"Soft-hearted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lateness of the hour Margaret was too soft-hearted to rouse Jean, who had lain down in her clothes, trembling for her father. She went instead into Gavin's room to look admiringly at him as he slept. Often Gavin woke to find that his mother had slipped in to save him the enormous trouble of opening a drawer for a clean collar, ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... the man still urged her, she said to him, 'Heaven bless you; and may children always be yours! My daughter has been stolen from me. Alas! how much happier is your lot than mine'; and, though weeping is impossible for the gods, as she spoke, a bright drop, like a tear, fell into her bosom. Soft-hearted, the little girl and the old man weep together. And after that the good man said, 'Arise! despise not the shelter of my little home; so may the daughter whom you seek be restored to you.' 'Lead me,' answered the goddess; 'you have found out the secret of moving me;' and she arose ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... about it, as he is about everything. Dear, sensible, odd, saintly, emotional, strong-headed, soft-hearted ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... and nieces twist him round their fingers, and laughed good-naturedly when they did it. In a single day he could not change into a fire-eater and go merrily upon the man-hunt. What an utterly mad idea it was, too, to try to cast all people into the same mould! No one dreamed of making a soft-hearted philanthropist of Weixler; and he was supposed so lightly to turn straight into a blood-thirsty militarist. He was no longer twenty, like Weixler, and these sad, silent men who had been so cruelly uprooted from their lives were each of them far ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... the farm Elizabeth cooked breakfast and awaited her brother's return with a sinking heart. She was a soft-hearted girl, easily distressed by the sight of suffering; and she was aware that Nutty was scarcely of the type that masks its woes behind a brave and cheerful smile. Her heart ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... spotted Dalmatian coach-dog overturn the cauldron at the fire. Here an old crone, with her spectacles on, is cautiously probing the contents of the said cauldron with a fork; here the mistress of the house is peeling pears; here the plump and soft-hearted cheese-wife is entertaining an admirer—outside there are pictures as vivid. Here are the clumsy leather-topped coach with its masked occupant and stumbling horses; the towed trekschuit, with its merry freight, sliding ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... far as to consent to marry you. He will actually make you his wife. In my opinion he's crazy, but he's got his own ideas. He has promised to give you a tip-top wedding. If it had been left to me," he went on, sternly, "I'd have let you have something very different, but he's a soft-hearted fellow, and is going to do a foolish thing. It's lucky for you though. You'd have had a precious hard time of it with me, I tell you. You've got to be grateful to him; so come up here, and give him a ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... with the quarter-staff. They know how to stand against the Scots, and do not get bowed like our Midland serfs,' put in Anne, before Archie could answer, which he did with something of a snarl, as Bertram laughed somewhat jeeringly, and declared that the Lady Anne had become soft-hearted. She looked down at her roses, but in the dismounting and mounting again the petals of the red rose had floated away, and nothing was left of it save a slender pink bud enclosed within a ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... from the canvas." Said Ralph: "I suppose thy meaning is that we shall see the mountains from hence?" "Yea," said David; "so hold up thine heart when that sight first cometh before thine eyes. As for us, we are used to the sight, and that from a place much nigher to the mountains: yet they who are soft-hearted amongst us are overcome at whiles, when there is storm and tempest, and evil ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... lord to all, Sir,' said Kennedy, affectionately, for he really loved and pitied the soft-hearted Duke. ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... through broken panes to chill men with ever-empty stomachs who sit about gambling and finding furious drunkenness in a sip of aguardiente. Courtyards of barracks where painters who have not a cent in the world mix with beggars and guttersnipes to cajole a little hot food out of soft-hearted soldiers at mess-time. Convent doors where ragged lines shiver for hours in the shrill wind that blows across the bare Castilian plain waiting for the nuns to throw out bread for them to fight over ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... She was of all people in the world the least given to be sentimental or soft-hearted in a foolish way; but strong as she was, there was something in these letters—or some mixture of things—that entered her heart like an arrow through the joints of an armour, and found her as defenceless. Tears came with that resistless, ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... soul, a thrifty and rather sentimental woman of the middle class, with the soul of a soft-hearted book-keeper, was constantly quenching the little rivalries between her two big sons to which the petty events of their life in common gave rise day by day. Another little circumstance, too, just now disturbed her peace ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... bedroom and the red-cotton comfort for one night at least, and Mrs. Bowse was a soft-hearted woman. If she'd heard the fellow sobbing behind the fence, she'd have been in a worse fix than he was. Women were kinder-hearted than men, anyhow. The way the fellow's voice sounded when he said, "Help me, help me, help me!" sounded as though he ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Cripps, unfolding it and reading out, with his back to the boy, "'Three months after date I promise to pay George Cripps thirty-five pounds, value received. Signed, E. Loman.' That's about it, eh, young gentleman? Well, blessed if I ain't a soft-hearted chap after the doing you've given me over this here business. Look here; ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... all on sight, gladly, the damned spies," he responded. "That's the great trouble with this country, Miss Strong. We're too soft-hearted and chivalrous. The Germans realize that war and sentiment have no place together. If killing babies and destroying churches will in their opinion help them win the war they do it without compunction. The civilized world ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... of time in silence. Racey had nothing to say. He was too busy speculating as to the true significance of the girl's presence. What did she want—money? These saloon floozies always did. He hoped she wouldn't want much. For he ruefully knew himself to be a soft-hearted fool that was never able to resist a woman's appeal. He glanced at her covertly. Her little chin was trembling. Poor kid. That's all she was. Just a kid. Helluva life ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... was tenable. Nevertheless, I must confess, that if all his grandfather of Navarre's morals have not descended to him, this poor King has somehow inherited a share of the specks that were thought to dim the lustre of that great Prince—that Charles is a little soft-hearted, or so, where beauty is concerned.