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More "Cowardice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the period is opposed to this theory of cowardice. There was nothing special for him to fear when Caesar was in Gaul, and Crassus about to start for Syria, and Pompey for his provinces. Such was the condition of Rome, social and political, that all was ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... and the Master were keenly aware of conditions. And they did their best,—a useless best,—to mitigate them for the dog. They labored over Cyril, to make him leave Lad alone. They pointed out to him the mean cowardice of his course of torture. They even threatened to send him to nearer relatives until his parents' return. All in vain. Faced with the most undeniable proofs, the child invariably would lie. He denied that he had ever ill-used Lad in ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... now continues his account of the conspiracy entered into in B.C. 64. [113] Per ignaviam, 'by means of cowardice,' here means, 'with the assistance of cowardly men,' 'such as you are not, since I have evidence of your valour and trustworthiness.' Vana ingenia are men of untrustworthy character. In both cases ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... drips from me like a candle spent, And e'en my sword this murderer denies, Though granting it would render him less vile. For shame! Such cowardice! He fears my thumb, For that is all that's left ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... of honour, to be judiciously valiant, to have a temperance which shall beget a smoothness in the angry swellings of youth, to esteem life as nothing when the sacred reputation of a parent is to be defended, yet to shake and tremble under a pious cowardice when that ark of an honest confidence is found to be frail and tottering, to feel the true blows of a real disgrace blunting that sword which the imaginary strokes of a supposed false imputation had put so keen an edge upon but lately; to do, or to imagine this done in a feigned ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... our laughter and our rage. Look on us with our sins oppressed! I, too, have trodden mine heritage, Wickedly wearying of the best. Burn from my brain and from my breast Sloth, and the cowardice that clings, And stiffness and the soul's arrest: And feed my brain with ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... by their lengthened defiance of the efforts to quell them, attributed cowardice and corruption with an unsparing bitterness; yet the difficulties even of the well-disposed were great, and they were often ignorant of the movements of the robbers. Their retreats were often in the forests, and known only to ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... have premonitions of coming ill, but this could not be said in the present instance of Bradley and his young companion. Bradley had the shrewdness to read the real cowardice of Mosely, who was the leader, and did not dream that he would have the courage to take the horses. But then, he did not know the danger in which their two visitors had placed themselves by their recent theft. Danger will strengthen the courage of the timid, and, in this case, it ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger
... and see if there are not many things which they can help, and if there are, by all means to help them. What is inevitable comes to us from God, no matter how many hands it passes through; but submission to unnecessary evils is cowardice or laziness; and extolling of the evil as good is sheer ignorance, or perversity, or servility. Even the ills that must be borne should be borne under protest, lest patience degenerate into slavery. Christian character ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... a thousand times, ever since I have been engaged in public matters, I have hardly heard anything else but that. It is precisely your own case, when, as a bishop, people reproach you for your impiety; or, as a musketeer, for your cowardice; the very thing of which they are always accusing ministers of finance is ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... pretty much alone in this convention. I am alone! I represent no faction, no interest except the cause of the humble who have asked for help from the masters who have been set over them. Perhaps I ought to have remained silent here to-day. My cowardice has been prompting me to keep still. It is no easy matter for me to stand up here and disturb the order of events which had been arranged by the gentlemen who have managed your public affairs for you so many years. But it would be much more difficult for some of the others here to speak, ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... finger, Savage and sly as aught of land could be, Erased the little wrinkling of the sea. O, in such enmity was man enisled, Such loneliness, by foolish shades beguiled, That it was bravery to see and live, But cowardice to see and to forgive, The wrong of evil, the wrong of death to life, The defeat of innocence, the waste of strife,— The heavy ills of time, injustice, pain— In field and forest and flood rose huge and plain, Brushing her mind with darkness, till she thought Not with her brain, but all ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... heart bounded with joy. Still, as he trudged onward through streets glittering in the morning sunlight, Caleb's conscience told him that not thus should this rival be overcome, that he who went to accuse the brave Marcus of cowardice was himself a coward, and that from the lie which he was about to act if not to speak, could spring no fruit of peace or happiness. But he was mad and blind. He could think only of Miriam—the woman whom he loved with all his passionate nature and whose life he had preserved ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... world does move. I never thought to be able to congratulate the Circulating Libraries on their attitude towards a work of art; and here in common fairness I, who have so often animadverted upon their cowardice, am obliged to laud their courage. The instant cause of this is Mrs. Elinor Glyn's new novel, "His Hour" (Duckworth, 6s.) Everybody who cares for literature knows, or should know, Mrs. Glyn's fine carelessness of popular opinion (either here or in the States), and the singleness of her regard ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... angry mon was yon tall Captain Scott [Footnote: Afterwards Major- General Scott, Commander-in-Chief of the United States army. The prisoners were sent to Montreal and Quebec. Hull was subsequently court-marshalled for cowardice and condemned to death, but he was reprieved on account of Revolutionary service.] at thae surrender. How he stamped an' ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... continued in his obstinate voice, resonant with proud courage: "And if Catholicism, as its enemies pretend, be really stricken unto death, it must die standing and in all its glorious integrality. You hear me, Monsieur l'Abbe—not one concession, not one surrender, not a single act of cowardice! Catholicism is such as it is, and cannot be otherwise. No modification of the divine certainty, the entire truth, is possible. The removal of the smallest stone from the edifice could only prove a cause of instability. Is this not evident? You cannot save old houses ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... her father's office was a part of a story she was writing based upon an incident that had occurred at a reunion of Captain Wilson's regiment that fall in Montgomery. A man who had been drummed out of the regiment for cowardice suddenly reappeared among his old comrades with an explanation that restored him to honored fellowship. Phil had elaborated the real incident as Captain Wilson described it, and invested it with the element ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... his bosom. I dreaded not his violence. The death that he might be prompted to inflict was no object of aversion. It was poverty and disgrace, the detection of my crimes, the looks and voice of malediction and upbraiding, from which my cowardice shrunk. ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... shrewd, sly little scamps, and appeared not to have the resolution of chickadees, but had a singular genius for getting others into trouble. They knew how to handle spirits like Harold. They dared him to do evil deeds, taunted him (as openly as they felt it safe to do) with cowardice, and so spurred him to attempt some trifling depredation merely as a piece of adventure. Almost invariably when they touched him on this nerve Harold responded with a rush, and when discovery came was nearly always among the culprits taken and branded, for his pride would not permit ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... inquisitors that he fled from Louvain in the autumn of 1521, and settled in Basle. He was strongly urged by both parties to come out on one side or the other, and he was openly taunted by Ulrich von Hutten, a hot Lutheran, for cowardice in not doing so. Alienated by this and by the dogmatism and intolerance of Luther's writings, Erasmus finally defined his position in a Diatribe on Free Will. [Sidenote: 1524] As Luther's theory ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... cowardice in refraining from answering such an attack. I am aware, Canon, of a growing feeling ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... learned to be ashamed of their cowardice, and their dumb lips learned to speak, and their shy, hidden love forced for itself a channel by which it could flow out into the light; because of Christ's death. And in another fashion that same ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... in a panic without any doubt, and Captain Scott was inclined to feel that "the coon had come down." Mazagan spoke to them in a savage tone, as though he was reproving them for their cowardice; but they plainly did not relish the idea of being shot down without being able to make any resistance, for there was nothing that looked like a musket to be seen ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... for us to judge an inspired person. That's where you men have an advantage. You are inspired sometimes both in thought and action. I have always admitted that when you are inspired, when you manage to throw off your masculine cowardice and prudishness you are not to be equalled by us. Only, how seldom.... Whereas the silliest woman can always be made of use. And why? Because we have passion, unappeasable passion.... I should like to know what he ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... Dupin once more; he is our official man, we have need of him." They went to look for him. They could not find him. He was no longer there, he had disappeared, he was away, hidden, crouching, cowering, concealed, he had vanished, he was buried. Where? No one knew. Cowardice has unknown holes. ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... frozen. The snow in which they stood had soaked their shoes and chilled their feet; there were holes in the shoes which some of them wore. The snow stuck to their hats and clung on their shoulders, making streaks there like fleecy epaulets done in the colour of peace, which also is the colour of cowardice and surrender. There was a cold wind which made them all shiver and set the teeth of many of them to chattering; but they ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... the strain of consistency, must conform to that as the chief of the folkways. It was at the beginning of the empire that the Romans began to breed slaves because wars no longer brought in new supplies.[137] Sex, vice, laziness, decline of energy and enterprise, cowardice, and contempt for labor were consequences of slavery, for the free.[138] The system operated, in both the classical states, as a selection against the superior elements in the population. This effect was intensified by the political system. The city became an arena ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... (gypsy) is celebrated for his sneaking cowardice, and his fiddle playing, he being a naturally gifted musician, as any one who has heard czigany music in ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... contrary of a good is an evil is shown by induction: the contrary of health is disease, of courage, cowardice, and so on. But the contrary of an evil is sometimes a good, sometimes an evil. For defect, which is an evil, has excess for its contrary, this also being an evil, and the mean, which is a good, is equally the contrary of the one and of the other. It is only in a few cases, however, that we ...
