"Ruthless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... much as a general might look back upon a successful campaign and analyze his victories. He was thinking of the hardships, the insufferable tribulations he had gone through. They had tried to penalize him for the mistakes of his youth. He had been exposed to ruthless misery, his very craving for romance had been punished, his friends had deserted him—even Gloria had turned against him. He had ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... glad that I—that we all—were firm at this time. Both I and your aunt are growing old. Troubles, sore indeed even for the young to endure, are upon us. I am not sure that a roof will cover our gray hairs much longer. Perhaps in the dead of this very night the ruthless enemy may come. Now, your aunt Whately's carriage is at the door. A gallant soldier and a Confederate officer, the choice of all your kindred, is eager to give you his name and loving protection. He will take you far away from war's rude alarms, with its attendant ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... the Indians were a constant terror to the settlers in Canada: several Frenchmen had been assassinated by the ruthless savages, and their countrymen were too feeble in numbers to demand the punishment of the murderers. Conscious of their strength, the natives became daily more insolent; no white man could venture beyond the settlement without incurring great danger. Building languished, and much of ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... laugh was suggestive of the noise made by a rusty door-hinge. The tilting of the golden cornucopia had made him a ruthless money-grubber, but he never questioned ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... exposure of the emotions in ugly, unnatural, or morbid forms was glorified. They made an impudent claim to the name of Art, but they were nothing better than disagreeable Science. But this was an extreme deviation of the tendency. The main line it took was not so detestable. It was towards the ruthless analysis of life, and of the soul of man; a part, in fact, of the general scientific movement. The outward forms of things charmed writers less than the motives which led to their making. The description of the tangled ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... sons, the three, the brave, From lands far hidden by the wave: I killed them for thee, who oppressest me sore; Hard died they, O ruthless ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... "You ruthless vandal! look at your work, Miss Montgomery," exclaimed a bright romping miss of fifteen, bursting upon them without regard to ceremony and pointing to the ground where ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... farmers following to perfection the give-and-take policy of "live and let live", and he will conclude that it would be gross sacrilege to attempt to disturb such harmonious relations between these people of different races and colours. But with a ruthless hand the Natives' Land Act has succeeded in remorselessly ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... Another intelligence, a new personality from which they unconsciously shrank looked at them through Dr. Harpe's familiar features. The Starrs were not analytical nor given to psychology, therefore it was no subtle change which could make them stare. It was as though a ruthless hand had torn away a mask disclosing a woman who only resembled some one they had known. She was a trifle more than thirty and she looked to-day ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... retired with ample means and in the enjoyment of an honorable reputation. There he exercised a generous hospitality, and led a quiet rural life. He planted a mulberry-tree, which became a pilgrim's shrine to numerous travellers; but a ruthless successor in the ownership of New Place, the Reverend Francis Gastrell, annoyed by the concourse of visitors, was Vandal enough to cut it down. Such was the anger of the people that he was obliged to leave the place, which he did after razing the mansion ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... other. Slowly the ruthless inquiry in the girl's eyes changed into fear, into a very piteous dismay. "Can't you deny—anything?" she whispered at last. "Mother! say it isn't ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... impatient of abuses, like every vigorous autocratic ruler, had no mind to wait two months to redress the grievances of his people. The barons who had been appointed as sheriffs at the opening of his reign had governed after the old corrupt traditions, or perhaps themselves suffering under the ruthless pressure of the barons of the Exchequer, had been driven to a like severity of extortion. By an edict of the king every sheriff throughout the country was struck from his post; of the twenty-seven only ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... was a volume of his own sermons;—nine hundred and ninety-nine octavo pages, O Heaven! It wasn't enough for him to preach and re-preach those appalling discourses, but then the ruthless man must go and print 'em! When I consider what booksellers—worthy men, no doubt, many of them, deserving well of their kind—he must have talked nearly into a state of syncope before ever he found one to ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... not yet been mentioned. Can you guess what it is? This terrible enemy is man,—not savage man or Indian, but civilized man. Although man has more need for forest trees than has any other animal, he is at the same time more ruthless in his treatment of them. Man destroys more trees every year, as a result of fires which he sets and of his wasteful methods of lumbering, than all the other enemies of the ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... his hands. "Be not misguided by this foolish merchant, who hath all to gain and nought to lose by this proceeding. Give me but a little space, and their claims shall be met, thy desires shall be satisfied, and yet half of thy estate be saved, which else must be all devoured betwixt these ruthless money-lenders and lawyers. I can make a covenant more binding than any attorney, as I have proved again and again, and" (with a gulp) "if money must be raised at once, I know an