—Do not blame him too severely, pretty Mistress Alice; when a man's hard fate has driven him among thorns, it were surely hard to prevent him from trifling with the few roses ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... seeing him. Their interview was very painful. At its close she exclaimed that she felt herself to blame, being a daughter of the house of Orleans, for ever having put faith in the Emperor Napoleon or his promises. Notwithstanding this reproach, the emperor, who was soft-hearted, pitied her extremely. She remained at Saint-Cloud for some hours, and that evening, when surrounded by the court circle, she threw back her head and begged for water. The emperor hastened to bring it to her with his own hand; but she exclaimed that she would not take it from ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... to whom his friends gave credit for much sternness;—but still he was one who certainly had no happiness in the world independent of his children. His daughter had left him, not, as he thought, under happy auspices,—and he was now, at this moment, soft-hearted and tender in his regards as to her. What was there in the world for him but his children? And now he felt himself to be alone and destitute. He was already tired of whist at the Eldon. That which had ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... I have mixed myself up in their affairs. And I ain't overcheerful, I can tell you. Yes, yes, I sat up the whole blessed night—it was pretty cold, too, about four o'clock. That's a fact. Well, I have always been a fool—I'm too soft-hearted." ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... "I'm a soft-hearted fool or I'd ha'—" began Melissa, somewhat ominously, but checked herself after a quick glance at her mistress's face. "Try to go to sleep, Uncle Joe," she substituted. "I'll have some toast and tea for you when you wake up. You—you look as if you hadn't ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... unjust and painful accusation Dora threw herself and the doll upon their faces, and wept bitterly. The eyes of the soft-hearted Nicholas began to fill with tears, and he squatted down before her, looking most dismal. He had a fellow-feeling for her attachment to an old toy, and yet Robin's will was law ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Soft-hearted as she was and amenable to nature's promptings, she did not feel herself to be very much to blame, and this made her confession the easier; besides which, she had no intention of telling more ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... thumb and forefinger and dropping us over the veranda railing. For our attack lacked somewhat in gentle courtesy, notably so that of "the Rowdy." He was a chestless youth of the type that has grown so painfully prevalent in our land since the soft-hearted abolishment of the beech-rod of revered memory; of that all too familiar type whose proofs of manhood are cigarettes and impudence and discordant noise, and whose national superiority is demonstrated by the maltreating of all other races. But the enrolled were all, black, white, or mixed, far ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... good deal on the Grays, and had built some social hopes on her position as their friend. Her forebodings proved true. Her little gush of thankfulness and penitence did not touch Mr. Gray's heart in the least. He saw that Berry was a dangerous friend for his soft-hearted, easily influenced Georgie, and told his wife that he decidedly objected to the girls' having anything more to do with her. Mrs. Gray agreed with him in opinion; and though there was no open rupture between the families, Berry found herself after ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... sentimental, German spaniel. Besides, he kept tolerably clean by dint of Israel's care, and thrust his long nose between the rails of his pen for grass, or fruit, or carrot- and beet-tops, with a knowing look out of his deep-set eyes that was never to be resisted by the soft-hearted spinster. Indeed, Miss Lucinda enjoyed the possession of one pet who could not tyrannize over her. Pink's place was more than filled by Fun, who was so oppressively affectionate that he never could leave ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... by one the friends who knew him personally have spoken, it has been discovered that this cynic was one of the tenderest and kindest men that our time has produced; this hater of his kind, a man so soft-hearted and full of sensibility that it was really a serious drawback to him in life; this misanthropist, one of the most genial and kindly companions in the world; this bitter satirist, a man who never made an enemy by his speech; this hard man, one who ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... anaemic, scrofulous little man, with strangely flaxen mutton-chop whiskers of which he was very proud. He was a clerk and had almost always something wrong with his eyes. He was rather soft-hearted, but self-confident and sometimes extremely conceited in speech, which had an absurd effect, incongruous with his little figure. He was one of the lodgers most respected by Amalia Ivanovna, for he did not get drunk and paid regularly ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... this expedition. Tim is so soft-hearted that likely enough he would try to convince Hardman of his wrongdoing, and so put him on his guard. Let Jeff tell him if ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... turned on his heel and left her in his own room. He only turned once to look in at the door again. "If you're in any trouble, I'm real soft-hearted, Eliza; I'll be real good to you, though you've been crusty ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... in a disagreeable day or two after his call upon the judge. He was dissatisfied with the ending of their interview. He felt that he had been foolishly soft-hearted in promising to call at the Fair Harbor, or, to consider for another hour the preposterous offer of management of that institution. He must say no in the end. How much better to have said it then and there. ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... recently, at a meeting, "Do you mean to elect Bismarck Schoenhausen, the man 'who, in the countryman's evening prayer, stands hard by the devil'?" (From Grillparzer's Ahnfrau.) And yet I am the most soft-hearted person in the world towards the common people. On the whole, my election here in these circumstances seems very doubtful to me; and as I do not believe I shall be elected in the other place either, when I am not there personally, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... disciplined Sikhs and Ghoorkas, would break our self-imposed restrictions in order to enrol the inferior but more savage races of Africa. Yet no charge has been more often repeated and has caused more piteous protests among the soft-hearted and soft-headed editors of ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... not the first time that I have had the privilege and pleasure of addressing a Manchester audience. I have often enough, before now, thrown myself with entire confidence upon the hard-headed intelligence and the very soft-hearted kindness of Manchester people, when I have had a difficult and complicated scientific argument to put before them. If, after the considerations which I have put before you—and which, pray be it understood, I by no means claim particularly ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... told me more about the steel cubes too and how much danger we were in from them—if it hadn't been for the second voice, which presumably had issued from a being who was keeping watch to make sure among other things that the first voice didn't get soft-hearted.) ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... you are doing. My life, your mother's, the existence of our family, hang upon your conduct. Yet, yet there is time to prevent this desolation. I am controlling my emotions; I wish you to save us, you, all! Throw yourself at your cousin's feet. She is soft-hearted; she may yet ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... us for a couple o' soft-hearted fools," said Miss Vilda feebly, after a long pause. "We'll be a ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the better, and would have chosen her before the other could she have come back; but that failing, this other would do, even Josephine's love being better than no love at all. Besides, she had her own charms, if of a sober kind. She was a sweet-tempered, soft-hearted creature, with the aroma of remembrance round her when she was young and pretty and unattainable: consequently, being unattainable, held as the moral pot of gold under the rainbow, which, could it have been caught, would have made all life glad. The sentimental rest which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... modern consciousness, and may be based on all previous social experiments. This matter is of great importance to us, on account of our large number of paupers. The weaker characters among us, discouraged by external pressure, spoilt by the soft-hearted charity of our rich men, easily sink ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... that of a spoiled stage darling, that Stephen had to remind himself sharply of her "innocent pose," and his own soft-hearted lack of discrimination where pretty women were concerned. By doing this he kept himself armed against the clever little actress laughing at him behind the blue eyes of a child. "You must know that there ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... old lady; 'but don't be soft-hearted and weak, Mary. It is not what I expect of you, as a sensible woman, to be harbouring a mere vagrant whom you know nothing about, and injuring ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... it would make my father turn over in his coffin if he could know that we've come to that! But I guess you're right. Everybody says I'm too soft-hearted to be a master of men. Well, I must be getting home. To-morrow morning, at the plant? ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... mind you, beyond this rollicking blackguard there stood a second Jack, a soft-hearted, self-sacrificing other-phase, chivalrous to quixotism, yet provokingly reticent touching any act or sentiment which reflected real credit on himself. Not that every blackguard is a Bayard, any more than every wife-beater is a coward; ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... is an insidious and wily person, and often presents himself to the soft-hearted celebrity in such humble and pathetic guise that one really hasn't the courage to snub him. He has come such a long way for such a little thing! it is such a lowly function he plies at the foot of that tall tree whose top you reached ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... Miss Martha's in a carriage, escorted by Madam Delia and by Anne, "that dull, uninteresting child," as Miss Amy had reluctantly described her, "so different from this graceful Adelaide." This romantic name was a rapid assumption of the soft-hearted Miss Amy's, but, once suggested, it was as thoroughly-fixed as if a dozen baptismal fonts had written it ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... after working his way up here all these months, and nearly coughing his head off at times, to find out that his only relation in the wide world ain't well off in this world's goods. But then Matilda she always was soft-hearted, and mebbe now she might find a hole in her humble home where her poor old brother could stay the short time he's got in this world of trouble and sorrow. I could do with less to eat if I had to, gents; and blood was always ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... evidence is in our possession concerning the disturbances of emotion accompanying disturbances of this gland, and controllable by its control. It might be said to energize deeply the tender emotions, and instead of saying soft-hearted we should say much-pituitarized. For all the basic sentiments (as opposed to the intellectualized self-protective sentimentalism), tender-heartedness, sympathy and suggestibility are interlocked with its functions. Its ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... unicorn charging on the enemy together, not for England or France, but all for poor Turkey; and Mr. Tennyson could not have written his "Charge of the Light Brigade," which would have been a great loss to elocutionists. There were in Parliament a few poor- spirited economists and soft-hearted humanitarians who would fain have prevented that mighty drain of treasure and of the best blood of England- holding, with John Bright, that this war was "neither just nor necessary"; but they were "whistling against the wind." There was one rich English quaker, with a heart like a tender ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... not sneering. I would not for a moment sneer at anything that helps to keep hearts tender in this hard old world. We men are cold and common-sensed enough for all; we would not have women the same. No, no, ladies dear, be always sentimental and soft-hearted, as you are—be the soothing butter to our coarse dry bread. Besides, sentiment is to women what fun is to us. They do not care for our humor, surely it would be unfair to deny them their grief. And who shall say that their mode of enjoyment is not as sensible as ours? Why assume that a doubled-up ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... heiress had been a soft-hearted, simple girl?" said Katherine, with a slight faltering in her tones. "Suppose she were credulous, loving, attracted by you—you are probably attractive to some women—and married you believing ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... the brilliant antitheses of Lady Mary to obscure and blur the man as they might have found him in his work. Booth and Jones have been taken for definite and complete reflections of the author of their being: the parts for the whole, that is—a light-minded captain of foot and a hot-headed and soft-hearted young man about town for adequate presentments of the artist of a new departure and the writer of three or four books of singular solidity and finish. Whichever way you turn, you are confronted with appearances each more distorted and more dubious than the other. Some have chosen to ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... Captain Smith," laughed Anne, looking up at the rough-speaking, soft-hearted man; "but you talk like the real captain. 'I give this for a law,' he said, 'that he who will not work ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... daughter of Stella increased in years and stature, and we must add in goodness: a mild, soft-hearted girl, as yet with no decided character, but one who loved calmness and seemed little fitted for the circle in which she found herself. In that circle, however, she ever experienced kindness and consideration. No enterprise however ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... ever a man too low and vile to get woman's pity, if he only had a pretty face," she said, caustically. "If he was an ugly, old, half-decent fellow, you wouldn't be making any soft-hearted surmises as to what he might have been under different circumstances. He has spoiled the lives of several tenderhearted women like you—yet you ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... passage of the Marquis, soon after his wife's death in Paris. But, as a rule, only Marie and Jean had access to the apartment. He looked round with an eye always ready with the tear of sympathy; for he was a soft-hearted man. Then he looked at Marie again, shamefacedly. But she, divining his ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... Bill. "I 'spose 'twas yer tender-hearted friends in England that put that notion into your head. There's a set o' soft-hearted folk at home that I knows on who don't like to have their feelin's ruffled; and when you tell them anything they