— The Categories • Aristotle
... dreadful tale you have told me,' I groaned. 'If you have told me the truth, and not lied in order to hide your own cowardice, the Sahib Eccles is probably dead. This, however, must be ascertained immediately, and his body must be found and brought in. You will guide me at once to the spot, and we shall follow ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... guide, "that I was disgusted at their cowardice; so, to shame them, as well as to do what I could for the travellers, I loaded a couple of my mules with meat, and said I would set off alone. This had the desired effect, for three men volunteered to go with me. When we reached the hut we found that six of the ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... partial, but total, coexisting, as it always does, with a noble peacefulness, with a noble inaptness for frivolous hazards, and a noble slowness to take offence, is, in its delays and forbearances, thought by the half-courageous to be no better than cowardice;—it is, as we have said, because great qualities revolve and repose in orbits of reciprocation with their opposites, which opposites are by coarse and ungentle eyes misdeemed to be contraries. Feeling transcendently ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... by brilliant information, was often full of interest. In nearly every case boasting quitted them with their youth, and the bravest were always the most modest. Influenced by no imaginary points of honor, they estimated themselves at their real worth; and all fear of being suspected of cowardice was beneath them. With these brave soldiers, who often united to the greatest kindness of heart a mettle no less great, a flat contradiction or even a little hasty abuse from one of their brothers in arms was not obliged to be washed out in blood; and examples of the moderation which true courage ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... fellow-senators show the right Roman nature at need. Marius sleeping quietly under the menace of death; his heroic son, with his little band of soldiers, committing suicide rather than surrender at Praeneste; Octavius scorning to imitate the vacillation and cowardice of his colleagues; Sylla plunging back alone into battle, that his example may reanimate the courage of his fleeing army: these are scenes that recall the best traditions of Rome. They are taken from Plutarch, it is true; but they are presented sympathetically and with stimulating ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... to each of the extremes, and each of these to the other extreme, though in some cases the virtue may be more antagonistic to one extreme than to the other, as courage to cowardice more than to rashness. In individual cases, it is difficult to avoid being deflected towards one ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... profane man, but the evidence is beyond question that if deeply angered he would use a hearty English oath; and not seldom the action accompanied the word, as when he rode among the fleeing soldiers at Kip's Landing, striking them with his sword, and almost beside himself at their cowardice. Judge Marshall used to tell also of an occasion when Washington sent out an officer to cross a river and bring back some information about the enemy, on which the action of the morrow would depend. The ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... great passion, to the ambassadors of the Quadi, who are trying to excuse their countrymen, bursts a blood-vessel, and dies.—VII. Who his father was, and what was his conduct as emperor.—VIII. His cruelty, avarice, envy, and cowardice.—IX. His virtues.—X. Valentinian the younger, the son of Valentinian, is saluted as emperor in the camp ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... risk bringing her alongside for the sake of swine like you. Over you go," and then seizing one of them by the collar of his shirt and the belt, he sent him flying over the side, the other man jumping over to avoid rougher treatment from the native seamen, who were disgusted at their cowardice. Then Morrison, Studdert, and three natives followed, and the boat pulled away clear of the ship, ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke
... 475; demur, suspense; hesitating &c v., hesitation, hesitancy; vacillation; changeableness &c 149; fluctuation; alternation &c (oscillation) 314; caprice &c 608. fickleness, levity, legerete [Fr.]; pliancy &c (softness) 324; weakness; timidity &c 860; cowardice &c 862; half measures. waverer, ass between two bundles of hay; shuttlecock, butterfly; wimp; doughface [U.S.]. V. be irresolute &c adj.; hang in suspense, keep in suspense; leave "ad referendum"; think twice about, pause; dawdle &c (inactivity) 683; remain neuter; dillydally, hesitate, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... me to suspect that I detected Mr. Wopsle with red worsted legs under a highly magnified phosphoric countenance and a shock of red curtain-fringe for his hair, engaged in the manufacture of thunderbolts in a mine, and displaying great cowardice when his gigantic master came home (very hoarse) to dinner. But he presently presented himself under worthier circumstances; for, the Genius of Youthful Love being in want of assistance,—on account of the parental brutality of an ignorant farmer who ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... exultation. In a comparison of resources this man who had plotted to crush me was to me as giant to midget. But I had the joy of realizing that man to man, I was the stronger. He had craft, but I had daring. His vast wealth aggravated his natural cowardice—crafty men are invariably cowards, and their audacities under the compulsion of their insatiable greed are like a starving jackal's dashes into danger for food. My wealth belonged to me, not I to it; and, stripped of it, I would be like the prize-fighter stripped for the fight. Finally, he ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... the boys helping their mounts with leg and arm; the Black holding his own with a dogged persistence that quite upset Langdon's prognostication of cowardice. ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... was properly reinforced, as his command was only an outpost. For his action in retiring so early he was severely criticized and reprimanded for his "error in judgment in retreating without sufficient reason," while his troops never forgave him for what they considered an exhibition of cowardice. ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... Rajput communities of Oudh or any other part of the country can hope to conceal from his family circle or village community any act of cowardice, or anything else which is considered disgraceful to a soldier, or to escape the odium which it merits ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... compelled to capitulate. But the federal government so far from being satisfied with these excuses, ordered a Court Martial to assemble, before which General Hull was tried, on the charges of treason, cowardice, and unofficerlike conduct. On the last charge only was he found guilty and sentenced to death. The Court, nevertheless, strongly recommended him to mercy. He was an old man, and one who, in other times, ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... knew. He really lived up to the standard of the New Testament. He did love his neighbor as himself. He never did good or kindness out of policy, but always from principle, from nature—which can be said of very few in this world. He was without cowardice of any kind, and without hypocrisy. I believe he had no vanity. He had the pride of a noble man and lived as generously toward the world as I have ever known man to live. This might be said of one ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... vanished altogether. Yet when she was quite dressed and her mirror bade her take courage she sat down and wrote a note of apology pleading a sudden indisposition. But she did not send it. Even in the writing her cowardice came home to her and she tore it up before she had signed her name. The wheels of the cab which was to take her to the big house rattled down the lane under her windows, and slipping her cloak over ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... is seized with terror, and conjures his master to fly. The King comforts him; and after charging the enemy six times, returns victorious from the field. Rameses, on rejoining his troops, addresses a long tirade to his captains upon their cowardice, and enlarges upon his own valor without any modest scruples. In the evening the rest of the troops came dropping in, and were surprised to find the whole country strewed with the bodies of the dead. The whole army joins in singing the praises of ...
— Egyptian Literature
... conviction. Orators of patriotic fervor came from senators who had before condemned any declaration of war as the greatest blunder the United States could commit. Others recounted the crimes of Germany against civilization, and, in face of these deeds, condemned any national unwillingness and cowardice to retaliate as showing a national degeneracy that was much ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... in his attitude towards the weaknesses of working-people. The "inertia" of the poor, which caused so many people to despair for them—their cowardice and instability—these were things about which Hal had heard all his life. "You can't help them," people would say. "They're dirty and lazy, they drink and shirk, they betray each other. They've always been like that." The idea would be summed up in ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... hypocrisy even sought to induce them not to leave the city. They threw perfumes, flowers, and pieces of silver to them. They gave them amulets to avert sickness; but they had spit upon them three times to attract death, or had enclosed jackal's hair within them to put cowardice into their hearts. Aloud, they invoked Melkarth's favour, and in ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... smites Sebald's heart like a hammer of God. He repents, but in the cowardice of repentance curses her. That baseness I do not think Browning should have introduced, no, nor certain carnal phrases which, previously right, now jar with the spiritual passion of repentance. But his fury with her passes away into the ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... having paused to allow the prince to speak, if he so wished. Like all great men engaged in plotting, whose system it is to conceal their hand until the decisive moment, the prince kept silence—but not from cowardice. In these crises he was always the soul of the conspiracy; recoiling from no danger and ready to risk his own head; but from a sort of royal dignity he left the explanation of the enterprise to his minister, and contented himself with ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... to him the thought to put an end to this maddening grief, by violence to period this miserable existence. But always he cast from him the horrible thought. He was not a coward, and the cowardice of suicide was abhorrent to him. Poverty he might leave her, but not the legacy of a suicide. If only it might be God's kindly will to let him die, once this abominable bargain was consummated! Death is the seal of silence; it locks alike the lips of the living and the dead. And she might live in ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... not cowardice," he returned, blushing. "It is being so constantly upset. I don't know what has come to me. ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... sent to Scotland and I, cast off, determined to plan a sure escape for Clare and for myself. This false monk, whom you are about to condemn with me, promised to carry to Clare the drugs by means of which she would soon have been the bride of heaven. His cowardice has undone us both, and I now reveal the story of the crime, that none may wed with Marmion, that his perfidy may be made known to the King, who, when he reads these letters, will see his favorite deserves the headsman's ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins
... Nobles, artisans, peasants, even priests, enrolled their names; and to decline this meritorious service was branded with the reproach of impiety, or, what perhaps was esteemed still more disgraceful, of cowardice and pusillanimity. The infirm and aged contributed to the expedition by presents and money; and many of them, not satisfied with the merit of this atonement, attended it in person, and were determined, if possible, to breathe their last in sight of that city where their ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... spot, he fastened on it with unerring instinct. His line was rather admonitory than persuasive. When he thought that the person whom he was addressing had an inkling of the truth, but was held back from avowing it by cowardice or indecision, he would utter the most startling warnings about the ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... bound into the camp and take somebody, unless they kept up the watch-fires and drove him away with brands. The next day, before sunrise, I called Hassan and Hadji Ali, whom I lectured severely upon their cowardice on a former occasion, and I received their promise to follow me to death. I entrusted them with my two Reillys No. 10; and with my little Fletcher in hand, I determined to spend the whole day in searching every thicket of the forest for lions, as I felt convinced that the animal that had disturbed ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... live much to God and honour; but I will not wilfully turn my back on both. I am, like all the rest of us, falling ever lower from the bright ideas I began with, falling into greed, into idleness, into middle-aged and slippered fireside cowardice; but is it you, my bold blade, that I hear crying this sordid and rank twaddle in my ear? Preaching the dankest Grundyism and upholding the rank customs of our trade - you, who are so cruel hard upon the customs of the publishers? O man, look at the Beam in our own ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for its successful working, was ever set up by, or even discussed between, two parties, one of which thought the other so unreasonable that it should be carefully denied everything it asked for and as unfit for any sort of political co-operation as mendacity, cowardice, and ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... have not scrupled to do in France, to Notre Dame de la Haine, Our Lady of Hate, yet I cannot forget that the corruption of good-nature is the generation of laxity of principle. Good-nature is our national characteristick; and though it be, perhaps, nothing more than a culpable weakness or cowardice, when it leads us to put up tamely with manifold impositions and breaches of implied contracts, (as too frequently in our publick conveyances,) it becomes a positive crime, when it leads us to look unresentfully on peculation, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... snapped Lady Fermanagh. "Your only hope of saving yourself is to forgive Tony for his cowardice and marry him. He will be grateful to you all his life. Don Carlos can tell him that the marriage ceremony was only a farce, and that he arranged with the bandit for your liberation immediately afterwards, or else explain that he helped you to ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... Winston's sister, with a spark of his spirit, "I will take the waiter up myself. I cannot sleep with this horror hanging over me—the fear lest, through my neglect or cowardice, a fellow-being—whose only offence against society, so far as we knows is his dropping down in a faint or stupor under a hedge on the Ridgeley plantation—should ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... off a burden of doubt; his theorising intellect loved the sensation of life thrown open to new, however vague, possibilities. At present he was convinced that Andrew Peak had done him a service. In this there was an indication of moral cowardice, such as commonly connects itself with intense pride of individuality. He desired to shirk the combat with Chilvers, and welcomed as an excuse for doing so the shame which another temper would ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... probably this wish was made at some distance from the destined period of its accomplishment. On the eve of her nine-and-twentieth birth-day, the lady perhaps might have felt inclined to retract her prayer. At least we should provide for the cowardice which might seize the female mind at such an instant. Even the most wretched life has power to attach us; none can be more wretched than the old age of a dissipated beauty:—unless, Lady V——, it be that ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... of mankind have no other reason for their opinions than that they are in fashion, it cannot be doubted but this persuasion made a rapid progress, since vanity and credulity co-operated in its favour, and it had a tendency to free cowardice from reproach. The infection soon reached the parliament, who, in the first year of king James, made a law, by which it was enacted, chap. xii. That, "if any person shall use any invocation or conjuration of any evil or wicked spirit; 2. or shall consult, covenant ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... Here the bishops themselves occupy the foreground (there are complaints about their cowardice and serving of two masters in the treatise de fugo). But it would be very unjust simply to find fault with them as Tertullian does. Two interests combined to influence their conduct; for if they drew the reins tight they gave over ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... possible, he declared war against France and Russia honorably, before the beginning of hostilities, thus bringing into contrast the moral courage to assume the responsibility for the beginning of the conflict as against the moral cowardice of both opponents, whose fear of public opinion was such that they did not dare openly to admit ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... human nature, deals with a frontier army officer who exposed continually himself to danger, desiring to work out in an indirect way this feeling of conquering one person by another, only it was himself, his own cowardice, that he wished eventually to conquer. I would ask Dr. Hall if the notion of which Royce has made so much, namely, the social concept, is not one which perhaps would act as the common denominator in these cases. We ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... as so many bodies to be seen. These men were lords of great riches, but excelled more in birth than bravery; hungry for life because owning great possessions, they were forced to yield to the sway of cowardice rather than nobleness. There were others, again, who brought show to the war, and not substance, and who, foisting themselves into the rear of their comrades, were the first to fly and the last to fight. One sure token of fear ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... they put spurs to their horses, and galloped away to a distance of some five hundred yards. There they halted, and set up such a screeching as almost deafened us, fired off some of their old rusty guns, and then rode away. We all laughed at their bragging and cowardice, except Asa, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... change of situation, age, and so forth; and perhaps it does not signify much which it is, if the faults are fairly gone, and if there be no danger of their returning: all our former misunderstandings arose on Cecilia's part from cowardice of character; on mine from—no matter what—no matter which of ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... (l. 126) is correct. Enkidu replies by again drawing a lurid picture of what will happen "When we go (together) to the forest......." This speech of Enkidu is continued on the reverse. In reply Gilgamesh emphasizes his reliance upon the good will of Shamash and reproaches Enkidu with cowardice. He declares himself superior to Enkidu's warning, and in bold terms says that he prefers to perish in the attempt to overcome Huwawa ...
