Literary notes about callously (AI summary)
The adverb "callously" is often employed to convey a stark, unfeeling indifference or cruelty in characters’ behavior and attitudes. Writers use it to accentuate moments where individuals act without empathy—whether it’s in dismissing someone’s feelings with casual cruelty [1, 2], administering brutal actions devoid of emotion [3, 4, 5], or making cold, calculated remarks that highlight a character’s lack of compassion [6, 7, 8]. In these contexts, "callously" not only defines a detached tone but also deepens the reader’s understanding of a character’s moral disposition and the harsh realities within the narrative.
- "That worries us a heap, Shorty," answered Hart callously.
— from Gunsight Pass: How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West by William MacLeod Raine - "If my back aches," she warned him callously, "you'll have to take me home, you know!
— from While Caroline Was Growing by Josephine Daskam Bacon - The result of those years has been torn from us, callously, brutally.
— from The Great Gold Rush: A Tale of the Klondike by W. H. P. (William Henry Pope) Jarvis - They saw them throw down their victims on the grass before the old man, and callously kill them with lance and sword.
— from Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish, Greek, Belgian, Hungarian - Women and children—how irreverently they have been thought of, how callously and brutally treated, since history began!
— from The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ: A Devotional History of Our Lord's Passion by James Stalker - When McKee callously informed him that the agent had been killed in the encounter, Bud was too horrified to speak.
— from The Round-Up: A Romance of Arizona; Novelized from Edmund Day's Melodrama by Marion Mills Miller - I knew that my next meeting with Lord Dangars could not be long delayed, and I taught myself to think of it coldly and callously.
— from The Profligate: A Play in Four Acts by Arthur Wing Pinero - What will you say when I tell you that though I played the lawyer so callously, they made me think so too?
— from Man and Superman: A Comedy and a Philosophy by Bernard Shaw