don't like—that shocks them, as they call it—no matter how true it be, they stop their ears and cry out, 'Oh, that is too horrible! We can't believe that!' An' they say ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... Soul! Lady, I beg your Pardon. How soft-hearted she is! I am in love; I find already a kind of tickling of I know not what, run ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... Roy? It's true—be certain of that, you soft-hearted fool. I tell the truth sometimes, Roy—when it serves my purpose. And I want you to imagine the details of what is going to happen to her. Think of it, Roy—the Lady of the Golden Bough, the saintly Mrs. Swope, the sweet Mary Baintree that was—lying in Fitzgibbon's ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... words, but could not check the red fury that was surging through Slaughter's overstrung brain. The man who, in the presence of Ailleen's sorrow, had been gentle and soft-hearted, was now, in the presence of the full force of embittered memory, swayed only by one impulse, conscious only of one thing. Hate, an unreasoning madness of hate, was upon him, and to soothe that hate, to satisfy the craving it ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... the Cash Department at that time, with his stool tilted comfortably against the wall, reading the sporting news from a pink paper to a friend from the Outward Bills Department who lay luxuriously on the floor beside him, did not rank among Mr Waller's pleasantest memories. But Mr Waller was too soft-hearted to interfere with his assistants unless it was absolutely necessary. The truth of the matter was that the New Asiatic Bank was over-staffed. There were too many men for the work. The London branch of the bank was really only a nursery. New men were constantly ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... sleep for either Bessie or her guest that night. Both girls were excited by memories of the day that was past, and by thoughts of the day that was coming. Ida was brooding a little upon her disappointment in Brian Wendover. He had very pleasant manners, he seemed soft-hearted and sympathetic, he was very good-looking—but he was not the Brian of her dreams. That ideal personage had never existed outside her imagination. It was a shock to her girlish fancy. There was a sense of loss ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... write and give Polly Powell the sack right away, she's noan thy sort. If you come across that German Emperor, don't be soft-hearted wi' 'im." ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... "You are very soft-hearted, all of a sudden, senorita," he said, with a fairly well-defined sneer, when he could bear no more. "You won't enjoy the bull-fighting, then, to-morrow—for all you have been looking forward to it so anxiously, and have robbed yourself of ribbons to decorate ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... right for being so soft-hearted!" thundered Koosje. "I'll be wiser next time I fall over a bundle, and leave ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... by the open window and fanned herself with a feeling of triumphant indignation. If Jean or Helen had been home, she knew perfectly well they would have been soft-hearted and lenient, but every berry on every bush was precious to Kit, and she felt that now was the appointed hour, as Cousin ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... will help just here to think of the man behind the work. No sensible human being, it would appear, can become aware of the life and personality of Thackeray without concluding that he was an essentially kind-hearted, even soft-hearted man. He was keenly sensitive to praise and blame, most affectionate and constant with his friends, generous and impulsive in his instincts, loving in his family, simple and humble in his spiritual nature, however questioning ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... homeward, in a deeper fit of abstraction than was altogether usual with him, "now will Bill Hinkley beat about the bush without bouncing through it, until it's too late to do anything. He's mealy-mouthed with the woman, and mealy-mouthed with the man, and mealy-mouthed with everybody. —quite too soft-hearted and too easy to get on. Here's a stranger nobody knows, just like some crow from another corn-field, that'll pick up his provisions from under his very nose, and he doing nothing to hinder until there's ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... still there, sitting sleepless in the soft and radiant moonlight, when toward twelve o'clock Graham came forth from his last visit for the night, and she lifted up her head and looked him dumbly in the face,—dumbly, yet imploring a word of hope or comfort,—and it was more than the soft-hearted Scot could bear. "Major," said he, as he gently laid a big hand upon the black and tangled wealth of hair, "that lad in yonder would have been beyond the ken of civilization days ago if it hadn't been for this little savage. I'm thinking he'll sleep ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... balance between her merits and her demerits, is a difficult task. A woman of a hundred opposing facets; of rare culture and charm, and of whims and fancies and strange enthusiasms each battling with the other. Thus, by turns tender and callous, hot-tempered and soft-hearted; childishly simple in some things, and amazingly shrewd in others; trusting and suspicious; arrogant and humble, yet supremely indifferent to public opinion; grateful for kindness and loyal to her friends, but neither forgetting nor ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... Garry, his voice changing, "salting the old man's fireplace with your own money so that his niece could come down here and study French and music! You wonderful, soft-hearted Irish lunatic! I ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... straight brows, the ripe lips, the soft oval contour, the clear olive complexion. She had also lustrous brown eyes; but these were full of tears. She only turned them on him for a moment; then she resumed her apparently interrupted occupation of sobbing. Aristide was a soft-hearted man. He ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... was far too soft-hearted to accept that invitation, and seizing Ranald's hand, said, heartily: "Never mind, Ranald, it was my own fault. We will just say ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... you be soft-hearted. He's a sly little dog, and knows my eye is on him. When I asked him what he saw in the dressing-room, after he brought out the ball, and looked sharply at him, he laughed, and said: 'Only a mouse,' as saucy as ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... put up another thousand to pull things straight the happier I shall be. And let me tell you, mother, that if I get Helen through this business well and happy, I shall quit fooling round as godfather, or stage uncle, or any other sort of soft-hearted idiot. Meanwhile, Bower has jumped ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... be found in the lassitude and exhaustion which must in time overtake the most warlike princes, the bravest generals, and the most highly tempered of conquering races. A few years of relaxed watchfulness, an indolent and soft-hearted sovereign, are enough to let loose all the pent up forces of insubordination and to unite them into one formidable effort. We thus see that, in many respects, nothing could be more precarious than the prosperity of that Assyria whose insolent triumphs ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... would not join himself to the King, because the King was an evil man, and he liked not evil; yet he loved not rebellion, and feared for his safety if the King had the upper hand; but it was still more that he had grown idle and soft-hearted, and feared the hard faring and