— An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic • Anonymous
... mine laughingly tells of an incident which she says happened a number of years ago, but which I have forgotten. She says that she asked me one night as she carried her hot-water bottle to bed, "Doctor, what makes cold feet?" and that I lightly answered "Cowardice!" Whereupon she threw away her beloved water-bag and has never ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... big black bear. If I don't trouble him, he'll be sure to let me alone. What if I call the dogs off, and go back? But what tale can I manufacture to tell Mr. Glenn? Pshaw! What should I fear, with such a musket as this in my hand? I can't help it. I really believe I am a little touched with cowardice! I'm sorry for it, but I can't help it. It was born with me, and it's not my fault. Confound it! I will screw up courage enough to see what it is, anyhow." Saying this, he strode forward desperately, and urging the hounds ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... its fate had the Anglo-Saxons remained its undisturbed possessors. "In the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries," says Mr. Worsaae, "the Anglo-Saxons had greatly degenerated from their forefathers. Relatives sold one another into thraldom; lewdness and ungodliness were become habitual; and cowardice had increased to such a degree that, according to the old chroniclers, one Dane would often put ten Anglo-Saxons to flight. Before such a people could be conducted to true freedom and greatness it was necessary that an entirely new vigor should ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... Arsdale behind him alive in such a condition as this would be to leave the curse upon the girl,—would be to desert her to handle this mad-man alone. He had seen red at the thought of it. It would be to brand his own act with unpardonable cowardice; it would be to go down into his grave with the helpless cries of this woman ringing in his ears; it would be to shirk the greatest and most sacred duty that can come to a man. The cold sweat had started upon his forehead at the ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... weakness in denying themselves; to the idealistic ones who, unable to confound their neighbors with their own superiority, join causes in the hope of confounding each other with the superiority of their betters (involved, but I am not done with them); to the idealistic ones whose cowardice converts the suffering of others into a mirror wherein stares wretchedly back at them a possible image of themselves; to the idealistic ones who, frightened by this possible image of themselves, join Movements for the triumph of Love and Justice and the overthrow of ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... characteristic of the brave leader: "If you had been as loyal to your king in hindering the entry of these pirates as I shall be in preventing their going out, you had never brought this trouble upon yourselves nor upon our nation, which has now suffered so much through your cowardice. In a word, I shall never grant your request, but shall endeavor to maintain to its fullest the respect which ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... sense of honour and dishonour, without which neither states nor individuals ever do any good or great work. And I say that a lover who is detected in doing any dishonourable act, or submitting through cowardice when any dishonour is done to him by another, will be more pained at being detected by his beloved than at being seen by his father, or by his companions, or by any one else. The beloved too, when he is found in any disgraceful situation, ...
— Symposium • Plato
... and was quite sick with indignation at the cowardice of the men; and my lord was in as great a fret as I, but there was no remedy. We durst not go about to retreat, for we should have been in such confusion that the enemy must have discovered it; so my lord resolved to keep the post, ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... but Clement Lambert, with some five or six others, professed their determination to follow Mr. Fremont to the uttermost limit of his journey. The others yielded to their remonstrances, and somewhat ashamed of their cowardice, concluded to advance at least as far as Laramie fork, eastward of which they were aware no danger was to be apprehended. Notwithstanding the confusion and excitement, we were very early on the road, as the days were extremely hot, and we were anxious to profit by the freshness ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... du Guesclin, the ally of Enrique of Trastamare, to remain quietly in his camp of Navaretta, and allow hunger to do its work with the invading force, but this prudent plan was prevented by the folly of Don Tello, brother of Enrique, who, accusing Bertrand of cowardice, so stung his fiery spirit that he resolved on instant combat, though knowing how little dependence could be placed on his ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... flowers of the 'jenan' (gardens) of knowledge (a pun on the name of the magazine) now opened to us. Let us pluck the fruits of wisdom, lifting up our heads in gratulation and true pride, and remain no longer in that cowardice and avarice which were imputed to the women of the Arabs ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... inspires, and to enter over the breach rather than through the hospitable gate. She will try and command wherever she goes; and trample over dependants and society, with a grim consciousness that it dislikes her, a rage at its cowardice, and an unbending will to domineer. To be old, proud, lonely, and not have a friend in the world—that is her lot in it. As the French lady may be said to resemble the bird which the fables say feeds her young with her blood; this one, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a company composed of colored men, and historians like to tell of their cowardice compared with the colored men of the American side.[72] Evidently a scarlet coat does not well fit a colored skin. To the eternal credit of the State troops composed of the men of color, not one act of desertion or cowardice is recorded against ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... fury. Why should he think of her in this hour? Six months back he would have looked with jealous eyes upon the right to lead the Vigilantes, but this change that had mastered him—what was it? Not cowardice, nor caution. No. Yet, being intangible, it was none the less marked, as his friends had shown ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... over the disasters of the Union army before Richmond, and other lesser affairs in which the North had gained no advantage; invectives against the President's July proclamation, his impudence and his cowardice; and prophecies of ruin to him and his cause. Papa listened and said little. I heard and was silent; with throbbing forebodings ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... should turn out men who will throw open the doors of industry, so that all men, everywhere, regardless of colour, shall have the same opportunity to earn a dollar that they now have to spend it. I know of a good many kinds of cowardice and prejudice, but I know none equal to this. I know not which is the worst,—the slaveholder who perforce compelled his slave to work without compensation or the man who, by force and strikes, compels his neighbour to refrain from ...
— The Future of the American Negro • Booker T. Washington
... one of the Fathers tried to correct the growing disorders. We learn from them that many fled from society, not to become holy, but to escape slavery and famine; and that many were lazy and immoral. Their "shaven heads lied to God." Avarice, ambition, or cowardice ruled hearts that should have been actuated by a love of poverty, self-sacrifice or courage. "Quite recently," says Jerome, "we have seen to our sorrow a fortune worthy of Croesus brought to light by a monk's death, and a city's ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... inhabitant of Vanity Fair had as free notions about religion and morals as Monsieur de Voltaire himself could desire, but when illness overtook her, it was aggravated by the most dreadful terrors of death, and an utter cowardice took possession of the prostrate ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... circulation, driving the surging, tumultuous blood back upon it), with the sun scorching his bare temples, a crown of thorns stabbing him at every helpless turn of his restless head; when such a man, under such circumstances, can rise above the wickedness, cowardice and cheap treason that have nailed him to the cross, and pray (and pray sincerely) that his guilty murderers, villainous detractors and unscrupulous slanderers may be forgiven, that man bears witness that he has, at ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... perhaps, in justice to the reiters, to be noticed that Coligny attributes their failure not to cowardice, as in the case of both the French and the German infantry, but to their not understanding orders, and to the ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... your insolent sneers about women's nerves and female cowardice. Now, nothing but Lambay will ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... Prudent for about three years. Over and over again had his master threatened to kick him out, but had kept him on for fear of doing worse. With a master ever ready to venture on the most audacious enterprises, Frycollin's cowardice had brought him many arduous trials. But he had some compensation. Very little had been said about his gluttony, and still less ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... snakes; but, by the by, how am I ever to get out again? We should have acted more wisely had we walked up boldly to Mynheer Bunckum, and apologising for having entered his grounds, wished him good morning. It is entirely owing to the Baron's cowardice that I am placed in this ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston
... asserted ostensibly in the interest of Slavery, in order to get rid of the power of Congress over that subject; but the real source of it was the cowardice of those invertebrate and timorous politicians who desired to evade the responsibility of expressing opinions concerning this power. General Cass was the putative father of it, and it might well have come from one of his pliancy and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... come back without her?" And she heaped upon him the bitterest reproaches. It was he who, through his cowardice, had been the cause of Virginia's night adventure. It was he who had ruined everything by concealing her departure until it was too late. Then he might have found her, if he had so resolved. But if he could not, why had he remained ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... adventurers from those States that, without cohesion and without a history, offer to humanity only infamous traditions and the sorry spectacle of Chambers in which appear united insolence and defamation, cowardice and cynicism. ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... laughing, "I mean you no harm. I am a young Englishman, lately come from the Plantations, and seeking employment. I see you struggling yonder, and likely to give up the ghost, and I pull you out; and then you call me Rogue and charge me with striking of you. Was it cramp or cowardice that made you bawl so? Give me something to drink better manners to you, and I will leave you and ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... given evidence of both the guilt and cowardice of these hotel keepers. When men concoct plans of evil which they dare not execute in person, and then hire a foreigner to carry them out, it is not strange if they prove too cowardly to face justice when their part in the crime has been made known. It is little wonder if they ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... erway from dat dar door!" bawled Washington. The black man was as timid as a fawn as a usual thing; but he was devoted to the old professor and he had that feeling of gratitude for Mr. Henderson that overcame his natural cowardice. When the Indians, without giving him a glance, rushed at the door, and a single shot from the half-opened window missed them by ten feet, Wash uttered another yell and sprang to reach ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... with her trepidation and flung it from her, chid Cinders for his foolish cowardice, and fell again to whistling Bertrand's ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... reprimand from the English Government. "You might better have resisted than you did, considering the many defensible houses and castles possessed by the undertakers, who, for aught we can hear, were by no means comforted nor supported by you, but either from lack of comfort from you, or out of mere cowardice, fled away from the rebels on the first alarm." "Whereupon," says Cox, the Irish historian, "the Munsterians, generally, rebel in October, and kill, murder, ravish and spoil without mercy; and Tyrone made James ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... powder, which set off in a new but not a pleasing manner the beauties of his complexion of about the same colour as a horse chestnut. Balbi was under forty, but he was decidedly ugly, having one of those faces in which baseness, cowardice, impudence, and malice are plainly expressed, joining to this advantage a tone of voice and manners admirably calculated to repulse anyone inclined to do him a service. I found him comfortably housed, well looked after, and well clad; he had books and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... pretended delicacy of conscience revolts at it; the mere cowardice of a boy. Who are you, that now takes the part of conscience against me? Are you a better man ...
