Wanton Quotes - Page 2

• Full many wanton babes have I,
  Which must be stilled with lullaby.

  George Gascoigne

  Babe, Lullaby

  George Gascoigne, Roger Pooley (1982). “The green knight: selected poetry and prose”, Carcanet Pr

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• Saddam Hussein's mind would have been a unique resource for historical, political and psychological research: a resource that is now forever unavailable to scholars... In a small way his execution represents a wanton and vandalistic destruction of important research data.

  Richard Dawkins

  Unique, Data, Forever

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• The lust of dominion innovates so imperceptibly that we become complete despots before our wanton abuse of power is perceived; the tyranny first exercised in the nursery is exhibited in various shapes and degrees in every stage of our existence.

  Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

  Lust, Abuse, Degrees

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• Society expects man to be a passive social animal who believes like the People of the Field in "Jurgen" that "to do what you always have done" and "what is expected of you" are the twin rules of life. This, is course, is not true. The wanton crucifixion of impulses, the unnecessary blocking and frustration of the drives and urges, are an evil that reflects itself in sophistication, ennui and boredom, dissatisfaction, melancholy, fatigue, anxiety and neurosis.

  Abraham Myerson

  Life, Block, Believe

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• [D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few.

  John Adams

  Eye, Men, Intellectual

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• Compassion is an emotion of which we ought never to be ashamed. Graceful, particularly in youth, is the tear of sympathy, and the heart that melts at the tale of woe. We should not permit ease and indulgence to contract our affections, and wrap us up in a selfish enjoyment; but we should accustom ourselves to think of the distresses of human, life, of the solitary cottage; the dying parent, and the weeping orphan. Nor ought we ever to sport with pain and distress in any of our amusements, or treat even the meanest insect with wanton cruelty.

  Hugh Blair

  Sports, Pain, Selfish

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• Nuptial love makes mankind; friendly love perfects it; but wanton love corrupts and debases it.

  Francis Bacon

  Love, Friendly, Mankind

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• Therefore we Christians, in turn, are obliged not to tolerate their wanton and conscious blasphemy.

  Martin Luther

  Christian, Conscious, Turns

  Martin Luther “On the Jews & Their Lies”, Gottfried & Fritz

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• Fortune, delighting in her cruel task, and playing her wanton game untiringly, is ever shifting her uncertain favours.

  Horace

  Games, Tasks, Shifting

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• Youth must be wanton, youth must be quick, Dance to the candle while lasteth the wick.

  Tennessee Williams

  Youth, Candle

  Tennessee Williams, David Ernest Roessel (2007). “The Collected Poems of Tennessee Williams”, p.169, New Directions Publishing

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• War is never lenient but where it is wanton; where men are compelled to fight in self-defence, they must hate and avenge. This may be bad, but it is human nature; it is the clay as it came from the hands of the Potter.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Hate, War, Fighting

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• The best minds will tell you that when a man has begotten a child he is morally bound to tenderly care for it, protect it from hurt, shield it from disease, clothe it, feed it, bear with its waywardness, lay no hand upon it save in kindness and for its own good, and never in any case inflict upon it a wanton cruelty. God's treatment of his earthly children, every day and every night, is the exact opposite of all that, yet those best minds warmly justify these crimes, condone them, excuse them, and indignantly refuse to regard them as crimes at all, when he commits them.

  Mark Twain

  Hurt, Kindness, Children

  Mark Twain (2017). “MARK TWAIN: 12 Novels, 195 Short Stories, Autobiography, 10 Travel Books, 160+ Essays & Speeches (Illustrated): Including Letters & Biographies – The Complete Works of Mark Twain: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn, The Innocents Abroad, Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Life on the Mississippi…”, p.4595, e-artnow

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• A wanton eye is a messenger of an unchaste heart.

  Saint Augustine

  Heart, Eye, Messengers

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• Every wanton and causeless restraint of the will of the subject, whether practiced by a monarch, a nobility, or a popular assembly, is a degree of tyranny.

  William Blackstone

  Degrees, Assembly, Tyranny

  Sir William Blackstone, John Fletcher Hargrave, George Sweet, Sir Richard Couch, William Newland Welsby (1852). “Commentaries on the Laws of England : in Four Books, with an Analysis of the Work”, p.126

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• Though no participator in the joy of more vehement sport, I have a pleasure that I cannot reconcile to my abstract notions of the tenderness due to dumb creatures in the tranquil cruelty of angling. I can only palliate the wanton destructiveness of my amusement by trying to assure myself that my pleasure does not spring from the success of the treachery I practise toward a poor little fish, but rather from that innocent revelry in the luxuriance of summer life which only anglers enjoy to the utmost.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Summer, Sports, Spring

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• The tragedy of the people of Palestine is that their country was “given” by a foreign power to another people for the creation of a new state. The result was that many hundreds of thousands of innocent people were made permanently homeless. With every new conflict their numbers increased. How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty?

  Bertrand Russell

  Country, Numbers, People

  Bertrand Russell, Ray Perkins (Jr.) (2002). “Yours Faithfully, Bertrand Russell: A Lifelong Fight for Peace, Justice, and Truth in Letters to the Editor”, p.411, Open Court Publishing

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• There is in man's nature a secret inclination and motion towards love of others, which, if it be not spent upon some one or a few, doth naturally spread itself towards many, and maketh men become humane and charitable, as it is seen sometimes in friars. Nuptial love maketh mankind, friendly love perfecteth it, but wanton love corrupteth and embaseth it.

  Francis Bacon

  Love, Men, Secret

  Francis Bacon, Basil Montagu (1825). “The Works of Francis Bacon, Lord Chancellor of England: A New Edition:”, p.33

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• We ought never to sport with pain and distress in any of our amusements, or treat even the meanest insect with wanton cruelty.

  Hugh Blair

  Sports, Pain, Cuckoos

  Hugh Blair, Alfred Howard (Esq.) (1810). “The Beauties of Blair: Consisting of Selections from His Works”, p.18

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• Love, whose month is ever May,
  Spied a blossom passing fair,
  Playing in the wanton air:
  Through the velvet leaves the wind,
  All unseen can passage find;
  That the lover, sick to death,
  Wish'd himself the heaven's breath.

  William Shakespeare

  Air, Wind, Sick

  William Shakespeare, John Payne Collier (1847). “Shakespeare's Plays: With His Life”

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• The consequences of inflation are malinvestment, waste, a wanton redistribution of wealth and income, the growth of speculation and gambling, immorality and corruption, disillusionment, social resentment, discontent, upheaval and riots, bankruptcy, increased government controls, and eventual collapse.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Gambling, Government, Growth

  Henry Hazlitt (1971). “Man Vs. the Welfare State”, p.136, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• The wondrous thing about nature, her gift to us, is her wanton promiscuity. She reproduces herself with abandon, with teeming infinite generosity.

  Ruth Ozeki

  Generosity, Infinite, Abandon

  Ruth Ozeki (2013). “All Over Creation”, p.229, Canongate Books

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• You must in your music be wavering like the wind; sometimes wanton, sometimes drooping, sometimes grave and staid, otherwhile effeminate; and the more variety you show, the better shall you please.

  Thomas Morley

  Wind, Wavering, Sometimes

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• To minimize my guilt at going to the pictures - to call this wanton pursuit of an effete pleasure by another name - I needed movie companions as drunkards need drinking partners. If I entered a cinema alone, God might plunge his arm through the roof of the auditorium booming in a stereophonic voice, 'And you, Crisp, what are you doing here?' I would never have dared reply, 'I'm just enjoying myself, Lord.'

  Quentin Crisp

  Drinking, Names, Voice

  "The Naked Civil Servant". Book by Quentin Crisp, Chapter 27, 1968.

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• blind wantons like the gulls who scream
  And rip the edge off any ideal or dream.

  Louis MacNeice

  Dream, Rip, Gulls

  Louis MacNeice (2015). “Selected Poems”, p.42, Faber & Faber

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• He had by now divested himself of schoolboy attitudes. He was unburdened by the desire to be a martyr or a hero. Any thoughts in that direction, Belgica effectively had quashed. Heroism in the corrupt sense of the age almost by definition, meant wanton self-sacrifice and bungling. For neither had he any taste. He wanted rational attainment; victory, but not at any price. No point upon the globe was worth the cost of a single life.

  Roland Huntford

  Life, Attitude, Hero

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