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More "Foolhardy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... born in Yorkshire, a high-handed Churchman and imitator of Laud; was foolhardy enough once to engage, nowise to his credit, in public debate with such a dialectician as Thomas Hobbes on the questions ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... and their followers were thrown into a fine rage at this unprecedented occurrence. They ran for the gates, to wreak dire vengeance upon the foolhardy perpetrator of the outrage; but they suddenly realized that they did not know which way to turn to find the foe. As they stood debating with many angry shouts and much gesticulating, one of the Arabs sank silently to the ground in their ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... being spoken outside Wareham's private room (where the interview took place), I nowadays think it more charitable to assume that he was a trifle crazy. One thing is certain, he had come to the wrong person in applying to me to aid and abet him in the foolhardy ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... Anne, "I dare not bid thee do such a foolhardy thing. Nevertheless, if thou hast the courage ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... girl, Harriet, dear," said Miss Elting softly, patting the brown head affectionately. "But don't you think you are just a little bit foolhardy?" ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge
... great as was his bravery, his size, his strength, what could they avail in such foolhardy strife? One jerk of the black snout, one flash of the white tusks, and, with a last yelping scream, the body of poor Shark goes whirling up into the air, and falls a bleeding, bisected, lifeless lump. Poor Shark! with all his faults, I think we ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... me why this yere foolhardy Hotspur don't stampede out for safety. But he don't; he stands thar lookin' onusual limp, an' awaits his fate. Prince Hal don't rush up an' mingle with Hotspur; he's playin' a system an' he don't deviate tharfrom. lie stands off about fifty yards, callin' ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... undertake it; but I had said I would and now I must stick to my word, or acknowledge that I was a big bluffer. I went up to the office and Fred Bennett gave me the orders. But as he did so he said: "Bates, that's a foolhardy thing for you to do, and I reckon the old man must be crazy to allow you to try it, but rather than give in to that mob out there I'll see you through with it. Now don't you forget for one minute, that you have twenty-three cars and a caboose trailing along behind you; that ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... paid for its heedlessness with destruction, and was more pitiable for its own sloth than by reason of the valour of the foe. For in warfare nought is found to be more ruinous than that a man, made foolhardy by ease, should neglect and slacken his affairs and doze ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... could not be wholly repressed. "I grant you it was foolhardy, in the economic point of view," he confessed. "I took a long chance of going ten thousand dollars to the bad. But mine-buying is a disease—as contagious as the measles. Everybody in a mining country takes a flyer, at least once. The experienced ones will tell you that nobody is immune. ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... of Francisco Pizarro to penetrate to Uiticos, his brother, Gonzalo, "undertook the pursuit of the Inca and occupied some of his passes and bridges," but was unsuccessful in penetrating the mountain labyrinth. Being less foolhardy than Captain Villadiego, he did not come into actual conflict with Manco. Unable to subdue the young Inca or prevent his raids on travelers from Cuzco to Lima, Francisco Pizarro, "with the assent of the royal officers who were with him," established the city ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... of Italy at that date. On April 8th in that year, Lorenzo de' Medici, who had succeeded in maintaining a political equilibrium in the peninsula, expired, and was succeeded by his son Piero, a vain and foolhardy young man, from whom no guidance could be expected. On July 25th, Innocent VIII. died, and was succeeded by the very worst pope who has ever occupied St. Peter's chair, Roderigo Borgia, Alexander VI. It was felt at once that the ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... met me on Baltimore Street, and informed me he held the warrant for my arrest. I assured him it would be foolhardy to try to execute it, for one of us would certainly be injured. I recommended him to report to Judge Bond, and I assured him I would be ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... uneducated—what would you? But it is so, even since I myself have been in residence at Withersby Hall—something like three and a half years—there have been several mysterious disappearances, Sir Nigel, and all directly traceable to a foolhardy desire to investigate these phenomena. For myself, I leave well enough alone. I trust you are going to ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... a hundred enterprises which appear in the market, it may safely be said that sixty are nothing but the simplest kind of wells, into which the capital of foolhardy speculators is sunk almost instantly. Out of the remaining forty, twenty-five may be looked upon as suspicious enterprises, partaking too much of gambling speculations. Among the last fifteen even, a careful choice must ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... "You are foolhardy. What can be done quietly, ought to be done quietly. If we cannot succeed so, why dare both ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... a wager, rode a horse down the cliff to the extreme verge of the Land's End; where the poor animal, seeing its danger, turned in affright, reared, and fell back into the sea raging over the rocks beneath. The foolhardy rider had just sense enough left to throw himself off in time—he tumbled on the ground, within a few inches of the precipice, and so barely saved the life which he had richly deserved ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... woe. Among those that Phillips approached, although not personally, was Colonel McIntosh, who communicated with Phillips through two intimate friends. McIntosh was persuaded to attempt no immediate demonstration in favor of the North; for that would be premature, foolhardy; but to bide the time, which could not be far distant, when the Federal troops would be in a position to support him.[721] The psychological moment was not yet. Blunt called Phillips back for operations ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... who followed Roland thought him more than brave, they considered him foolhardy. But Roland, caring little whether they followed or not, retraced his own steps in default of those of the bandits. The two men, ashamed, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... scene from the balcony. At the time it did not strike me as a farce. I merely thought that she had been stupid and foolhardy. But since then I have reflected. She provoked the mob of the street, wilfully, just at the very moment when she reached M. Droulde's door. She meant to appeal to his chivalry, and called for help, well knowing that ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... must have been aboard the schooner secretly; what he told his father and his eagerness to bet with me on a proposition that seemed foolhardy on the face of it clinch the thing in my mind. The misguided fool! That, Elsa, is an example of how low a man will go who has been spoiled and brought up without the ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... bodily, into the air in his mortal spring, mouth wide open, its crimson cavern glaring, teeth gleaming, eyes blazing, mane erect, paws spread, claws wide, the stoutest heart might well quail. Yet, after barely escaping one lion, this foolhardy coxcomb, this vainglorious madcap, joyously called for another and jauntily despatched him: whatever may be said against Commodus as a man and an Emperor, as an athlete he believed in himself ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... raising his voice. His eyes rested on Jock with the steady, penetrating gaze that was peculiar to him. More foolhardy men than Jock McChesney had faltered and paused, abashed, under those eyes. "McChesney, your enthusiasm for your work is causing you to forget one thing that must never be forgotten in ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... for a moment or two, and I fancied that there was something of that admiration in his gaze which a cautious man sometimes feels for the foolhardy. ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... it next occurred to my recollection that a taut hawser, suddenly cut, is a thing as dangerous as a kicking horse. Ten to one, if I were so foolhardy as to cut the Hispaniola from her anchor, I and the coracle would be knocked clean out ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... well, sir. I'm not giving orders. But my own life is worth something to me and I have a right to tell you that you are taking foolhardy chances. And you know ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... to showers of shrapnel as well as to an incessant rifle fire. Never were guns so welcome as those of the 82nd battery, brought by Major Connolly into the firing line. The enemy's riflemen were only a thousand yards away, and the action of the artillery might have seemed as foolhardy as that of Long at Colenso. Ten horses went down on the instant, and a quarter of the gunners were hit; but the guns roared one by one into action, and their shrapnel soon decided the day. Undoubtedly it is with Connolly and his men ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... clear of the entrance I saw the enemy distant about a thousand metres. I at once recognized her as being one of the oldest type of Russian torpedo boats afloat. When I established this fact, a devil entered into my mind, and did a most foolhardy act. ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... he had paid dearly for his foolhardy contempt of public opinion, it was the fashion at Saint Germains to excuse him by throwing the blame on others. Some Jacobites charged Anne with having purposely kept out of the way. Nay, they were not ashamed to say that ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... have heard aright,—He to suffer! What could this mean? They hadn't figured on this when they left the nets and boats to follow. There had been a rosy glamour filling impulsive Peter's self-confident sky. Now this black storm cloud! Then to Peter's foolhardy daring came words spoken with a new intense quietness that made the words quiver: "If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... MAKANG, and the same word is applied to any daring or dashing feat, such as crossing the river when it is dangerously swollen. To disregard omens would be MAKANG also; it seems, therefore, to have the flavour of the word rash or foolhardy. ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... is he doing? That's a foolhardy piece of business, trying to reach that truck. It's under the fire of the German trench, as well as within range of their battery. What ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... crater, half strangling himself in its poisonous fumes, scorching the shoes off his feet, and once, I believe, he lost most of his hair and eyebrows—a narrow squeak. He throws his head back and laughs at any word of caution. To my notion, it's foolhardy to push a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... sometimes her mouth was twitching. John Storm was conscious and very quiet. Holding Glory's hand as if he could not part with it, he was looking around with the expression of the soldier who has done the fearful, perhaps the foolish and foolhardy thing and scaled the walls of the enemy. He is lying with the enemy's shot in his breast now, and with death in his eyes, but he is smiling proudly for all that, because he knows that the army is coming ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... into a position of much prominence, and conveyed the very reasonable supposition that he was individually powerful. When a man is supposed to possess power, he can travel a long distance on the effect of a flashing eye, and an expanded chest; also, it is a foolhardy man who, regardless of his reputation, engages to meet all-comers in ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... thirty, twenty-four, and thirty-six pounders, served with a zeal and courage which far exceeded any thing I had expected to find in the patriot army. The fellows were really more than brave, they were foolhardy. They danced rather than walked round the guns, and exhibited a contempt of death that could not well be surpassed. As to drawing the guns back from the embrasures while they loaded them, they never dreamed of such a thing. They stood jeering ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... the sheriff who had been listening with keen interest to the hunter's account of his bold but fruitless attempt to compel the submission of the desperado, "I cannot believe, after all, that the fellow will be so foolhardy as to persist in his refusal to surrender, when he knows there is now no longer any chance for him to escape. I will try him faithfully before resorting ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... long as he could, without any further delay. If by any possibility he could stop that leak, he determined to start off at the next high tide, that very night, and run the risk. It was a daring, even a foolhardy thought; but Tom was desperate, and the only idea which he had was, to escape ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... dragon had him," muttered King Aetes to himself, "and the four-footed pedant, his schoolmaster, into the bargain. Why, what a foolhardy, self-conceited coxcomb he is! We'll see what my fire-breathing bulls will do for him. Well, Prince Jason," he continued, aloud, and as complaisantly as he could, "make yourself comfortable for to-day, and to-morrow ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... "Well, of all the foolhardy, cowardly tricks, I believe that takes the premium!" said Frank, as he arose and grasped the wheel again. "That ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... now was, should he return to Slocum's office or seek outside assistance? He decided upon the latter course. To attempt to bring the rascally real estate agent to terms alone would be foolhardy. ...
