"Cowardice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... because he had arrived at old age without dignity and without any sense of what was fine in life; he was not even susceptible to the chastening influences of a sick-room. She knew, indeed, that he hated and despised sickness in others, and that when ill himself he became a moaning mass of cowardice and vituperation. And in her heart she invented the most wonderful excuses for him, and transformed him into a martyr of destiny who had suffered both through ancestry and through environment. Was it his fault that he was thus tragically defective? ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... eventful history, Valerie," said the old gentleman. "I agree with you on the propriety of making your existence known to your brother, and also to your father, who has been sufficiently punished for his cowardice. Whether your father will be able to contain his secret, I doubt very much; and from what you have told me of your mother, I should certainly not trust myself in France. I am not very well informed of the laws of the country, but it is my impression that children are there under the control ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... general social rule, that a lady should refuse a gentleman's hand, unless the gentleman's mother were a consenting party to the marriage. She would have held any such doctrine as absurd. The lady, she would have said, would have had to look to her own family and no further. It was not virtue but cowardice which had influenced her, and she had none of that solace which may come to us in misfortune from a consciousness that our own conduct has been blameless. Lady Lufton had inspired her with awe, and any such feeling on her part was mean, ignoble, and unbecoming the spirit with which she ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... call,—he is in Mars. But the sentinel, still as marble, or moving like a well-adjusted machine that will not defy law—he stirs us by his energy, his laboring vigilance. His care for others would make him surrender his life at once. The trusted soldier has left selfishness and cowardice on the first tenting-ground, and works hard, though he stands statue-like. It is his business to be of use, and he is never useless. So with a great artist. He is brother to gentleman or churl. Hawthorne had not an atom of the poison of contempt. As I have said before, if he did not love stupidity, ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... drachmas a head. Upon the whole account, there remained two hundred and forty Romans unexchanged, and the senate now not only refused to allow money for the ransoms, but also reproached Fabius for making a contract, contrary to the honor and interest of the commonwealth, for redeeming men whose cowardice had put them in the hands of the enemy. Fabius heard and endured all this with invincible patience; and, having no money by him, and on the other side being resolved to keep his word with Hannibal and not to abandon the captives, he dispatched ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
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