brisk jesting of the camp. Yet even so the thought of the war lay heavy on his heart, and he wondered how men, whose lives were so short upon the goodly earth, should find it in their hearts to slay and be slain for such shadowy things as command ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... been a Roman Catholic. And whether the punishment might be for six weeks or for two years, what should be done with the family? Where should they be housed? How should they be fed? What should be done with the poor man when he came out of prison? It was a case in which the generous, soft-hearted old Lady Lufton was almost beside herself. "As for Grace," said young Lady Lufton, "it will be a great deal better that we should keep her amongst us. Of course she will become Mrs Grantly, and it will be nicer for her that it should ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... daunted; "I shouldn't hesitate. And, at all events, I should be civil to him at all times. Why, the way you treated that wretched young man to-day at Clonbree Barracks was, I consider, shameful! And you call yourself, I dare say, soft-hearted. To look at you, one would think you couldn't be unkind if you tried; and yet the barbarity of your conduct to-day, to a person who literally worships the ground you walk ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... "He's too soft-hearted," commented Jamieson, angrily. "A lad like that ought to be sent to the reformatory—proper place ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the Farm - Or, Bessie King's New Chum • Jane L. Stewart
... pitching so much, going a bit free, as she did when close-hauled, the wind drawing more abeam as it veered north; and Captain Snaggs was not the last to notice this, you may be sure. He thought he might just as well take advantage of it, as not being one of your soft-hearted sailors, but a 'beggar to carry on when he had the chance,' at least, so said Hiram Bangs, who had ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... this—he was too soft-hearted—but I will!" he cried, and flung a hand-grenade, and then a second, over the breastwork. The explosions were followed by agonized groans from the Grays hugging the lower side of the terrace. For this they had crawled across ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... cudgelled his brains for some means of increasing his slender resources. Friends advised him to try farming, or start a business in lending grain to cultivators. Neither trade was to his liking. Clerks are of little use outside their own sphere; and Sham Babu was too soft-hearted to succeed as a village Shylock. A matter of pressing importance was to establish his son Susil, who had passed the First Arts examination and was hanging about the Government offices at Ghoria, in the hope of securing a post. Sham Babu took ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... King coming back and breathing heavily, she stood up, and with huge tears on her red and crumpled face she looked out upon the fields as if she had never seen them before. An immense sob shook her. The King stamped his foot with rage, and then, because he was soft-hearted to them that he saw in sorrow, he put his hand ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... prating fellow, One that hath studyed out a trick to talk And move soft-hearted people; to ...
— The Maids Tragedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... have been,—a son-in-law to sit and think about, and dream of, and be proud of,—whose existence as her son-in-law would in itself have been a happiness to her out in her banishment at the other side of the world; but nevertheless it was natural to her, as a soft-hearted loving mother with many daughters, that any son-in-law should be dear to her. Now that she had gradually brought herself round to believe in Nora's marriage, she was disposed to make the best of Hugh, to remember that he was certainly a clever man, that he was ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... to-morrow," said Blucher, laconically. "If we do to-day what we can. he is annihilated. God grant that our victory may be followed up, and that they may not grow soft-hearted again at headquarters! The Emperor of Austria never forgets that Bonaparte is his son-in-law; nor the crown prince of Sweden that he is a native of France, and he would like to spare his countrymen further bloodshed; nor the Emperor of Russia, ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... said gravely: "it hardened them. I have been as soft-hearted as any man over the supposed maternal anguish of negro women, but I assure you, old fellow, my own observation quite cured me. It may be there are cases, such as we weep over in Uncle Tom's Cabin, but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... to be, like most giants, good-natured, lazy, stupid, soft-hearted, and extremely fond of drink. One night, his lady being engaged to dinner at Nightingale House, I saw Mr. Jeames resting himself on a bench at the "Pocklington Arms:" where, as he had no liquor before him, he had probably exhausted ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... soft-hearted turtles, hear What you alone profoundly will resent: A bird of your pure feather 'tis whom here Her desolate mate remaineth to lament, Whilst she is flown to meet her dearer love, And sing ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... fundamentally nasty about Morris Mr. Brock would not be inclined to overrate him. Mr. Brock pardons no unpardonable horrors: there are none here to pardon. But he overrates, or rather overmarks, William Morris as a scrupulous but soft-hearted examiner might overmark a sympathetic pupil. He never gives marks when the answer is wrong, but he gives a great many when it is right: and he is a little blind to deficiencies. He does not make ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... the world," she said. "I have never had enough money to be soft-hearted. No woman with feeling can get five hundred per cent. out ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... the Volscians about what had taken place. Some blamed him severely, while others approved, because they wished for peace. Others again, though they disliked what he had done, yet did not regard him as a traitor, but as a soft-hearted man who had yielded to overwhelming pressure. However, no one disobeyed him, but all followed him in his retreat, though more out of regard for his noble character than for ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... has got a sharp tongue in his head. He's an odd compound, just like a great big roasted potato, all crusty and crabbed without, but mealy and soft-hearted within. He takes me to be half a rogue and all the rest of me a scoundrel—Och, by St. Patrick! ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... shape of God's repenting of the evils he has brought on his people; and was the only trouble she ever kept from her mother: she feared to wake her own pain in the dearer heart. She could have told her father; for, although he was, she knew, just as loving as her mother, he was not so soft-hearted, and would not, she thought, distress himself too much about an ache more or less in a heart that had done its duty; but as she could not tell her mother, she would not tell her father. But her father and mother saw that a ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... cliffs, thinkin' she'd be likelier t' pick up a labourer as would be glad on a bed near his work. A'd ha' liked to ha' set her agait wi' a 'sponsible lodger afore a'd ha' left, for she's just so soft-hearted, any scamp may put upon her if he nobbut gets ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... damn tender, soft-hearted ways that will win in the end. My old Indian guide used to say, 'Much stick, good squaw.' Ann Penhallow has never in her whole life had any stick. Damn these sugar plum husbands! I'd like to know what Miss Leila Grey thinks of this performance. ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... "Don't be such a soft-hearted donkey, Harry, lad," retorted Bob. "Settle the whole lot if you can, boy; it'll only be so many skulking cut-throats the less in the world. My idee is that every one of them chaps as we can finish off ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... use as weapons to turn against us, be it to please some other man, or to smooth the path by which they escape from us. It was with a bracelet of Glycera's that I paid the captain of the ship that brought us to Alexandria; but the soft-hearted fool, whose dove flew after me, and I are men of a different stamp; I will follow my flown bird, and catch it again." He spoke the last words aloud, and then desired one of the senator's slaves to give his mule a good feed and drink, for his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... had a fine outfit which he let, and threw himself in as guide. Plenty of everything (including cheek) for fifteen people, the exact number who have put down their names to go. (Some girls and parents are staying for a ball at the Semiramis, where I've tearfully persuaded the only soft-hearted officers I know to dance with them—otherwise the lot would have been on my hands in the desert.) Had so much to do yesterday taking the crowd to Matariyeh, where the Holy Family hid in a hollow tree, that I had no time to look at the Arab's outfit. Was inclined ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... no good report could be given by his masters and ushers of that thick-set, square-faced, black-eyed, soft-hearted little Irish boy. He was very idle. He was whipped deservedly a great number of times. Though he had very good parts of his own, he got other boys to do his lessons for him, and only took just as much trouble as should enable him to scuffle through his exercises, and ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... These big, soft-hearted trappers were all crying now like women. No other thought occurred to them than that these ghastly remains were Bob's, for the toboggan and ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... their fates, thus Soft-hearted shrink from our own, When the measure we mete is meted to us, When we reap as we've always sown? Shall we who for pastime have squander'd life, Who are styled "the Lords of Creation", Recoil from our chance of more equal strife, ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... proceeded laughingly, "we started a rhyming club; but the first meeting was not quite a success. Every one of us proved so soft-hearted! The rules therefore were set at naught. So I can't help thinking that we must enlist your services as president of the society and superintendent; for what is needed to make the thing turn out well is firmness and no favour. The next matter is: ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... difficulty in accounting for everything. It was the witch who had enticed the children on to the moor and made them lose themselves; and, though she had sent them back safe and sound, it was impossible to say what trouble she might have in store for them. One soft-hearted woman did indeed suggest that no witch could have power to hurt such dear innocent angels; but Mrs. Fry promptly rose up in arms against her, for was not her Tommy also a dear innocent angel, though to be sure he was but a poor boy, whereas her Ladyship's children were rich? Then Mrs. ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue
... would throw himself upon his sisters' compassion—women were so soft-hearted and forgave so easily. But Cedric had refused this; he had even used strong language ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... she was a great favourite, shook his head reproachfully at her, as he paused to rest and wipe his heated countenance. He was a greasy and affable personage, whose temper was as easy as his morals. He was more soft-hearted than most of his compatriots, and he honestly liked Arithelli and admired ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... longer cares whom she hurts," runs another passage in this letter; "like an unloved child at bay she means, to smash and kill. The pity of it! Never was there a more generous, soft-hearted, kindly people. Germany, the land of the Christmas tree and folk songs, and hearthsides and gay childish laughter, turned into a relentless fighting machine! But each individual is a cog firmly fixed in the machine, which will go ever on as long as the ruling power ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... "making arrangements" about this bill; and had he seen John Tozer, John would have been compelled to accord to him some little extension of time. Both Tom and John knew this; and, therefore, John—the soft-hearted one—kept out of the way. There was no danger that Tom would be weak; and, after some half-hour of parley, he was again left by Mr. Sowerby, without having evinced ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... Horn country," he said long afterward. "I had picked that out as a happy hunting ground for years and years, and I never wanted to go anywhere so much as I wanted to go along with Theodore on that trip." But the memory of the lonely look in Will Dow's face overcame the soft-hearted backwoodsman at the last minute. He pointed out to Roosevelt that one man could not well handle the logs for the new ranch-house and suggested that he be allowed ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... in that Armada of Sir Chaloner's, just taking leave of England; most obscure of the items then, but now most noticeable, or almost alone noticeable, is a young Surgeon's-Mate,—one Tobias Smollett; looking over the waters there and the fading coasts, not without thoughts. A proud, soft-hearted, though somewhat stern-visaged, caustic and indignant young gentleman. Apt to be caustic in speech, having sorrows of his own under lock and key, on this and subsequent occasions. Excellent Tobias; he has, little as he hopes it, something considerable by way of mission in this Expedition, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... unfortunately, Captain West returned. All the victuals and munitions having been put ashore, the old factious projects were revived. The soft-hearted West was made to believe that the rebellion had been solely on his account. Smith, seeing them bent on their own way, took the row-boat for Jamestown. The colony abandoned the pleasant Non-such and returned ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... couldn't, and felt the spirit to move a mountain, and were obliged to lie still on a sofa!" Pixie bounced in a characteristic fashion on her own sofa corner, and whisked a minute pocket-handkerchief to her eyes. "Excuse me, me dear, will you change the conversation? I was always soft-hearted, but red eyes at a dinner party are not a la mode. ... Let's talk ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... sunny lands there would have been sown Seeds of Regret, which would have blossomed eventually into Flowers of Despair. I should have gone about the world, a modern Admetus, snivelling at my accursed luck, without even the chance of persuading a soft-hearted Alcestis to die for me. I should have been a dismal nuisance ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... started on what's like to prove the last trail for both of us, understand? By night we'll both be outlawed. They'll have a price on us, and long before night, Kern will be after us. For the first time in your soft-hearted life you've got to work, and you've ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... own, no," Harris said; "only one that's going to be his later on. Did it ever strike you as queer that Slade, whose way is to crush every new outfit, should suffer a soft-hearted streak every year or so and befriend some party that had elected to start up for himself right in the middle of Slade's range? And later buy him out? That's the way he came into nearly every ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... on it and I went out into the kitchen to laugh it over with the cat. I'm a soft-hearted boob and I hate to take a sucker, at that. But accordin' to my dope, that dough of friend Alex's was the same as in ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... my way, mon Lieutenant, we would take no prisoners, hands up or hands down," he said; "we are too soft-hearted ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... blessing of Heaven on us now departing from them over the wild seas. Kit took off his cap; and we all followed his example, as if impelled to it. It was really an affecting incident. Our hardy captain is not a soft-hearted man; but I saw him wipe a tear from his eye as the chant ceased. I have not sought to color the picture. There was a wonderful pathos about it. We had not heard the song before; and I am inclined to believe it extempore,—one of those musical efforts which persons in what we term the ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... in spite of her anger, was very soft-hearted, was touched at their distress, and ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... taxes—whew! Last summer things were smashed generally, and when Will (his brother) sailed in Sherman's expedition, it was a blue day enough: how his mother and the girls did carry on! (Nabbes and Will supported the family, by the way; and Nabbes, inside of his slang, billiards, etc., was a good, soft-hearted fellow.) However, the country was looking up now. There were our victories,—and his own salary was raised. Will was snug down at Port Royal,—sent the girls home some confoundedly pretty jewelry; they were as busy as bees, knitting socks, and—What, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... calves, and went trembling down the steps towards the boat. The good old man! I wish I had had a shake of that trembling podgy hand somehow before he went upon his sea martyrdom. I felt a love for that soft-hearted old Christian. Ah! let us hope his governante tucked him comfortably in bed when he got to Faro that night, and made him a warm gruel and put his feet in warm water. The men clung around him, and almost kissed him as they popped him into the boat, but he did not ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Of course you weren't tired! Oh, Phil, Phil, you are your father's own son; too soft-hearted for this 'miserable and naughty world.' It won't be able to resist taking ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... A soft-hearted, soft-headed man, a confirmed valtudinarian, a day-dreamer, who had wasted away his life in dawdling and maundering over Simple Poetry, and sighing over his unhappy attachment; no child, no babe, was more ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... paralysing than the burning presentation of them in the morning's sermon. She was spared questions herself, as she was a stranger; and sat to hear girls of her own age and older men and women who looked as soft-hearted as herself, utter definitions of the method of salvation and the being and character of God that compelled the assent of her intellect, while they jarred with her spiritual experience as fiercely as brazen ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... the earth be drunken with our blood: Ile kill my Horse, because I will not flye: Why stand we like soft-hearted women heere, Wayling our losses, whiles the Foe doth Rage, And looke vpon, as if the Tragedie Were plaid in iest, by counterfetting Actors. Heere on my knee, I vow to God aboue, Ile neuer pawse againe, neuer stand still, Till either ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... found little to his liking in the editorial and still less in the critical part of his work. "I do not profess," he wrote, "the art and mystery of reviewing, and am not ambitious of being wise or facetious at the expense of others." He was never a good critic, for he was too soft-hearted, and too little in conceit with his own judgment to give an unfavorable opinion. And this was in the period of "slashing" criticism, when it was the proper thing, unless an author could show good reason for being declared the greatest man of the age, to hang, draw, and quarter him on the spot. ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... tendency to terrify me, at first. But now I know what a colossal old fraud and humbug this same soft-hearted and granite-crusted specimen of humanity can be. For last night, after the usual demonstration, I slipped out to the Blue Room and found big Dunkie kneeling down beside little Dinkie's bed, with Dinkie's small hand softly enclosed in his dad's big paw, ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... with strange devices, to preserve his own grotesque existence. A James the First, who can sanction at the least, if not direct, the torture to be applied to a poor, old, clergyman, was yet in the main a soft-hearted man, can feel most tenderly for a broken limb of any favourite, have an anxious affection for "Steenie and Baby Charles," and an undoubted, and provident, regard for his own "sacred" person. What shall we say, too, of that Chancellor of his, a man, like his master, of a soft heart, full of the ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... and revelling in glory, now disfigured in body and broken in spirit, does not know which way to turn; sees that to go on is dangerous, to return a betrayal of vacillation; has the loyalists his enemies, the disloyal themselves not his friends. Yet see how soft-hearted I am. I could not refrain from tears when, on the 25th of July, I saw him making a speech on the edicts of Bibulus. The man who in old times had been used to bear himself in that place with the utmost confidence and dignity, surrounded by the warmest affection ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... the fray and wanted all to know it. Yet there was something in the eye, in the setness of the jaw, in the hair-trigger calm, yet fiercely savage grip in which he closed his strong hands on the arms of his chair, that told me more plainly than words that this was not the optimistic, soft-hearted Bob Brownley I had known and loved. I could not help feeling that if I had been a leader of the Russian terrorists, and this man who now sat before me had come to my ken when I was selecting bomb-throwers, I should have seized upon ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... yours! You know all there is to know, now! What else could you find out? You know how he's given all his life to looking out for his family, ending up with years of that bed-ridden old aunt the others wished on to him, just because he was too soft-hearted to get out from under. You know how anxious the Company was to do something to make up to him for all the years of service he gave them. And you know how happy he has been here, how he's loved it all, and fathered every root and seed in his garden, ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... the "living relatives" whose sorrows so sympathetically affect these soft-hearted and soft-headed persons are those of the murderer, not those of his victim, let us consider what they really say, not what they think they say: "Death is no very great punishment, for the criminal doesn't mind it much, but hopeless captivity is a very great ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... "it's all for the best. Don't cross your bridges before you come to them. Wait till I tell you everything. That fox, Daney, had the common sense to call the girl on the telephone and explain the situation; he induced her to come out here and tease that soft-hearted moonstruck son of ours back to life. And when Donald's strong enough to stand alone—by Jupiter, that's exactly how he's going to stand!