— The Young Oarsmen of Lakeview • Ralph Bonehill
... he take? Would she come to sacrifice? What should he do—should he give up this foolhardy expedition and retrace his steps? No; a strange fascination drew him onwards. Step by step he moved forward until he drew nigh to the marble Temple of the night goddess—a lonely man amidst the great solitude, and shadowed by the ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... Mr. GEOFFREY PYKE has such a fine yarn to spin of his foolhardy proceeding in walking right into the eagle's beak as correspondent for an English newspaper, at the end of September, 1914, and (after some months' solitary confinement in Berlin and his transfer to the civilian ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 8, 1916 • Various
... selected the channel, my men by this time having gained sufficient confidence in my judgment, since so far we had had no serious mishap. But I foresaw that we should soon have an accident, as they were getting foolhardy, and in their ignorance attributed the wonderful luck we had had entirely to ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... into the sacred halls. Under his canopy, opposite the high altar, sat the vicegerent of God upon his golden throne, surrounded by the consecrated cardinals and bishops, protected by the Swiss guard! Who could have ventured to attack the holy father—who would have been so foolhardy as to attempt to penetrate that thick wall of Swiss guards and princes of the Church—who could have been successful in such an attempt? No human being! But where the people could not penetrate, where there was no room for the swinging ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... shivered inwardly. He was a man of courage, but not of foolhardy courage, the species of courage that dares death unnecessarily. He was getting on in years, and hoped, when it came his time to die, to pass out peacefully in his nightshirt. And here was that fool of a Racey practically telling Harpe and the other rascals ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... the tricks those perfect rascals used to play. Birds of a feather, ill jesters, scoundrels all! Dear Gorgo, what will become of us? Here come the King's war- horses! My dear man, don't trample on me. Look, the bay's rearing, see, what temper! Eunoe, you foolhardy girl, will you never keep out of the way? The beast will kill the man that's leading him. What a good thing it is for me that my brat ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... loiter on the threshold, but he was too much afraid of the old man. "It's impossible that this beautiful girl can be his daughter," thought he, "for she has a kind heart. She must be the poor girl who was brought here in my place, and for whose sake I undertook this foolhardy enterprise." He did not fall asleep for a long time, and even then his uneasy dreams gave him no rest. He dreamed of all sorts of unknown dangers which threatened him, and it was always the form of the fair girl that came ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... already done so, and presently were deep in a gentle talk, of which at length certain words that had been foolhardy enough to wander within her range, attracted the notice of Mrs. Ramshorn, and she began to listen. But she could not ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... September, Bolivar's palace was attacked by a group of conspirators whose object was to murder him. They took the guard by surprise, wounding and killing several of its members, and started towards Bolivar's room. The Liberator intended to fight, but was persuaded that it would be foolhardy; so he jumped through the window to the street and hid for a while. The conspirators, crying, "Death to the tyrant and long life to General Santander and the constitution of Cucuta," went in pursuit of him. Colonel William Ferguson, ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... time I acted on the spur of the moment, and under stress of great excitement. I had had time to collect my wits by the time he gained possession of the revolver. I wasn't as foolhardy as I was at the beginning. I was afraid he would shoot me ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... It was a foolhardy thing—Rance could see it now as he looked out on the mad water, and at the little flat, awkward boat on ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... smite the rocks with dismaying ferocity. To catch the five eleven he would have to leave at once, and he seized his belongings and opened the door, but upon stepping out upon the veranda the walk he had contemplated along the shore path to the village seemed a foolhardy thing to undertake. An unearthly darkness had fallen upon the world and a misstep in the rough path over the rocks might pitch him headlong into the sea. He had marked the presence of a telephone in the house and decided to summon a taxi, but ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... old man phlegmatically. "It is high time you were off. You are foolhardy to match your chances with justice. Prison stares ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... dogs communicate with men, and he would assure me, on his honour, that there was some peril on the mountain; appeal to me, by all that I held holy, to turn back; and at length, finding all was in vain, and that I still persisted, ignorantly foolhardy, he would suddenly whip round and make a bee-line down the slope for Silverado, the gravel showering after him. What was he afraid of? There were admittedly brown bears and Californian lions on the mountain; and a grizzly visited Rufe's poultry yard not long before, to the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... eyes." But yet he did not approve of the marriage. "They were poverty stricken," he said, and Clayton went about from day to day with his life in his hand. "A brave man," he said to himself; "but singularly foolhardy,—unless it be that he wants to die." He had not been called upon for his consent, for Edith had never yielded. She, too, had said that it was impossible. "If Ada would have suited, it might have been possible, but not between Yorke and me." They had both come now to call him by his Christian ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... mercilessly butchered, burnt alive, or carried into a still more horrible captivity. But Divine Providence remedied this terrible state of affairs, by means not naturally looked for, and which in the commencement seemed not only foolhardy, but little suited to the end. Yet a very special providence was visibly at work, in a chain of events that were altogether miraculous, as the sequel proved. A new colony was founded at Montreal, which was intended as a barrier against the inroads of the savages, ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... task,—to overthrow the Pharisees in Jerusalem itself. No other alternative was left him. And here we believe Mr. F. W. Newman to be singularly at fault in pronouncing this attempt of Jesus upon Jerusalem a foolhardy attempt. According to Mr. Newman, no man has any business to rush upon certain death, and it is only a crazy fanatic who will do so. [21] But such "glittering generalizations" will here help us but little. The historic data show that to go to Jerusalem, even at the risk of death, ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... had had supper. And as I took the cup from the shelf the fantastic idea came into my mind to ask my protegee to come in and drink her coffee by the fire in the parlour. I must frankly own it was foolhardy; it was rash, it was even dangerous. But there it is! One cannot help the way one is made, and I am afraid I am not of those who invariably take the coldly prudent course ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... army. Now, to engage in a combat wherein you risk your whole fortunes without putting forth your entire strength, is, as I observed before, when condemning the defence of a country by guarding its defiles, an utterly foolhardy course. On the other hand, it is to be said that a prudent captain, when he has to meet a new and redoubtable adversary, ought, before coming to a general engagement, to accustom his men by skirmishes and passages of arms, to the quality of ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... "He is a little fool, Corp, but not such a fool as I am." He lay on his face, shivering, not from cold, not from shock, but in a horror of himself. I think it may fairly be said that he had done a brave if foolhardy thing; it was certainly to save the boy that he had jumped, and he had given himself a moment's time in which to draw back if he chose, which vastly enhances the merit of the deed. But sentimentality had been there also, and he was now shivering with a presentiment of the length to ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... having cut the escort to pieces, slew also the merchants and travellers. He seemed to give the sword the more heartily in that he sought it for himself, but could never get it. No doubt he deserved to get it. He performed deeds of impossible foolhardy gallantry, the deeds of a knight-errant; rode solitary, made single-handed rescues, suffered himself to be cut off from his posts, and then with a handful of knights, or alone, indeed, carved his way back to Darum. Des Barres, the Earl of Leicester and the Grand Master, ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... abandon this foolhardy undertaking. How can you expect to find Weiss in all that confusion? Most likely he is no longer there by this time; he is probably making his way home through the fields. I assure you that ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... against the only sort of assassins who are in the least degree dangerous. I want you to understand this quite clearly,' he said, turning to her suddenly with an earnestness which had something tender in it. 'I want you to know that I am not rash or foolhardy or careless about my own life. I have only too much reason for wanting to live—aye, even for clinging to life! But, as a matter of calculation, there is no precaution to be taken in such a case which can be of the slightest value as a genuine protection. ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... of disappointment, that his emotions were not by any means such as a really courageous man would experience. He was completely lacking in enthusiasm for this enterprise, for it struck him as risky, nay, foolhardy, insane, to take a boat over that cataract in an attempt to snatch human beings out from the very midst of those threshing breakers. It seemed more than likely that all hands would be drowned in the undertaking, ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... and as you did not care to return to your lodgings near Saint Botolph's Church without Aldgate, you privily despatched Dick Taverner to bring your horses from the Falcon in Gracechurch Street, where you had left them, with the foolhardy intention of setting forth this morning to Theobalds, to try and obtain an ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... curiosity seekers had assembled to see the aeronaut make his first foolhardy attempt, as they called it. Never before had a spark-spitting motor been hung under a great reservoir of highly inflammable hydrogen gas, and most of the group thought the daring inventor would never see another sunset. Santos-Dumont moved around his suspended air-ship, ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... which she was ashamed, but for which she would have unreflectingly made any sacrifice. The embrace was over in an instant. Besides being guiltless of obesity, George Cannon was free from the unpardonable fault of clumsiness. He was audacious, but he was not foolhardy, and he would never be abashed. True, she had seen dismay on his face at the moment of his declaration, but that moment was unique, and his dismay had ineffably flattered her. Now, on the half-landing, she was drenched in bliss. And she felt dissolute; she felt even base. ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... with England began, President Madison and his advisers thought it foolhardy to attempt to oppose Great Britain on the ocean, for she had the strongest fleet of any nation in the world, and so decided to confine the war entirely to land. It was Bainbridge who brought about a change of this unwise policy by impassioned pleading, to the everlasting ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... drank again, never cussed nor stormed, and I've laid it by as an item, that the badness and sameness of men lies in their wits—if you want a companionable, safe man, you've got to turn to sich as are bereft of their senses—and most women is that foolhardy they prefer wits and ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... led from green pastures to the stable, and the period of effervescence made him almost possessed by a demon, so many sorts of follies did he commit. He wrote "a poem of the world," fell in love with an actress older than himself, became known as foolhardy for his wild escapades, and only ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... even seem to perceive me, though I was as near as I am to you; but its eyes seemed prying into the air. It passed by me quickly, and, walking across a stream of burning lava, soon vanished on the other side of the mountain. I was curious and foolhardy, and resolved to see if I could bear the atmosphere which this visitor had left; but though I did not advance within thirty yards of the spot at which he had first appeared, I was driven back by a vapor that well-nigh stifled me. Cospetto! I have ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... last accounts, had gone into the mountains south of Sunset Pass toward Chevlon's Fork, and his trail was doubtless watched to head off couriers or cut down stragglers. Blakely's appeal to be allowed to follow and join his troop had been declared foolish, and the attempt foolhardy, by Captain Cutler. This and not the real reason was given, coupled of course, with the doctor's dictum. But even Graham had begun to think Blakely would be the better for anything that would take him away from ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... himself for a brave man, wherefore he made no advertisement of the fact. He knew that just as readily as the other would he dive among ground-sharks to save a life, but in that fact he could find no sanction for the foolhardy act of diving among sharks for the half of a fish. The difference between them was that he kept the curtain of his shop window down. Life pulsed steadily and deep in him, and it was not his nature needlessly to agitate the surface so that the world could see ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... the glassy waters of the creek, every eye being directed anxiously ahead, for we knew not at what moment we might encounter our enemy, nor in what force he might be. To me it appeared that we were acting in rather a foolhardy manner in thus rushing blindfold as it were upon the unknown, and earlier in the day—in fact, just after we had entered the river—I had suggested to Ryan the advisability of taking the schooner somewhat higher up the stream and anchoring her in a snug and well-sheltered ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... a thing as asking the cabin-boy to climb the rigging when the sea is rough, and before he has had a chance to prove himself a good climber in pleasant weather. Master Willy, don't obey any such foolhardy order. The Captain, I am sure, does not want you to try any ...
