gratuitous

The attack must have all the shocking senselessness of gratuitous blasphemy.

The self-sacrifice of a father or mother, or self-sacrifice with the possibility of a reward, is more comprehensible than gratuitous self-sacrifice, and therefore seems less deserving of sympathy and less the result of free will.

If we are to avoid a perfectly gratuitous assumption, we must dispense with the subject as one of the actual ingredients of the world.

``Fearless and wicked as they are, they dare not attempt such open and gratuitous cruelty!''

"Dear father," he said sadly, "I wish you would not expose yourself to such gratuitous pain from scoundrels!"

The time and the manner of his asking her appeared like a gratuitous insult to me; and I could have wept with pure vexation.

(the only gratuitous) part of the falsehood and trickery of such men's lives, or whether they really hope to cheat Heaven itself, and lay up treasure in the next world by the same process which has enabled them to lay up treasure in this--not to question how it is, so it is.

Scorn, bitterness, unprovoked malignity, gratuitous desire of ill, ridicule of whatever was good and holy, all awoke to tempt, even while they frightened him.

He had hardly returned from the marquee with the prize in his hand, when it began to be understood that Wiry Ben proposed to amuse the company, before the gentry went to dinner, with an impromptu and gratuitous performance--namely, a hornpipe, the main idea of which was doubtless borrowed; but this was to be developed by the dancer in so peculiar and complex a manner that no one could deny him the praise of originality.

This distinction was rather a gratuitous concession made by the poorer and less polished part of the population than a right claimed by the favored few.

" vociferated the General as, turning to the Frenchman, he declared that my bringing about of the incident had been gratuitous. De Griers smiled contemptuously, and shrugged his shoulders.

The egotism of this speech was not wholly gratuitous. I thought it did seem strange to him: that a needless constraint was put upon him by excessive consideration for my feelings.