honest, a fairly honest, goldsmith in Lombard Street who will ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... their manners, but I do admire their thrift, industry, and cleanliness. Their manners are abominable. Their excessive courtesy is neither instinctive nor genuine; it is camouflage for a ruthless, greedy, selfish, calculating nature. I have met many Japanese, but never one with nobility or generosity of soul. They are disciples of the principles of expediency. If a mutual agreement works out to their ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... all right." He was very gruff. He felt now a furious angry reluctance at leaving her behind. He stormed at himself as a fool; one of the things that the strong man must learn of life is to be ruthless in these partings and breaking of relations. He stood further away from her and spoke as ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... Finally, I should trust that in the sanctified keeping of the Legates my mortal part would rest as sweetly as bones laid in hallowed earth brought from Jerusalem; and that under their serene protection I should be forever secure from being in any way exhumed and utilized by the ruthless ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of somber pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror—of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision,—he cried out twice, a cry ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... presently, was a giant according to the general tradition. The Moros that invaded the Agsan are spoken of as "tailed men." There is, however, one tradition—persistent and universal—to the effect that up to 1877, and even later, though in a lesser degree, there was war—ruthless, relentless, never-ending war. This tradition is borne out by the events that succeeded the advent of the missionaries and their efforts to thrust Christianity upon a people who neither understood its doctrines ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... Pinch, in his guilty agitation, shook a bottle of Dutch Drops until they were nothing but English Froth, and in his other hand sustained a formidable carving-knife, really intended to reduce the swelling, but apparently designed for the ruthless infliction of another wound as soon as that was dressed; Charity rendered not the least assistance, nor uttered a word. But when Mr Jonas's head was bound up, and he had gone to bed, and everybody else had ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... emerging in the coming years will deal simply and logically not only with the business of death, but with birth. At present the sexual morality of the civilized world is the most illogical and incoherent system of wild permissions and insane prohibitions, foolish tolerance and ruthless cruelty that it is possible to imagine. Our current civilization is a sexual lunatic. And it has lost its reason in this respect under the stresses of the new birth of things, largely through the difficulties that have stood in the way, and do still, in a diminishing degree, stand in the way ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... a supreme court, and Iraq has some dedicated judges. But criminal investigations are conducted by magistrates, and they are too few and inadequately trained to perform this function. Intimidation of the Iraqi judiciary has been ruthless. As one senior U.S. official said to us, "We can protect judges, but not their families, their extended families, their friends." Many Iraqis feel that crime not only is unpunished, it ...
— The Iraq Study Group Report • United States Institute for Peace
... hour the Ulster Unionist Council ever spent. Men not prone to emotion shed tears. It was the most poignant ordeal the Ulster leader ever passed through. But it was just one of those occasions when far-seeing statesmanship demands the ruthless silencing of promptings that spring from emotion. Many of those who on that terrible 12th of June were most torn by doubt as to the necessity for the decision arrived at, realised before long that their leader had ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... serpent type, you would have a better idea of that countenance than long descriptions can convey: the width and flatness of frontal—the tapering elegance of contour disguising the strength of the deadly jaw—the long, large, terrible eye, glittering and green as the emerald—and withal a certain ruthless calm, as if from the ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... that people cannot watch anything die in silence? I suppose after all you are not sufficiently ruthless to carry off your own selfishness ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange
... whole 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 of pushing important discoveries were unexpectedly placed in his ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... love Wife and no wife, a prisoner in liberty With that I sail into the dark Without those consolatory efforts, useless between men Women are taken to be the second thoughts of the Creator Women with brains, moreover, are all heartless World is ruthless, dear friends, because the world is hypocrite World prefers decorum to honesty Yawns coming alarmingly fast, in the place of ideas You beat me with the fists, but my spirit is towering You are ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... slaughter; but I had little time to think, for the captain's deep voice came again over the water towards us: "Pull ashore, lads, and fill your water-casks." The men obeyed in silence, and it seemed to me as if even their hard hearts were shocked by the ruthless deed. On gaining the mouth of the rivulet at which we intended to take in water, we found it flowing with blood, for the greater part of those who were slain had been standing on the banks of the stream, a short way above its ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... since been, a love for constitutional rights, had, a few years before, been thrown into dismay by the loss of their charter, and, from that time, kept in a feverish state of anxiety respecting their future political destinies. In addition to all this, the whole sea-coast was exposed to danger: ruthless pirates were continually prowling along the shores. Commerce was nearly extinguished, and great losses had been experienced by men in business. A recent expedition against Canada had exposed the colonies to ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... form an idea of their numbers. The moment he saw the insignificant band he felt that they were doomed men, or else the spirit abroad was not what he thought it to be, and he had been witnessing some strong indications of its ruthless nature. ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... throne he had added to the crown Artois, Burgundy, the northern parts of Picardy, Anjou, Franche-Comte, Provence, and Roussillon. To secure such a wholesale aggrandizement he had been unscrupulous in chicanery, sleepless in his aggression, ruthless to the extremest verge of cruelty; no treaty had been too solemn to tear up, no oath too sacred for violation, no ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... bees, and do not like idleness. Besides, as one bad habit leads to another, Arthur, in his lounging ways, would often do great damage to the fairies' flower-beds, switching off the heads of wild-flowers in the most ruthless fashion, and even pulling them up by the roots when ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... suffering, whereby the mysterious, piteous condition of mankind is shadowed forth, his seeking was vain, and he ran the risk of loosing himself in the problems of eternal justice, the worth of upright living, and even the existence of God; for an unjust, ruthless, almighty being is no God. But by means of the theophany—which is to be understood merely as a process in his own heart, and which clearly shows him the impotence of feeble man to unravel the world-enigmas—he attains to insight; not, indeed, of a positive kind such as a knowledge ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... the capacities and peculiarities of the negro race. They were her servants; she taught some of them; hunted fugitives applied to her; she ransomed some by her own efforts; every day there came to her knowledge stories of the hunger for freedom, of the ruthless separation of man and wife and mother and child, and of the heroic sufferings of those who ran away from the fearful doom of those "sold down South." These things crowded upon her mind and awoke her deepest compassion. But what could she do against all the laws, the ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... haunted the region hereabouts. He looks just as he used to, he is the same pale knight of the melancholy mien. He is the most ridiculous mixture of forced gayety and silent hopelessness, he is affected—ruthless and brutal toward himself and others. He is taciturn and a man of few words, and doesn't seem to be enjoying himself at all, though he does nothing but drink and lead a riotous life. It is as I have already said, as if he had a fixed idea that he received a personal ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... Treitschke will tell us that Germany is 'just merely an extended Prussia'). And let us remember, in extenuation of Prussia, that she has suffered from two things—geographical pressure springing from her mid-European situation, and an evil tradition of ruthless conquest perpetuated by her Hohenzollern rulers since the days of the Great Elector, and especially since Frederic the Great. Geographical pressure on all sides has made Prussia feel herself in a state of chronic strangulation; and a man who feels strangled will struggle ruthlessly ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... we retain enough realism and common sense not to wish to transfer these complicated conventions and compromises to a land of such ruthless logic and such rending divisions. We may hope to reproduce our laws, we do not want to reproduce our legal fictions. We do not want to insist on everybody referring to Mr. Peter or Mr. Paul, as the honourable member for Waddy Walleh; because a ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... 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 ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... extravagance and waste. Submission, however, was not merely advisable; it presented the only prospect of peace. Open resentment was largely suppressed, but it was inevitable that the whites should become hostile to the blacks, and that they should dislike the Republican party for its ruthless imposition of a system which governed them without their consent and which placed them at the mercy of the incompetent and unscrupulous. A system which made a negro the successor of Jefferson Davis in the United States Senate could scarcely fail to throw the majority of southern whites into the ranks ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... the early and middle ages; compacts with Satan, consorting with evil spirits, and familiarity with the Devil, of later times; all at last ripening into an epidemic demonopathy with its countless victims of fanaticism and error, malevolence and terror, of persecution and ruthless sacrifices. ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... of truth of every form and degree wherever found, Judge Troward was a ruthless destroyer of sham and pretence. To those submissive minds that placidly accept everything indiscriminately, and also those who prefer to follow along paths of well-beaten opinion, because the beaten path is popular, to all such he would perhaps appear ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... of the German soldier of to-day be the result not only of the ruthless command from the official higher up but also of the de-souling, materialistic influence of Socialism on the common people of Germany during the past twenty-five years? Is not the viciousness of Prussian militarism plus the demoralizing influence ...
— Socialism and American ideals • William Starr Myers
... patriotism, and prior to being embalmed in the academy he had charge of the postgraduate work in atavism and superior sneering. "No, my test is not quite that, and if you venture to disagree with me about this or anything else you are a ruthless Hun and an impudent Jew. No, the garbage-man may very well be an excellent judge: for by my quite infallible test the one thing requisite for a critic of our great Philistine literature is an ability to induce within himself such an internal disturbance ...
— Taboo - A Legend Retold from the Dirghic of Saevius Nicanor, with - Prolegomena, Notes, and a Preliminary Memoir • James Branch Cabell
... Destructive. Read the accounts of Powell's trips down its dangerous course; of Alarcon's struggles to ascend its headlong tides; of Ives's and Wheeler's attempts to explore a portion of it; of Cardenas's efforts even to reach its waters from one of its banks, and of the ruthless manner in which it has destroyed the lives of those unfortunate enough to come within its reach. Then you will see how absolutely useless a river it is. In this regard the Colorado River is unique. Most rivers carry beneficent life all along their journey. ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... the patriotic instinct the aspiration of a people to deserve well of foreign opinion. Subsequently the speaker turns from his survey of the ideal which he would have his country seek. He exposes with ruthless frankness the ugly realities of her ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... with her before we left England. She loved me, but he had some strange kind of influence over her—the dominance of a strong nature over a weak, I think. Or perhaps it was a more primitive feminine instinct. He was always the strong man—even then—ruthless, determined. It was strange that he should have loved such a gentle timid creature, though that, perhaps, was not so strange as a man like Robert Turold loving any woman. But love her ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... suicide, and he could not resign himself to such a pitiful and abrupt conclusion of his splendid life. As for Anna, how could she, unless she were forced, accept the idea of a death which must lead to eternal death? But ruthless necessity was at their heels, and the circle was slowly ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... applicant for a passport is required to answer is his reason for desiring to make the journey, and during the Great War, as everybody of mature years will recall, civilians were not permitted to subject themselves to the dangers of a ruthless submarine war without good and sufficient reason. Mr. O'Leary had a reason—to his way of thinking, the noblest reason in all the world; consequently he was proud of it and not at all inclined ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... change it or indeed that it ought to be changed at all. Only by knowing other ways of life can we be certain of the relative worth of our own way; knowledge alone gives certitude. Without knowledge we run the risk of becoming ruthless destroyers of things which an intelligent sympathy might well preserve and find a place for ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... actually in view, cannot be long postponed. Is it not mete, therefore, to take fair opportunity of studying the characteristics and qualities of an animal, closely associated with us by fable and in fact, which is doomed to extinction by the ruthless strides of civilisation, which is regarded by some as cleanly and decent, and by others as repulsive and direful? Plain, unromantic, unsensational statements make for the acquirement of knowledge illustrative ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... of 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 demands self-restraint; in place of thrusting aside, or treading down, all competitors, it requires that the individual shall not merely respect, but shall help, his fellows; its influence is directed, not so much to the survival of the fittest, as to the fitting of as many ...
— Recent Tendencies in Ethics • William Ritchie Sorley
... is broken ... I awake; How swift the rush of memory's turning tide, Whose ruthless waves the will's frail barriers break, And flood the cells where consciousness would hide! Alas, how mad and fierce the world appears! How dark and ominous the future seems! I rise to face them ... yet recall through tears The quiet ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... that unlucky adventurer. Fifty years later the West rose in arms against Henry VIII, in support of the "old religion," and to protest against the dissolution of the monasteries; but the rising was put down, and Henry took and subdued Exeter, and carried through his bold and often ruthless policy. ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... wrote. He came in that artificial age, and began to speak with his noble natural voice. He came the gentle satirist, who hit no unfair blow; the kind judge, who castigated only in smiling. While Swift went about hanging and ruthless, a literary Jeffreys, in Addison's kind court only minor cases were tried;—only peccadilloes and small sins against society, only a dangerous libertinism in tuckers and hoops, or a nuisance in the abuse of beaux canes and snuffboxes." Steele set The Tatler a going. "But with his friend's ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... closer, the embracing fringe of cocoanut-trees drew my eyes. They were like a girdle upon the beautiful body of the land, whose lower half was in the ocean. They seemed the freewaving banners of romance, whispering always of nude peoples, of savage whites, of ruthless passion, of rum and missionaries, cannibals and heathen altars, of the fierce struggle of the artificial and the primitive. I loved these palms, brothers of my soul, and for me they have never lost ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... not at all unlikely. Goaded to madness, one of the poor chaps may have put his fist into the face of a German guard, and that shot would have been the result; of course, the poor beggar would be killed instantly, for your German is nothing if not ruthless. He's armed, you see, and is the stronger party, and knows that the authorities won't look too ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... Such monsters of barbarity ought to be excluded from all the privileges of human nature, and hunted down as wild beasts without pity or cessation. What infamy ought these powers to incur, who employ and encourage such ruthless barbarians?] ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... resented this devotion, the way it was accepted as an established fact in the neighbourhood, a standing sum to Joanna's credit. Of course she was fond of her sister—she could not help it—but she would have forgiven her more easily for her ruthless domineering, if she had not also had the advantage in romance. An admirer who sighed hopelessly after you all your life was still to Ellen the summit of desire. It was fortunate that she could despise Alce so thoroughly in his person, or else ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... should anyone seek his life, trying to pick him off as if he were a beast of prey? He had been keeping quiet, disturbing nobody, merely seeking a chance to escape, when this ruthless rebel had seen him. He became in his turn hot and fiercely ready to give bullet for bullet. Smoke floating through the pass and the flash of the cannon, made him more eager to hit the sharpshooter who was seeking so hard to ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... that others are happy,—it consoles me." Again her agony wrung from her these bitter words,—the bitterest she ever uttered,—words of transient madness, yet most characteristic:—"Oh God! help me, is all my cry. Yet I have little faith in the Paternal love I need, so ruthless or so negligent seems the government of this earth. I feel calm, yet sternly, towards Fate. This last plot against me has been so cruelly, cunningly wrought, that I shall never acquiesce. I submit, because useless resistance is degrading, but I demand an explanation. I see that it ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... made the first of a series of passionate efforts to leave the room. His determination was so intense and the manifestations of it were so ruthless, that Mrs. Schofield, exhausted, found herself obliged to call for the official head of the house—in fact, she found herself obliged to shriek for him; and Mr. Schofield, hastily entering the room, beheld his wife apparently in ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... Turkish fashion upon the ground, on the same side of the fire, and the blaze flickered redly over the face of each. They were strong faces, primitive, fierce and cunning, but in different ways. The evil fame of Moses Blackstaffe, second only to that of Simon Girty, had been won by many a ruthless deed and undoubted skill and cunning. Yet he was a white man who had departed ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... 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, 110 he would have paid for the nursing a thousand: he had ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... whether he is right or you are right? He has created them with much loving care; therefore don't sneer at them—don't jeer at them—it hurts! If you have reared a rosebush in your garden, and seen it bud and bloom, are you pleased to have some ruthless vandal tear the flowers from their stem and trample them in the mud? And it is not always our most beautiful children we love the best. The parent's heart will surely warm ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... objectives. The seven deadly sins of Christian ethics—Pride, Anger, Envy, Avarice, Sloth, Gluttony, and Lust—represent not so much deliberate wrongfulness, as the outstanding forms of man's uncontrolled and self-regarding instincts; unbridled self-assertion, ruthless acquisitiveness, and undisciplined indulgence of sense. The traditional evangelical virtues of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience which sum up the demands of the spiritual life exactly oppose them. Over against the self-assertion ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... cried he, while he clasped the veteran to his breast, "I am indeed favored above mortals. I see thee again, on whom I believed the gates of a ruthless prison had closed forever! I have all that remains of my country now within my arms. Kosciusko, my friend, my ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... its practices became the pursuit of those who would otherwise have never witnessed or even thought of them. No doubt Crockford's had its tragedies, but all its disasters and calamities together would hardly equal a lustre of the ruthless havoc which ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... unsuccessfully, then, turning north, raided all the country from Fort Hunter. He let loose his forces for the general purpose of devastation. He again did his work thoroughly,—brutally, as was customary in Indian warfare at that time. Major Jelles Fonda, one of the victims of this ruthless destruction, who had been a confidential officer under Sir William Johnson, was absent, being a State senator. Sir John's forces burned his homestead, "The Nose," at Palatine, and destroyed, it is said, $60,000 worth of his property. On the night of October 18 Sir John encamped with his forces ...
— Colonel John Brown, of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the Brave Accuser of Benedict Arnold • Archibald Murray Howe
... to this ruthless exposure of plans was camouflage. As if by magic-tents, huts, dumps, guns began, as it were, to sink into the scenery. The magicians were men skilled in the use of brush and paint-pot, and several leading ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... peace undisturbed. It was a mere game which he played with his own emotions, for it was no longer in his power to throw up anything upon which he had set his mind. Without knowing it, he had become the slave of his own will, a headlong, ruthless will, which saw nothing but the goal, and to whom the lives and happiness of others were no more than obstacles to be thrown indifferently on one side. Yet in this short interval, when that will lay ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... she would never again be tender till her daughter should have repudiated her base,—her monstrous engagement. She bound up all her faculties to harshness, and a stern resolution. Her daughter had been deceitful, and she would now be ruthless. There might be suffering, but had not she suffered? There might be sorrow, but had not she sorrowed? There might be a contest, but had not she ever been contesting? Sooner than that the tailor should reap the fruit of her labours,—labours which had ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... "Abolitionism" should be utterly defeated and forever exterminated. It was said to be a "doctrine" which was "revolutionary and destructive of this government," and which "invited a warfare between the North and the South, to be carried on with ruthless vengeance, until the one section or the other shall be driven to the wall and become the victim of the rapacity of the other." Such misrepresentation annoyed Lincoln all the more because it was undeserved. The history of ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... looked longingly and unsuspectingly in the direction of Siberia. They were learning by degrees that the semblance of freedom which offered a pathway to escape was nothing but a strategem employed by pretended friends to entrap them into more cruel and ruthless hands. On every side loomed the evidence of their danger. The villainous stares of foreign interlopers, the ribald jests of guards, the furtive glances of the envious, the scowls of the emancipated underling, the profanity of the domineering agitator who denounced respectability ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... call to the attention of the President of Mexico that the employment of ruthless submarine warfare now promises to compel England to make peace in a ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... also the story of Segelfoss, in its passing from the tranquil dignity of a semi-feudal estate to the complex and ruthless modernity of an industrial centre. Segelfoss By (1915) treats of the fortunes of the succeeding generation, and the further development of Segelfoss ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... in uniform. The one who occupied the chief seat, and seemed to be the president, was old and gray, with hard, suspicious eyes, and a long, typical Spanish face, in every line of which I read cruelty and ruthless determination. His colleagues, who called him "marquis," treated him with great deference, and his ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... "Well," he said, without a trace of nervousness; "what'll you have?" The choice fell upon breast of lamb. The secretary asked for iced tea. Endymion, more ruthless, ordered ginger ale. When the ginger ale came, Lawton, still waggish, observed the label, which was one of the many imitations of a well-known brand. "The man who invented the diamond-shaped label," said Lawton, "was certainly a pathfinder in the wilderness of the ginger ale business. This ginger ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... 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
... overcome, at any cost of pain and sweat and blood, by a direct effort of the will. As he never yielded to fever and weakness in himself, so he dealt with the vice and frivolity he detested, crushing it out by a ruthless application of power, hunting it with spies, stretching it on the rack and breaking it on the wheel. But a gentler, more understanding method would have accomplished more, ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... "The ruthless destruction of the Tolmen, in the parish of Constantine, which has been so much deplored, has had the effect, we are glad to say, of drawing attention to the necessity of taking measures for the preservation ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... shall find we have escaped from one set of taskmasters to fall into the hands of others far more ruthless. The tyranny of the Church is light in comparison with that which future generations may have to undergo at the hands of the doctrinaires. The Church did uphold a grace of some sort as the summum bonum, in comparison ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... bank bill Mr. Smith sent me yesterday, but I hardly ever felt delight equal to that which cheered me when I received your letter containing an extract from a note by Mr. Thackeray, in which he expressed himself gratified with the perusal of Jane Eyre. Mr. Thackeray is a keen ruthless satirist. I had never perused his writings but with blended feelings of admiration and indignation. Critics, it appears to me, do not know what an intellectual boa-constrictor he is. They call him "humorous," "brilliant"—his ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... to invest death with its chief terrors. We shrink indeed from the humiliating prospect of corruption and decay; we cling fondly to those companionships, associations, and pleasures, from which death for ever separates us; we deprecate and dread the blighting of our earthly hopes, and the ruthless frustration of our schemes. These are very painful accessories of death; but they are not its sting; they do not make it a poison for the soul as well as for the body. "The sting of death is sin." That sting has been drawn for the Christian, and death hath no terrors for him. But, had the ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... way, have appreciated all the subtleties of his relations with Jeanne? She would ask pointed, probably barbed, questions about Jeanne. She would tear the whole romance to shreds. Jeanne stood too exquisite a symbol for him to permit the sacrilege of Peggy's ruthless vivisection. For vivisect she would, without shadow of doubt. His long and innocent familiarity with womankind in Durdlebury had led him instinctively to the conclusion formulated by one of the world's greatest cynics in his advice ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... last shot was fired, he dismounted and leant against his horse, completely unnerved by the tremendous excitement that had been compressed into the space of half an hour. Zaki was in ecstasy at the victory. The ruthless massacre of so many of his tribesmen, the ruin of his native village, and the murder of his relations was avenged, at last. The reign of the Dervishes was over. Henceforth men could till their fields in peace. It was possible that, even yet, he might find his mother and sisters still alive, in the ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... the welkin with their shouts, While man, and horse, and hound, Ruthless tread down each ripening ear, ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... to him when, at last, they were safe on the great ship, with miles of turbulent water between them and the ruthless dominion of dastur. That confession—with its unconscious revealing of the Rajput spirit hidden in her laughter-loving heart—had drawn them into closest union and filled Dyan with self-reproach. Small wonder if Oxford seemed to both a paradise of knowledge and of friendly freedom. Small ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... 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 straightly Such ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... the world holds good because in large families it is impossible for each child to receive what schoolmasters call "individual attention." The children may receive a good deal of individual attention from one another in the shape of outspoken reproach, ruthless ridicule, and violent resistance to their attempts at aggression; but the parental despots are compelled by the multitude of their subjects to resort to political rather than personal rule, and to spread their attempts at moral monster-making over so many children, ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... in our web of earthly life, He, the divine Master, who came to save, to teach a lesson, to suffer and die, would assume a body so sacred, so delicate, so pure and sensitive that, when exposed to the rough and ruthless ways of life, He could truly cry out from the depths of His anguish: "O all ye that pass by the way, attend and see if there be any sorrow like unto ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... morn he lay, Slain by a ruthless hand! Never to wake with his fearless eyes— Never ...