— The Lawyers, A Drama in Five Acts • Augustus William Iffland
... and a thrall; That forces up a smile upon my lips. Olaf, one hears indeed that thou art young; It is by mockery and arrogance That one can judge thy age. Now, look at me Full in the eyes; consider well my brow: Hast thou among the thralls e'er met such looks? Dost think that cunning or that cowardice Could e'er have carved these wrinkles on my brow? I did entice thee hither. Ha! 'tis true I knew that thou didst wait but for a sign To flutter after the enticing bait; That in thy soul thou didst more highly prize Thy kinship with an extinct race of kings Than great Earl Hakon's world-renowned ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... Nicanor, well known to the Jewish commandant, to take him. Josephus, professing prophetical powers, offered to surrender, and quieted his conscience by a secret prayer to God, which is a sad compound of cant and cowardice: ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... own acts, by his own cowardice, he himself had precipitated, was here now. Fatality had overtaken him. Whether the whole truth would come to light he did not know. Truly at this moment he hardly cared. He did not feel as if he were himself, but another being before whom ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... as well as temper, and there are points beyond which neither can be stretched without sinking into cowardice or plunging into credulity. This, my friends, I conceive to be your situation; hurried to the verge of both, another step would ruin you forever. To be tame and unprovoked, when injuries press hard upon you, is more than weakness; but to look up for kinder usage, without ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... Mr. King. I—I've always thought I loved a storm. Ooh! But this is too terrible! Aren't you really afraid you'll be struck? Thanks, ever so much." He had squared himself between her and the door, turning his back upon the storm: but not through cowardice, as ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... The softest of her sex, if wronged in love, or thinking that she's wronged, becomes a tygress in revenge. I'll instantly to Beverley's—No matter for the danger—When beauty leads us on, 'tis indiscretion to reflect, and cowardice to doubt. [Exit. ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore
... and waste of war. The stern military character, brave but tender, is a type of human nature for which we cannot pay too much. Consider physical courage alone, how valuable it is, and how rare. With what speed the citizen runs at the first glimpse of danger! With what pleasure or shamefaced cowardice citizens look on while women are being violently and indecently assaulted when attempting to vindicate their political rights! How gladly everyone shouts with the largest crowd! Consider how many noble actions ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... the other revolver, for rifles were of no use at such short range. I man[oe]uvred cautiously to keep most of the soldiers in front of me, and stealthily backed toward the door, where a soldier stood guard with the other weapon. I was reckoning on the cowardice of most of those in front of me, but I had failed to count on the men I had shot. As I now backed quickly towards the door, I suddenly felt the arms of the fallen man about my legs, and I stumbled backwards over him. In a twinkling the whole ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... die by the hands of these cowardly Boers, but by the hand of a black and courageous nation like myself . . ." He then took leave of his people, told his brother to read the Bible, and expired. The Swazies were so infuriated at the cowardice displayed by the Boers on this occasion that they returned ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... to his friend of Graustark until nearly two weeks after his arrival in the city. He had discussed with himself the advisability of revealing his plans to Anguish, fearing the latter's ridicule with all the cowardice of a man who knows that scoffing is, in a large measure, justifiable. Growing impatient to begin the search for the unheard-of country, its capital and at least one of its inhabitants, he was at last compelled ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... appearances by saying a word for him from time to time in Parliament, which he knew would be useless, and which he certainly took no measures to make effective. It is sometimes said that Buckingham never knew what dissimulation was. He was capable, at least, of the perfidy and cowardice of utter selfishness. Bacon's conspicuous fall diverted men's thoughts from the far more scandalous wickedness of the great favourite. But though there was no plot, though the blow fell upon Bacon almost accidentally, there ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... for some time, speaking both Shawnee and Miami, and also a little Wyandot and Delaware. His vocabulary acquired a sudden richness and depth. He called them names that implied every manner of cowardice and meanness. Their ancestors had been buzzards feeding on offal, they themselves were mangy, crippled and deformed, and, when the few that were left alive by the white men returned home, they would be set to work cooking, and caring for the lodges. When they died they ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Bob, "there is a loathsome, sickly stench of cowardice and distrust about all this kind of French delicacy that is enough to drive an honest fellow to the other extreme. True love ought to be a robust, hardy plant, that can stand a free out-door life of sun and wind and rain. People who are too delicate and courteous ever fully to speak their minds ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... But the Nicene party was the home of the ascetics. In an age of indecision and frivolity like the Nicene, the most earnest striving after Christian purity will often degenerate into its ascetic caricature. Through the selfish cowardice of the monastic life we often see the loving sympathy of Christian self-denial. Thus there was an element of true Christian zeal in the enthusiasm of the Eastern Churches; and thus it was that the rising spirit of asceticism naturally attached itself to the Nicene faith ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... in danger. He was compelled to double the guards around his tent, and to move it from place to place to avoid continual insults. He was several times fired at when he ventured out of his marquee. Porter openly attributed the abandonment of the invasion of Canada to the cowardice of Smyth." ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... of all this; for though I do want bravery for the warfare of life, I could wish, like some other soldiers, to have as much fortitude or cunning as to dissemble or conceal my cowardice. ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... to invite the sergeant into the room, so absorbed was she in the nature of the business at hand. Expectancy breeds cowardice. When great issues are at stake every act wears an awful meaning. For this reason she stood transfixed at the threshold, before this unexpected arrival, whom she associated with the image of Stephen. With the sudden and ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... Unfortunately, I was the cause. From the black looks of the young men I half suspected, if the Sioux chief would accept me in lieu of material gifts, I might be presented as a peace-offering. This would certainly not forward my quest, and prudence, or cowardice—two things easily confused when one is in peril—counseled discretion, and discretion seemed to ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... shall now our peers betide?" Archbishop Turpin full well replied. "My cavaliers, of God the friends, Your crown of glory to-day He sends, To rest on the flowers of Paradise, That never were won by cowardice." The Franks made answer, "No cravens we, Nor shall we gainsay God's decree; Against the enemy yet we hold,— Few may we be, but staunch and bold." Their spurs against the foe they set, Frank and paynim—once more ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... longer conceal from himself the horrible fact of his cowardice; he was thoroughly frightened! He would have run from the spot, but his legs refused their office; they gave way beneath him and he sat again upon the log, violently trembling. His face was wet, his whole body ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... describing the indefatigable industry with which they labour on the voluntary task, their glee in the truantry from the labour for which they are paid, their casuistry over the theft of milk for the pious purpose of keeping the poor lad alive, the odd blending of cowardice and magnanimity in their terror of the sickness and in their constant care that some one should at least be always in earshot of the boy, ready to pass in to him on a long-handed shovel what food they could scrape up, their supple ingenuity in ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... and a dread of merited punishment, implored the queen to intercede for his safety. He who was profuse of the lives of others, with a consistency which is characteristic of villany and despotism cannot endure the thought of forfeiting his own, but betrays a cowardice proportioned to his recent insolence. The king returning at the moment in a state of the utmost exasperation, imputed the worst motives to his suppliant attitude, and allowed his servants to rush forward ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... I do not know what might be said if we stopped him. I—I won't have my name made a laughing-stock. I am a Crewys, and the honour of the family lies in my hands. I can't give the world a right to suspect a Crewys of cowardice, by preventing his departure on active service. We have fought before—in ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... But the cowardice availed him nothing; for the host seeing him unhappy, and thinking to cheer him, came in as he was getting into bed, and opened on the subject of his own accord. It was a story be told to every body who came, and he ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... Setting his fate aside, of comely virtues; Nor did he soil the fact with cowardice— An honor in him which buys out his faults— But with a noble fury and fair spirit, Seeing his reputation touched to death, ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... to sit out a dance with you, that east of the fifteenth meridian the situation is reversed, and the man who wasn't swift about his wooing would stand no chance at all. Modesty of approach is reckoned a sure sign of unworthiness, and deference as cowardice that ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... tried both[84] ways, the consuls at length said, "Conscript fathers, lest you may say that you were not forewarned, a great disturbance is at hand. We require that they who accuse us most severely of cowardice, would assist us in raising the levies; we shall proceed according to the resolution of the most intrepid amongst you, since it so pleases you." They return to their tribunal, and on purpose commanded one of the most factious of the people, who stood in their ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... by any other general but the king himself. Nuniz also gives us a graphic description from personal knowledge of the character of Krishna's degenerate successor Achyuta, whose feebleness, selfishness, cowardice, and cruelty paved the way for the final ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... to her that instead of following the Indians so stupidly she ought to watch her chance and at the first opportunity make a wild dash off into the darkness. Kut-le was so sure of her weakness and cowardice that she felt that he would be taken completely by surprise and she might elude him. With a definite purpose in her mind she was able to fight off again and again the blur ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... also took on from Plato the four cardinal virtues of Wisdom, Temperance, Courage, and Justice, and defined them as so many branches of knowledge. Against these were set four cardinal vices of Folly, Intemperance, Cowardice, and Injustice. Under both the virtues and vices there was an elaborate classification of specific qualities. But notwithstanding the care with which the Stoics divided and subdivided the virtues, virtue, according to their ...
— A Little Book of Stoicism • St George Stock
... associate you with the particular kind of abomination I imagined, is a fool—the kind of fool who is afraid to trust his senses.... As for my making it hard for you to approach the subject, as you say, it is true. It was simply moral cowardice. I understood that you wished to clear the matter up; and I was revolted at the notion of my injurious blunder being discussed. I tried to show you by my actions that it was as if it had never been. I hoped you would pardon me without any words. ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... surging, tumultuous blood back upon it), with the sun scorching his bare temples, a crown of thorns stabbing him at every helpless turn of his restless head; when such a man, under such circumstances, can rise above the wickedness, cowardice and cheap treason that have nailed him to the cross, and pray (and pray sincerely) that his guilty murderers, villainous detractors and unscrupulous slanderers may be forgiven, that man bears witness that he has, at ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... of party-making, and was quite sick with indignation at the cowardice of the men; and my lord was in as great a fret as I, but there was no remedy. We durst not go about to retreat, for we should have been in such confusion that the enemy must have discovered it; so my lord resolved to keep the post, ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... sullenness had been turned to his good. It would not be said, if history should take count of the fact, that while the Lord of Pulwick had served four years before the mast, he had ever disgraced his name by cowardice.... ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... are members. The course of conduct which these men and those like them advocate for the nation would, of course, not only mean a peculiar craven avoidance of national duty by our people at this time, but would also inevitably tend permanently to encourage the spirit of individual cowardice no less than ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... quieter pulse of his blood Philip began to ask himself if he was going to escape the ordeal which a short time before he had accepted as a certainty. Was it possible that his shots had frightened Bram? He could not believe that. Cowardice was the last thing he would associate with the strange man he had seen in the starlight. Vividly he saw Bram's face again. And now, after the almost unbearable strain he had been under, a mysterious SOMETHING that had been in that face impinged itself upon him above all other ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... there are not many things which they can help, and if there are, by all means to help them. What is inevitable comes to us from God, no matter how many hands it passes through; but submission to unnecessary evils is cowardice or laziness; and extolling of the evil as good is sheer ignorance, or perversity, or servility. Even the ills that must be borne, should be borne under protest, lest patience degenerate into slavery. Christian character is never formed ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... effects, especially amongst tyrants, in despotico Imperio, and such as are more feared than beloved of their subjects, that get and keep their sovereignty by force and fear. [5999]Quod civibus tenere te invitis scias, &c., as Phalaris, Dionysius, Periander held theirs. For though fear, cowardice, and jealousy, in Plutarch's opinion, be the common causes of tyranny, as in Nero, Caligula, Tiberius, yet most take them to be symptoms. For [6000]"what slave, what hangman" (as Bodine well expresseth this passion, l. 2. c. 5. de rep.) ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... But cowardice was stronger than common sense. I only slackened my pace when I reached the green light, where I saw a dark signal-box, and near it on the embankment the figure of a man, ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... ever been conducted with more manifest self-seeking than that which hurled Edward from power. The angry spite of the adulterous queen, the fierce vengeance and greed of Roger Mortimer, the craft and cruelty of Orleton, the time-serving cowardice of Reynolds, the stupidity of Kent and Norfolk, the party spirit of Stratford and Ayermine, can inspire nothing but disgust. Among the foes of Edward, Henry of Leicester alone behaved as an honourable gentleman, anxious to vindicate a policy, but careful to subordinate his private ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... unbearable. He treated the others like Dagoes and on every occasion he tried to pick a quarrel with the Halfbreed, but the latter, entrenching himself behind his Indian phlegm, regarded him stolidly. Marks mistook this for cowardice and took to calling the Halfbreed nasty names, particularly reflecting on the good character of his mother. Still the Halfbreed took no notice, yet there was a contempt in his manner that stung more than words. This was the state of affairs when one evening ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... everything out of love for a hypocritical religion and out of love of country. How have they answered me? By burying me in an infamous dungeon and robbing me of my intended wife! No, not to avenge myself would be a crime, it would be encouraging them to new acts of injustice! No, it would be cowardice, pusillanimity, to groan and weep when there is blood and life left, when to insult and menace is added mockery. I will call out these ignorant people, I will make them see their misery. I will teach them to think not of brotherhood ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... in her trouble solely because it was necessary. So far she had done naturally. But though she had come, she had not come in any of the spirit of humility. She had been bold as brass to her in the midst of her cowardice towards her husband,—imperious to herself and unbending. She had declined her advice with scorn. And yet one word spoken by herself would have been destructive. Seeing that she had been so treated had she not been wrong to abstain ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... about me shallow fools, Who with mean scruples weigh the gold of life, And faltering, paltering, end by failure; failure, The only crime which I have not committed: I would have MEN about me. As for conscience, Conscience is but the name which cowardice Fleeing from battle scrawls upon its ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... few minutes' respite that shortened by that much the hour of his lesson. He could never manage to go over a hurdle with his hands placed on his hips; at every jump they snatched at the horse's mane. Heppner raged over this cowardice; but storm and shout as he would, Frielinghausen's hands were for ever clutching at his ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... against an attack that never came), in spite of such alarms, no attempt was made upon his army or his ships. The town was quiet, and Tory ladies and gentlemen were at last at ease. On the Mall they might daily watch the parade of the troops, speak their minds about the faction, and agree upon the cowardice of the provincials. Yet the Whigs of Boston made no submission. They were, as Warren wrote of them, "silent and inflexible." At the same time they had everything at stake. Their leaders Hancock and Warren still lived openly among them, in the face of the threat of arrest. The artisans, too, at ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... own day, as it has happened so often before. It seems that imminent disaster alone will arouse the nation to its best military effort. In 1757, however, England was thoroughly aroused. Failure then on her own special element, the sea, touched her vitally. Admiral Byng—through sheer cowardice, as was charged—had failed to attack a French fleet aiding in the siege of the island of Minorca which was held by the English, and Minorca had fallen to the French. Such was the popular clamor at this disaster that Byng ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... horseboy in thy host. It is thou that art honoured, in being the chosen instrument by which great things have been wrought in Israel.—Nay, interrupt me not—I tell thee, proud baron, that, in the sight of Heaven, thy wisdom is but as folly— thy courage, which thou dost boast, but the cowardice of a village maiden—thy strength weakness—thy spear an osier, and thy sword ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... the lamentation of the Saite, but Paulus stepped into their midst, blamed them for their cowardice, and with warm and urgent speech implored them to return to their posts so that the wall might be guarded at least on the eastern and more accessible side, and that the castle might not fall an easy prey into the hands of an enemy from whom no quarter was to be expected. Some of the anchorites ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and, as we have intimated, had unquestionably entered the house. But at the beginning of the affray, when he thought every one was too much occupied with his own concerns to remark his absence, he slipped out of the room, not for the purpose of avoiding the engagement (for cowardice was not one of his failings), but because he had another object in view. Creeping stealthily up stairs, unmasking a dark lantern, and glancing into each room as he passed, he was startled in one of them by the appearance of Mrs. Sheppard, who seemed to be crouching ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... pick a lock better than a blacksmith, and was known as one of the most cunning sneak thieves in the place. At fourteen he beat a little boy of eight unmercifully. (Did anybody expect old Nancy to tell him that was the crown crime of cowardice?) ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... affairs. We know that differences of opinion are to be found everywhere and on every question; when, therefore, a man differs from those who think that this war can and ought to be continued, we must ascribe his opinion to discouragement, weakness, or cowardice. We must acknowledge the truth of the facts from which he draws his conclusions, and which have compelled him to utter it. His object is to make known the true state of the country—which indeed is his plain duty. Were he not to do so on the present occasion he would ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... his friends set the common good above their private gain. For them a new heart was being born into the world. They were no longer consumed with blind greed, with love of their petty selves. They were no longer full of cowardice and distrust and enmity. Life was a thing beautiful to them. It was flushed with the color of hope, of fine enthusiasms. They might suffer. They might be defeated. But nothing could extinguish the joy in their souls. They walked like gods, immortals, ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... in the Senate, and his bearing as cool and matter of course as if he were on a promenade, he rode through the mob, and had passed out of musket shot by the time the demoralized ruffians had begun to accuse each other of cowardice, and each one to explain what he would have done if he had been in somebody else's place, or would ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... level, with a broader spirit of brotherly good-will one for another. Peace is generally good in itself, but it is never the highest good unless it comes as the handmaid of righteousness; and it becomes a very evil thing if it serves merely as a mask for cowardice and sloth, or as an instrument to further the ends of despotism or anarchy. We despise and abhor the bully, the brawler, the oppressor, whether in private or public life; but we despise no less the coward and the voluptuary. No man is worth calling a man who will ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... 'tis impossible they shou'd not have some Imperfections, seeing they are Men, but their Imperfections ought not to destroy the Character that is attributed to them; if we describe them Brave, Liberal and Generous, we ought not to attribute to them Baseness or Cowardice, because that their Actions wou'd otherwise bely their Character, and the Predominant Virtures of the Heroes: 'Tis no Argument that Salust, though so Happy in the Description of Men, in the Description of Cataline does ...
— Prefaces to Fiction • Various
... Does the man play me false? Read those lines, Lena, and tell me, does the man mean to fight in earnest who can dare to write them? He advises Ammiani to go to Venice. It's treason, if it is not cowardice. And see here—he has the audacity to say that he deeply respects the lady Ammiani is going to marry. Is Ammiani going to marry her? ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was gone I was able to smile grimly and call it a coincidence, wondering meanwhile, if one of the consequences of my hideously disarranged life was to be a lapse into chittering cowardice; an endless starting aside ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... (Hunt the Devil), Salaerrez, Tabas, and other corsairs, who collectively composed a formidable force. These were all old acquaintances and some old followers of Kheyr-ed-Din, and to them did he relate the piteous tale of the cowardice of Venalcadi, whom he accused of having deserted his brother Uruj in his direst necessity, thereby causing his death; the abominable conduct of Hassan, who had turned and bitten the hand that fed him. With tears ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... Mexican saw in them impelled him towards the door. He moved backwards, keeping his face turned towards the money-lender. At this moment Lablache was at his best. His was a dominating personality. There was no cowardice in his nature—at least no physical cowardice. Doubtless, had it come to a struggle where agility was required, he would have fallen an easy prey to his lithe companion; but with him, somehow, it never did come to a struggle. He ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... lieutenant-colonel as much as he pleased, for Philippe pointedly avoided casting his eyes in his direction. Max, though the blood boiled in his veins, was too well aware of the importance of behaving with political prudence—which occasionally resembles cowardice—to take fire like a young man; he remained, therefore, perfectly calm ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... state-house, or the old church were spared. Drummond and Lawrence, it is said, showed their unselfish zeal for the cause by applying the torch to their homes with their own hands.[677] As the Governor, from his ships, saw in the distance the glare of the burning buildings, he cursed the cowardice of his soldiers that had forced him to yield the place to the rebels. But as it could now serve him no longer as a base, he weighed anchor, and ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... of his great hosts. Shall these things be? I say they shall not be. But what am I, save the servant of the citizens of Bethulia? And what do I speak, save the thought that is in your hearts? There is no cowardice in you. You are not sheep, nor rabbits, nor beetles, nor lice. You are valiant men, and women lion-hearted. Without you I am naught, and if I defy Holofernes, my fortitude is yours and my resolve springs ...
— Judith • Arnold Bennett
... the axiom 'Ne Hercules quidem contra duos', two would have been enough. It is curious that in London, where everyone is brave, only one man is needed to arrest another, whereas in my dear native land, where cowardice prevails, thirty are required. The reason is, perhaps, that the coward on the offensive is more afraid than the coward on the defensive, and thus a man usually cowardly is transformed for the moment into ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... of a war-god. Before going to fight the people of the district where he was worshipped all met and prayed that they might be "strong-hearted" and free from cowardice. ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... he knew more than his position as postmaster entitled him to know; but the furtive droop at the corner of his eyes showed also that his secretiveness was equal to his cowardice. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... writers drew apart one single quality or characteristic and descanted upon it, neglecting all the rest. Thus it is that Griselda becomes Patience, and Janicola Poverty, and that by an easy and imperceptible transition the abstract personages of novels and the drama are created: Cowardice, Valiance, Vice. Those typical beings, whose names alone make us shudder, were considered perfectly natural; and, indeed, they bore a striking resemblance to Griselda, Janicola, and many other heroes of the ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... another. "He was always jeering at the boatswain for his cowardice, and telling him he ought to act like a man. We knew pretty well what he meant by that." Similar remarks were made by others; for all the men in the boat were honest and true, and had been among those who had at once sided with the captain and officers. Such are always ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... Alpine solitudes was like a stringent wine to his surcharged spirit. He was one to whom life and death had become as the yes and no of ordinary men: not more than a turning to the right or to the left. It surprised him that this fellow, knowing his own cowardice and his conscience, should consent to live, and care to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... presented with disproportionate prominence. James Stuart had stronger qualities for good or evil than Thackeray seems to have found in him. Some of his contemporaries denied him the credit of man's ordinary courage; he has even been accused of positive cowardice; but there does not seem to be the slightest ground for such an accusation. Studied with the severest eye, his various enterprises, and the manner in which he bore himself throughout them, would seem to prove that he had courage enough for any undertaking. Princes ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... Lords has become a beargarden since Brougham has been in it; there is no night that is not distinguished by some violent squabble between him and the Tories. Lord Winchelsea directly accused him of cowardice the night before last, to which he replied, 'As to my being afraid to say elsewhere what I say here, oh, that is too absurd to require an answer.' It is nevertheless true. Melbourne does very well; his memory served him happily on this night. Brougham had lashed the Lords into a fury by calling ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... Marie with difficulty restrained her tears, when she saw her uncle so completely discouraged. So many useless sufferings! so much labour lost! Penellan himself became ferocious in his ill-humour; he consigned everybody to the nether regions, and did not cease to wax angry at the weakness and cowardice of his comrades, who were more timid and tired, he said, than Marie, who would have gone to the end of ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... the shaft, he found the majority of the men returning to their work as usual, Maverick having given them no warning, partly through his own cowardice, and partly through a determination that Houston should have no hint ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... sir!" continued Mr. Middleton, turning to Master Burghe; "you have been convicted of theft, falsehood, and cowardice—yes, and of the meanest falsehood and the basest cowardice I ever heard of. Under these circumstances, I cannot permit your future attendance upon my school. You are no longer a proper companion for my pupils. To-morrow I shall call upon your father, to tell him what has happened and advise ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... captain, with a guard of twelve men, proceeded to Canton to demand the payment of the sum (L30,000.) This daring conduct threw the viceroy into astonishment, and perhaps occasioned him some terror; for nothing but the excessive cowardice of the Chinese could have deterred him from noticing the affront. They, indeed, shewed a disposition after the captain had quitted Canton of avenging themselves, but this altogether in their customary manner; and I was assured, that the viceroy, as indemnification ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... ye, was a never-to-be-forgotten night. Every person naturally looked anxious, but I believe I may safely say, that there was not one face in a hundred that was pale with fear, or that exhibited a trace of cowardice or terror upon it. One thought was uppermost in every bosom, and that was—to drive back the invaders, yea to drive them into, and drown them in the German ocean, even as Pharaoh and his host were encompassed by the Red ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... before Holden. It seemed to his bold and ferocious temper, that he could not, without cowardice, hear assailed and not vindicate, a principle that had been inculcated upon him from youth, and formed a sacred portion of his creed. As he stood up, the blanket fell in graceful folds from his shoulders, around his person, and he stretched out ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... is a rather curious mixture of impulse and reason; of shyness and audacity; of composure and timidity; of courage and cowardice and experience. But there is in her no ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... is now left to us, is no doubt arduous and difficult. It would not be in the least so with a country united, and feeling its own strength: but to contend against dejection, cowardice and disaffection at home, aiding a powerful enemy from without, is not a light or easy matter. It must, however, be tried; for I have no conception that any other use can be made of this event by ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... abashed to the earth, and entreated the forgiveness of the Rabbi, whose flashing eyes and extended features glared and swelled with indignation; but the only two emotions that at the time contended within him were cowardice and pride. Had he the power, gladly would he have struck the Jew to death, as a punishment for what he deemed his insolence; but he feared the protecting and avenging hand of Cromwell, who never resigned a cherished purpose or a cherished ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... breath; "I have seen a redskin that didn't furgit that a man had saved him from dying or being shot, but such redskins are as scarce as hen's teeth. The rule is that they take all such kindnesses as signs of cowardice, and despise the one that shows 'em. Let me tell you something that I know," continued Hazletine, seriously. "Three years ago, when I was down in Arizona, Jim Huber was the owner of the ranch where I was working. He b'leved in treating Injins kindly. I've seen him give the 'Paches ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... prince surpassed all his predecessors in effeminacy, luxury, and cowardice.(1007) He never went out of his palace, but spent all his time amongst a company of women, dressed and painted like them, and employed like them at the distaff. He placed all his happiness and glory in the possession of immense treasures, in feasting and rioting, and indulging himself in all the ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... more than our life could have done; but such cases must always be extremely rare. Even the soldier on the battlefield will help his country more by living than by dying, if he can do so without failing in his duty. His death is not a triumph, but only a lesser evil than cowardice and disgrace. And what shall we say, for example, of the case of a young biologist who dies of blood-poisoning on the eve of a great and beneficent discovery? Is not this a case in which the modern God might with advantage ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... may be still in store for us; for what do we not deserve? When we consider the inhumanity, the cowardice, the stolid selfishness, of which this people has been guilty, especially on the subject of negro slavery, we can find no refuge from despair but in the comforting assurance that God is a God of mercy, as well ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... allude to the cowardice imputed to me by the same authority, it would be easy to refer to the above enumeration of distresses caused by our two ships having captured all their provisions in the face of thirteen, in every ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... when going into action to think about anything but what would seem most likely to interest him—the impending danger. During the first period of his service, hard as he tried and much as he reproached himself with cowardice, he had not been able to do this, but with time it had come of itself. Now he rode beside Ilyin under the birch trees, occasionally plucking leaves from a branch that met his hand, sometimes touching his horse's side with ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... have insisted upon conferring a boon, which was not wanted; and how happened it, that Yankees, with all their acknowledged shrewdness in money matters, could never to this day perceive how they were protected by it? Yet New-England is reproached with cowardice and ingratitude to her Southern benefactors! If one man were to knock another down with a broad-axe, in the attempt to brush a fly from his face, and then blame him for not being sufficiently thankful, it would exactly illustrate the relation between ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... twenty minutes when Mary came into the room. She knew that Patience was not there; and had retreated up-stairs. But there seemed to be a cowardice in such retreating, which displeased herself. She, at any rate, had no cause to be afraid of Mr. Newton. So she collected her thoughts, and arranged her gait, and went down, and addressed him with assumed indifference,—as though there had never been anything between them beyond simple ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... feels uneasiness in his stomach which suffers from many of the symptoms accompanying dyspepsia. He is easily startled; the slamming of a door, the firing of a cracker, the falling of a book, a sudden touch, or even speaking to him unexpectedly, will cause him to start. Cowardice is a sure consequence of Self-Abuse and involuntary emissions. The appetite is irregular, often poor, sometimes voracious; the bowels are also variable in their action. The prostatic portion of the urethra is frequently irritable and sometimes is very much inflamed; oftentimes there is ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... and has fallen off his horse three or four times during his royal progress; is a heavy drinker of the liquors of the period, with horribly coarse, even gross manners. Macaulay is very severe with him. He says that "his cowardice, his childishness, his pedantry, his ungainly person and manners, his provincial accent, made him an object of derision. Even in his virtues and accomplishments there was something eminently unkingly."[1] It seemed too bad that "royalty should be exhibited to the world stammering, ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... children. If I thought that I alone were obnoxious to public hatred, I would instantly offer my life as a sacrifice. But it is the throne which is aimed at. In abandoning the king, no other advantage can be obtained than merely saving my life; and I will never be guilty of such an act of cowardice." ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... detail may be of infinite value for social and reforming purposes. It may be the duty of every one of us to study these sores in the body politic for the existence of which we are collectively responsible. It may be craven cowardice not to open our eyes wide to these painful and hideous facts, which cry out to be removed and prevented. And if any person whose enthusiasm in life it is to abolish them hits upon an artistic device for calling attention to them, ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... confess it to this strip of a girl. For a time he thought it was almost more than he could do. Yet, like his father, once set upon a course, nothing could divert him. So, after a week of doubts and determinations, of cowardice and courage, he pulled himself ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... thought that he said this out of fear, or cowardice, he changed his tone, and hurried him up to his house to partake of some refreshment after his ride, while he gave orders to his seamen to ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... frankly, kindly, and easily in a strange house as at home. In the middle classes, where the segregation of the artificially limited family in its little brick box is horribly complete, bad manners, ugly dresses, awkwardness, cowardice, peevishness, and all the petty vices of unsociability flourish like mushrooms in a cellar. In the upper class, where families are not limited for money reasons; where at least two houses and sometimes three or four are the rule (not to mention the clubs); where there ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... length, their numbers and persistent fury prevailed, their only prize was some twenty Huron warriors, spent with fatigue and faint with loss of blood. The rest lay dead around the shattered palisades which they had so valiantly defended. Fatuity, not cowardice, was the ruin of the ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... people have entered heart and soul into this war, and without the slightest doubt as to its righteousness and as to the destiny of the empire, this modern military autocracy, ultimately to be completely victorious. This is hard to believe, although it must be admitted that the cowardice of the Socialists and the obsession of the professors are remarkable phenomena. As to the latter, however, we must remember their dependence on the Government, not only for their information and their "call" to speak, but also for their positions ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... but the true one], "had already seated deep in my very muscles, as it were. I do not mean to accuse myself of idleness—I have enough of self-crimination without adding imaginary articles—but in all things that affect my moral feelings I have sunk under such a strange cowardice of pain that I have not unfrequently kept letters from persons dear to me for weeks together unopened. After a most miserable passage from Leghorn of fifty-five days, during which my life was twice given over, I found myself ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... sir, that the world contains much cowardice. To find Mr. Austin afraid to do the right, this ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at his companions' cowardice, for they had no courage but in the open field, and dared not venture into Rome, looked ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... Prince Ypsilanti thought only of saving himself. This purpose he effected in a few days, by retreating into Austria, from which territory he issued his final order of the day, taxing his army, in violent and unmeasured terms, with cowardice and disobedience. This was in a limited sense true; many distinctions, however, were called for in mere justice; and the capital defects, after all, were in himself. His plan was originally bad; and, had it been better, he was quite unequal to the execution of it. The results were unfortunate to ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... declare his wishes to his father, and was thus disobeying Isabel's behests, he must explain the difficulty to her. He felt already that she would despise him for his cowardice,—that she would not perceive the difficulties in his way, or understand that he might injure his cause by precipitation. Then he considered whether he might not possibly make some bargain with his father. How would it be if he should consent to go back to the Liberal party on being allowed ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... under the Liberty Tree that he had been seen in company with Attucks, the mulatto, and half a dozen others, near Wentworth's Wharf, and that Hardy had distinguished himself by taunting with cowardice, a squad of soldiers, until the redcoats avenged the insults with blows; but nothing more serious than a street brawl was ...
— Under the Liberty Tree - A Story of The 'Boston Massacre' • James Otis
... the timidity, not to say cowardice, of my nature, have feared that I should be daunted by Colonel Stewart's most just observations upon the defects and deficiencies of my past manner and principles of novel-writing; but, on the contrary, I, who know myself better, feel that, in spite of my timidity, I am, instead of being ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... dangers and difficulties, as God's instrument. 'I will send thee' must have come like a thunder-clap. The commander's summons which brings a man from the rear rank and sets him in the van of a storming-party may well make its receiver shrink. It was not cowardice which prompted Moses' answer, but lowliness. His former impetuous confidence had all been beaten out of him. Time was when he was ready to take up the role of deliverer at his own hand; but these hot days were past, and age and solitude and communion with God had mellowed ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... where you like," answered my father, amused at the stranger's cowardice, of which he did not seem at all ashamed; "we shall look to you, however, to help us in driving back the redskins if ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... recover from the shock of their recent losses, as well of men as of arms and of military stores, and especially that they should ever regain their courage and reputation, which, in war, always contribute to success as much, at least, as arms themselves. Even the ancient reproaches of cowardice were renewed against the Americans and their own partisans abated much of the esteem they had borne them. They were more than half disposed to pronounce the Colonists unworthy to defend that liberty which ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... sea, and swarmed upon the land, wasting it with fire and sword. When Uther heard thereof, he fell into a greater rage than his weakness could bear, and commanded all his nobles to come before him, that he might upbraid them for their cowardice. And when he had sharply and hotly rebuked them, he swore that he himself, nigh unto death although he lay, would lead them forth against the enemy. Then causing a horse-litter to be made, in which he might be carried—for ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... the cowardice of guilt. Her nerves were unstrung by weariness and excitement. And Tozer, with his little red eyes blazing upon her, was very different in this fury of personal injury, from the grandfather of the morning, who had been ready to see ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... a true sense of values, courage and will-power to carry out honest intentions, and, finally, sufficient earning power to meet all righteous obligations. Dishonest acts result far more often from ignorance, warped sense of justice, inability to appreciate values, cowardice, weak will, or incompetence, than from wrong intent. Whether or not any individual is endowed with the necessary honesty for success in any particular vocation is, therefore, a problem which can be settled only by careful analysis of all its requirements. Law and banking both require a high ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... many a sword-stroke was given and many a push with the spear. While the Moors were thus beleagered came letters from the Captain of the Almoravides, saying that he had not turned back to Algezira de Xucar for fear, nor for cowardice, neither as one who fled, but for lack of food, and also by reason of the waters; and that it was his set purpose at all events to succour them and deliver them from the oppression which they endured, and he was preparing to do this with all diligence. And ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... I cannot leave my affairs for an insolent and ungrateful fool! I ask your advice for the ordinary way of life, not for the way that cowardice or fear dictates. If without looking for him, or avoiding him, we meet, and a quarrel is inevitable, what ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... conviction that we are right; it is an intellectual difficulty; but frequently it is simple mushiness of character, the same defect which tempts us, when we know a thing is true, to whittle it down if we meet with opposition, and to refrain from presenting it in all its sharpness. Cowardice of this kind is not only injustice to ourselves, but to our friends. We inflict a grievous wrong by compromise. We are responsible for what we see, and the denial or the qualification should be left to take care of itself. Our duty is, if possible, to give a distinct outline to what we have in ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... wares" Everyone has his share How much excited cowardice there often is in boldness Love has no law People do not think as they speak, and do not speak as they act Rage of a timid man She saw that he would yield on ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant • David Widger
... had killed black bears and knew nothing of Grizzlies, and he had a contemptuous opinion of the courage of bears and a correspondingly exalted belief in his own. At least he was afraid somebody might suspect him of being afraid, and he confounded caution with cowardice in others. ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... pure, rare air of the open mountains for the miasma of the sick-room—these are the changes offered him, with what promise of pleasure and of self-respect, with what a revolution in all his hopes and terrors, none but an invalid can know. Resignation, the cowardice that apes a kind of courage and that lives in the very air of health resorts, is cast aside at a breath of such a prospect. The man can open the door; he can be up and doing; he can be a kind of a man after all ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... country; having shown, as I profess that I have shown, that his name was always treated with singular dignity and respect, not only by the lovers of the old Republic but by the minions of the Empire; having found that no charge was ever made against him either for insincerity or cowardice or dishonesty by those who dealt commonly with his name, am I not justified in saying that they who have in later days accused him should have shown their authority? Their authority they have always found in his own words. It is on his own ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... a puling, quill-driving, soft-handed age—among our own rank, I mean. Cowardice is called meekness; to temporize is to be charitable and reverent; to speak truth, and shame the devil, is to offend weak brethren, who, somehow or other, never complain of their weak consciences till you ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... suddenly, at the slightest noise, rushes back to the point of departure. The transformation has been more exterior than interior. The minds of the people are still in the seventeenth century; they still feel the fear and cowardice engendered by the inquisitorial bonfires. The Spaniards are slaves to their very marrow; their pride and their energies are all on the surface; they have not lived through three centuries of ecclesiastical servitude for ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... quarrel. If men must fight, let them use their fists, and so be quit of it for a bloody nose and a few bruises. But I could not avoid the duel with Cludde without suffering the imputation of cowardice, and when Venables came after me and said that he had arranged with Simpson that we should meet next morning at daybreak on the Southsea Common and settle the matter with rapiers, I was quite content. 'Tis true ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... in securing news, I read every morning was of the worst. During the Spanish War it was especially virulent, being full of statements and arguments to show that corruption was the main characteristic of our government, cowardice of our army and navy, and hypocrisy of our people. Very edifying were its quasi-philosophical articles; and one of these, showing the superiority of the Spanish women to their American sisters, especially as regards ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... kill in this way? Had you stabbed him in the back with a knife, you would have shown the courage of your vileness. It would have been a vileness undisguised. But you feared the consequences of that, powerful as you are; and so you shelter your cowardice under the pretext ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... yourself, and trust you will lay aside all effeminate thoughts with this feminine dress. Do not blush at having worn a disguise to which kings and heroes have been reduced. It is when female craft or female cowardice find their way into a manly bosom, that he who entertains these sentiments should take eternal shame to himself for thus having resembled womankind. Follow me, while Lilias remains here. I will introduce you to those whom I hope to see associated with you in ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... coldly; "there are circumstances in which one cannot, except through cowardice,—I offer you that refuge,—refuse to admit certain persons ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Texians' ardour cooled a little, and they offered the Indians twelve cents an acre for their land, which proposition was not attended to; and probably the Cherokees, from the fear which they inspired, would never have been molested had it not been for an act of the greatest cowardice on the part of the Texian government, and a most guilty indifference on that ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... a bull is timid, finding himself in so strange a place, and he stands trembling, or tries to retreat. Then everybody despises him for his cowardice and wants him punished and made ridiculous; so they hough him from behind, and it is the funniest thing in the world to see him hobbling around on his severed legs; the whole vast house goes into hurricanes of laughter over it; I have laughed till the ...
— A Horse's Tale • Mark Twain
... perpetrated all sorts of schoolboy atrocities on the Diggers, but, above all things else, they burned for a pillow-fight. In vain they challenged the Diggers to combat. Those law-abiding savages declined, though well aware of thereby falling into contempt on charge of cowardice. ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... step, therefore, in providing for the expansion of the navy for war, is to estimate the situation correctly. The greatest difficulty in doing this arises from a species of moral cowardice, which tempts a man to underestimate its dangers, and therefore the means required to meet them. Probably no single cause of defeat in war has been so pregnant with disaster as this failure to make a sufficiently ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... when he gets it, with his comrades; and so generosity strikes down selfishness. In a thousand ways he is tried, and that by sharp critics. His smallest faults are necessarily apparent, for, in the varying conditions of the soldier, every quality is put to the test. If he shows the least cowardice he is undone. His courage must never fail. He must be manly and independent, or he will be told he's a baby, ridiculed, teased, and despised. When war assumes her serious dress, he sees the helplessness of ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... is a fourth thing, of which we already know too much. There is an evil spirit whose dominion is in blindness and in cowardice, as the dominion of the Spirit of wisdom is in ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... oarsmen, take your places with the blessing of sorrow in your souls! Whom do you blame, brothers? Bow your heads down! The sin has been yours and ours. The heat growing in the heart of God for ages— The cowardice of the weak, the arrogance of the strong, the greed of fat prosperity, the rancour of the wronged, pride of race, and insult to man— Has burst ...
— Fruit-Gathering • Rabindranath Tagore
... an agony of apprehension, 'can such things happen in a country like this? Such unrelenting and cold-blooded hostility!' He wiped off the concentrated essence of cowardice that was oozing fast down his forehead, and ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... impaired by time and folly: he is no more disposed to belittle himself here than elsewhere; and it is himself that he cuddles in this small, soft, incomprehensible and unsoiled incarnation. For, as I bring the children, they have no evil in them and no cowardice and ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... read it again; now its sense was clear to her, and she was overcome with horror. In set words, mincing no terms, it accused Alec MacKenzie of sending George Allerton to his death in order to save himself. The words treachery and cowardice were used boldly. The dates were given, and the testimony ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... what avail were such regrets as these? He must take things as they were now, and see that, in dealing with them, he allowed himself to be carried away neither by pride nor cowardice. And if the worst should come to the worst, then let him face it like a man! There was a certain manliness about him which showed itself perhaps as strongly in his own self-condemnation as in any other part of his conduct at ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... widow's weeds. There is no answer—Edith's tears are falling. She is contrasting her own cowardice with Trixy's courage; her own hardness ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... tried at Albany in 1814 by court martial, General Dearborn presiding, was found guilty of treason, cowardice, neglect of duty and unofficerlike conduct, and was sentenced to be shot; the president remitted the sentence because of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... accuse him of cowardice, the guardsman waited until the door had closed upon the last one of his men. Then, slowly, with the utmost composure, he walked out alone between ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... been so brave to-night, would not have me show cowardice," he said softly. "These scoundrels must not remain at large a moment longer than we can help. There is more now at stake than the bank's money—I shall not rest till they are captured, for only then shall I feel ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... side of their colonel to give him some help in urging his men to attack the enemy artillery, which was the only way of stopping the cannonade, but when I saw that I would have no success, and that the cowardice of the Hollanders would result in many casualties in my regiment, I led my troops to the front of them and was about to move into the attack when I saw the bridge on the left collapse under the first section of men from the 24th, throwing them ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... manifesto pulingly taking the blame for a crime last night so obviously his that mere denial would add blood to the crime itself, Adams says in extenuation that 'women were herded before the Cossacks like deer in the park,' while they were picketing. But he does not say that in the shameful cowardice so characteristic of his leadership in this labor war, he forced, by his own motion, women unfit to be seen in public, much less to fight his battles, under the hoofs of the horses in Sands Park this morning, and if the Greek woman, who claims ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... something about Jeekie's manner that frightened Aylward, who understood for the first time that beneath all the negro's grotesque talk lay some dreadful, iron purpose, as courage lay under his affected cowardice and under his veneer of selfishness, fidelity. At any rate he halted with Alan, who stood beside him, the revolver of which Aylward had been relieved by Jeekie, in his hand. Meanwhile Jeekie, who held the rifle which he had reloaded, ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... ought to now. He is a handsome fellow, dashing and reckless, the kind to make an impression. She was flattered by his attentions, and deceived into the thought that she really cared for him. Then she saw his true nature—his selfishness, brutality, cowardice, even—and revolted. I doubt if I had anything to do with this change—it was bound to come. You are a man, Major Hardy, and must know men—is Le Gaire the kind you would want your ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... difference between a sword and a good sharp tooth save that the sword struck and let go and the tooth struck and held on? It had been said in England that to hunt negroes with hounds was barbarous and cowardly; but criminals were hunted with bloodhounds in all civilized countries; and as for cowardice, the man who had sent for these hounds was as brave as any old crusader! No, Dyck Calhoun could not be charged with cowardice, and his policy of the hounds might save the island and the administration in the end. They had arrived in the very hour of Jamaica's and Lord Mallow's greatest ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... grass, while intense pride and the consciousness of innocence struggled with the burning sense of painful injustice. Russell sat silent and pitying beside him, till at last Eric, with sudden energy, sprang to his feet, and said, "Now, Edwin! I've been conquering my cowardice, thanks to you, so come along home. After all, the fellows are in the wrong, not I," and so saying he took Russell's arm, and walked across the playground ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... not arise until, with constant attention to the law and continued watchfulness of self, duty is done for its own sake. No man is for a moment secure of his morality without continued endeavor. In order to deliverance from the original sin of inertness and its train, cowardice and falsity, men stand in need of examples, such as have been given them in the founders of religions, to construe for them the riddle of freedom. The necessary enlightenment concerning moral conviction is given by the Church, whose symbols are not to be ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... orange—through this again to the white—and even thence to the violet, ere a decided movement had been made to arrest him. It was then, however, that the Prince Prospero, maddening with rage and the shame of his own momentary cowardice, rushed hurriedly through the six chambers, while none followed him on account of a deadly terror that had seized upon all. He bore aloft a drawn dagger, and had approached, in rapid impetuosity, to within three or four feet of the retreating figure, when the latter, ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... again. It is not good that one who has the eyes and the tongue of a man should take water from another—even from a Jerry Strann. And even Jerry Strann withdrew his eyes slowly from his prey, and shuddered; the sight of the most grisly death is not so horrible as cowardice. ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... the safe in the Beartown post office was accompanied by more than one unique incident. Chief among these was the cowardice exhibited by two of the three members who composed the ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... curious mixture of daring and cowardice, like most of the natives in Mesopotamia. He was very pleased with the hospital, but expressed a crafty sentiment. "You have too many hospitals," he said. "The Turks do not have these hospitals, for then all their men would become sick. It ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... of Jean Jacques was absolutely broken down. He says little of the blows with which his offences were punished by his master, but he says enough to enable us to discern that they were terrible to him. This cowardice, if we choose to give the name to an overmastering physical horror, at length brought his apprentice days to an end. He was now in his sixteenth year. He was dragged by his comrades into sports for which he had little inclination, ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... point, there was a sort of a kick up, as though with the feet behind. I looked all around, as soon as I dared to, but everything was still except the tormenting shadow. I scarcely breathed, but kept watching the queer figure, till I was almost ready to faint from cowardice. I tried to reason with myself—and called to mind how my father had endeavored to banish this weakness; how one night on being afraid to go into the cellar, he had himself gone with me and examined every corner, to convince me that there was nothing to fear; and under the ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... individual, or as a Christian would say, in the sight of God, it is the heart that makes all the difference between virtue and depravity. In the case of our lovers delay was best for society, but bad for them: the purposed crime was a test of their characters, and they added the sin of cowardice to the sin of adultery, which they had already committed in their hearts. Suppose four men agree to hold up a train. When the light of the locomotive appears, three lose their courage: the fourth stops the train, and single-handed takes the money from the express-car ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... those for protecting them on land. In most of the States severe penalties are provided to punish conductors of trains, engineers, and others employed in the transportation of persons by railway or by steamboats on rivers. Why should not the same principle be applied to acts of insubordination, cowardice, or other misconduct on the part of masters and mariners producing injury or death to passengers on the high seas, beyond the jurisdiction of any of the States, and where such delinquencies can be reached only by the power of Congress? ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin Pierce • Franklin Pierce
... fateful note, and had fled from her. She had intimated that he was a coward in not seeing his fiancee and telling her the truth. She did not like his writing that other girl and running away. Now she would believe the cowardice was inherent, because he had written her, also—and had run ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... others? To live on in no dread of foes, undegraded by infirmity, secure through the cares, and free from the disease of flesh, is a spectacle that captivates our pride. And yet dost thou not more admire him who dies for another? Since I have loved her, Mejnour, it seems almost cowardice to elude the grave which devours the hearts that wrap us in their folds. I feel it,—the earth grows upon my spirit. Thou wert right; eternal age, serene and passionless, is a happier boon than eternal youth, with its yearnings and desires. Until we can be all spirit, ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Brice. "A hanger-on of Hade's, eh? That may explain it. Sato's cowardice may have been a bit of rather clever acting. He saw no use in risking his neck for you people when his master wasn't here. It was no part of his ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... attributed to any other tree. The branch of a palm, if you put a weight upon it, doth not yield and bend downwards, but turns the contrary way as if it resisted the pressing force. The like is to be observed in these exercises. For those who, through weakness or cowardice, yield to them, their adversaries oppress; but those who stoutly endure the encounter have not only their bodies, but their ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... training for many months. I had delayed my experiments for very nearly six weeks on various excuses because of my dread of this first flight, because of the slackness of body and spirit that had come to me with the business life. The shame of that cowardice spurred me none the less because it was probably altogether my own secret. I felt that Cothope at any rate might ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... distrust of Parolles' pretensions, and his eventual recognition of his cowardice and instability, I believe we have a reflection of the attitude of Sir Thomas Heneage towards Florio, and a suggestion of his disapproval of Florio's intimacy with Southampton. This leads me to infer that though Lady Southampton and Heneage apparently acquiesced in, and approved of, Burghley's ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... conversation with her and ashamed of his cowardice, Vaxin pulled the bedclothes over his head and shut his eyes. For about ten minutes he felt fairly comfortable, then the same nonsense came creeping back into his mind. . . . He swore to himself, felt for the matches, and without opening his eyes ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... I cared for nothing. I had stood over him once before, not quite so fiercely as now, but full as austerely. It was one night when burglars attempted the house at Sympson Grove, and in his wretched cowardice he would have given a vain alarm, without daring to offer defence. I had then been obliged to protect his family and his abode by mastering himself—and I had succeeded. I now remained with him till ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... innocent that she could not understand the fury of the German woman. For, as you may imagine, the wifely penetration was not to be deceived for any great length of time—the more so that the wife was older than the husband. The man with the peculiar cowardice of respectability never said a word in Flora's defence. He stood by and heard her reviled in the most abusive terms, only nodding and frowning vaguely from time to time. It will give you the idea of the girl's innocence when I say that at first she actually thought this ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... character of Napoleon, when he says, [16]"Ulcisci, prima lex est, altera, mentiri, tertia, negare Deos." To these we may add unlimited ambition, insatiable vanity, considerable courage at times, and the most dastardly cowardice at others. It must be owned, that this last is an extraordinary mixture; but I am inclined to believe, in despite of the many proofs of rash and impetuous courage, that Napoleon was in the main, and whenever life and existence was at stake, a cool and selfish coward. His rival Moreau always thought ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... in command of capital and it would have been forthcoming. He had something that capital would cheerfully get behind if he had the courage to back up his claims. To fail was nothing less than moral cowardice. The will to do had not been efficient. There was a flaw ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... true of the camp boss, the foreman. A firm that knows its business knows this, and so never considers merely what sort of a character a candidate may bear in town. He may drink or abstain, may exhibit bravery or cowardice, strength or weakness—it is all one to the lumbermen who employ him. In the woods his ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... Treachery, cowardice, looting, any indignity to women, he punished with death; but to the wounded, either of his own or of the enemy's forces, he was as gentle as a nursing sister and the brave and able he rewarded with instant promotion and higher pay. In no one trait ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... war were going so directly against him, fled from the battle, many of the vikings followed him in the belief that he was but intending to make a new rally and to presently return to the fray. That the chief of Jomsburg could be guilty of mean cowardice surpassed their understanding; moreover, they were bound by their oaths to obey him in all things. Some twenty of his ships followed him out of the bay, and the captains watched him, ready to turn back with him at his first signal. But Sigvaldi ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... my boy, and do it. Do not allow yourself to indulge in moral cowardice, but dare to do right, asking help of God, who is able ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
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