—We're not the slightest bit compromised, my dears. The McKaye ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... joke, and while he chuckled over the recollection that it had been an expensive jest to the perpetrator, who had lost a valuable gold coin by the transaction, he had no fancy for exposing himself to any further ridicule on the occasion. So the bluff, imperious, soft-hearted captain issued an ukase commanding silence on the subject; and silence was observed, not in the least because Rosamond Duncombe or Susan Trott were afraid of him, but because Rosamond loved her father, and ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... no carriage of note had passed, Edith ventured to get her transplanting trowel, doff her gloves, and commence dividing her flower roots, that she might put them elsewhere. She became so interested in her work that she was positively happy, and soft-hearted Malcom, with his eye for the beauties of nature, was getting his rows crooked, because of so many admiring glances toward her as she went to ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... of her charities pained the soft-hearted Pamela not a little. To give to all who asked her had been the one unselfish pleasure of her narrow soul. She had been imposed upon, of course; had fed families whose fathers squandered their weekly wages in the cosy taproom of a village inn; had in some wise encouraged idleness ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... known Mrs. Mart in the days when, as a blooming school-girl, the latter used to trip by the Cranston homestead, and had striven to aid her through the failing fortunes of the months preceding Mart's last strike; it was her voluble account of the state of affairs that prompted this soft-hearted squadron commander to take Mart by the hand and bid him tell his troubles. Mart broke down. He'd been a fool and a dupe, he knew and realized it, but Elmendorf had so preached about his higher destiny and the absolute certainty of triumph and victory if they ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... don't make lads as true and white as he to be killed off by a pack of jail vermin. Come to the wall as he told us to. Maybe we'll get a shot at those murderers before the day is done. Come along an' stop that blubberin'," and he grabbed the soft-hearted little darky by the arm and dragged ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... Yet it is undoubtedly Shakespearean in part, probably in great part; and it immediately reminds us of King Lear. Both plays deal with the tragic effects of ingratitude. In both the victim is exceptionally unsuspicious, soft-hearted and vehement. In both he is completely overwhelmed, passing through fury to madness in the one case, to suicide in the other. Famous passages in both plays are curses. The misanthropy of Timon pours itself out in a torrent of maledictions on the whole race of man; and these ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... had always been soft-hearted towards women, so now he was embarrassed. In the handling of these cattle he was carrying out the orders of his superiors; he had no power to grant favors to any one, and he told Miriam this again and again. But she would not listen to ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... girl was listening to every word, many an episode which in the aggregate had given him the reputation he bore throughout these wild miles of cattle land, the reputation of a man who was hard, hard as rock "on the outside," as she put it, hard inside, too, when they drove him to it, but naturally as soft-hearted as a baby. She wished she had a boy like him! Why, when she and John hit hard luck, last year, what with the cattle getting diseased first and her and John getting laid up next, flat of their backs with the grip, that man was an angel in britches ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... systematically fleeced by the undeserving poor—people who have no earthly business to be poor, who have hands and heads which can give them a competence, only they are moral idiots. No woman should be allowed full use of large sums of money. She is so soft-hearted, she can't say no, and she's imposed on ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... the shop, scarcely heeding the voice of Mr. Mossrose, who said, "I'll take forty per shent" (and went back to his duty cursing himself for a soft-hearted fool for giving up so much of his rights to a puling woman). Morgiana, I say, tottered out of the shop, and went up Conduit Street, weeping, weeping with all her eyes. She was quite faint, for she had taken nothing that morning but the glass of water which the pastry-cook ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... appearance; and these rosy urchins, springing forward, shouted affectionately, "Maman! Maman!" to the great astonishment and bewilderment of James Gann, who well-nigh fainted at this sudden paternity so put upon him. However, being a good-humoured, soft-hearted man, he kissed his lady hurriedly, and vowed that he would take care of the poor little things, whom he would also have kissed, but the darlings refused his caress with ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... her happiness really depends on it he will give his leave. It all depends on that. If I judge your father rightly, he's just as soft-hearted as other people. The man who holds out is not the man of the firmest opinion, but the man ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... savage very kindly, and ought to have received more gratitude. Perhaps when she hears how her adopted child wandered about at night, and ended by killing Clear, she will be glad she is dead and buried. Yet, I don't know. Women are wonderfully soft-hearted, and certainly Rhoda is thought no end of by that ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... order not to awaken any suspicions, and avoid any too curious questions. But I confess I had none of the coolness of which people boast who have found themselves in the same position. All that evening I felt inclined to be soft-hearted and sentimental. ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... mother being dead, take care of him? He was twelve, healthy and intelligent—which led directly to the evening when I sat, very cross, at my desk and fished young John's note out of the scrap-basket. I had got as far in answer as "Dear John"—when these visions of the past interrupted. I am not soft-hearted. I am crabbed and prejudiced and critical, and I dislike irregularity. Above all I am thoroughly selfish. But the sum of that is short of being brutal. Only sheer brutality could repel the lad's note and request. My answer went ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... against it, but they said nothing more in opposition, knowing that it would be of no avail. Obliging, generous, and soft-hearted, the candidate, nevertheless, had a temper of steel when his mind was made up, and the others had learned not to oppose it. But all shunned the journey with him to Crow's Wing except Harley, Mr. Plummer, Mr. Herbert Heathcote—because there is ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... place, sir, off and on, for nigh three hundred years. We're a good many Simlins'—and we're a good set, I'll say it! a pretty good set. Not thin-skinned, you know,—we can take a scratch without bein' killed—but we never would stand bein' trampled on. We're soft-hearted too; plenty o' what I may call tendrils, ready to take hold of anything; and when we take hold we do take hold. We cover a good deal of ground in the country, here and elsewhere—in the various branches. My mother was a Mush, and my grandmother was a Citron; a good families ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner |
