HEARTLESS

James Thurber


The laughter of man is more terrible than his tears, and takes more forms—hollow, heartless, mirthless, maniacal.


Antoine de Saint - Expury
Flight to Arras, ch. 15, 1942

The injustice of defeat lies in the fact that its most innocent victims are made to look like heartless accomplices. It is impossible to see behind defeat, the sacrifices, the austere performance of duty, the self-discipline and the vigilance that are there—those things the god of battle does not take account of.







Charles Caleb Colton (1780 - 1832)







In America every woman has her set of girl-friends; some are cousins, the rest are gained at school. These form a permanent committee who sit on each other's affairs, who "come out" together, marry and divorce together, and who end as those groups of bustling, heartless well-informed club-women who govern society. Against them the Couple of Ehepaar is helpless and Man in their eyes but a biological interlude.




Charlotte Bronte
Jane Eyre


"I tell you I must go! Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automaton?-a machine without feelings? And can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!"

Woodrow Wilson

The truth is, we are all caught in a great economic system which is heartless.

The New Freedom [1913], Chapter 1

Karl Marx 1818 -1883


Religion is the sign of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.


Heartless they fought, and quitted soon their ground." (Dryden)

James Joseph Sylvester (1814-1897)
Kepler's Apostrophe


Stung in her turn, the heartless fair
Who proudly eyes me now,
Shall weep to see some other share
The godhead of my brow;
Shall weep to see some lovelier star
Snatched to my soul's embrace,
Ascend with me Fame's fiery car
And claim celestial place.


Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)
Love's Nocturn


Wheresoe'er my dreams befall,
Both at night-watch, (let it say,)
And where round the sundial
The reluctant hours of day,
Heartless, hopeless of their way,
Rest and call;--
There her glance doth fall and stay.