— The Shipwreck - A Story for the Young • Joseph Spillman
... you venture here alone?" Hans inquired, "and why unarmed? How foolhardy! The wolves would have made short work of ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... It seemed a foolhardy thing to do, but Phil understood exactly how to go about it. If he were able to turn the team, he would undoubtedly save them from plunging into the seats where hundreds of people were sitting. A trained circus horse always will avoid the spectators, but there is no accounting for what a green ...
— The Circus Boys On the Mississippi • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... no sooner regained his feet, than he seized Frank around the body, and, lifting him from his feet, threw him heavily to the ground. Frank's revolver had become entangled in his belt in such a manner that he could not draw it, and he now saw how foolhardy he had been, for his antagonist was a man of almost twice his size, and possessed of enormous strength. But Frank still retained his presence of mind, and, in falling, he managed to catch the rebel by the hair, and pulled him to the ground with ...
— Frank on a Gun-Boat • Harry Castlemon
... There was still another, a harsh one that growled something unintelligible, and Wetherell guessed, from the fragments which he heard, that the judge before sitting down to his duty was trying to dissuade the stage driver from a step that was foolhardy. He guessed likewise that Lem was not to be dissuaded. At length a silence followed, then the door swung open, and three figures came down the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... encouraged, that adaptability becomes lessened, and that wiser selection of mates does not occur. But how bring about early marriages in a time when the luxuries seem to have become necessities, and therefore the necessity of marriage is eyed more and more as an extravagance of the foolhardy? How bring about early marriage when women are earning pay almost equal to that of the men and are therefore more reluctant to enter matrimony unless at a high standard of living. The late marriage is an evil, but how it can be displaced ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... the retired soldier, and I ran after her, imploring her not to risk her life on such a foolhardy errand, but she took ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... the quick by the comparison make between him and Moreau, and by the wish to represent him as foolhardy ("savants sous Moreau, fougueuse sous Buonaparte"). In the term of "brigands," applied to the generals who fought in La Vendee, he thought he recognized the hand of the party he was about to attack and overthrow. He was tired of the way in which Moreau's system of war was called ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... wide open and fixed, that, having heard of its threatening demonstration against the cavalry who attacked it on the previous day, they felt certain it meant mischief, and was only waiting for some foolhardy wight to venture within its reach, to seize and devour him. They had been despatched by a despotic king to capture or kill the creature; but, whilst every man there would have emulated his neighbour in rushing to certain death against the ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... might be able to check the animal and bring it to a standstill. She did not pause to think what a foolhardy thing she was doing. All of a sudden the animal swung about in a half circle. He literally cracked the whip with Harriet Burrell. The rein slapped the side of a big tree. Harriet was lifted from her feet and hurled with great force into the middle ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge
... chance!" cried Blood, in broken-hearted frenzy. "If ye say it was desperate and foolhardy, why, so it was; but the occasion and the means demanded nothing less. I fail within an ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... to us, without the least embarrassment, the letters of the lady. The curious thing about them was the moderation she exercised in the expression of her love, while at the same time her plans for meetings were of the most foolhardy, breakneck description. ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... out to sea. I think, Mr. Jones, you owe us apologies more than gratitude, for your folly was responsible for the incident. You were altogether too venturesome. Such action on this coast, where the surf rolls high and creates an undertow, is nothing less than foolhardy." ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... simultaneously. Well, my good Flemming, there is not much wisdom needed to tell me that if the king knows of our contract, he will be all the more on his guard, and will make preparations to defend himself; for he would not be so foolhardy as to attempt to attack our three united armies. No, no. Our regiments can remain quietly in Poland, the seventeen thousand men here will answer ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... Terre des Voizins that Jean had resolved to seek his beloved, and his resolution was unalterable. He knew the danger; he wished to avoid death if possible; he meant to employ to the full the resources at his command; foolhardy as his enterprise seemed it was long and carefully planned. He knew that in the summer evenings it was the custom of the Voizin women to visit the sunny shores of the bay: this he had seen from Lihou; could he then succeed in landing unperceived, and in concealing himself in one of the ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... The attempt would seem foolhardy in a prince so little popular as Philip the Fair; but Philip in reality risked nothing, and knew it; the feudality did not possess sufficient union, the people did not have enough force to profit on this occasion against the Crown. Besides, the Pope was more ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... which are admittedly the most important religious creations outside of Christianity. These students come back to us with fragments of doctrines, gems of ethical wisdom, traces of sublimity from the Indian sacred books. It would be foolhardy not to receive any genuine treasures, no matter what the mine from which they have been quarried. We are all eager to admit the immeasurable possibilities of the Oriental type of thinking for the development ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell
... pricked up their ears aghast—down the rapids at Kohiseva on a stick of timber; it was more than any had ever ventured yet. True, there was the man some ten years back—a foolhardy fellow from a neighbouring district—who had tried the lower reach, which was less dangerous by far, but he was dead when he ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... mean between baseness and excessive self-denial; gentleness is a mean between irascibility and insensibility to insult; modesty is a mean between impudence and shamefacedness. People are often mistaken and regard one of the extremes as a virtue. Thus the reckless and the foolhardy is often praised as the brave; the man of no backbone is called gentle; the indolent is mistaken for the contented; the insensible for the temperate, the extravagant for the generous. This is an error. The mean alone ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... through the sluice. Sometimes, when the dam is high, some of the river-drivers go through in the boats—a dangerous practice, this; for often the bateaux have gone under water, entirely out of sight, to come up below the falls, and more than once have lives been lost in this foolhardy feat. ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... opinion expressed when the captain finished his story, and that was that Rodney Gray was a foolhardy young fellow. ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... the base of the rock, we found a way cut, a narrow path, most of the distance hewn out of the rock, winding upward along the face of the precipice. The view, as one rises, is of the break-neck description. The way is really safe enough, even on mule-back, ascending; but one would be foolhardy to ride down. We met a lady on the summit who was about to be carried down on a chair; and she seemed quite to like the mode of conveyance: she had harnessed her husband in temporarily for one of the bearers, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... anatomy and physiology so lightly as to think of using remedies, even for relief, without first undergoing a thorough examination by a competent physician. In troubles of a rectal character it is exceedingly foolhardy to allow any one to prescribe without insisting upon a thorough examination to ascertain whether there be any disease of a cancerous nature present, or what the trouble actually is, and its progress. To expect one remedy or ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... at times appear to me a foolhardy one, but the confidence of the woman of Bulika, real or simulated, always overcame my hesitancy. The princess's magic, she insisted, would prove powerless against the children; and as to any force she might muster, our animal-allies alone would assure our ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... were in the world, have even condemned you; they have been fruitful, but you fruitless; they have been fearful of danger, but you foolhardy; they have taken the fittest opportunity for their own preservation, but thou hast both blindly, and confidently gone on to thy ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... have another chance to talk to you privately for some time. A few things are to be impressed on your minds. The first is this. Take no foolish chances. Don't be foolhardy. We cannot afford to waste our tools. And in this struggle tools are what you are, not boys, not human beings that will feel cold, and heat, and pain and privations; just tools. ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine
... to come, and of course he would not come. No one could be so audacious and foolhardy as to invite destruction after being solemnly warned—and yet, if he did come, she wanted to be there to speak to him again and rebuke him and tell him not ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... the audacious are not the same. Audacity means boldness, but to be rash often means to be imprudent or foolhardy. When a little dog attacks a big dog, as so often happens, his boldness becomes rashness. When Charles Kingsley attacked Newman, his boldness turned out ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... You are certainly very kind and watchful; but, Blanche, if you don't care for yourself, you ought to consider other people. It's a terrible responsibility to travel with such a foolhardy person. I can't say I'm sorry if you've been a little frightened. Take ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... colleague from the last remaining vestige of control. Beyond the extent of these judgments, I doubt if this astute personage will be found to have committed himself in black and white; and the more foolhardy President may thus be left in the top of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... more than once to-day whether I had not been foolhardy in letting you come here—whether distance wasn't safest, and the hunger of absence sweeter than the full meal of your presence for—for both of us, things being between us as they actually are. What if the bubble burst?—I have had ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... was that it could not get down. And they seemed to be too far apart to be of much help to each other, for the cupola Crows had lost little time in lifting the trap-door of the belfry and finding that the ladder was gone, and none of them was hardy—or foolhardy—enough to risk the drop into the uncertain dark. So there they ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... screen flashed out instead. The Thessians were covering up. Their own rays were useless now. Though Arcot could not hope to destroy their ray shield, they could no longer attack his, for their rays were useless, and already they had lost so much of the protective relux, that they would not be so foolhardy as to risk a second ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... have carried her on to a terrible rebuff. She could find heart only to look at the pictures which were showy and then walk out. It seemed to her as if she had made a splendid escape and that it would be foolhardy to think of applying in that ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... That's the funny thing. He must have been a foolhardy fellow, and I rather think it was him that wrote that." He took out a slip of paper from his pocket. "That's what he wrote, sir. 'I've got out, Eustace Borlsover, but I'll be back before long.' Some jail bird just escaped, I suppose. It will make it ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... has passed its experimental ordeal, and stands firmly established in popular regard. It was started at a period when any new literary enterprise was deemed almost foolhardy, but the publisher believed that the time had arrived for just such a Magazine. Fearlessly advocating the doctrine of ultimate and gradual Emancipation, for the sake of the UNION and the WHITE MAN, it has found favor ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... yet without being able to understand the secret of the support of vital power without food. But whatever risk there might be, or how strong my faith when my patrons were the subjects of what might be called foolhardy experiments, there came a time when this faith was to have ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... rejoined. "Foolhardy means just what the word implies, and only a fool will be foolhardy. If we had been trying to upset the canoe, as a matter of sport, that would have been the work ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... surprise. This is only one of many instances of a similar folly which I observed throughout the American war. I speak of military officers especially. There is something in the character of Englishmen which makes them over-confident and foolhardy, and they will require to be taught by some very severe lessons before they learn the importance of caution. This want of caution in an officer, when entrusted with the lives of brave men, is a very great fault, and shows great folly and an unfitness for command. The vice, I ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... I thank God, the Creator and Conserver of all things, for having guided me into this hospitable house. It is He alone who governs us and we are compelled to recognise His providence in all matters human, notwithstanding that it is foolhardy and sometimes incongruous to follow Him too closely. Because being universal He is to be found in all sorts of encounters, sublime by the conduct which He keeps, but obscene or ridiculous for the part man takes in it and which is the only part where they appear to us. And therefore one must not shout, ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... back by sunset, when the gates were locked, and no one was allowed out or in till six the next morning. The women, who carried all the water used in the waterless town, had of course to conform to the same rule. Like most men who are constantly exposed to danger, the shepherds became careless or foolhardy, and wandered rather far with their herds. Osman was too astute to neglect his opportunities. On this occasion an old shepherd, who was well-known at Sphinx Redoubt, had strayed too far. The Soudanese swept down, cut off his ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... in agreement. "The action you took was too swift and too foolhardy to be believed. You knew that you could have destroyed not only yourself, but also all who live on that planet. You could also have wrecked the planet itself and the ships and those of my own race who manned them. We had tried to contact you, but since you had not developed subspace radio, ...
— Upstarts • L. J. Stecher
... always in touch; but how could a mere handful of a score of Indians cope successfully with the men of the mission, aided, as they would be, by the trained soldiers of the presidio? Pomponio had sense enough to see that such procedure would be foolhardy, and he abandoned the plan for the time, hoping his little body of followers would increase, when the disparity in strength and numbers between the two sides ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... that you could escape, Walter, without my knowledge. This is the regiment to which I belong. You were foolhardy ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Love in '76 - An Incident of the Revolution • Oliver Bell Bunce
... and his Staff, the miserable commander of the steamer kept her moving with as much prudence as they would let him exercise. Some of them had been drinking heavily, no doubt; but the prospect of laying hands on so much wealth made them absurdly foolhardy, and, at the same time, extremely anxious. The old major of the battalion, a stupid, suspicious man, who had never been afloat in his life, distinguished himself by putting out suddenly the binnacle light, the only one allowed on board for the necessities of ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... the left of the lounge door, yawned the well of the basement stairway. And one chance was no more foolhardy than another. Like a shot down that dark hole he dropped—and brought up with a bang against a closed door at the bottom. Happily, it wasn't locked. Turning the handle, he stumbled through, reclosed the door, ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... ten days on the Peninsula before he made his reputation. His monocle, his "what," and his rich maledictions were admired and imitated all along the Brigade front. From Fusilier Bluff to Stanley Street it was agreed that Major Foolhardy was a Sahib. Twice a day every bay in the trench system was cursed by him. "God! give me ten Turks and a dog, and I'd capture the whole of this sector any hour of the day or night," and his head ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... Foolhardy chaps as lives in towns, What dangers they are all in; And now a'tremblin' in their beds, For fear the roof should fall in! Poor creatures, how they envies us, And wishes, I've a notion, For our good luck in such a night, ...
— The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 1 • Various
... vain that he employed both so much kindness and so much violence in order to suppress Christianity. The reign of the gods was irrevocably ended. His soul filled with rage when he saw that he was powerless to change the course of events. He ended by undertaking a foolhardy expedition into Persia, thinking that that was the only way in which to defeat Christ, triumph over the "cursed" religion, and bring back victoriously the altars of the dead gods. But the Olympians on whom he had counted were of ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... at a time when rumours of war were rife, to the rapid development of heavier-than-air craft on the Continent. So far, as we have seen, the aeroplane had been regarded in England as little more than the plaything of a few adventurous but foolhardy spirits. A certain amount of experience in piloting and handling aeroplanes had been gained by a handful of Army officers, but the machines used either belonged to the officers themselves, to civilians, or to aviation ...
— Aviation in Peace and War • Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes
... the sun came very pleasantly out. I had been awake all night, I had undergone the most violent agitations of mind and body, and it is not so much to be wondered at, as it was exceedingly unwise and foolhardy, that I should have dropped into a doze. From this I awakened to the characteristic sound of digging, looked down, and saw immediately below me the back view of a gardener in a stable waistcoat. Now he would appear steadily immersed in his business; anon, to my more immediate ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a note on p. 52 of Job and Solomon, "Heb. K's[i]l, the name of the foolhardy giant who strove with Jehovah. The Chaldeo-Assyrian astrology gave the name Kisiluv to the ninth month, connecting it with the zodiacal sign Sagittarius. But there are valid reasons for attaching the Hebrew popular myth to Orion." So Col. Conder, in p. 179 of ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... said George, "as though I were a foolhardy boy without any sense. I shall select from the more polite and less irritating speeches; the grosser insults ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... expressed desire to escort them aboard their ship would have caused them to fall on the neck of even a foreign soldier in adoration. The thirst for joviality often led wayward sailors to crave for drink, and under its baneful influence they were easily wafted into a delirium of foolhardy devices that would never have entered the mind of the ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... his companions to stay quiet, he went to the Auditorium and spoke for more than an hour. Only towards the end did the audience perceive that he showed signs of fatigue. This extraordinary performance was most foolhardy, and some of his carping critics said that, as usual, Roosevelt wanted to be theatrical. But there was no such purpose in him. He felt to the depths of his soul that neither his safety nor that of any other individual ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... the palace, burning with the fires of murder. Messenger after messenger came to report that the fugitives were still at large. Contrary to Ahmed's expectations, Umballa did not believe that his enemies would be foolhardy enough to seek refuge in the house of Ramabai. The four roads leading out of the city were watched, the colonel's bungalow and even the ruins of Bruce's camp. They were still in ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... found a way cut, a narrow path, most of the distance hewn out of the rock, winding upward along the face of the precipice. The view, as one rises, is of the break-neck description. The way is really safe enough, even on mule-back, ascending; but one would be foolhardy to ride down. We met a lady on the summit who was about to be carried down on a chair; and she seemed quite to like the mode of conveyance: she had harnessed her husband in temporarily for one of the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... better. It was not a simple thing to do. It was distinctly a perilous, if not a foolhardy feat. Nance knew this, too, but he had grown to feel a great confidence in Tad Butler. He believed that if anyone could brave those swirling waters and come out alive, that one was Tad Butler. But it was a desperate chance. Still, with the ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... in evil and dissipated courses, nor death by any of those foolhardy and rash exploits which have far too often been glorified as "courage" ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... the dragon had him," muttered King AEetes to himself, "and the four-footed pedant, his schoolmaster, into the bargain. Why, what a foolhardy, self-conceited coxcomb he is! We'll see what my fire-breathing bulls will do for him. Well, Prince Jason," he continued aloud, and as complacently as he could, "make yourself comfortable for today, and tomorrow morning, since you insist upon it, ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... Felix Bauer did as brave or as foolhardy a thing as anyone ever did. It was partly to punish himself for the murderous feeling he had entertained a moment before that he now said, "Good God! I must save him now. Help me, ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... "But—but—if you will be foolhardy, at least wait till you've given some one of the others an opportunity. One of the majors, or the Adjutant, might do it with less danger. Give ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... before him as long as he could, without any further delay. If by any possibility he could stop that leak, he determined to start off at the next high tide, that very night, and run the risk. It was a daring, even a foolhardy thought; but Tom was desperate, and the only idea which he had was, to escape as soon ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... dinner, in the hall of the clock. [1] On entering, I paid him marked respect, and he received me with the greatest stiffness. Then he asked who had installed me in the house, and by whose authority I had begun to build there, saying he marvelled much that I had been so headstrong and foolhardy. I answered that I had been installed in the house by his Excellency, and that his lordship himself, in the name of his Excellency, had given the orders to Lattanzio Gorini. "Lattanzio brought stone, sand, and lime, and provided what ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... to collect his forces in the town, that at break of day the latter was obliged to take the road back to Dresden, owing to several severe wounds which he had received and the complete disorder into which his troops had been thrown. Kohlhaas, made foolhardy by this victory, turned back to attack the Governor before the latter could learn of it, fell upon him at midday in the open country near the village of Damerow, and fought him until nightfall, with murderous losses, to be sure, but with corresponding success. Indeed, the next ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... ashamed, but for which she would have unreflectingly made any sacrifice. The embrace was over in an instant. Besides being guiltless of obesity, George Cannon was free from the unpardonable fault of clumsiness. He was audacious, but he was not foolhardy, and he would never be abashed. True, she had seen dismay on his face at the moment of his declaration, but that moment was unique, and his dismay had ineffably flattered her. Now, on the half-landing, she was drenched in bliss. And she felt dissolute; she felt even base. ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... to have won her way so far in high places that her health of body and mind should be thus considered—pleasant, less as personal gratification, than that it casually reflected a proof of her good judgment in a course which everybody among her kindred had condemned by calling a foolhardy undertaking. ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... bed, and stab himself three times in the throat to the sound of slow music. He bore Washington a special grudge, being quite aware that it was he who was in the habit of removing the famous Canterville blood- stain, by means of Pinkerton's Paragon Detergent. Having reduced the reckless and foolhardy youth to a condition of abject terror, he was then to proceed to the room occupied by the United States Minister and his wife, and there to place a clammy hand on Mrs. Otis's forehead, while he hissed into her trembling husband's ear the awful ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... may be possible that the garrison within the fort has been reduced to a number equal, or even less, than your force; but I should say it would be foolhardy in the extreme to make such a venture without a certain knowledge of the extent of the force behind the breastworks. But the riflemen have opened on the regiment nearest to them," added the captain, as ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... to our regimental commander, who growled, 'Well, if you will go I suppose you will; but it would be a foolhardy thing for even an unwounded ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... Within certain limits he would acknowledge an authority which had been made real to him by chains and imprisonment, and reluctantly suspend an intended blow and retreat to a corner when insistently commanded, yet the fires of rebellion never were extinguished and it would have been foolhardy to get within effective reach of his paw. To strangers he was irreconcilable ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... himself,—"unless it be one who saw her with my eyes." But yet he did not approve of the marriage. "They were poverty stricken," he said, and Clayton went about from day to day with his life in his hand. "A brave man," he said to himself; "but singularly foolhardy,—unless it be that he wants to die." He had not been called upon for his consent, for Edith had never yielded. She, too, had said that it was impossible. "If Ada would have suited, it might have ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... high, some of the river-drivers go through in the boats—a dangerous practice, this; for often the bateaux have gone under water, entirely out of sight, to come up below the falls, and more than once have lives been lost in this foolhardy feat. ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... as an iron ball of the same size, and the bore walls could therefore be comparatively thin. They were made in calibers up to 50-pounders. There was a chamber for the powder charge and little danger of the gun's bursting, unless a foolhardy fellow loaded it with an iron ball. The wall thicknesses of this gun are shown in Figure 24, where the inner circle represents the diameter of the chamber, the next arc the bore caliber, and the outer lines the respective diameters ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... Providence, than to any amount of seamanlike precaution. It is, indeed, remarkable that a hundred vessels are not every year lost on the upper lakes where one now is, by being ill supplied or equipped, or through foolhardy intrepidity. ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... would seem foolhardy in a prince so little popular as Philip the Fair; but Philip in reality risked nothing, and knew it; the feudality did not possess sufficient union, the people did not have enough force to profit on this occasion ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... one hundred dollars looked as big to him as a million does to most people. Hastily drawing on his trousers, he began stealthily descending the stairs. Fortunately for him, his aunt and mother were asleep, else they would have put an emphatic veto on his foolhardy scheme. The bolts of the door were softly slid back, the door itself silently drawn inward an inch or two, and the lad peeped out. His position gave a full view of the front of the woodshed, and ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... administrations against them, the Missouri Charcoals may be regarded as foolhardy in persisting in the fight they made for the deliverance of their State from slavery. They did persist, however, and with such success in propagating their views that Governor Gamble and the other Conservative leaders decided that heroic ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... jealous of our entering their country, and men who go too far in search of game have often been shot at by invisible foes. They take care that their arrows don't strike, but shoot only as a warning that we must go no farther. Sometimes some foolhardy men have declared that they will go where they like in spite of the Fenmen, and they have gone, but they have never returned. When we have asked the men who come in to trade what has become of them they say 'they do not know, most likely they had lost their way and died ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... back against it. I generally selected the channel, my men by this time having gained sufficient confidence in my judgment, since so far we had had no serious mishap. But I foresaw that we should soon have an accident, as they were getting foolhardy, and in their ignorance attributed the wonderful luck we had had entirely to their own ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... which appear in the market, it may safely be said that sixty are nothing but the simplest kind of wells, into which the capital of foolhardy speculators is sunk almost instantly. Out of the remaining forty, twenty-five may be looked upon as suspicious enterprises, partaking too much of gambling speculations. Among the last fifteen even, a careful choice must ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... all the master said to his dogs as he crept in through an old window into the donjon keep. It was a foolhardy thing to do, for the stones were loose around it, but he had many times got in there before, and why, he thought, should he not do so now. Besides, this was Reynard's favourite den, and he hoped to shoot him in it. But the fox had improved on his dwelling ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... he was of seventeen, and courageous and foolhardy to desperation, he burst into tears, the tension on his nerves from the excitement we had all gone through since the early hours of that ill-fated morning having completely unmanned him, making him for the moment a ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... is presumable, that this was a mere bravado, in the full confidence that no one would be found sufficiently foolhardy to engage to follow the example. It is needless to say, that the promise of laughing aloud could not have been performed; so that any one might have safely accepted the challenge, conditioning for the full performance ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... gates were locked, and no one was allowed out or in till six the next morning. The women, who carried all the water used in the waterless town, had of course to conform to the same rule. Like most men who are constantly exposed to danger, the shepherds became careless or foolhardy, and wandered rather far with their herds. Osman was too astute to neglect his opportunities. On this occasion an old shepherd, who was well-known at Sphinx Redoubt, had strayed too far. The Soudanese swept down, cut off his retreat, ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... immediate English territory should be massacred. The West Saxons rose on the appointed night, and slew every one of them, including Gunhild, the sister of King Swegen, and a Christian convert. It was a foolhardy attempt. Swegen fell at once upon Wessex, and marched up and down the whole country, for two years. He burnt Wilton and Sarum, and then sailed round to Norwich, where Ulfkytel, of East Anglia, gave him ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... island and its favorite calling to the perils of war, and begging that the actual declaration of war might be averted. When this had availed nothing, and the young nation had rushed into battle with a courage that must seem to us now foolhardy, the Nantucketers adopted the doubtful expedient of seeking special favor from the enemy. An appeal for immunity from the ordinary acts of war was addressed to the British Admiral Cochrane, and a special envoy was sent to the British naval officer commanding the North American station, ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... dismaying ferocity. To catch the five eleven he would have to leave at once, and he seized his belongings and opened the door, but upon stepping out upon the veranda the walk he had contemplated along the shore path to the village seemed a foolhardy thing to undertake. An unearthly darkness had fallen upon the world and a misstep in the rough path over the rocks might pitch him headlong into the sea. He had marked the presence of a telephone ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... despise an enemy, and always to take every precaution against surprise. A soldier or sailor in war time should always sleep with one eye open, and his arms in his hands, the Admiral used to say, speaking somewhat metaphorically. The foolhardy folly which had made many officers neglect proper precautions, has caused the destruction of many brave men, as well as the failure of many important enterprises. At last Jack reached the frigate. Captain Lascelles was very much vexed at hearing of the loss ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... wealthy. Dupper was originally Count Du Perre, and came of a noted aristocratic French family. His forefathers were, I believe, prominent in the court of Louis XIV. When a young man he committed some foolhardy act in France and was banished by his people, who sent him a monthly remittance on condition that he get as far away from his home as he could, and stay there. To fulfill the terms of this agreement Du Perre ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady
... chance to talk to you privately for some time. A few things are to be impressed on your minds. The first is this. Take no foolish chances. Don't be foolhardy. We cannot afford to waste our tools. And in this struggle tools are what you are, not boys, not human beings that will feel cold, and heat, and pain and privations; just ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine
... almost like a foolhardy risk," Julien muttered. "If those fellows could have got at him, they'd have killed him. Have they gone back to their room, I wonder? Let us hear what the people ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... this idea struck me as unfortunate. The elder Dumas had worked that vein so well and so completely, I doubted if any literary gold remained for another author. It seemed foolhardy to resuscitate the Three Guardsmen epoch—and I doubted if it were possible to carry out his idea and play an intense and pathetic rôle disguised with a ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... anon, Dick," rejoined Nicholas, with a hollow laugh, and in a dismally deep tone. "You will see Isole herself. I was foolhardy enough to invite her to dance the brawl with me. She smiled her assent, and winked at me thus—very significantly, I protest to you—and she will be as good ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... a place that seems accessible in order to procure a photograph. It was a foolhardy undertaking, and we knew it. But fortune favored us, and the much-desired picture was secured. But thus will men gamble with death to gratify a whim, for a false step or sudden vertigo would have sent us crashing on to ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... children being mercilessly butchered, burnt alive, or carried into a still more horrible captivity. But Divine Providence remedied this terrible state of affairs, by means not naturally looked for, and which in the commencement seemed not only foolhardy, but little suited to the end. Yet a very special providence was visibly at work, in a chain of events that were altogether miraculous, as the sequel proved. A new colony was founded at Montreal, which was intended as a barrier against the inroads of the savages, and of which it ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... now did, as he got into the taxi, he would have called footless and foolhardy an hour before, and at any other hour his judgment might have restrained him. But just now he seemed controlled by a force greater than smooth-running judgment—a composite of many forces: by sudden jealousy, by a sudden desire ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... "'Them foolhardy sports," I replies, "who has yeretofore attempted that enterprise sleeps in onknown graves; so don't you-all pester me, ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... holidays among the mountains, though (like a true Forsyte) he had never attempted anything too adventurous or too foolhardy, he had been passionately fond of them. And when the wonderful view (mentioned in Baedeker—'fatiguing but repaying')—was disclosed to him after the effort of the climb, he had doubtless felt the existence of some ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Speaker Colfax on the apparent rashness, for he had completed "the foolhardy act" by occupying President Jefferson Davis' vacated house, he replied with the calm ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... his reputation by nipping angrily at Mr. Farnshaw as he dodged under the straps with which the horses were tied to the reach ahead. To have passed in front of this team unencumbered and alone when the power was in motion would have been foolhardy; but with Jack in his arms it was an act of mock-heroics typical of the whole bull-headed character of Josiah Farnshaw. He stumbled slightly in springing out of the horse's way, and with Jack, who was a load, in his arms, was barely able to keep ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... stay and fight. But his nerves were not strong enough to execute so foolhardy a resolution. He seemed to see a man behind every maple-trunk. Darkness was fast coming on, and he knew that his absence from supper at his boarding-place could not fail to excite suspicion. There was no time to be lost. ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... in the supernatural potency of these gimcracks? No, and yes. Not to be foolhardy, he quietly slipped down every day to the levee, had a slave-boy row him across the river in a skiff, landed, re-embarked, and in the middle of the stream surreptitiously cast a picayune over his shoulder into the river. Monsieur D'Embarras, ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... Madame Weiss, abandon this foolhardy undertaking. How can you expect to find Weiss in all that confusion? Most likely he is no longer there by this time; he is probably making his way home through the fields. I assure you that Bazeilles ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... MONTHLY Has passed its experimental ordeal, and stands firmly established in popular regard. It was started at a period when any new literary enterprise was deemed almost foolhardy, but the publisher believed that the time had arrived for just such a Magazine. Fearlessly advocating the doctrine of ultimate and gradual Emancipation, for the sake of the UNION and the WHITE MAN, it has found favor in quarters where censure was expected, and patronage where opposition ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... stable, and the period of effervescence made him almost possessed by a demon, so many sorts of follies did he commit. He wrote "a poem of the world," fell in love with an actress older than himself, became known as foolhardy for his wild escapades, ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... was fairly gallied this week when the King went out yachting, meaning to be back for the theatre; and the eight or nine o'clock came, and never a sign of him. I don't know when 'a did land; but 'twas said by all that it was a foolhardy ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... between hating the whole war and wanting to enlist in the British Aero Corps, to get life's supreme sensation—scouting ten thousand feet in air, while dozens of batteries fired at him; a nose-to-earth volplane. The thinking Carl, the playmate Carl that Ruth knew, was masked as the foolhardy adventurer—and as one who was not merely talking, but might really do the thing he pictured. And Martin Dockerill seemed so dreadfully to take it for granted that Carl ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... strong man, President Sidonio Paes, to his last account and plunged that ill-starred land into chaotic confusion. The plan was discovered by the Portuguese military attache, who warned the President himself and the War Minister. But Sidonio Paes, quixotic and foolhardy, refused to take or brook precautions. A few weeks later the assassin, firing three shots, had no difficulty in taking aim, but none of them took effect. The reason was interesting: so determined were the conspirators ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... inquired if he knew Doctor Pope, of San Francisco, a man that was contemplating shooting grizzlies with the bow and arrow. The doctor replied that he did, whereat the sage laughed and said that the feat was impossible, most dangerous and foolhardy; it could not be done. We fully appreciated the danger involved—therein lay some of the zest. But we also knew that even should we succeed in killing them in Yellowstone Park, the glory would be ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... assure me, on his honour, that there was some peril on the mountain; appeal to me, by all that I held holy, to turn back; and at length, finding all was in vain, and that I still persisted, ignorantly foolhardy, he would suddenly whip round and make a bee- line down the slope for Silverado, the gravel showering after him. What was he afraid of? There were admittedly brown bears and California lions on the mountain; and a grizzly visited Rufe's poultry yard not long before, to ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... from many men would be considered mere foolhardy boasting. But Tucker was a man not given to brag. Indeed, he was apt to be very laconic in speaking of his exploits. A short time after his escape from the three ships, he fell in with an English armed vessel of no small force, and captured ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... the solution was Government property, and he had to do something to make everybody think it worthless, so that he could get title to it? That faked demonstration that failed was certainly a bold stroke—so bold that it was foolhardy. But it worked. It fooled even me, and I am not usually asleep. The only reason he got away with it, is, that he has always been such an open-faced talker, always ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... to say is this: Let well enough alone. If the ingots are safe, permit them to remain so. Don't be foolhardy enough to put any one on the ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... one of many instances of a similar folly which I observed throughout the American war. I speak of military officers especially. There is something in the character of Englishmen which makes them over-confident and foolhardy, and they will require to be taught by some very severe lessons before they learn the importance of caution. This want of caution in an officer, when entrusted with the lives of brave men, is a very great fault, and ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... the old man phlegmatically. "It is high time you were off. You are foolhardy to match your chances with justice. Prison stares ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... Mr. Barlow, "what are you talking about? The bathing is very safe at our place; there's really no danger at all, unless one is positively foolhardy." ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... almost trembled at the audacity which might have carried her on to a terrible rebuff. She could find heart only to look at the pictures which were showy and then walk out. It seemed to her as if she had made a splendid escape and that it would be foolhardy to think of applying in ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... straight up the hill and directly toward the one up there crouching and—waiting? Were they in collusion? Gus had but a moment to guess. Still crouching, unseen, though brave,—for Gus was courageous even sometimes to the point of being foolhardy in the rougher sports, or where danger threatened others,—he avoided now the almost certain fate of George, for the villain was still armed and desperate, no doubt. And Gus hoped that the arrest of the scamp would surely follow his meeting with the ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... every time. That's the funny thing. He must have been a foolhardy fellow, and I rather think it was him that wrote that." He took out a slip of paper from his pocket. "That's what he wrote, sir. 'I've got out, Eustace Borlsover, but I'll be back before long.' Some gaol bird just escaped, I suppose. It will make it all the easier for us to trace him. Do you ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... would to Heaven we had not!" replied he—"nay, it was not I neither; it was Diego: he was grown foolhardy, and would go on, though I advised him not—if ever I open a door that ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... men to halt and face the foolhardy bandits. He arranged them two deep and spread them out so that they extended right across the road. He himself stood in the centre a little in advance of the rest; the civilians ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... the northern Protestant princes took alarm. If they had viewed with composure the failure of Frederick's foolhardy efforts in Bohemia, they beheld with downright dismay the expansion of Bavaria and the destruction of a balance of power long maintained between Catholic and Protestant Germany. And so long as the ill-disciplined remnants of Frederick's armies were behaving like ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... and the news that I have in secret will be known all over Corsica to-morrow. Who knows? the island may flare up like a heap of bracken, and no one bearing a French name, or known to have French sympathies, will be safe. You know how you yourself are regarded in Olmeta. It is foolhardy to venture ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... legacy. With the customary infatuation of men who gain money by risking the loss of it, he presumed on his good luck. One pecuniary disaster followed another, and left him literally penniless. He was found again, in England, exhibiting an open boat in which he and a companion had made one of those foolhardy voyages across the Atlantic, which have now happily ceased to interest the public. To a friend who remonstrated with him, he answered that he reckoned on being lost at sea, and on so committing a suicide worthy of the desperate life ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... continued to be foolhardy, took their thorough fill of that license which is always working to their detriment, and abused the good nature of the emperor. [Sidenote:—9—] Vespasian soon ceased to notice them. He sent a despatch to Rome rescinding the disfranchisement of ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... go with me. I haven't quite the pluck to try it alone, as I know you would do in my place. I may brace up to it, though. Dad has given me permission to do just as I please. He says he trusts me not to be foolish or foolhardy and to keep him informed of my plans. Isn't he a good Dad? Come if you ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... and fanaticism render them almost foolhardy in a battle, if a Moro sees that he is beaten and that escape is possible, he will avail himself of opportunities to fight another day. If brought to bay, however, he is desperate, and in his more religious ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... 1881, Beckwith, swimming ten hours a day over a 32-lap course for six days, traversed 94 miles. Since the time of Captain Webb, who was the pioneer of modern long-distance swimming, many men have attempted and some have duplicated his feats; but these foolhardy performances have in late years been diminishing, and many of the older ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... used to slip on board his ship and steal with supernatural dexterity, and the sailors catch them by the tails, which they observing, came ever with their tails soaped like pigs at a village feast; and how some foolhardy sailors would venture into the town at the risk of their lives; and how one day they had to run for it, and when they got to the shore their boat was stolen, and they had to 'bout ship and fight it out, and one fellow who knew ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... 'ignominious' in Dalrymple, however, to take his men away from an infuriated populace; there were then thousands of sturdy New Englanders in the towns about, ready to crowd into Boston at the proper signal; and what were two single regiments to do if they had come? It was foolhardy in Hutchinson to resist the demand of the determined gathering at the Old South. He had been wise the evening before, but on that day his sagacity deserted him. When Lord North, the unwise minister of King ...
— Under the Liberty Tree - A Story of The 'Boston Massacre' • James Otis
... first time I acted on the spur of the moment, and under stress of great excitement. I had had time to collect my wits by the time he gained possession of the revolver. I wasn't as foolhardy as I was at the beginning. I was afraid he would shoot me ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... Weary, foolhardy to the last, stayed longest; but even Weary could not but admit that the case was hopeless. The brush was thick and filled the gully, probably from end to end. Riding through it was impossible, and hunting it through on foot would be nothing but suicide, with a man like Blink hidden ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... use common sense and never grow foolhardy. It is never advisable that a person in a perspiration should ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... was need of warmth and comfort; for the winter storms came rushing over the snow fields, and the thick, cold clouds came, bringing night at noonday. Then the travel over the mountain road would cease, for days or weeks, or if some foolhardy man, or a daring troop came up from the valley, they would cross themselves, if they got as far as the hospice, and would gasp out: "That was tempting Providence: that ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... Street, and as you did not care to return to your lodgings near Saint Botolph's Church without Aldgate, you privily despatched Dick Taverner to bring your horses from the Falcon in Gracechurch Street, where you had left them, with the foolhardy intention of setting forth this morning to Theobalds, to try and obtain an ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... directed the rest to remain comfortably at Tehuacan until my return on the next day. Herman, however, refused the proposition; my scheme was dangerous; for me to go alone, at night, over a strange road, to Chila was foolhardy; he should accompany me to protect me. Consenting that he should accompany, we began to seek a mozo, as guide to Chila. With difficulty, and some loss of time, one was found who would undertake the business for two pesos. In vain a Jew peddler standing ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... o'clock in the afternoon it was decided to work in toward shore and search for a sheltering harbor in which to anchor for the night. Under any circumstance it would be foolhardy for so small a vessel to remain in the open sea outside, after darkness set in, in those ice-menaced fog-choked northern waters. The course of the Princess May was accordingly changed to bear to the westward and ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... escort to pieces, slew also the merchants and travellers. He seemed to give the sword the more heartily in that he sought it for himself, but could never get it. No doubt he deserved to get it. He performed deeds of impossible foolhardy gallantry, the deeds of a knight-errant; rode solitary, made single-handed rescues, suffered himself to be cut off from his posts, and then with a handful of knights, or alone, indeed, carved his way back to Darum. Des Barres, the Earl ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... play. Birds of a feather, ill jesters, scoundrels all! Dear Gorgo, what will become of us? Here come the King's war- horses! My dear man, don't trample on me. Look, the bay's rearing, see, what temper! Eunoe, you foolhardy girl, will you never keep out of the way? The beast will kill the man that's leading him. What a good thing it is for me that my ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... Prescott rejoined. "Foolhardy means just what the word implies, and only a fool will be foolhardy. If we had been trying to upset the canoe, as a matter of sport, that would have been the work ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... goblin's unsuspecting simplicity made me foolhardy; I would stuff him recklessly full of lies; rout him out o' field grandly, and stop his ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... tempting a spot we lay in wait for them, they invariably avoided that particular place and seized their victim for the night from some other camp. Hunting them by day, moreover, in such a dense wilderness as surrounded us, was an exceedingly tiring and really foolhardy undertaking. In a thick jungle of the kind round Tsavo the hunted animal has every chance against the hunter, as however careful the latter may be, a dead twig or something of the sort is sure to crackle just at the critical ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... stabbed a man, or at least a boy, that was in charge of a jewelry shop, and that the boy might die. Cousin Willie, Mr. Peters says, has been stealing jewelry nearly ever since we came here and the police have been watching him but he did not know this and so he had grown quite foolhardy, and this morning in broad daylight he went into some sort of jewelry or pawn shop where there was only a boy watching the shop, and the boy was a cripple. Cousin Willie had planned to hide the things under his coat and to sneak ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... regarded as downright foolhardy to attempt to get elected to Congress from the District as a republican; so the nomination was merely passed around as an ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... opinion? How should I dare to attempt to add my contribution to man's store of knowledge in so weighty a matter without as much as knowing whether I possessed the requisite patience—a genuine gift for imparting tuition, and a sufficient measure of devotion? Above all, how could I have been so foolhardy as to have undertaken to make my investigations in connexion with a descendant of Rolf's! Indeed, my only excuse could be my intense love of knowledge, my reverence and high regard for science. Science—whose temple we may enter only when filled with intensest ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... Garibaldi? I don't know him, nor does he know me. Have you acquaintance with Madame Swartz? She could help Mr. Spicer. But she has just gone to Rome. And we are going to Rome. Did not Sarianna tell you that? We go on my account to avoid the tramontana here. People say we are foolhardy on account of the state of the country; but you are aware we are no more frightened of revolutions than M. Charles is of the tiger. Prices at Rome will be more reasonable at any rate. Nobody pays high for a probability of being massacred. What ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... a foolhardy thing. Without a word of warning she leaped through the doorway, and stood on the ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... there were good-byes to be said. The polar winter was near at hand, when the sea for miles beyond the barrier would freeze solid and it would have been foolhardy for the Brutus, which had discharged all her coal but that necessary to steam north with, to have remained longer. She sailed early in the morning, bearing with her letters to their friends in the north, which the boys could not help thinking might be ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... all the courts of Europe. How, at last, his ambition getting the better of his discretion, he thought to be a modern Alexander, to make Europe Protestant, subdue Rome, and carry his conquering eagles into Egypt and Turkey and Persia. How, by unwise measures and foolhardy endeavors, he lost all the fruits of his hundred victories and his nine years of conquest in the terrible defeat by the Russians at Pultowa, which sent him an exile into Turkey, kept him there a prisoner of state for over five years; and how, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... felt the embarrassment usual in any one guilty of so foolhardy an action. He had expected to surprise Clemence, and he found her upon her guard; the thought of the disloyal part he was playing at this moment made the blood mount to his cheeks and took away, for the time being, his ordinary assurance. He sought in vain for a speech which might first justify ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... made Bart shiver. He recognized what the foolhardy escapade might have cost had that whirling cannon ball met a human, instead of ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... that—on th' roof iv his boat. "Hi-spy," says he. "Hi-spy ye'er gran'mother," says I. "I've had me eye on ye f'r fifteen minyits an' ye're a dead man as I can prove be witnesses," I says. An' he fell off th' roof. I was sorry to take his life but war knows no mercy. He was a brave man but foolhardy. He ought niver to've gone again' me. He might've licked Cervera but he cudden't lick me. We captured all th' men-iv-war, desthroyed most iv th' cruisers an' ar-re now usin' th' flag-ship f'r a run-about. Th' counthry is safe, thanks to a vigylant an' ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne
... of subsequent history this extreme pro-slavery programme was not only wrong in morals and statesmanship, but short-sighted and foolhardy as a party policy. But to the eyes of President Buchanan this latter view was not so plain. The country was apparently in the full tide of a pro-slavery reaction. He had not only been elected President, but the Democratic ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... his father, Captain Michael, died, and three years later the oldest son, Oliver, decided to send Peter to his uncle Lord Aylmer to be trained for the service. Is it far-fetched to assume that Oliver found his small brother something of a handful? If Peter was one-quarter as pugnacious and foolhardy at twelve as he was at forty, there is small wonder that a young man burdened with the cares of a large estate and an orphaned family would be not unwilling to get rid of him,—or at least of the responsibility of him. Their uncle, the Admiral, apparently liked his little Irish nephew, ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... "I am not going to make you an unwilling partner in any foolhardy scheme such as you are thinking of, because that is just the Obvious thing that our friends who take so much interest in us would expect and prepare for. All the same, there is just a trifling commission which I will ask ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... they did away with the expense and care of carpets. It is true that we are to have no carpets in the apartments where these hardwood floors have been laid, but these handsome floors simply emphasize and italicize a man's poverty unless they are dotted with rugs, and there is none so foolhardy as to deny that the average rug costs five times as much as the average carpet. And the care demanded by a hardwood floor is exacting, for that shining surface, upon which every spot of dust stands out so distinctly, must be gone over daily with a ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... could not quite justify the scheme. All the efforts of his imagination, as he rode home, to bring his judgment to the same side with itself, had failed, and he had been driven to confess the project a foolhardy one. But, on the other hand, had he not had a leading thitherward? Whence else the sudden conviction that Scudamore had taken her, and the burning desire to seek her in Raglan stables? And had he not heard mighty arguments from the lips of the most ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... forward again, and every one noticed that his rapier was higher than usual and seemed not to cover him at all. He brandished it in the air in a way that looked utterly foolhardy. Bauer came on furiously, feeling that if he failed now he must be laughed at for ever. His long arm turned with the rapidity of lightning, and every one saw the whistling blade flash towards Rex's unprotected cheek. To the amazement of all present the cut did not take effect. There ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... to confide her secret to him, but something held her back; something said to her that he was not meant to know it, that if he knew he might be tempted to do still more foolhardy deeds, he would feel compelled to put her mystical message to the test. She remained silent; her mind was working too quickly for speech. She had forgotten that Michael wanted her answer. Her heart had given it so willingly that words were scarcely needed, but he pressed her ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... the year 1492, and understand the conditions of the various States of Italy at that date. On April 8 in that year, Lorenzo de' Medici, who had succeeded in maintaining a political equilibrium in the peninsula, expired, and was succeeded by his son Piero, a vain and foolhardy young man, from whom no guidance could be expected. On July 25, Innocent VIII. died, and was succeeded by the very worst Pope who has ever occupied S. Peter's chair, Roderigo Borgia, Alexander VI. It was felt at once that the old order of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... led his troops to the assault in a mad rush that carried the Pathans to the base of the tower before they could realise what a foolhardy undertaking they were engaged upon. The rest of his men very cowardly lagged behind. Then, no ladder being procurable, he set to work to break down the wall, while from above the defenders rained down a storm of stones upon them. One of these missiles hit Nicholson in the face ...
— John Nicholson - The Lion of the Punjaub • R. E. Cholmeley
... and very entertaining. He had an utter contempt for danger but was not foolhardy. At swearing he was a wonder. A cavalry regiment would have been proud of him. Though born in England, he had spent several years in New York. He was about six feet one, and as strong as an ox. I am five feet five in height, so we looked like "Bud" Fisher's "Mutt ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... secure, foolhardy king: Shall I, for love, speak treason to thy face? Open the door, or I ...
— The Tragedy of King Richard II • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... suspects it only too justly of disorderly impulses, and a capacity for self-contradiction. He is the most extraordinary contrast to Teddy, whose confidence in the universe amounts almost to effrontery. Teddy carries our national laxness to a foolhardy extent. He is capable of leaving his watch in the middle of Claverings Park and expecting to find it a month later—being carefully taken care of by a squirrel, I suppose—when he happens to want it. He's rather ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... reference to the English part of the General Synod: "They have totally fallen away from the faith of the fathers. Though enthusiastic over the name 'Lutheran' and zealous in spreading the so-called 'Lutheran' Church, they, in a most shameful and foolhardy manner, attack the doctrines of our Church and seek to spread their errors in sermons, periodicals, and newspapers, notably the doctrines of Baptism and the Lord's Supper and the connected important doctrines of grace, of the two natures in Christ, etc. ... Besides, ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... daily weaving for his life, and possessing such unavowed but powerful enemies among the great lords as Tremouille and Bouillon, to say nothing of Mademoiselle d'Entragues's half-brother, the Count of Auvergne—I could hardly believe that with this knowledge his Majesty had been so foolhardy as to travel without guards or attendance to Fontainebleau. And yet I now felt an absolute certainty that this was the case. The presence of La Varenne also, the confidant of his intrigues, informed me ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... the whole faculty a flame of indignation, worthy of being described by Moliere. Petrarch made a general enemy of the physicians, though, of course, the weakest and the worst of them were the first to attack him. One of them told him, "You are a foolhardy man, who, contemning the physicians, have no fear either of the fever or of the malaria." Petrarch replied, "I certainly have no assurance of being free from the attacks of either; but, if I were attacked by either, I should not think of ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... two the river bodily fell away. Altogether it was a beautiful, though a startling picture. The whole set of the current was towards this drop with headlong fury. There were no eddies, no slack water of any kind. But we could not do such a foolhardy thing as to go into it without knowing what it was and therefore a landing was imperative. Accordingly we headed for the right bank, and laid to our oars till they bent like straws. We almost reached the shore. It was only a few feet away, but the relentless ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... passed. The green things of Japanese planting had poked their tender shoots through the black American soil. There had been no fighting except in few cases, where a company of foolhardy militia or a local posse had tried to attach the Japanese outposts. American aeroplanes had ...
— In the Clutch of the War-God • Milo Hastings
... need not tell you that the boy ranchers in their secret hearts rather hoped there would be shooting. They had been under fire before, and while they were not foolhardy nor inclined to take risks, they felt that if there was to be a fight on the part of the sheep men to get unlawful possession of Diamond X land, the sooner such a fight took place the better. Suspense was worse ...
— The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek - or Fighting the Sheep Herders • Willard F. Baker
... "I should like to have you a proficient in all manly accomplishments, only don't be foolhardy and run useless risks. I want my son to be brave, but not rash; ready to meet danger with coolness and courage when duty calls, and to have the proper training to enable him to do so intelligently, but not to rush recklessly into it ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... sheriff, met me on Baltimore Street, and informed me he held the warrant for my arrest. I assured him it would be foolhardy to try to execute it, for one of us would certainly be injured. I recommended him to report to Judge Bond, and I assured him I would ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... the war and of the ravaging of Acadian fishing towns set Massachusetts in flame. To Boston, above all New England towns, was Louisburg a constant danger. The thing seemed absolute stark madness,—the thoughtless daring of foolhardy enthusiasts,—but it is ever enthusiasm which accomplishes the impossible; and April 30, 1745, after only seven weeks of preparation, an English fleet of sixty-eight ships—some accounts say ninety, ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... men who followed Roland thought him more than brave, they considered him foolhardy. But Roland, caring little whether they followed or not, retraced his own steps in default of those of the bandits. The ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... exchanging affectionate greetings with Bell'-Imperia, has no doubt of his man. Alcario falls. But Lorenzo is on the spot to cover up his traces. Promising Lazarotto a certain pardon, he leads the unsuspecting villain into foolhardy lies until sentence of instant execution is passed, when a check upon his further speech is immediately applied and his tongue silenced for ever. Meanwhile, Andrea has been carrying a bold front in Portugal, passing swiftly from the tactful speech of diplomacy to the fierce ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... every side as the conflict continued with unabated vigour. The ammunition was fast expending on both sides, when Mr Ebenezer Pleggit, hearing the noise, and perhaps smelling his own drugs, was so unfortunately rash and so unwisely foolhardy, as to break through the sacred ring, advancing from behind with uplifted cane to fell the redoubtable Timothy, when a mixture of his own, hurled by his own red-haired champion, caught him in his open mouth, breaking against his only two remaining front teeth, extracting them as the ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... and deliver his papers; he stepped silently on board, and we exchanged salutes. As I saw that the two boat-loads of twenty-five men were lying off within hearing, on either side of us, I took this opportunity to admonish the captain about his foolhardy attempt to escape, and how he thereby had endangered the lives of his crew. The latter, realizing the justice of my remarks, thanked us for having saved them by respectfully lifting their caps. The captain awkwardly excused himself by saying he had simply ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner
... you owe us apologies more than gratitude, for your folly was responsible for the incident. You were altogether too venturesome. Such action on this coast, where the surf rolls high and creates an undertow, is nothing less than foolhardy." ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... Mok was a coward, but two glasses of beer were enough to turn his nature in precisely the opposite direction. A glass less would have left him timorous, a glass more would have made him foolhardy and silly. He saw that somebody was about to stab his old friend. In five long, noiseless steps, or leaps, he was behind that somebody, and had seized the arm which ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... yon deserve a thorough good scolding," he went on presently. "What possessed you to attempt bathing in a rough sea like that? Seriously"—speaking more earnestly. "It was a most foolhardy thing to do." ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... sheriff who had been listening with keen interest to the hunter's account of his bold but fruitless attempt to compel the submission of the desperado, "I cannot believe, after all, that the fellow will be so foolhardy as to persist in his refusal to surrender, when he knows there is now no longer any chance for him to escape. I will try him faithfully before resorting to ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... opportunity here to regain his independence. Jeremiah knew how foolhardy and impossible this undertaking would be. He so informed Pashhur, therefore, and received a kick and a cuff for his pains, as a farewell from that worthy officer ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... that it would be better not to do it at all. One recognises the knowledge of a great man in the fear with which he does a thing the more he understands it; and, on the contrary, the ignorance of others in the foolhardy daring with which they fill pictures with what they know nothing about. There may be an excellent master who has never painted more than a single figure, and without painting anything more deserves more renown and honour than those who have painted a thousand pictures: he knows better how to do ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... But, of course, she come out as pat as anything with him being an artist and different-like from the rest. Still, I said as I'd rather she didn't, and Adam had better take him, because of the quicksand, you know. It wouldn't be hardly safe to let him go alone. He's a bit foolhardy too. But Adam's not so young as you, Rufus, and he was out before sunrise. So I thought as how maybe you'd step into the breach and take Mr. Knight ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... meeting them in the shape of a dragon. While the eldest son retreated, crying that a wise and prudent man never strives with dragons, the second advanced recklessly, without thinking of protecting himself. The third, however, set to work in a business-like way, not only to rescue his foolhardy brother, but to slay the dragon. On perceiving this, the father resumed his wonted form, and announced he would divide his realm into three parts, of which the best share, Iran or Persia, was bestowed upon Trij, the son who had shown ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... and it has a wide compass; but what else are all these fantastic warblings and flourishes, these preposterous runs, these never-ending shakes, but delusive artifices of style, which people admire in the same way that they admire the foolhardy agility of a rope-dancer? Do you imagine that such things can make any deep impression upon us and stir the heart? The 'harmonic shake' which you spoilt I cannot tolerate; I always feel anxious and pained when she attempts it. And then this scaling up into the region of the third line above ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... the matter of taxation we have had something to say during the campaign, but we Socialists are too good economists not to know that the burdening of our local industries in the way of taxation above that placed upon them in other cities would be foolhardy. Under the present system, to which we are opposed, manufacturing concerns have their rights, and any special burden placed upon them by one community above that which is placed upon them in other communities would inevitably and of necessity, from the standpoint ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... with Lord Hastings, Jack and Frank and the other few members of the crew, was stalking the foe—no particular foe, perhaps—but any enemy that might be foolhardy enough to ...
— The Boy Allies Under the Sea • Robert L. Drake
... for his life in battle, but that he is foolhardy, and of too proud a courage. Save for that, ...
— The Fall of the Niebelungs • Unknown
... went a little too far. A man charged with friendly impulse, charged also with knowledge, must be handled tenderly. You must not be foolhardy. But here was bravado, nothing less. For she arched her brows, and showed her eyes innocently wide. "Oh!" she said, "why? Why won't ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... Merrily they swung along, buoyed up by an unnatural exaltation; yet now and then, as they drew near their destination, the young man had a chilling premonition of evil to come, and wondered if he had not been foolhardy ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... ineffective punitive expedition organized after some unusual outrage, such as the murder, a few years back, of Lieutenant Brooke, the English explorer. Naturally the Government does not care to assume any responsibility for the foolhardy foreigner bent on risking his life. Lieutenant Brooke went without permission, and during my stay in Ning-yuean I learned that two French travellers had just sought in vain for leave to attempt the crossing of the mountains ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... report on the proposed invasion and the means of thwarting it. The reports of our spies also prove that all experienced seamen on the Continent declared Napoleon's project to be either a ruse or a foolhardy venture. ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... of the grain business; also a seat upon the Winnipeg Grain Exchange must be purchased before the farmers could enter the arena as dealers in grain. None of the officers of the young company which was about to try its wings overlooked the fact that nothing could be more foolhardy than for farmers like themselves, direct from the green pastures, to attempt the plunge they were about to take without proper guidance as to the depth of the water and the set of the currents. They knew they were embarking in a most intricate and difficult business and with so much at stake on ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... a place, he felt, would be foolhardy. He made his weapons ready, and took his position in a corner of the room behind the door. If ill was intended, he would ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
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