— Love or Fame; and Other Poems • Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
... sank down on the dried leaves that lay in a drift on the edge of the bluff. Andrew crouched close beside her to the windward. And the ruthless old moon that was putting the stars out of business by the second was not in the least abashed to find them gazing at her as she blustered up over the ridge, round and ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... cards, but the women appeared to have absolutely no occupation of a rational kind. The entire city only boasted of three pianos, but nearly every house possessed a gramophone, which generally provided the music after dinner, when the ladies would sit in a silent circle and listen to the ruthless assassination of Massenet and Mascagni, while the men played cards or walked up and down the room chatting and smoking, and frequently adjourning to the buffet, which in Yakutsk is seldom far distant. Once a month an amateur ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... was filled. The red-brown figures, naked save for the loincloth and the headdress, the impassive faces dashed with black, the ruthless eyes—I knew now why Master Edward Sharpless had gone to the forest, and what service had been bought with that silver cup. The Paspaheghs and I were old enemies; doubtless they would find their ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... Philadelphia, there to write the best known of all American literary productions; from their mountain home she had seen British troops march into Charlottesville, four miles away, and then, with household treasure, had fled, knowing that beautiful Monticello would be devastated by the enemy's ruthless tread. She had known Washington, and had visited his lonely wife there at Mount Vernon when victory hung in the balance; when defeat meant that Thomas Jefferson and George Washington would be the first victims of a vengeful foe. She saw her husband War-Governor of Virginia in its ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... ours! Now launch your light barks, brothers—launch your light barks! The skiffs that brought us hither must be moored in the calm bays of our dear island before the broad sun looks over the tops of the eastern hills. But first we must punish our ruthless foe. Let us inflict on him the fate he threatened to inflict on the beauteous maiden—let us bind him and throw him down these rugged rocks into the wave that rolls furiously below! He is ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... was who led men to consider the possibility of a State in which all citizens {165} should be free and equal. He suffered banishment and much hardship for the bold schemes he presented. The Parlement of Paris was ruthless when the two books—Emile and the Social Contract—were ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... in silence, a curious feeling of embarrassment upon her, as if she looked upon something which she was not meant to see and yet could not turn from. His brown face was so intent, almost terribly keen. The lines about the mouth were drawn with ruthless distinctness. It was the face of a hunter, and the iron resolution of it sent an odd quiver that was almost of foreboding through ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... then sudden disappeared, And left the Princess in dismay, Who scarce knew what or why she feared; Such words of passion till that day She ne'er had heard. Alas! was she To be the ruthless chieftain's prey? Vain was all hope his grasp to flee. Oh! God, that in some dungeon's gloom Remote, forgotten, she had lain, Or that it were her blessed doom To 'scape dishonour, life, and pain! How would Maria with delight This world of wretchedness resign; Vanished of youth her visions bright, ...
— The Bakchesarian Fountain and Other Poems • Alexander Pushkin and other authors
... understand. Look at Italy, at this very moment. The darkness and depression from which that glorious peninsula is about to emerge are the fruits of long-continued dissensions and an iron despotism, which is at length broken by the impulses left behind him by a ruthless conqueror, who, under the appearance and the phrases of Liberty, contended only for himself. A more concentrated egotism than that of Napoleon probably never existed; yet has it left behind it seeds ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... again—and from their gaze streamed a current of reassurance, of good will—nay, of intense spiritual strength. I saw that they were not fierce, not ruthless, not inhuman, despite their strangeness; no, they were kindly; in some unmistakable way, benign and sorrowful—so sorrowful! I straightened, gazed back at them fearlessly. Olaf drew a deep breath, gazed steadily too, the hardness, the ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... 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
... bridges, around Goat Island, then to the shore, then to the elevator, and descended to the ice-bridge; but, above the angry battle of Niagara, arose the plaintive, dying cries of scores of snow-white birds, the shouts of gathering sightseers. Against the ruthless edges of ice lay, bleeding and broken, what was left of that superb company homeward bound. Their poor, twisted legs, their crushed heads, their flattened bodies, their pitiful, dying struggles, would melt a heart ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... not particularly anxious that Howells should see his MS., fearing that he might lay a ruthless hand on some of his more violent fulminations and wild fancies. However this may be, further postponement was soon at an end. Mrs. Clemens's eyes troubled her and would not permit her to read, so she requested that the Yankee ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... from its mischief—a man-eater from its mania for human blood. The inherent love of cruelty had been too long fostered in these Breeds of Foss River. Lablache had too long swayed their destinies with his ruthless hand of extortion. All the pent-up hatred, stored in the back cells of memory, was now let loose. For all these years in Foss River they had been forced to look to Lablache as the ruler of their destinies. Was he not the great—the wealthy man of the place? ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... the highest degree, quickness to conceive and courage to execute? On the other hand, all faculties that can make greatness, contain those that can attain goodness. In the savage Scandinavian or the ruthless Frank lay the germs of a Sidney or a Bayard. What would the best of us be if he were suddenly placed at war with the whole world? And this fierce spirit was at war with the whole world,—a war self-sought, perhaps, but ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... winning victories in the East, and the news of them somewhat disturbed the ruthless conquerors. But for the present they were absolute, and the saturnalia of blood went on. It ended at length in the death ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Russia, and the lesser Powers, of the absolute necessity of a sincere and cordial alliance to make preparations for the conflict to put down, or at least successfully to resist, the common enemy,—the ruthless and unscrupulous disturber of the peace of Europe; not to make war, but to prepare for war in view of contingencies; and this not merely to preserve the peace of Europe, but to save themselves from ruin. All his confidential ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... strength. It was just such proud, dark, purposeful souls that Byron delighted to draw; but the only one in literature to whom I can fully liken her is the wife of Macbeth. There was the same ambition—the same ruthless will—the same disregard of everything that stood in her way. And, like Cawdor's wife, she weakened ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... be free to preserve this, and desires political freedom for such reasons rather than for those that would most naturally appeal to an Englishman in the same subject position. The belief of the European in his own Kultur tends to be fanatical and ruthless, and for this reason, as much as for any other, the independence of extra-European civilization is of real importance to the world, for it is not by a dead uniformity that the world as a whole ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... guard the portals carefully, it is equally necessary for the welfare of all, that the community through their legislators, both state and national, should accept the responsibility of preventing the ruthless exploitation of immigrants in the interest of private profit. Exploited and injured themselves, these become the unconscious instruments of hardly less ruthless exploitation and injury to their fellows in the competitive struggle for ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... as the founder of the modern school of the Law of Nature and of Nations. He was struck with the ruthless manner, in which wars were generally conducted; the slight pretences, upon which they were generally begun; and the barbarity and injustice, with which they were generally attended. He attributed these evils to the want of settled principles respecting the ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... until we reached Bouligny, a once busy and prosperous manufacturing town. A few of the inhabitants had been allowed to remain throughout the enemy occupation and small groups of those that had been removed were by now trickling in. The invader had destroyed property in the most ruthless manner, and the buildings were gutted. The domestic habits of the Hun were always to me inexplicable—he evidently preferred to live in the midst of his own filth, and many times have I seen recently captured chateaux that had been converted into ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... the 49th 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 right thing at the right place and time mystified him. ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... treacherous Indian crawls stealthily to the attack, and, without a moment's warning, two or three of a party may fall to the earth, pierced by rifle-balls, or rearing horses may throw the riders, and leave them at the mercy of these ruthless assassins. ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... airy, fairy-like structures of candied fruits, frostings, and flowers; its jagged rock of ice where chickens and turtles, made of ice-cream, were resting on every peak and cranny; its gold-tinted jellies, and its snowy temples. Soon, fairy-work and temple yielded to ruthless boys, who crowded around with genteel eagerness to serve the girls with platefuls of delicacies, quite ignoring the rolling eye-balls of two little colored gentlemen who had been sent up from town with the feast, and who had fully expected to do the honors. Meanwhile Liddy, in black silk ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... justice in England as a state paper—a bill of indictment against a body of noblemen and gentlemen; against an order that for two hundred years had been the right arm of the Church and the defender of Christianity against its most dangerous and ruthless enemies. No writer of fiction would have ventured on inventing such a trial, and no one unacquainted with mediaeval history would credit the record that grave prelates and learned judges drew up such a document, and then set themselves to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... before venturing to make the inquiries that rushed to my lips. And even then I paused a while. When needing information from Penny, one has to be circumspect; she has a way of shutting off the supply with ruthless decision, yet with a seeming absence of deliberate purpose, whenever she suspects ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett |
