"Ruthlessness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... devil of wickedness she had never seen in human eyes before. The ruthlessness left no room for appeal. Unless the courage to tame him lay in her ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... the supreme pleasure of the writer was to trace the analogy between his hero and nature. In both there was the same apparent contradictoriness—the combination of utter tenderness and utter ruthlessness. "The power that heals wounds also inflicts them: that clothes the dungheap with sweet growths and grasses, breaks, too, into fire and earthquake; that causes the partridge to die for her young, also makes the shrike with his living larder." So, too, with Felsenburgh; He who had wept over ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... that I had called the great. His wise eyes saw qualities that weighed more than smartness. Yes, we would sit down where the bank sloped gently to the quiet stream and glance at the picture of our people, the negroes being lynched, the miners' civil war, labor's hold ups, employers' ruthlessness, the ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... had gone to Deutschland to admire and love the Germans. But he found what I found—an astonishing amount of ruthlessness. How could one expect that the ultimate world-justice and world-humanity were to evolve out of a race to which the army, armed soldiers and statesmen clad in steel, ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... Europe. But it was a powerful weapon, for if successfully enforced it would destroy Napoleon's Continental System entirely. Accordingly, in pursuance of his policy that fire must be fought with fire, the Emperor retorted with equal ruthlessness, fulminating the terrible Milan Decree of December seventeenth, 1807. In it he declared that any vessel which obeyed the orders of the English admiralty or suffered itself to be searched was and would be regarded as an ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... quelled by the Roman general Aulus Caecina. Aventicum surrendered (A.D. 69), but Julius Alpinus, a chieftain and supposed ring-leader, was singled out for punishment and put to death. "The rest," says Tacitus, "were left to the ruth or ruthlessness of Vitellius" (Histor., i. 67, 68). Julia Alpinula and her epitaph were the happy inventions of a sixteenth-century scholar. "It appears," writes Lord Stanhope, "that this inscription was given by one Paul Wilhelm, a noted forger (falsarius), to Lipsius, and by Lipsius handed over to Gruterus. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... had dwelt in the palace and under the holy influence of the Dalai Lama, the supreme religious power in Buddhist Asia, gave him a high standing among his fellow-tribesmen. The influence thus gained and his boldness and ruthlessness completed the work he had in mind. The ruling khan was deposed, all members of his family whose hostility was feared by Galdan were slain, and he found himself at the head of the tribe, whose ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... church-going men, who loved their families, did justice to their neighbors, and sincerely tried to serve God, not only waged an unceasing war on the red and white foes of the State and of order, but carried it on with a certain ruthlessness that indicated less a disbelief in, than an utter lack of knowledge of, such a ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Law, which was carrying lemon-box staves to Palermo, disclosed a ruthlessness of method which deserves grave condemnation, but was accompanied by no circumstances which might not have been expected at any time in connection with the use of the submarine against merchantmen as the German ...
— Why We are at War • Woodrow Wilson
... ordered rise like the fabric of Aladdin's lamp before his very eyes. Michelangelo is said to have exposed the architect's trickeries to the Pope; what is more, he complained with just and bitter indignation of the wanton ruthlessness with which Bramante set about his work of destruction. I will again quote Condivi here, for the passage seems to have been inspired by the great sculptor's verbal reminiscences: "The worst was, that while he was pulling down the old S. ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... with all true greatness an element of ruthlessness. Or perhaps she subsequently sent conscience money to the Red Cross anonymously. There are certain matters on which I do not ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Mr. Garrison, on my neck you can see the five scars, indications of his ruthlessness. One stroke should have been sufficient, a doctor told me afterwards. This one, the last,—do you see it? Well, it was the only capable stroke of them all. Just think of having to go through eternity with these awful scars on my neck. And it was ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... we have been imagining fit, economic fear and most economic hope will be alike removed out of life. No one will be haunted by the dread of poverty or driven into ruthlessness by the hope of wealth. There will not be the distinction of social classes which now plays such an immense part in life. The unsuccessful professional man will not live in terror lest his children should sink in the scale; the aspiring ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... privileges of the clergy and troops—suppressed monastic institutions—granted absolute liberty of opinion—abolished the laws against the liberty of the press—created many literary institutions; and whatever were his political errors, and the ruthlessness with which in the name of liberty and reform he marched to the attainment of his object, without respect for the most sacred things, he is generally allowed to be a man of integrity, and even by his ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... should be eternally one at least on watch in the priests' dwellings, so down the passages which led to them I made my way. It would have surprised me little to have found even these deserted. That the old order was changed I knew, but I was only then beginning to realise the ruthlessness with which it had been swept away, and how much it had given place ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... came up before her as she talked, that horrid encounter with commercial ruthlessness: she saw again poor 'Gene's outraged face of helpless anger, felt again the heat of sympathetic indignation she and Neale had felt, recognized again the poison which triumphant unrighteousness leaves behind. She shook ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... should do this in strict confidence and say that the memoir is not intended to convey a threat of submarine warfare. I should only like you to remind the Ambassador before his interview with the President of the expectations we based in the spring on Wilson and to call his attention to the increasing ruthlessness with which the enemy is carrying on the war. I take it for granted that Gerard will treat my memoir as strictly confidential ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... the straight highways suggested something else. Master engineering, certainly. But a ruthlessness too, as if the builders, who refused to accept any modifications of their original plans from nature, might be as arrogant and self-assured in other ways. He did not admire this relic of civilization; in fact it ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... was found that cruelty such as this was avowed and sanctioned by the king. Even the cold heart of General Churchill, to whose energy the victory at Sedgemoor had mainly been owing, revolted at the ruthlessness with which James turned away from all appeals for mercy. "This marble," he cried as he struck the chimney-piece on which he leant, "is not harder than the ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... while the very practice complained of. But late in January, 1917, her government announced that there would be no longer any pretence of complying with international law, but that with the coming month a campaign of unlimited submarine ruthlessness would be begun and ships sunk without warning and irrespective of their nationality if they appeared in certain prohibited zones. Within twenty-four hours the United States sent the German Ambassador from the country and within two months we ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... counterfeit presentment, which (knowing its poor brief reign) has played us and our friend that mean trick. When this happens we must be merciless, like the fairy-story prince when the wicked creatures in the wood spoke to him in the voice of his mother; piety towards the original arms us with ruthlessness towards the portrait. It was for this same reason that, as I have said, I unpinned from my screen those two facsimiles of drawings, feeling rather a brute while I ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... She was a weird witch-wife, mother of storm demons and frost giants, who must be fought with steadily, warily, wearily, over dreary heaths and snow-capped fells, and rugged nesses and tossing sounds, and away into the boundless sea—or who could live?—till he got hardened in the fight into ruthlessness of need and greed. The poor strip of flat strath, ploughed and re-ploughed again in the short summer days, would yield no more; or wet harvests spoiled the crops, or heavy snows starved the cattle. And so the Norseman launched his ships when the lands were ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... idea, and was therefore on an infinitely higher plane than the sensual divinities of the ancients. His own views of the Creator seem to me to be a more evident degeneration. He declares that looking round at Nature he can see nothing but ruthlessness and brutality. "Either the Creator is not all-powerful, or else He is not all-good," says he. "Either He can stop these atrocities and won't, in which case He is not all-good; or else He would stop them but can't, in which case He is not all-powerful." It was ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... thought of his theology, none who knew him could have any doubt as to the robust and uncompromising character of his faith. It was because he felt so sure of his footing that he allowed himself a liberty of movement perplexing to those whose position was one of more delicate balance. He had a ruthlessness in tossing aside what might be called "non-essentials," that was dictated not so much by an under-estimate of their due importance, as by an impatience with those who over-estimated them, confounding the vessel with ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... Miss Falconer," I answered with almost Teutonic ruthlessness. Confound it! I couldn't sit here forever bullying her; sheer desperation lent me strength. "The Espagne sails from Bordeaux on Saturday, I see by the Herald, and if I were you, I should most certainly be on board. In fact, if you lose the chance, I am sure you'll ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... spectacle at Rome, in its way as significant of cruelty and ruthlessness, the Triumph, each occasion of which signified some nation conquered or army defeated, and thousands slain or plunged into misery and destitution. The victorious general to whom the senate granted the honor of a triumph was not allowed to enter the city ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... "Guete Leute hier," and these poor people got chalk and tried to copy the difficult German writing on every door in the street. I am afraid that did not save them, however, when their turn came. It was the utter ruthlessness and foresight with which every contingency was prepared for that appalled me and made me realize what a powerful enemy we were up against. Everything was thought out down to the last detail and must have ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan
... with a conversational ruthlessness. "Fifteen dollars! Why, I'd give that myself an' set it up out there at the cross-roads for autos to bid on while they run. Its wuth—well, I wouldn't say what 'twas wuth. Maybe you'd laugh, an' I ain't goin' to be laughed at, if ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... tolerated on the outside because he made light of individual immortality, and believed in the eternity of Israel and the Zadokite priesthood. The Pharisees had been on the opposition during the latter period of the Maccabeans: so with partisan ruthlessness they excluded from the canon the writings commemorative of the valorous deeds of those priest-warriors who freed the people from foreign overlordship and restored the Davidic boundaries of the realm. Because the apocalyptic visions inclined to teachings ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... reproaches, had done something more than shock her. They had opened her eyes to the true nature—already dimly seen—of the plan to which she had lent herself. They had torn the last veil from the selfishness of those with whom she had acted, their cupidity and their ruthlessness. And they had shown the man himself in a light so new and startling, that even the last twenty-four hours had not prepared her for it. The scales of prejudice which had dimmed her sight fell at length, and wholly, ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... not pretend to regret the dead man. Indeed, I had been near doing the same deed myself. But I shrank before this calm ruthlessness. ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... Barrington on the Housatonic—which formed a newer New England, less lettered and scriptural than the old, where class distinctions were little known, where contact with the Indian and the wilderness had added a secular ruthlessness and ingenuity to the harsh Puritan temper, and where the individual, freed from an effective "village moral police," learned in the rough school of nature a new kind of conformity unknown to the ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... he was the most terrible outcome of the northern race. The very spirit of the sea-robbers from whom he sprang seemed embodied in his gigantic form, his enormous strength, his savage countenance, his desperate bravery, the fury of his wrath, the ruthlessness of his revenge. "No knight under heaven," his enemies owned, "was William's peer." Boy as he was at Val-es-dunes, horse and man went down before his lance. All the fierce gaiety of his nature broke out in the warfare of his youth, in his rout of fifteen Angevins ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... aggression and expansion where such policies were beneficial to Rome, with little or no regard for their effects on Roman associates, allies, friends or enemies. Studied ruthlessness. ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... civil war? That is a diary worth the reading. There is told the story of not alone vain hopes and ungratified ambitions, but of an empty stomach and dizzy head to supplement the mental agony and make its ruthlessness complete. There were, too, the high courage which was sorely tested—and an empty stomach is a dreadful shackle—and the bulldog pertinacity which ever does things. That was a diary of real life, with little room for dreams, and much ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... or conciliatoriness of the possessing classes, and, conversely, upon the moderation or violence of those who desire fundamental economic change. The majority which Bolsheviks regard as unattainable is chiefly prevented by the ruthlessness ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... Barbara in the hands of that woman with the cruel eyes or a victim to the ruthlessness of Strangwise made Desmond cold with apprehension. If they believed the girl knew where the jewel had disappeared to, they would stop at nothing to force a confession from her; Desmond was convinced of that. But what ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... serene look forward to the future. Some people prayed yearningly for its success, though they could have no other share in its making. And of course there were those men who had gotten into power and could not stay there without ruthlessness. They knew what the Platform would mean to their kind. For, once world peace was certain, they would be killed by the people they ruled over. So they sent grubby, desperate men to wreck it at any cost. They were prepared to pay for or to commit any ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... was that we could keep aloof and by conserving our energies and remaining neutral, hold ourselves in reserve as the only mediating influence for peace; but with each passing week some untoward event brought about by the ruthlessness of Germany made the prospect for the interposition of America's influence daily ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... more for things and events than for fellow creatures. For, although the story is often concerned with righting some wrong, or avenging some murder, yet it must be confessed that the author commonly succeeds better in the measure of his ruthlessness in devising crimes and giving his portraits of devils an extra touch of black. Mercy is not his strong point, however he may abound in justice; and he will not stickle at piling up the agony, if thereby he provides opportunity ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... cause had never been a good one. No danger threatened the country. No European nation desired to make war upon them. They went to war wantonly, and without just cause. Soon it became plain that they meant to wage war with a ruthlessness and inhumanity the world had never known. They threw to the winds all the laws of "fair play." Treaties became for them mere "scraps of paper," to be torn if necessity demanded. They marched through Belgium murdering and torturing ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... military significance in this; it was simply an exhibition of unbridled rage and savagery. With Rheims Cathedral, and hundreds of lesser churches and chateaux, these ruins will be perpetual monuments to the wanton ruthlessness of German kultur. ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... "she would not know how. It's the ingrained innocence which men encounter that they don't allow for or understand in us. Even after we are married, and whether or not we learn to love our husbands, it remains part of us as an educated instinct; and it takes all the scientific, selfish ruthlessness of a man to break it down. That's why I say so few among us ever comprehend the motives attributed to us in romance or in that parody of it called realism. Love is rarer with us than men could ever believe—and I'm glad of it," she said maliciously, with ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... moths are walking about the newspaper, sometimes they are torn callously from the embrace of their mates. The fate of the male moths is to be flung into a basket where they stay until the next day, when perhaps some of them may be mated again. The novice is impressed not only by the ruthlessness of this treatment but by the way in which the whole loft is littered by male moths which have fallen or have been flung on the floor and are being ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... be caught up into the beauty she exhaled. But the electricians were too much for her. They followed her with spot-limes and gave her no play of light and shadow.... That, Rodd knew, was Butcher, exploiting his new discovery, thrusting it down the public's greedy maw. The ruthlessness of it! This exquisite creature of innocence, this very Ariel, born at last in life to leap forth from the imagination that had created her, this delicious spirit of freedom, come to beckon the world on to an awakening from its sloth and shame! To be used ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... seething and whirling invisible population of beings, like ourselves, but glorified: yet unlike ourselves in this, that what seemed entirely right, because natural, to them would have been in ourselves horrible. The ruthlessness, for instance, of Quidnunc as he pursued and obtained his desire, had Quidnunc been a human creature, would have been revolting; the shamelessness of the fairy wife of Ventris had she been capable of shame, how ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... it for us with such histrionic and towering absurdity that we can laugh at his statement of it; but we must not laugh at him without learning to laugh at ourselves. All this talk about the iron will, about set teeth and ruthlessness, what does it mean except that the German chose to glorify openly and to carry to a logical extreme the peculiar error of the whole Western world—the belief that the highest function of man is to work his will upon people and things ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... to grow apart. But for a century past the tendency has been changing from divergence to convergence, from ignorance and distrust of one another to understanding, sympathy, and good-will, from independence and ruthlessness to interdependence and co-operation. Numerous agencies have brought this about—some physical like steam and electricity, some economic like commerce and finance, some social like travel and the interchange of ideas through the press, some moral and religious ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... that, upon her present diet, at all events, the young bloodhound was not quite equal to the task of nourishing five puppies. No doubt Nature—whose wisdom so often is mistaken for ruthlessness by pessimistically inclined observers of the surfaces of things—had a watchful eye upon Desdemona ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... an iron ring, symbol of their slavery; and like Circe, she transforms men into swine. After she has hypnotised Sanin, and taken away his allegiance to the pure girl whom he loves, "her eyes, wide and clear, almost white, expressed nothing but the ruthlessness and glutted joy of conquest. The hawk, as it clutches a captured bird, has eyes like that." Turgenev, whose ideal woman is all gentleness, modesty, and calmness, must have seen many thoroughly corrupt ones, to have been so deeply impressed with a woman's capacity for evil. ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... men will be on French and English soil before these words are read—escorting ocean liners and convoying merchant vessels, while in divers other ways the navy of this country is playing its dominant part in the fight against German ruthlessness. ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... they were, had been disturbing to her. Indeed, as time went on and her knowledge of Lord Hurdly increased, the fear that he might have dealt insincerely with his cousin or with herself grew steadily. She saw proofs every day of the ruthlessness with which he sacrificed men, and even what should have been principles, to gain his ends. By the light of the same knowledge she realized how his meeting with her had disturbed him in his customary calmness of poise, and she argued from this fact how important it had ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... they had often much of her enervated and almost decaying manner. Her beauty was of the dropping-to-pieces type, bound together by wonderful clothes of a fashion peculiar to herself and very effective. But they had the energy, the ruthlessness, and the indifference to opinion of their father, and loved to startle the world he had won for himself. They were shameless, ultra-smart, with a sort of half-condescending passion for upper Bohemia. And as neither their ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... the more heinous in his sight because it involved also the absolute forfeiture of their vast estates in the case of Ormonde and other loyalists, against whom no suspicion of Roman Catholic leanings could be alleged. Its very ruthlessness gave it an appearance of outward settlement ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... genius and vice. He hates and he loves fiercely, as if there were wild gipsy blood in his veins. Though seemingly a model of decorum and devoted to his art, he complains of his "daily drudging round" and "the cramped monotony of his existence." He commits his crime with the ruthlessness of a beast, his own nature being wholly untamed. If we deduce that his father was an adventurer and a vagabond, we shall not be far wrong. If we deduce that his mother was the opium-eater, prematurely aged, who had transmitted her vicious propensity ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... pitilessness, severity, brutality, hard-heartedness, inhumanity, rigor, sternness, cruelty, hardness, mercilessness, ruthlessness, truculence. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... Or—the question would never be silenced, though he scorned it—had she lain expecting the footstep in the room and the whisper that should tell her it was done? Among the foul possibilities of human nature, was it possible that black ruthlessness and black deceit as well were hidden behind that good and ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... idea—algebra, or the bow and arrow, or democracy. Nature's present impulse appears as a rebellion against her own methods; man, her creature, will emancipate himself from her law, will save himself from her blindness and her ruthlessness. He is "Nature's insurgent son"; but, being the child of his mother, goes at the task in her old blundering way. Some men are scheduled to elimination because of defective eyesight; they are furnished with ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... Captain in the Army of Salvation. Dawson, his Emma, and Clara are very happy, very united, and I am glad that I saw them in their own home. I am helped to understand how tender is the heart which beats under Dawson's assumed cloak of professional ruthlessness. At first I wholly misjudged him, but I will not now alter what I then wrote. My readers will learn to know their ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... La Mothe knew it as he knew the justice of the King. Had he not given his satire a loose rein over the safe-conduct which drew this very Guy de Molembrais to Valmy, and the swift ruthlessness which brushed aside any such feeble plea as a King's good faith? If Villon was right then this little inch or two of new-cut twig might indeed be all he said, the shadow of death, revenge, hate, and a warning against further attempts of a like kind yet ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... going on without an escort to our proposed night stop thirty li further. But my more experienced companions thought it dangerous to spend the night alone at an inn within this belt, as the villagers near the line were as bitter against foreigners as any in the province, the German brusqueness and ruthlessness having ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... arises to magnitude is not called lawlessness; and killing more than murder is called war. The great industrial centers show us what ruthlessness may mean, more cruel and more dangerous than the worst deeds of our border fighting men. As for the criminal records of our great cities, they surpass by infinity those of the rudest wilderness anarchy. Their nature at times would cause a hardened desperado ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... little of the truth, giving barely one single fact to a page full of heroic sentiment, had not let us guess that, beyond the frontiers of France, the enemy was doing frightful damage, with a rapidity and ruthlessness which, after the check at Liege, was a tremendous menace to the Allied armies. I understood these things better, in a stark nakedness of truth, when I found myself caught in the tumult of a ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... up to the hour. On the long sheet lay the record of his ruthlessness, the epitaph of a million. In his pocket was exactly $79.08. This was to last him for less than forty-eight hours and—then it would go to join the rest. It was his plan to visit Grant & Ripley on the afternoon of the twenty-second and to read the report ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... among tramps—the criminal tramp—despises the ordinary bum and the "gaycat." And they in turn fear him for his ruthlessness and recklessness. ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... He and I differed on the subject of Bolshevism. I have never seen any signs either of constructive ability or sound principles in any Bolshevik leader; nothing but enterprise, driving-power, vindictiveness, Hebrew cunning, and a criminal ruthlessness. They're not statesmen. And Bolshevism, as so far manifested, isn't a statesmanlike system; it holds the reins too tight. I don't condemn it for the cruelties committed in its name, because whenever Russians get excited there'll be fiendish cruelties; Russians are like that—the most cruel devils ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... had been the associate of the notorious Bill Symonds in one or two criminal affairs connected with "faked" claims and the like. The elder of the two officers in particular drew a vivid and damning picture of the man's life and personality, of the cunning with which he had evaded the law, and the ruthlessness with which he had avenged one ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... rest, it were a hard judge that had anything but praise. The brilliant blackguardism of the Master; his touch of sentiment as he leaves Durisdeer for the last time, with a sad old song on his lips; his fascination; his ruthlessness; his irony;—all are perfect. It is not very easy to understand the Chevalier Bourke, that Barry Lyndon, with no head and with a good heart, that creature of a bewildered kindly conscience; but it is easy to like him. How admirable is his undeflected belief ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... But the story, slenderly rooted in itself, has no support. Spain was the claimant, and, so far as the bold and repeated attempt of the Huguenots to contest her claims in Florida was thwarted by a diabolical, yet not unavenged ruthlessness of resistance, Spain made ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... but her heart was beating wildly, spasmodically. There was that about him, a ruthlessness, a deadly intention, that appalled her. The ground seemed to be rocking under her feet, and a dreadful consciousness of sheer, physical weakness rushed upon her. She went back against the table, seeking ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... Tower." His sword Morglay is still to be seen in the armoury of the castle; his bones lie beneath a mound in the park; and the town was named after his horse. So runs a pretty story, which is, however, demolished with the ruthlessness that comes so easily to the antiquary and philologist. Bevis Tower, science declares, was named probably after another Bevis—there was one at the Battle of Lewes, who took prisoner Richard, King of the Romans, and was knighted for it—while Arundel is a corruption ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... one reformer who devotes a good deal of his time to intimate talks with powerful conservatives. He explains them to themselves: never after do they exercise their power with the same unquestioning ruthlessness. ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... and fro, began to enter into details of his hasty journey to Axe. Old Mrs. Baines, having beheld her grandson, was preparing to quit this world. Never again would she exclaim, in her brusque tone of genial ruthlessness: 'Fiddlesticks!' The situation was very difficult and distressing, for Constance could not leave her baby, and she would not, until the last urgency, run the risks of a journey with him to Axe. He ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... face more knowingly. She saw in those big, innocent eyes a serene selfishness and a kind of sweet ruthlessness. In the pouting lips she saw discontent and a gift for wheedling. But all she said was, ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... about your gallantry," said Dan with all a brother's ruthlessness, "until I told them it was merely a habit of mind with you; then Sis called you ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... success were big. The men who made their way to the top—men like Gould, Fisk, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller and Carnegie—were pioneers whose courage, foresight, and daring were combined with sufficient ruthlessness to enable them to triumph where others failed. A few of them, like Carnegie, had some slight conception of the meaning of the labor problem; most of them did not. Linked to the industrial pioneer ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... with M. Rossigny this morning and it did not appear to me that you were accompanying him with a light heart. I admit the ruthlessness and bad taste of my interference and I apologise for it humbly; but I risked being taken for a ruffian in order to give you ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... in nor out of the Confederacy, neither protected by the Confederate lines nor policed by the enemy, they were subject at once to the full rigor of the financial and military demands of the Administration of Richmond and to the full ruthlessness of plundering raids from the North. Nowhere can the contrast between the warfare of that day and the best methods of our own time be observed more clearly than in this unhappy region. At the opening of 1864 the effective Confederate lines drew an irregular zigzag across the map from ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... had not yet got away from the stage-trickiness of Scribe. Unreality and artificiality face you at every step. The music is a different matter. No one, not even Mendelssohn in his Hebrides overture, has ever given us the sea, the noise and colour of it, its violence and ruthlessness, as Wagner has here. It is the sea that pervades the whole of the act; but imposed on its ceaseless sound there are very splendid things—some worn a little threadbare by now, but many still fresh. In the next act the prima donna has her opportunity. ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... city in India would such an alliance between Hindus and Mahomedans have seemed only a few years ago more unthinkable. For nowhere else have we such a vision as in Delhi of the ruthlessness as well as of the splendour of Mahomedan domination in India. Nowhere can one measure as in Delhi the greatness of its fall, and its fall had begun before it ever came into conflict with the rising British power. It had been shaken to its foundations by the far more ancient power ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... perhaps a dangerous condition, a situation full of risk for the white man and all his people, should his force and ruthlessness weaken even for one moment. But Nicol was too widely experienced, too naturally cut out for his work to fall for weakness. He treated the Indian as he would treat a trail dog, as a savage beast to be beaten down to the master will, and kept alive only ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... to the bedroom, about 7.30, to get Louis by ruthlessness and guile out of bed, she was surprised to discover that he had already gone up to the bathroom. She guessed, with vague alarm, from this symptom that he had a new and very powerful interest in ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... rattletrap of a train drew up there was not an element of cohesion left in the crowd. She knew too much to drive them away to where they might have regained something of determination, but let them stand there under her eye where they could see in herself the ruthless symbol of Ali Higg's ruthlessness. And not even the sight of the frightened passengers, in a panic because of tales that had been told them up the ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... this moment of defeat that Pius the Fifth mounted the Papal throne. His earlier life had been that of an Inquisitor; and he combined the ruthlessness of a persecutor with the ascetic devotion of a saint. Pius had but one end, that of reconquering Christendom, of restoring the rebel nations to the fold of the Church, and of stamping out heresy by fire and sword. To his fiery faith every means ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... — N. revenge, revengement^; vengeance; avengement^, avengeance^, sweet revenge, vendetta, death feud, blood for blood retaliation &c 718; day of reckoning. rancor, vindictiveness, implacability; malevolence &c 907; ruthlessness &c 914.1. avenger, vindicator, Nemesis, Eumenides. V. revenge, avenge; vindicate; take one's revenge, have one's revenge; breathe revenge, breathe vengeance; wreak one's vengeance, wreak one's anger. have accounts to settle, have a crow to pluck, have a bone to pick, have a rod in ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... submarines, has put into the hands of all England's enemies the means at last to sever the vital nerve of the much-hated enemy, and to pull him down from his position of ruler of the world, which he has occupied for centuries with ever-increasing ruthlessness and selfishness. What science has once begun she continues, and for every shipbuilder in the whole world there is now no sphere which offers a stronger stimulus to progressive activity than the sphere of the submarines. Here an endless ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the country they lived in was Egypt. And Egypt had a wicked King. This wicked King ordered all the little boy babies—" She paused, appalled at the thought of telling these infants of that long-past ruthlessness. But, again to her surprise, the infants now showed pleasurable interest. An ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... quickly. This move was to put her firmly aside so he could pass; and Madeline, seeing he would not hesitate to lift her out of the way, surrendered the door. He turned on the threshold. His face was still working, but the flame-pointed gleam of his eyes indicated the return of that cowboy ruthlessness. ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... rather easily. There was a difference between the fighters of the Fleet and the politicoes of Headquarters. The politicoes were no harder, perhaps, nor more ruthless, than the fighters, but they were of a different breed. Theirs was the ruthlessness of the bully who steps on those who are weaker rather than the ruthlessness of the man who kills only to win a battle. MacMaine had the feeling that the Headquarters Staff preferred to spend their time browbeating their underlings rather than risk their necks with someone ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett
... water, just as she developed the use of barbed wire entanglements along the front. Infantry advancing across No Man's Land were held helpless before the enemy's fire by barbed wire entanglements. Germany, with her submarine policy of ruthlessness, changed the Atlantic Ocean into another No Man's Land across which every American soldier had to pass at the mercy of the enemy before he could arrive ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... house, through the packing, through the very moving itself. It took the form of a sort of watchful waiting, although at the time we neither of us realized it, and of dislike of the house and its surroundings. It extended itself to the very garden, where she gathered flowers for the table with a ruthlessness that was almost vicious. And, as July went on, and Miss Emily made her occasional visits, as tiny, as delicate as herself, I had a curious conclusion forced on me. Miss Emily returned her antagonism. I was slow to credit it. What secret and even unacknowledged opposition could there ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... if he ever succeeded in eliminating death from the equation of his immediate future, it was impossible to say. The wisdom of ages bids us beware of the man of one idea. He is to be feared for his ruthlessness, for his concentration, for the singular strength he has acquired in the centralization of his intellectual power, and because he has welded, as it were, the rough metal of many passions and of many talents ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... Heliodora sunk in her thoughts that she allowed Marcian to leave her without another word. He, having carried his machination thus far, could only await the issue, counting securely on Heliodora's passions and her ruthlessness. He had but taken the first step towards the end for which he schemed; were this successful, with the result that Heliodora used her charms upon the Greek commander, and, as might well happen, obtained ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... envy of the men, curiously alike in that it was sometimes veiled and half wistful, sometimes very open. Drifters—you see so many of the sort in a restaurant—why wouldn't they hanker after the strength and ruthlessness of a man like Worth? And the poor prunes, how little they knew him! As my friend Walt would say, he wasn't out after any of the old, smooth prizes they cared for. And win or lose he would still be a victor, for all he and his sort ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... not possible nowadays, now that the working classes are conscious of their strength, to apply taxation to ordinary articles of general consumption with anything like the ruthlessness which in former days produced such widespread misery. Indirect taxation of this kind carries with it this inherent weakness that its burden falls most heavily on those who are least able to bear it, consequently it is bound to break in the hand of those who attempt to apply ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... trustees. Vigorous confiscation is a particularly logical punishment for the proven corruption of public officers by any property owner or group of property owners. Rich men who bribe are a danger to any state. Beyond the limits of lunacy it might be possible to define a condition of malignancy or ruthlessness that would justify confiscation, attempts to form corners in the necessities of life, for example, could be taken as evidence of such a condition. All such measures as this would be far more beneficial than the immediate improvement they would ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... child the same conflict wages and the same destruction of character ensues. Parents set themselves to bend the will of their children to their own—to break their stubborn spirit, as they call it—with the ruthlessness of Grand Inquisitors. Cunning, unscrupulous children learn all the arts of the sneak in circumventing tyranny: children of better character are cruelly distressed and more or less ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... or detailed historical judgment. Attila, though he loses his political importance and most of his historical acquisitions in the Teutonic heroic poems in which he appears, may retain in some of them his ruthlessness and strength; at other times he may be a wise and peaceful king. All that is constant, or common, in the different poetical reports of him, is that he was great. What touches the mind of the poet out of the depths of the past is nothing but the tradition, undefined, ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... caught between Russia and a Franco-British combination until she had formed a counterbalancing alliance with America, Italy, and Turkey. And he had most certainly not encouraged her to depend on England sparing her: on the contrary, he could not sufficiently admire the wily ruthlessness with which England watches her opportunity and springs at her foe when the foe is down. (He little knew, poor man, how much he was flattering our capacity for Realpolitik!) But he had reckoned without his creed's fatal and fundamental weakness, which is, that as Junker-Militarism promotes ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... his calculated play upon the instincts of the nation which he governed seemed to many in his time to introduce a cold and ruthless element into politics, which seemed colder and more ruthless when it appeared in the less kindly character of his disciple Lord Randolph Churchill. But the same ruthlessness is often found now, and may perhaps be more often found in the future, whenever any one is sufficiently concentrated on some political end to break through all intellectual or ethical conventions that stand ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... interests. For this highest principle I have reserved the honored term, good-will. Neither you nor I can reasonably decline to consider the bearing of our actions on any interest whatsoever. Right conduct, since it is inconsistent with the least ruthlessness, must inevitably in the end assume the ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... eyes to see an opportunity. To-night, he will attack us.". It is true that Tametomo afterwards refrained from taking his brother's life, but the above proves that he would not have exercised any such forbearance had victory been attainable by ruthlessness. History does not often repeat itself so exactly as it did in these Hogen and Heiji struggles. Fujiwara Yorinaga's refusal to follow Tametomo's advice and Fujiwara Nobuyori's rejection of Yoshitomo's counsels were wholly responsible for the disasters that ensued, and were also ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... seemed to Mark, in one of those waking trances that occur like dreams between one disturbed sleep and another, that the presence of the chaplain was shaking the flimsy foundations of the Abbey with such ruthlessness that the whole ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... you think it's football it's Euripides, and when you think it's Euripides it's Marie Corelli." Of all the actors in this affair he remains to me to the last as the most mysterious. I know that he loved Vera with the endurance of the rock, the heat of the flame, the ruthlessness of a torrent, but behind that love there sat the man himself, invisible, ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... was living at the rate of ten thousand a year. Well, we dined as we were, Carville insisting that as I was up from the country they should bar evening dress for one night. This was rather pretty in its way, and I found he was a curious mixture of prettiness and downright brutal ruthlessness. I found a man I knew slightly among the guests, a chap named Effon, son of the soap man, and he told me that Carville was one of the most extraordinary men he had ever met, that women would almost come to him at the crooking of his finger, and even men of ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... with a convulsive movement of protest. Perhaps never before had she so clearly realized the ruthlessness of the man ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... physical quality; in such expressions as 'leur fauve volee', speaking of the ravens in La Fin de Satan, 'le desert fauve' (Androcles), 'son bec fauve', of the vulture (Sultan Mourad), the suggestion of wildness or ruthlessness predominates. Usually the word is used in a wholly figurative sense. Thus in La Fin de Satan the fallen archangel, flying from Jehovah, is 'fauve et hagard', Barabbas stumbling against the Cross is 'fauve', and of the lunatic in the tombs it is said: 'fauve il mordait'. In all these cases ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... by any means possible. But one might as well compile an Old Testament anthology and omit Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. For, whatever the Germans may say, they are the major prophets of the new-German spirit. Treitschke is the prophet of tribalism, Nietzsche of ruthlessness, Bernhardi of ambition. It is absurd to say that they are not influential. Treitschke may have fallen somewhat out of fashion in the years immediately preceding the war, but his spirit had permeated the political thought of a whole generation. To the living influence of ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... It is the Kingdom of Heaven within us fighting against the brute powers of the world; and it is apt to have those qualities of unreason, of contempt for the counting of costs and the balancing of sacrifices, of recklessness, and even, in the last resort, of ruthlessness, which so often mark the paths of heavenly things and the doings of the children of light. It brings ...
— The Trojan women of Euripides • Euripides
... of ruthlessness. The selfless man, by dealing with others in the same extraordinary way in which he deals with himself, may easily under the pressure of extreme conditions become impersonal in his thinking upon duty. The morality of such a state of mind ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... particular request. And now who should come dropping in, ex machina, but Dr. Japp, like the disguised prince who is to bring down the curtain upon peace and happiness in the last act; for he carried in his pocket, not a horn or a talisman, but a publisher. Even the ruthlessness of a united family recoiled before the extreme measure of inflicting on our guest the mutilated members of "The Sea Cook"; at the same time, we would by no means stop our readings; and accordingly the tale was begun again at the beginning, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... independence. Indeed, as early as September 1, 1900, the South African Republic was annexed, and on October 25, Transvaal became an English colony. In its international aspect the Boer War cost England temporarily the friendship of many nations, who resented the ruthlessness with which they carried on war, and ridiculed the lack of efficiency which was so noticeable during the early stages of the war. Relations with Germany became especially strained as a result of the strong pro-Boer sentiment which was evident throughout ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... the disguised prince who is to bring down the curtain upon peace and happiness in the last act; for he carried in his pocket, not a horn or a talisman, but a publisher—had, in fact, been charged by my old friend, Mr. Henderson, to unearth new writers for Young Folks. Even the ruthlessness of a united family recoiled before the extreme measure of inflicting on our guest the mutilated members of The Sea Cook; at the same time, we would by no means stop our readings; and accordingly the tale was begun again ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... opened up the entire subject of nonresidence, and curiously enough I was disappointed in Tolstoy's position in the matter. It seemed to me that he made too great a distinction between the use of physical force and that moral energy which can override another's differences and scruples with equal ruthlessness. ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... small, secret, ruthless smile....That was her residue: ruthlessness. She may have left behind her in the turbulent war-zone the savage elementary lust for living at any cost, but she had ineradicably learned the value of life, its brevity at best, the still more tragic brevity of ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... account for the assassination we must concede high rank to the German Emperor's. He justly describes it as a "deed unparalleled for ruthlessness," and then adds that it ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the story of John Brown, and disproves the blacker circumstances. Yet he appears to hold that Dundee should have resigned his commission rather than carry out the orders of Government? Burley's character for ruthlessness is defended by the evidence of the "Scottish Worthies." As Dr. McCrie objects to his "buffoonery," it is odd that he palliates the "strong propensity" of Knox "to indulge his vein of humour," when ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... vitiated stock. For little by little the soft, moist airs of Zanzibar had corroded the spirit of the Oman Arabs, who had sailed thither, in the old days, from their own rugged land, in great fierceness and ruthlessness, unconquered by men, and incapable of foreseeing that some day they would be vanquished by perfumed breezes. As for Hamoud-bin-Said, he was typical of his kind to-day in that humid paradise, where want of energy, and lack ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... all there is the repulsion and loathing for the whole business of war, with its bloody ruthlessness, its fiendish ingenuity, and its insensate cruelty, that comes to a man after a battle, when the tortured and dismembered dead lie strewn about the trench, and the wounded groan from No-Man's-Land. But neither is that the fear of death. It is ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... by himself and his followers, and his ruthlessness in permitting the plunder and burning of churches and convents, kept back the much greater hosts who would otherwise have flocked to his ranks. And at this critical moment in his career he committed the signal error of failing to march on Moscow, the principal seat of the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... practise it. It will help them to enter, more completely than ever before, into the life of the group to which they belong. It will teach them to see the world in a truer proportion, discerning eternal beauty beyond and beneath apparent ruthlessness. It will educate them in a charity free from all taint of sentimentalism; it will confer on them an unconquerable hope; and assure them that still, even in the hour of greatest desolation, "There lives the dearest freshness deep down things." As a contribution, then, ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... be. At the same time, most of us hate spies and insects for the same reason. We regard them as noxious creatures intruding where they have no right to be, preying upon us and giving us nothing but evil in return. Hence our ruthlessness. We say: "Vermin," and destroy them. To regard a human being as an insect is always the first step in treating him without remorse. It is a perilous attitude and in general is more likely to beget crime than ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... his life, and, if that must go, for his soul. Then she got up. He was unconscious, white, death-like. It seemed that his torture, his near approach to death, had robbed his face of ferocity, of ruthlessness, and of that strange amiable expression. But then, his eyes, ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... different Dan from the impetuous, hot-headed Dan of former times. Gillian found his calm ruthlessness difficult to understand, and yet, realising all that he had suffered, she could not but condone it to a ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... entered the tavern and, helping themselves, or rather compelling the inmates of the house to help them to whatever they wanted, they treacherously and with ruthlessness shot down John Raymond, an infirm old man, only because he, alarmed at this roughness and brutal conduct, was about leaving the house to seek a place of greater safety." Hudson's ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... for him. It would be very wrong to hang a man upon such presumptions; but it is impossible to deny that they have a logical bearing upon the facts. However this may be, I think it is undeniable that Fitzjames did good service to history in showing once for all the ruthlessness and extravagance of Macaulay's audacious rhetoric. It is characteristic that while making mincemeat of Macaulay's most famous essay, Fitzjames cannot get rid of his tenderness for the great 'Tom' of his boyish days. Besides praising the literary skill, ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... back and demand that he listen to the truth. He wanted to explain, to set himself right. He wanted that man and all men to know he was not the Bonbright Foote who had brought on the strike and fought it with such vindictive ruthlessness. He wanted to prove that he was innocent, and to wring from them the right to meet and to be received by his fellow laborers as ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... watched his handling of the lines sullenly, a dull resentment and horror in her heart. He would subdue her as easily as he had the half-broken colts, sometimes bullying, sometimes mocking, sometimes making love to her with barbaric ardor. There were times when his strength and ruthlessness had fascinated June, but just now she felt only horror weighted by a ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... knew where?—to stand behind us, saying "I forbid you entrance, in the name of the ancient gods!" We could not see him, nor hear his voice; but we could feel that he was there, and something in us revolted against the ruthlessness of disobeying, of forcing our way into the room in spite of him, to ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... fate could have been devised for Giustino than to live under the patronage of such an individual. He took charge of the little fellow, and was not slow in discovering that his protege possessed not only a muscular framework and ready wit, but the malice, the concentrated ruthlessness and rapacity of fifty devils rolled into one. Something could be made out of that boy, he concluded; the Society, always ready to adopt promising neophytes on the recommendation of a qualified practitioner like himself, would doubtless enrol him in due ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... Ormont enjoyed a perusal of a letter addressed by him to the burgess's journal; and so did his detractors. The printing of it was an act of editorial ruthlessness. The noble soldier had no mould in his intellectual or educational foundry for the casting of sentences; and the editor's leading type to the letter, without further notice of the writer—who was given a prominent place or scaffolding ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... is a thinking, feeling being, that loves us, still he acts toward us individuals with the exalted greatness and seeming ruthlessness of a natural force, of a divine power. He can love us and know us, better than we know the cells of our own body, and yet take no account of our little worries, because he knows how insignificant they are. And he always acts through great, universal things, instincts and impulses, ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... he has his own truth to utter aloud if he should please; but here he will not play the prophet; the life of eighteenth-century Venice is dust and ashes; the poet will say not a word more than the musician has said in his toccata; the ruthlessness of time and death make him a little remorseful; it is enough, and too much, that through this music of the hours of love and pleasure we should hear, as it were, the fall of ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... general direction, but through the valley. It was all that a country road ought to be. It had honest ruts and unattached stones of various sizes. Cows had passed along that way. Trees met overhead irregularly, and bushes grew up in confusion on the sides. The ruthlessness of macadam, the pressure of fat tires, the scorching of engines, had not banished the thick grass which the country wants to give its roads, and would give to all its roads if the country were not being constantly "improved." There were places where one could rest without fear ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons |
