—his passion died as if a blight had shriveled it up; he only asked, "What ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... decide whether they desired to have or not to have, to be poor or rich. If a Roman or a man of the Middle Ages had been suddenly brought into view of the scene, he would have concluded without hesitation that a ruthless invader was coming down the island; that his advanced guard was momentarily expected; and that anybody found by his forces in possession of Western Union, or Harlem, or Lake Shore, or any other paying stock or bond, would be subjected to cruel tortures, ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... What bitter tears with thee I shed! Thou hast resigned thy destiny Unto a ruthless tyrant dread. Thou'lt suffer, dearest, but before, Hope with her fascinating power To dire contentment shall give birth And thou shalt taste the joys of earth. Thou'lt quaff love's sweet envenomed stream, Fantastic images shall swarm In thy imagination warm, Of happy ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... parallel? England! He hated my mother country with a deep and rancorous hatred. Coming from Vermont he had taken into his bones a poison for the British atrocities of the Revolution; he loathed England for her conduct of the War of 1812, the ruthless burning of Washington, with all its priceless records of the early days of the republic. He was eager, restive to fight England. England's invulnerableness tantalized him; her habitual luck infuriated him. Her ownership of the ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... though at his touch her whole body had turned to ice. His eyes looked straight into hers, searching her with intolerable minuteness, probing her through and through. And from those eyes she shrank in nameless terror; for they were the eyes of her dream, green, ruthless, terrible. He looked to her like a man whose will might compel ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... tenants found themselves in a mesh of legal claims—old services revived, old dues enforced, endless suits in the King's courts grinding them again to serfage. Oppression was no longer the rough blow of the rough baron; it was the delicate, ruthless tyranny ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... Algiers for ever in 1535 to become the High Admiral of the Ottoman Empire, the Corsairs lost indeed their chief; but so many of his captains remained behind that the game of sea roving went on as merrily as ever. Indeed so fierce and ruthless were their depredations that the people of Italy and Spain and the islands began to regret the attentions of so gentlemanly a robber as Barbarossa. His successor or viceroy at Algiers was a Sardinian renegade, Hasan the Eunuch; but the chief commanders at sea were ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... fleet became a mere helpless mass of shattered or damaged vessels. Five hundred are said to have been sunk—the majority by the enemy, but some even by their own friends. The sea was covered with wrecks, and with wretches who clung to them, till the ruthless enemy slew them or forced them to let ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... women," she continued, with her curiously ruthless and too self-possessed air. "Each woman for herself, and the Devil will carefully take the hindmost. Why ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... brief flourishes of the pen, to portray the various intricacies of his character as I see them, clearly and dispassionately with the eyes of a psychological observer, whose hand is uncorrupted by the bribes of ruthless profiteers, grafters ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... thereby be enabled to make a more secure meal upon his unfortunate victims; and so the very vigilance which the ants exerted against his vile deception would itself react in time against their own kind, by leaving only the most ruthless and indistinguishable of their foes to become the parents of future generations ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... pearls, rubies, and other precious stones which once embellished this and every other part of the edifice, were taken away by ruthless invaders of India; and their places filled by colored stones with little loss of effect. Shah Jahan's cenotaph lies unenclosed at the left, showing that it was not included in the original plan. Indeed, it had been the intention of Shah Jahan ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... gain these fruits that have been earned, To hold these fields that have been won, Our arms have strained, our backs have burned, Bent bare beneath a ruthless sun. ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... sensitiveness had been growing less day by day, and he himself growing proportionately hardened; but still he knew what remorse was, and by the very agony of his shame was still held out of the lowest of all depths—the depths of ruthless sin. ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... away Because her Cyrus loves another; The ruthless churl informs the girl He loves ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... down some woodland deep In their own quiet glade should sleep The relics dear to thought, And wild-flower wreaths from side to side Their waving tracery hang, to hide What ruthless ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... barber, approaching Frank with his red-hot sword, made him lie on his back to be shaved. Then followed an excruciating sense of having his hair pulled and his face scraped and burnt, which made him move and murmur in his sleep; until, a ruthless attempt being made to thrust the sword up his nostrils, ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... is coming on and is conserving the productive qualities of the hillside soil which was drained away by ruthless cutting of timber a quarter century ago. Today the farmer is taught to treat his farm and pasture land with lime and phosphate, a thing unheard of in the early days. And the greatest of all his blessings today, the mountain farmer will tell ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... prepared for those who love Him. Better to believe that all our conceptions of the height to which the human race might attain are poor and paltry compared with that toward which God is guiding it, and for which he is disciplining it by awful lessons: and to fight on, if need be, ruthless, and yet full of pity—and many a noble soul has learnt within the last two years how easy it is to reconcile in practice that seeming paradox of words—smiting down stoutly evil wheresoever we shall find it, and saying, 'What ought ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... at all the tempestuous background of the drama enacted there in the chill of the chapel at sunrise, but the clash of those two outlaw souls suddenly on guard before each other, thrilled him by the unexpected. Rotil, profane, ruthless, and jeering, had suddenly grown still before the face of a woman from whom ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... available cash. Neither in New York nor in London could purse strings be loosened for the purpose of building a road through what the world considered a barren and Arctic wilderness. But in the faith and vision of the president, George Stephen, and the ruthless energy of the general manager, William Van Horne, American born and trained, the Canadian Pacific had priceless assets. Aided in critical times by further government loans, they carried the project through, and by 1886, five years before the time fixed by their ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... her head with it all, but she knew it and did not interfere. There are a great many letters of the Queen of Scots at Simancas, some of them of the deepest interest. She remains the same as I have always thought her—brilliant, cruel, ruthless, and perfectly unfeeling." ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... before the settlement of the country the fur of the beaver brought a high price, and therefore it was pursued with weariless ardor. Not even in the quest for gold has a more ruthless, desperate energy been developed. It was in those early beaver-days that the striking class of adventurers called "free trappers" made their appearance. Bold, enterprising men, eager to make money, and inclined at the same time to relish the license of a savage life, would set forth with a ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... lines, Where Rome, the Empress of the world, Of yore her eagle wings unfurled. And here his course the Chieftain staid, Threw down his target and his plaid, And to the Lowland warrior said— "Bold Saxon! to his promise just, Vich Alpine has discharged his trust. This murderous Chief, this ruthless man, This head of a rebellious clan, Hath led thee safe, through watch and ward, Far past Clan-Alpine's outmost guard. Now, man to man, and steel to steel, A Chieftain's vengeance thou shalt feel. See here, all ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... glimpse of Weymouth, you cannot do better than to begin in front of this landmark, and drive down Commercial Street. Here for several smiling miles there is nothing—no ugly building large or small, no ruthless invasion of modernity to mar the mood of happy simplicity. Her beauty of beach, of sky, of river, Weymouth shares with other South Shore towns. Her perfection of idyllic rusticity is ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... heaths the lightnings flame, Black secret hags "do deeds without a name!" Yet through its direst agencies of awe, Light marks its presence and pervades its law, And, like Orion when the storms are loud, It links creation while it gilds a cloud. By ruthless Thor, free Thought, frank Honour stand, Fame's grand desire, and zeal for Fatherland. The grim Religion of Barbarian Fear With some Hereafter still connects the Here, Lifts the gross sense to some spiritual source, And thrones some Jove above the ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to be personifications of sudden tempests, which, with ruthless violence, sweep over whole districts, carrying off or ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... parties. As yet, the colony had got on very well, without having the question of nationality called into the account; but it had now become so far important, as, in a small way, to be a nursery for seamen; and there was much reason to fear that the ruthless policy of the strong would, in the event of a discovery, make it share the usual fortunes of the weak. It was on account of this dread of foreign interference, that so much pains had been taken to conceal the history and state of the little community, the ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... knew that Max had returned to her side. His hand was laid upon her arm, his fingers sensitive and ruthless closed upon her pulse. ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... purity, flowing as from an inexhaustible fountain through every lineament, which drives far off or converts all baser natures. Napoleon's head is of the first description; it is stern, and not only so, but ruthless. Yet this ruthlessness excites no aversion; the artist has caught its true character, and given us here the Attila, the instrument of fate to serve a purpose not his own. While looking on it, came full to ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... calamity, half-starved cows were turned in to nibble the grass, and incidentally to trample and crush flowers and ferns into one ghastly ruin. And at the same moment, as if inspired by the same spirit of destruction, some idle railroad "hand," with a scythe, laid low the whole bank of grapevines. Ruthless was the ruin, and wrecked beyond repair the spot, after man's desolating hand passed over it; a scene of violence, of dead and dying scattered over the trampled and torn-up sod; "murder most foul" in the eyes of a Nature-lover. I could not bear to look upon it. I shunned ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... to be very full and complete to be wholly convincing, for, rightly or wrongly, I have been very strongly impressed with the conviction that the queen is the victim of a powerful band of thoroughly ruthless, unscrupulous conspirators." ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... augmented by differences in religion, and by the absence of strong business interests. Christianity had not been vouchsafed to man, and commerce had very imperfectly done its work, while war was carried on in the most ruthless ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... he had entered the house, Marise felt a passing dislike for him. She had often felt him to be hard and ruthless, but she had never seen anything cheap ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... was of the opinion that Eleanor would grace the deanery as perfectly as she would the chaplain's cottage; and he thought, moreover, that Eleanor's fortune would excellently repair and dilapidations and curtailments in the dean's stipend which might have been made by that ruthless ecclesiastical commission. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... yet, were in circulation on the Bourse. Was it a manoeuvre of the enemy, of that Hemerlingue against whom Jansoulet was waging ruthless financial war, trying to defeat all his operations, and losing very considerable sums at the game, because he had against him his own excitable nature, his adversary's cool-headedness and the bungling of Paganetti, ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... cab. Aboard the receding boat the ruthless engine bells jingled on; the broad waterside and the city behind it seemed, from her decks, to draw away into the western clouds, and the yellow river spread wide its shores in welcome to her swinging form. Now its mighty current seemed to quicken ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... drove through Louvain—martyred Louvain! It was too dreadful to contemplate. First the material destruction of those wonderful buildings, like an exquisite pattern in lace, torn by a ruthless sword and eaten by wanton flame; then the misery and deprivation of the people who were able to resist those hours of agony ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... this realm Should feed to fulness the great enmity Of Zeus, the suppliants' guard, against itself! A twofold curse, for wronging stranger-guests Who are akin withal, confrontingly Should rise before this city and be shown A ruthless monster, fed on human doom. Such things the Argive people heard, and straight, Without proclaim of herald, gave assent: Yea, in full conclave, the Pelasgian folk Heard suasive pleas, and Zeus ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... distance from their native den, O'erpowered they fall beneath the force of men. Prostrate on earth their beauteous bodies lay, Like mountain firs, as tall and straight as they. Great Menelaus views with pitying eyes, Lifts his bright lance, and at the victor flies; Mars urged him on; yet, ruthless in his hate, The god but urged him to provoke his fate. He thus advancing, Nestor's valiant son Shakes for his danger, and neglects his own; Struck with the thought, should Helen's lord be slain, And all his country's glorious labours ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... They were a ruthless lot as a whole, these claim jumpers. They took long chances, illegally selling relinquishments and skipping the country before they were caught. Some of them even threatened or intimidated newcomers who knew nothing about the ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... Early, and his ruthless destruction of Chambersburg led to many recommendations on the part of General Grant looking to a speedy elimination of the confusion then existing among the Union forces along the upper Potomac, but for a time the authorities ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... upon her Their waters amain In ruthless disdain, - Her who but lately Had shivered with pain As at touch of dishonour If there had lit on her So coldly, so ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... of God, slow art thou and still, Yet failest never! On them that worship the Ruthless Will, On them that dream, doth His judgment wait. Dreams of the proud man, making great And greater ever, Things which are not of God. In wide And devious coverts, hunter-wise, He coucheth Time's unhasting stride, Following, following, him whose eyes ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... fool who is ever pursuing the phantoms of the brain, or as a knave who covers his own selfishness under the mask of the public welfare.(480) Hence the adherents of communism are satisfied with any form of government which seems to offer them most, and this a ruthless despotism can do, at least, for the moment. And, although they are ever ready for any revolution in the form of government, and easily to be won over to it, they are most readily captivated by a despotic ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... invasion of the earth by the Martians should go without record, and circumstances having placed the facts at my disposal, I deem it a duty, both to posterity and to those who were witnesses of and participants in the avenging counterstroke that the earth dealt back at its ruthless enemy in the heavens, to write down the story in ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... somewhat nervous and trembled a little at the thought of her near discovery, but felt not the slightest qualm of conscience at her ruthless destruction of another's property. On the contrary, she experienced a wicked satisfaction, and smiled to herself as she pictured Miss Thompson's consternation when the latter should discover her loss. Best of all, the principal would never find out who did it, for Eleanor vowed ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... referred the other day to the report of the debates in the House of Commons found in the 10th volume of Cobbett's Parliamentary Reports, touching the attack on Copenhagen by England in 1808, in which the Ministry justified its ruthless attack upon a neutral power in almost precisely the same language that Von Bethmann Hollweg used in justifying the attack on Belgium, and Lord Ponsonby used the sort of reasoning then, in answer to the Government, that England is now using in answer to Germany. I was distrustful of the quotations ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... ruthless man destroyed more than fortunes; he trafficked in human lives. There had been half a dozen mysterious suicides which had been investigated by Scotland Yard, and found directly traceable to letters received in the morning, ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... of everything of value about her. Even the cabin door and windows were gone, and every rope and spar and sail; the cook's galley, hold and forecastle plundered of every article worth carrying off, and an air of general desolation and ruthless ransacking pervaded her ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... hands; and he did his work well. He died, as he has lived, in the path of duty and honour. Let the world rage around us, let the enemy decry us, I say, Follow his example. The Lord will stand by you against the ruthless hand of the foe, and at the moment when He deems it right for interference peace will come once more. Why is the sympathy of the whole world with us in this struggle for freedom? Why are the strangers pouring in ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... my son! Dear hope for ever lost! The ruthless gods have served me but too well. For what a life of anguish and remorse ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine
... is certainly in a precarious position. After showing himself so weak in the face of the long and ruthless British provocations, he has to play the strong man with Germany. Otherwise he will lose what prestige he has left, and he knows that in the background the pretender to the throne, Mr. Roosevelt, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... resurrection of the dead; and that these vast, streaming, endless swarms were the condemned, marching noiselessly as shades to unavoidable and everlasting misery. They seemed to me merely automata, in the hands of some ruthless and unrelenting destiny. They lived and moved, but they were without heart or hope. The illusions of the imagination, which beckon all of us forward, even over the roughest paths and through the darkest valleys and shadows of ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... struggling wildly in his arms then, but he laughed, as ruthless children do when they have caught a little bird and can ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... Khartoum. And throughout the Congo territory, and many an equatorial tribe beyond, this man's name has been known and feared. No leader of slave-hunters can come near him for bold and wide-sweeping raids, the terror and unexpectedness of which, together with the complete and ruthless fixity of purpose wherewith the objects of them, however strong, however alert, are struck and promptly subjugated, have gained for him among his followers and allies the sobriquet of El Khanac, "The Strangler." ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... he was only ruthless and predatory after the manner of his kind. A thrill of admiration tingled his spine. The women of his race were chattels, lazy and inert, without fire, merely drudges or playthings. Here was one worth conquering, a white flame to be controlled. ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... one hour of the day," she remarked, sinking into a large easy-chair, "which I devote to repose. How shall I preserve my fleeting youth if you break in upon it in this ruthless manner?" ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... has been marked by the terrible sword of the Great War. The maintenance of peace will then depend upon there being no causes of exasperation constantly stirring up the spirit of patriotism, of justice or of fair play to achieve redress. Our terms may be severe, they may be stern and even ruthless, but at the same time they can be so just that the country on which they are imposed will feel in its heart that it has no right to complain. But injustice, arrogance, displayed in the hour of triumph, will never be ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... half-sister, and with such skilful diplomacy that Miss Gailey was able to pretend to herself and to others that George Cannon, and not Sarah Gailey, was the obliged person. But now Hilda saw Sarah Gailey afraid to go to London, and George Cannon pushing her forward with all the ruthless strength of his enterprising spirit. And the sight was extraordinarily, incomprehensibly tragic. Sarah Gailey's timorous glance seemed to be saying: "I am terrified to go. It isn't beyond my strength—it's beyond my spirit. But I shall have ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... of moral hives; but some wretched lingering remnant of the original article induced her to write to Aunt Lucretia that Uncle David was staying with us, and of course Aunt Lucretia came without invitation and without warning, dropping in on us with ruthless unexpectedness. ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... is, and always will be, violent and intransigeant when the rights of God are in question. She will be absolutely ruthless, for example, towards heresy, for heresy affects not personal matters on which Charity may yield, but a Divine right on which there must be no yielding. Yet, simultaneously, she will be infinitely kind towards the heretic, since a thousand human motives and circumstances may come in and ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... a historical development, a truly national affair, as are the Empire of Great Britain, the Republics of France and the United States, or the Empires of Russia and Japan. It is a modern combination of politically divergent unities, forced by the ruthless but infinitely shrewd policy of Bismarck and his coadjutors, misdirected and perhaps driven to ruin by the man and his entourage, who, even if he is King of Prussia "by the grace of God," is only Emperor of Germany "by ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... White Tsar, Steadfast patience from staunch loyalty have borrowed, Slaved for Slavdom still in Peace, and died in War; We have borne the yoke of power, and its abuses, We have trusted cells and shackles served their turn; Nay, that e'en the ruthless knout had noble uses; Now we ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 10, 1891 • Various
... and the tribe of Dreams. And again the goddess murky Night, though she lay with none, bare Blame and painful Woe, and the Hesperides who guard the rich, golden apples and the trees bearing fruit beyond glorious Ocean. Also she bare the Destinies and ruthless avenging Fates, Clotho and Lachesis and Atropos [1610], who give men at their birth both evil and good to have, and they pursue the transgressions of men and of gods: and these goddesses never cease from their dread anger until they punish the sinner with a sore ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... Especially at the commencement of our sojourn would I avoid mixing myself up with Indians' quarrels; but if our guide comes back saying that their camp is in danger, we must help him. It would never do, you know, to leave women and children to the mercy of ruthless savages." ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... these arguments in order,—for they must be so dealt with to develop any reasonable theory of the Mosaic philosophy,—Moses, doubtless, was a ruthless conqueror, as his dealings with Sihon and Og sufficiently prove. "So the Lord our God delivered into our hands Og also, the king of Bashan, and all his people: and we smote him until none was ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... seem that anger is the most grievous sin. For Chrysostom says [*Hom. xlviii in Joan.] that "nothing is more repulsive than the look of an angry man, and nothing uglier than a ruthless* face, and most of all than a cruel soul." [*Severo. The correct text is Si vero. The translation would then run thus . . . "and nothing uglier." And if his "face is ugly, how much uglier is his soul!"]. Therefore anger is ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... soldiery had been shed, without protest from these of Puritan stock, but they shuddered at thought of reprisals. Aunt Agnes coming to Cushing! Aunt Agnes to meet the colonel and his "red-handed horde of ruthless slayers!" ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... like the expiring groans of a hapless porker in the hands of a ruthless butcher, than any thing else you could compare ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... 30. Coote's cruelties are admitted on all sides to have been most fearful. Leland speaks of "his ruthless and indiscriminate carnage."—History of Ireland, vol. iii. p. 146. Warner says "he was a stranger to mercy."—History of the Irish Rebellion, p. 135. "And yet this was the man," says Lord Castlehaven, "whom ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... finished off in a circle, one arc of which touched the steps of an open porch. These steps were sagging and decayed, and the porch was swept by the gentle eddyings of leaves of past summers that had sought refuge there and had been undisturbed by the ruthless sweepings of winds or brooms. There was a haunting odour of pine and something else that was damp and old and weary and forgotten, and a shrivelled wisteria vine that clung with withered fingers to a trellis at the house ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... savage, barbarous, truculent, merciless, unmerciful, pitiless, ruthless, fell>. (With this group ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... still worse state of delapidation. However, since the holes did not occur simultaneously in the two garments, by wearing both she was amply covered. For a waist she wore a red crape dressing sacque, and about her hair she tied a broad, ragged ribbon of red to protect the soft waves from the ruthless twigs. She looked at herself in the mirror. Nothing daunted by the sight of her own unsightliness, she took a bucket and went ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... I felt ruthless toward the professor. I cannot plead ignorance of the golfer's point of view as an excuse for my plottings. I knew that to one whose soul is in the game, as the professor's was, the agony of being just beaten in an important match exceeds in bitterness ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse |
