"Coward" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... prefer him to a hot-blooded one. Do you want to pick a quarrel with me? Do you want to make me lose my temper? I shall refuse you that satisfaction. You have been a coward, and you want to frighten some one before you go to bed to make up for it. Strike me, and I'll strike you in self-defence, but I'm not going to mind your talk. Have you anything to say? No? Well, then, good evening." And Major ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... thought you'd be such a coward? It's all over now, and we can't go away all of a sudden like this, even if we wanted to, and I don't. I want to stop and see what will happen next, and help if ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... Even the religions with most dross in them have had something of this virtue; but the Christian religion manifests it with unexampled splendor. "Lead me, Zeus and Destiny!" says the prayer of Epictetus, "whithersoever I am appointed to go; I will follow without wavering; even though I turn coward and shrink, I shall have to follow all the same."[187] The fortitude of that is for the strong, for the few; even for them the spiritual atmosphere with which it surrounds them is bleak and gray. But, "Let thy loving spirit lead me forth into the ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... required his superintendence. This story is proved to be false by Herakleides of Pontus, he quoting Anakreon's poems, in which Artemon Periphoretus is mentioned many generations before the revolt and siege of Samos. He tells us that Artemon was an effeminate coward who spent most of his time indoors, with two slaves holding a brazen shield over his head for fear that anything should fall upon it, and if he was obliged to go out, used to be carried in a hammock slung so low ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... departing companions, and could retain only with the gallant Tancred three hundred knights, and two thousand foot-soldiers for the defence of Palestine. His sovereignty was soon attacked by a new enemy, the only one against whom Godfrey was a coward. Adhemar, bishop of Puy, who excelled both in council and action, had been swept away in the last plague at Antioch: the remaining ecclesiastics preserved only the pride and avarice of their character; and their seditious clamors had required that the choice of a bishop ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... was fallen, ruined, ridiculous by his unsuccessful suicide? Sauvresy had held out his arms to him. Sauvresy was a noble fellow, and loved Hector sufficiently not to perceive the falseness of his position, and not to judge him a coward because he shrank from suicide. ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... pursuit off. Then he announced his intention to drive the machine home himself, taking the route that led past Mr. Hunter's home. He had no fear of further trouble with the driver or his confederates, for he was certain that Jake was a coward at heart and the two highwaymen could hardly have arrived in the vicinity of the cave on foot, since they were driven off in mad haste in the opposite direction, even if they had been disposed to make ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... how she managed to do what she did when the enemy got to Woodside in the war. That was quite remarkable, considering what a coward she was. During 1864 the Yankees on a raid got to her house one evening in the summer. As it happened, a young soldier, one of her cousins (she had no end of cousins), had got a leave of absence, and had come there sick with fever just the day before (the house was always a ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... Blank, they whetted their swords together when peace was declared. Captain said, 'General, I'm not crazy and neither am I a coward. I looked up and seem like a man was comin' out the clouds, and so ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... Now, that fine-looking cockerel of mine is the stupidest one of the lot, and the ugly, long-legged chap is the king of the yard, he's so smart; crows loud enough to wake the Seven Sleepers; but the handsome one croaks, and is no end of a coward. I get snubbed; but you wait till I grow up, and then see'; and Ted looked so like his own long-legged pet that everyone laughed at ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... mean that you won't be there the day after to-morrow?" cried Potel, interrupting his friend. "Do you wish to be called a coward? and have it said you are running away from Bridau? No, no! The unmounted grenadiers of the Guard can not draw back before the dragoons of the Guard. Arrange your business in some ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... turned against Major Selover with unrestrained virulence. He had no equal means of reply or defence at his command, but he had at last uttered threats of personal nature, and published King as a liar, a swindler and a coward. To all this Mr. King responded in his Bulletin, by stating in that paper that he defied Selover; and he went on to state the place of his residence; the time he left home to go to his office in the morning; the route thither he usually ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara
... quiet, kind, cold, austere uncle—the apprentices—the strange servants— and, oh! more than all, those hardeyed, loud-laughing tormentors, the boys of his own age! Naturally timid, severity made him actually a coward; and when the nerves tremble, a lie sounds as surely as, when I vibrate that wire, the bell at the end of it will ring. Beware of the man who has been roughly treated ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... "Coward! brute!" I exclaimed, gasping for breath; and losing all command of myself, I rushed in before Tommy. "Let alone the child— you'll kill him if you continue to treat him thus; if you do I will brand you as a murderer. Help! help! he is ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... allows the clearest perception of disagreeable consequences, such as pain, loss of ease, loss of reputation, loss of money, or any other harmful results that may follow, to frighten him out of the road that he knows he ought to take, is a worse fool still, for he is a coward and recreant ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... answered Lord Glenvarloch; "I will cleanse them from a calumniator and a coward." He then pressed on Lord Dalgarno, and struck him with the flat ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... Nick, with a sigh, "this is considerably more than I counted on. I didn't think, from the way you acted in the water, that you were anything but a big coward; but I'm thankful enough you didn't get your claws ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... him, "I can't help being angry with Mr. Townsend. I think I'm a little afraid of him. I'm a coward in some ways. You're different. You just smile kindly at me, as if you were older than Methuselah, and had all the wisdom of Solomon or Socrates, and were inclined to be tolerant ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... to his feet, his slow features working. "That ain't right, Cap," said he. "I know I'm scared to do some things, but I—I don't believe I'm no coward. I ain't afraid to go down there, but I won't go to-night, ner let you go, fer it's the same as death to start now. We couldn't maybe make it in the daytime, but I'm willin' to try it then. Don't you call no coward ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... to know who threw that rope? If he isn't too big a coward, he'll tell me. I guess Mr. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... I have discovered that I have suddenly become a moral coward, and am obliged to descend to subterfuges in order to bolster up my courage. This isn't a usual thing with me, I think, but neither is the occasion. I've been wanting and planning to tell you something, face to face, for a long time; but at the crucial moment my courage has failed each time. I ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... on the Flemish artisan, for such was Wilkin Flammock, with such a mixture of surprise and contempt, as excluded indignation. "I have heard much," he said, "but this is the first time that I have heard one with a beard on his lip avouch himself a coward." ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... coward dread on my pale cheeks Imprinted, when I saw my guide turn back, Chas'd that from his which newly they had worn, And inwardly restrain'd it. He, as one Who listens, stood attentive: for his eye Not far could lead him through the sable air, And the thick-gath'ring ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... rose with ghastly face. He had gathered a watch, a whistle, a pipe, a tobacco pouch, a handkerchief, a little case of cards and papers. He looked at the adjutant. There was a silence. The adjutant was feeling that he had been a coward to make Lean do ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... waxed when all of a sudden she wanted to cross the deck and go below to comfort that donkey Achleitner. Frederick would not allow her. He was ashamed of his previous attack of fright, called himself a miserable coward, and got himself under perfect control. In this attitude he played the role of a severe mentor, Ingigerd's responsible guardian and protector, strict, but fatherly and good-natured. Though she laughed at him, it by no means displeased her to let him ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... in Nature, tho' we cannot readily determine where to fix it. This brings to my Mind, when Glendour was boasting in the Play, that at his Nativity the Heavens were full of fiery Shapes, and the Foundation of the Earth shook like a Coward; Hotspur reply'd humourously, Why so it would have done at the same Season, if your Mother's Cat had but kitten'd, tho' your ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... despising you for a coward and a flirter," said Maria Angelina in a low but exceedingly penetrative voice, and so intense was her command of the situation that neither man found humor, then, in the ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... o' their manhood! See," added she, "do ye see wha yon is, skulking as far as he can get frae our door wi' the weel-filled sack upon his shouthers? It is yer ain dearie, Florence Wilson! O the betrayer o' his country!—He's a coward, Janet, like the rest o' them, and shall ne'er ca' ye his wife while I ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... mighty interest at stake: if he passed this room, he might at the worst die like a soldier; and he should see Miss Walladmor! His firmness was now tried to the uttermost, and somewhat shaken: his heart palpitated a little; and he smiled to see that his hand trembled like the hand of a coward. ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... "And the coward," said he, grinding his teeth, "got out of his window—and three policemen in his garden. He must have bribed a pickpocket—low knave that he is. But ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... as the two men with the toothache," said Peter. "They both met at the dentist's, who it seems had only time to pull one tooth. The question arose as to which it should be. 'I'm so brave,' said one, 'that I can wait till to-morrow.' 'I'm such a coward,' said the other, 'that I don't ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... himself for small things, but megalokindynos, i.e. endangering himself for great things. And Seneca says (De Quat. Virtut.): "Thou wilt be magnanimous if thou neither seekest dangers like a rash man, nor fearest them like a coward. For nothing makes the soul a coward save the consciousness ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... like her now. She pinched little Jacques Moet until he cried out and then she laid it to Pierre Dessau, who was well thrashed for it, and I called her a coward. I am afraid girls ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... you take me for a fool?" shouted the injured man, in a great rage. "Don't tell me such cock-and-bull stories. First you insult me, and then you lie like a coward; but I'll ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... as much surprised as pleased at this change in the young man's character, and he the more regretted having to tell the whole of the narrative, which was sure to cause further pain to the lad. However, it had to be done, and Jim, who was no coward, took it all better than ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... from the forces under Gen. Lewis, two of his men (Clay and Coward) who were out hunting and at some little distance from each other, came near to where two Indians were concealed. Seeing Clay only, and supposing him to be alone, one of them fired at him; and running up to scalp ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... chorus! They were a lot of tabby-cats—afraid to wet their precious feet. If it hadn't been for Tom, Miss Gray would have been drowned before the eyes of that mean director and those other imitation men. Ugh! I de-test a coward!" ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson
... blasted coward! Three weeks and this is the last day." He looked at his watch. "Only another hour and then I'm free to speak. Stick it for another hour. ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... "and in the innermost of my heart lieth the fear that mayhappen there is no Well, and no healing in it if we find it, and that death, and the backward way may yet sunder us. This is the worst of my heart, and evil is my coward fear." ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... the animal on his shoulders he took to the brazen underground chamber, which he had built, when Hercules came in with the body of the Nemean lion. There he stayed for several days, according to a good old historian, Diodorus, who in writing of the King told that he was so great a coward. ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... coward!" Sir Ralph exclaimed; "now I know it," and, with a taunting laugh, he ordered his men to follow him, issued from the village, and prepared, with his little band, to charge the Roundhead horse, about a ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... call me a coward, but I'll never let you count me a mean, miserly rascal," and the cheque with Drumsheugh's painful writing fell in fifty pieces on ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... some one else at that moment, most likely he would not have valued his life so slightly. He clewed up his canvas like a wise mariner, and lay to while the Symplegades butted one another with their foreheads of adamant, and the sea was white with terror all about them. Jason was no coward: he would have braved the passage had he alone been concerned in the result; but for Maud in her rose-garden and for the future, dear to him as his hope of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... makes me feel a coward. I want it to come; I want to taste life, to drain the whole cup, to understand, to feel. But that is the boy in me. I am more than half a boy, I always have been. But the woman in me: it ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... a sort of coward inpricking that I sha'n't come out of this with a whole skin, Jack; and there's a thing on my mind that mayhap you can take off. You have had Madge to yourself a dozen times since that day last autumn when I asked ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... always thought herself a coward, she feared death with a terrible repugnance; but now she found, to her surprise, that she would have light-heartedly changed places with her husband. She had much more courage to die than to watch him die—to watch Vincent die, to see him day by day grow weak ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... that!" declared Jack, with a sneer on his face to express his contempt, "he's a regular coward about the water. And if they do have the hard luck to run up against a Hun torpedo, Randolph will ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... morning, I was coming into the kitchen to light the fire, and met Grace Marks with the pails in her hand, going out to milk the cows. As she passed me, she gave me a poke with the pail in the ribs, and whispered with a sneer, 'Arn't you a coward!' ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... expression that almost daunted poor Joyce, who was half a coward at heart, anyhow, so she meekly rose ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... street, determined to wait there for the thirty minutes, when he noticed that to his left only a few of the tables were occupied. At one of these he could wait in the shade. Besides, he had a feeling that he was little more than a coward if ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... was a coward, Miss Burnham!" he replied, warmly. "You are speaking cruelly and unjustly of as brave a set of fellows as ever lived! The strongest man among them set the example; he volunteered to stay by Frank, and to bring him on in the track of the ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins
... that, as soon as war came, and his regiment was ordered on active service, he deserted at once, and went off and hid himself. What should you call such a man? You would call him a base and ungrateful coward, and you would have no pity on him, if he was taken and ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... are sullen; and Osman Digna, who was on bad terms with him a short time ago, and who, Mahmud suspects, is intriguing with them against him, is foremost in urging that an attack should take place; though everyone knows he is a coward, and never shows himself in battle, always running away directly he sees that things are going against him. Still, he has five thousand followers ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... to me, Dr. Perrin. You are a chivalrous gentleman, and you think you are helping a man in desperate need. But I say that anyone who would permit you to tell such a tale is a contemptible coward!" ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... tumours for the sake of obtaining credit for different qualities. Thus a terrific crack at the back of the ear might produce so great an elevation of the organ of combativeness as might obtain for the greatest coward a reputation for the greatest courage; and a thundering rap on the centre of the head might raise on the skull of the veriest brute a bump of, and name ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various
... a Shawanoe!" exclaimed Deerfoot, his voice as firm and unwavering as his nerves; "coward! Serpent that creeps in the grass and strikes the heel of the hunter; Arorara speaks with a double tongue; he says he took the scalp of Deerfoot, but the scalp of Deerfoot is here, and he dares Arorara and Waughtauk and Tecumseh and all the chiefs and sachems and warriors of the Shawanoes, ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... Ragged Men now, Von Holtz believed. He had fled a week or more before, when Jacaro—already learning the language of his half-mad allies—began to plan a grandiose attack upon the Golden City. Von Holtz was born a coward, and he knew where Tommy Reames and Denham would shortly thrust a Tube through. It would come out just where the catapult had flung Evelyn and Denham, months before, the same spot where he had marooned them. He ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... is a coward sparing in the heart, Offspring of penury and low-born fear:— Prayer must take heed nor overdo its part, Asking too much of him with open ear! Sinners must wait, not seek the very best, Cry out for peace, ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... us on, And many a battle there we join amid the eyeless night, And many a Danaan send adown to Orcus from the light: Some fled away unto the ships, some to the safe sea-shore, 399 Or smitten with the coward's dread climbed the great horse once more And there they lie all close within the well-known womb ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... Irishman, looking his ci-devant adversary full in the face, "as I proved you not worth thrusting with my sword, I now pronounce you not worth words—even to call you coward,— though that you are from the crown of your head to the soles of your feet. Not even brave when your body is encased in armour. Dastard! ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... it up, and—Heaven is my witness that I am writing only the bare truth—before I had raised myself there was a sound of metal hinges creaking, and I distinctly saw the lid shifting upwards. I may have behaved like a coward, but I could not for my life stay for one moment. I was outside that dreadful building in less time than I can write—almost as quickly as I could have said—the words; and what frightens me yet more, I could not turn the key ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... for a loup-garou, Father Gaspard: a loup-garou may have a harder time in this world than the other beasts, but he is no coward; he can make ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... told him, that this was the very ship they had attacked; and gave him a full account of the skirmish we had with their boats, and how foolishly and coward-like they had behaved. I told him all the story of our buying the ship, and how the Dutchmen served us. I told him the reasons I had to believe that this story of killing the master by the Malaccans was not true; as ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... he was always a coward. 'Go up alonger this drivelling sick man,' he says to his wife, 'and Magwitch, lend her a hand, will you?' But ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... coward, I must admit that such conversations were not calculated to produce a favourable impression on my mind. They might have been well meant, but did more harm than good. It is one thing to face the enemy on the battlefield, where one may defend himself; ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... figure fills the postern, and in an instant Angelica is torn aside by Master Willie Joffers (well versed, for all his mumming, in matters of chivalry). "Kisses for such coward lips?" cries he. "Nay, but a swinge to silence them!" and would have struck trousered Angelica full on the mouth. But decollete Geoffrey Dizzard, crying at him "Sweet termagant, think not to baffle me by these airs of manhood!" ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... Clarissa is firmly brave; her Soul abhorred Self-murder, nor would she, as she told Miss Howe, willingly like a Coward quit her Post; but in this Case, could she not have awed Lovelace into Distance, tho' her Hand had pointed the Knife, yet might he properly have been said to have struck the Blow. The picturesque Attitude of all present, when Clarissa suddenly cries out, 'God's Eye is upon us' ...
— Remarks on Clarissa (1749) • Sarah Fielding
... dare,' said Mr. Tyson, in a voice of thunder, 'but thee dare not, coward as thou art, for well does thee know, that the ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... ears for his torrent of invective, having no eyes for his writhings and threats, he had no longer the courage to perpetrate this dark deed. After the first fury of his rage had passed, he could not bring himself to it, and quitted the room like a coward and a man taken in crime, stung to the quick by those prayers continuously said for the monk. The night was passed ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... believe it's true at all," averred the Bonnie Lassie loyally. "I don't believe Plooie is a coward. There's some reason why he doesn't go over and help! I want ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... horror at seeing a huge Snake crawling in at the door. They all ran away except the King, who felt that his rank forbade him to be a coward, and the King's son. The King called out for somebody to come and kill the Snake; but this horrified them still more, because in that country the people believed it to be wicked to kill any living thing, even snakes, and scorpions, and wasps. So the courtiers did nothing, ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... times. And they scurry along without a glance at one another, each innately convinced that his ideas, his prejudices, his ambitions, his tastes are the Great Standard, the Normal Criterion. Puritan, paranoiac, sybarite, katatoniac, hardhead, dreamer, coward, desperado, beaten ones, striving ones, successful ones—all flaunt their umbrellas in the rain, all unfurl their invisible umbrellas to the world. Let it rain, let it rain—calamities and ecstasies tipped with fire and roaring with ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... myself. I know him not, he has done me no harm, yet because it is war, arranged by princes and kings, we must become murderers. And why should I kill him? because others would misconstrue my act of mercy if I did it not, and brand me a coward, aye and worse, a traitor. Why should I make that mother childless? why must I rob that loving wife of her husband? Why I be the means of making those little ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... nobleman and since the nobleman had no other vocation he began to become extinct. A bullet fired from a mile away is no respecter of persons. It is just as likely to kill a knight as a peasant, and a brave man as a coward. You cannot fence with a cannon ball nor overawe it with a plumed hat. The only thing you can do is to hide and shoot back. Now you cannot hide if you send up a column of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night—the most conspicuous of signals—every time you shoot. So the next step was the invention ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... the cure, smiling, "you should never ask a coward whether he is afraid, you only risk his telling a lie. He will say 'No,' ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... East A jocund and a welcome conqueror; And Aphrodite, sweet as from the sea She rose, and floated in her pearly shell A laughing girl; when lawless will erects Honour's gay temple on the Mount of God, And meek obedience bears the coward's brand; While Satan in celestial panoply With Sin, his lady, smiling by his side, Defies all heaven ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... darkness? Was he ashamed to face her—or angered by the reminder of her existence? No doubt it seemed to him now a monstrous absurdity that he should ever have said he loved her! He despised her—thought her a base and coward soul. Very likely he would make it up with Mary Lyster now, accept ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ran on. When I adverted to the question of their entire separation, she replied: "Be it so! One day the period will arrive; I know it, and feel it. But in this I am a coward. This imperfect companionship, and our masquerade of union, are strangely dear to me. It is painful, I allow, destructive, impracticable. It keeps up a perpetual fever in my veins; it frets my immedicable wound; it is instinct ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... there are no songs about them and no praises in the West, whatever there may be in the South. Why would there, and they running away and leaving the country the way they did? And what good did they ever do it? James the Second was a coward. Why didn't he go into the thick of the battle like the Prince of Orange? He stopped on a hill three miles away, and rode off to Dublin, bringing the best of his troops with him. There was a lady walking in the street at Dublin when he got there, and he told her the battle was lost, and she ...
— The Kiltartan History Book • Lady I. A. Gregory
... to think the visitor's descent effected with unwarranted eclat, and accordingly he growled once more. Malone, however, was no coward. The spring of the dog had taken him by surprise, but he passed him now in suppressed fury rather than fear. If a look could have strangled Tartar, he would have breathed no more. Forgetting politeness in his sullen rage, Malone pushed into the parlour before Miss Keeldar. He glanced at Miss Helstone; ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... a jugful!' says I, emphatic. 'I'll borrer a boat to get to Orham in, when I'm ready to go. You won't ketch me in that man-killer again; and you can call me a coward all you want to!' ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... on the window panes). I ought never to have concealed what sort of a life my husband led. But I had not the courage to do otherwise then—for my own sake, either. I was too much of a coward. ...
— Ghosts - A Domestic Tragedy in Three Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... make a coward violent to see his mother tormented as you are by this fellow, and not to be allowed to put a stop to it. ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... grave, sweet smile. Then I could do no otherwise than set him hastily down and look away, for so unearthly a smile I had never seen. He was, though fragile, not an unhealthy child; though so delicately formed, and intensely sensitive to nervous shocks, had nothing of the coward in him, as was proved to us in a thousand ways; shivered through and through his little frame at the sight of a certain picture to which he had taken a great antipathy, a picture which hung in the public gallery at the Tonhalle; he hated it, because of a certain ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... that would be murder," she continued. "We should have to call it murder, shouldn't we? And that is a fearful word. I could never quite forget it. I should always ask myself if I were right, if I had the right to judge. I am a coward. The work is too much ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... "Coward!" cried the men, reproachfully. "You can't catch the man, so you'd shoot him down. Is that the ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... False coward, wreak thy wif; By corpus domini, I will have thy knife, And thou shalt have my distaff and ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... or bending o'er The sweet-breathed roses which he loved so well, While through long years his burdening cross he bore, From those firm lips no coward accents fell. ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... began, sitting upright and clasping my hands round my knees, "this is a pretty bad business for me. I haven't the reputation of being a coward, but I'll own I feel pretty rocky and mean when I see you sitting there on the floor with that iron collar round your neck and that chain holding you to the wall, and know that it's, in a measure, all my stupid, blundering folly that has ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... the miser, when he hugs his gold; the courtier, who builds his hopes upon a smile; the savage, who paints his idol with blood; the slave, who worships a tyrant, or the tyrant, who fancies himself a god;—the vain, the ambitious, the proud, the choleric man, the hero and the coward, the beggar and the king, the rich and the poor, the young and the old, all live in a world of their own making; and the poet does no more than describe what all the others think and act. If his art is folly and madness, it is folly and madness at second hand. "There is warrant for it." Poets ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... these excessive characters are singularly contrasted. Jezebel scoffs at approaching retribution, and, shining with paint and dripping with jewels, is pitched to the dogs; Lady Macbeth goes like a coward to her grave, and, curdled with remorse, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... this,—for surely you will not be a coward, and dodge consequences,—you name a scheme of life-hire. This you esteem so much superior to our democratic way of holding each man and woman to be the shrine of rights which have an infinite sanctity, and of adjudging ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... armies of Kerensky. At Zborov, we pierced six enemy lines but were forced to retreat because the other fighters failed to advance as fast as we. Then came the long wait for the time when Russia should find herself, as she is still trying to do. The Slav is not a coward once his mind is trained. There is hope for his ultimate recovery. The power of Czardom was enforced ignorance, and this made possible the infamous treaty of Brest-Litovsk. But we saw that there was no hope for a mere handful of us to hold the Russian ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... meditatively. "So you've heard we've gotten on a bit. You must even have heard of this"—placing her hand over the jar of the Brown Cold Cream. "You want to be in at the feast. You're so easy to read that I can tell you what you're after before you can get the coward words out. Marry you! ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... let me tell you that you saw as pretty a fellow hanged as ever trod shoe leather. Aye!" putting his face nearer to that of the officer, "and there was many a coward looked on, that might much better have ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... suddenly to an end when Grady, following the glances of his auditors, turned and saw who was coming. Bannon noted with satisfaction the scared look of appeal which he turned, for a second, toward the men. It was good to know that Grady was something of a coward. ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... me, Elsa, these hours past, that I am a coward and a villain to let you go on with this miserable life. Nay! it's worse than that, for your future life with that bully, that brute, will be far more wretched than you have any idea now. He doesn't care for you, Elsa—not really—not as I care ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the few, rapid, and significant words which conveyed some hasty order, counsel, or notice, suited to any sudden occasion or emergency: e. g. 'To him flying from the field the hero addressed these winged words—"Stop, coward, or I will transfix thee with my spear."' But by Horne Tooke, the phrase was adopted on the title-page of his Diversions of Purley, as a pleasant symbolic expression for all the non-significant particles, the articuli or joints of language, which ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... answered; "but I wish it was over. I dread something, and I do not know what it is. Though nothing shall induce me to waver, I am afraid, Munro. I am not ashamed to say it: I am afraid, as I was the first night I stayed in this house. I am not a coward, ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... "Don't be a coward!" hissed Halloran. "If worst comes to worst, whoever it is can share the girl's fate," and with these words he opened the door of the coach, ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... old Grip!" cried Tom Tallington, kicking his heels together as the big dog gave his ears a shake, and lay down with his head between his paws, blinking at the fire, while his little assailant uttered a snarl, which seemed to mean "Oh you coward!" and trotted away to meet a tall rugged-looking man, who came slouching up, with long strides, his head bent, his shoulders up, a long heavy gun over his shoulder, and a bundle of wild-fowl in his left hand, the birds banging against his leather legging as he walked, and ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... and he meant to have it. For some seconds, we both waited on the wall in breathless silence, and then Alec, with a reckless disregard of what might be in store for him, gently let himself drop, and I, fearing more, if anything, than the present danger, to be for ever after branded as a coward if I held back, timidly followed suit. By a great stroke of luck we alighted in safety on a soft carpeting of moss. Not a word was spoken, but, falling on hands and knees, and guiding ourselves by ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... Dutch of origin. For he will have it a weir to catch fish, when all the world doth know that Veritas is Latin for truth, and Vere cometh of that, or else of vir, as though it should say, one that is verily a man, and no base coward loon. And 'tis all foolishness for to say, as doth Mynheer, that the old Romans had no surnames like ours, but only the name of the family, such like as Cornelius or Julius, which ran more akin unto our Christian names. I believe it not, and I won't. Why, was there not ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... rather to have the crown in possession than to hope for it hereafter. Such an one I thought to find in thee; and if I thought right, then truly I call thee true husband and King, but if not, then I count myself to have suffered loss, seeing that thou art not a coward only, but also bloodguilty. Be up and doing, therefore. Thou hast not, as had thy father, to pome from Corinth, or even from Tarquinii, to win for himself a kingdom among strangers. All things that are about thee mark thee out for kingship, to which, if thou judge thyself ...
— Stories From Livy • Alfred Church
... Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning; but give me the man who has pluck to fight when ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... past, for it seemed to all that yesterday's adventures were quite enough to last for at least a week. Yet each felt a little anxious that the others should not think it was afraid, and presently Cyril, who really was not a coward, began to see that it would not be at all nice if he should have to think ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... convictions, and to do Their part in shaping issues to an end. Silence may guard the door of useless words, At dictate of Discretion; but to stand Without opinions in a world which needs Constructive thinking, is a coward's part. ...
— Poems of Optimism • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... believe, Fred Oakes and I betrayed ourselves genuine adventurers. Any fool could have talked glibly about setting the town on fire; any coward could have yelped about the danger of it, and improbability of success. It needed adventurers to size up instantly all the odds against the idea, recognize the one infinitesimal chance, and plump for it. And we ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... craven scruple Of thinking too precisely on the event— A thought which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom, And ever three parts coward; ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... whom it cost the soutar so much care and effort to love, and who, although intellectually small, was yet a good man, and by no means a coward where he judged people's souls in danger, thought to save the world by preaching a God, eminently respectable to those who could believe in such a God, but to those who could not, a God far from lovely because far from righteous. His life, nevertheless, ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... than sorry; and it is better to be scared than syphilitic. "I dare do all that may become a man," says Macbeth; "who dares do more is none"; let a man dare if he will with his own body, aye, his own soul; he is but a coward who does not shrink from buying voluptuous moments with the hazard of wife and child. Hydrophobia is far less perilous than venereal disease, and if one hundredth as many were attacked by it the world would be placarded with scarlet ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... really horrible eugenist, because he wants to get a super-man who, having more than two legs, will be a vastly superior person to a man. Chesterton loves men. He tells us why St. Peter was used to found the Church upon. It was because he 'was a shuffler, a coward, and a snob—in a word, a man.' Even the Thirty-Nine Articles and the Councils of Trent have failed to find a better reason for the founding of the Church. It is a defence of the fallibility of the Church, the practical nature ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... the outlaw's life! Hurrah for the felon's doom! Hurrah for the last death-strife! Hurrah for an exile's tomb! Come life or death, 'tis still the same, So we preserve our stainless name From losel of the coward's shame. Hurrah for the mountain side! Hurrah for the bivouac! Hurrah for the heaving tide! If rocking ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... of me, sir, that I was a coward. I have looked death in the eyes; I have often hunted and arrested criminals who would not have had the least hesitation in doing away with me. There are whole gangs of rascals who have vowed my death. All manner of horrible revenges threaten me to-day. For all that I have the most complete ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... object and destination? The memory of his cleverness and initiative in their night ride to Konopisht gave her new hope. Why should he not come to Sarajevo? Between the lines of the note she had written him he must have read the tenderness that had always been in her heart. He was no coward, and the idea of fleeing to England when danger threatened her would, of course, be the last that would come into his mind. It was curious that she had not thought of this before. He would come to Sarajevo if he ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... magnates deem themselves, I would not, while the mountains can yield one free spot for my footstep, change my place in the world's many grades for theirs. To the brave, there is but one sort of plebeian, and that is the coward. But you, sage Rienzi," continued the Knight, in a gayer tone, "I have seen in more stirring scenes than the hall of ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... dungeons of a wicked lord named Sir Damas. He has a younger brother, and the two brothers are enemies, quarreling about their inheritance. Now the younger brother, Sir Ontzlake, is very strong, but Sir Damas is not strong, and moreover, he is a coward. So he tries to find a knight who will fight for him against ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... rule, 730 The sword, the laurel, and the purple robe, To slavish empty pageants, to adorn A tyrant's walk, and glitter in the eyes Of such as bow the knee; when honour'd urns Of patriots and of chiefs, the awful bust And storied arch, to glut the coward rage Of regal envy, strew the public way With hallow'd ruins; when the Muse's haunt, The marble porch where Wisdom wont to talk With Socrates or Tully, hears no more, 740 Save the hoarse jargon of contentious monks, Or female Superstition's ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... Creil in a train with a French officer. When they got to Creil, they knocked up the Mayor, and begged him to procure them a horse. He gave them an order for the only one in the town. Its proprietor was in bed, and when they knocked at his door his wife cried out from the window, "My husband is a coward and won't open." A voice from within was heard saying, "I go out at night for no one." So they laid hands on the horse and harnessed it to a gig. All night long they drove in what they supposed was the direction of ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... Father! For Thou callest me Thy child, As in Thy holy Jesus and Good Spirit reconciled,— O Father, in this evil day when atheism is found Dropping its poison seeds about in all our fallow-ground, Shall I keep coward silence, and ungenerously forget The Friend that hitherto hath helped me—and shall help me yet? Shall unbelief, all unabashed, proclaim that God is Not,— Nor faith with honest zeal be quick ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... somewhat unusual, as he was generally very bland and polite, but to-night he was so cantankerous that I fancied he must have been drinking. To me he was especially insulting, and went so far as to hint that I, unlike other Englishmen, was a coward; that I hadn't courage to resist a man manfully, but would act towards an enemy in a cunning, serpent-like way. This was not the first occasion on which he had sought to pick a quarrel with me, and I felt like resenting it. I desisted, ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... Menones? Governor of Nineveh? Who fled my sword, fear-cold, and pale with terror? Insult not Husak with so poor a suit! That coward's race— ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... thing to laugh about it in London, and it is another to stand out here in the darkness of the moor and to hear such a cry as that. And my uncle! There was the footprint of the hound beside him as he lay. It all fits together. I don't think that I am a coward, Watson, but that sound seemed to freeze my very blood. ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... Tom was no coward, in the ordinary sense of the word: there was in him a good deal of what goes to the making of a gentleman; but he confessed to being "in a bit of a funk" when he heard who was below: there was but one thing it could mean, he thought—that Letty had been found out, and here was her cousin ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... You spoil it. He'll scream. He'll turn pale and tremble like the coward he is. But he can't get away, Jose, he can't get away! I've got him, Jose! And I'll unbutton his jacket, that hated Yankee uniform. And I'll take this knife and I'll put it right close to his soft, white skin. Then I will press down—down! ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... been emulated, he ordered the saddle to be taken from his horse and placed against a large beech-tree near by. Here seated, with his men falling and the bullets of the enemy whistling perilously near, he steadily gave his orders while many of those who had called him coward were in full flight. During the heat of the action he took his tinder box from his pocket, calmly lighted his pipe, and sat smoking as composedly as though by his own fireside. A striking spectacle, that old man, sitting in the midst of hottest battle, with the life blood ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... half the American fleet may have been destroyed for lack of warning," groaned Ridge. Then he added, his face blazing with anger: "I hope you are not an American, and I don't believe you can be, for you are a traitor, a coward, and a contemptible cur. I only hope I may meet you again some time when I am off duty, and can give you the ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... danger is little or nothing to the daring and courageous. The fellow that isn't afraid of the ball, is scarcely ever hurt. He defends himself with eye and hand. The coward is the one most likely to get hurt. I think that there is just enough risk in these games to engender a manly contempt for pain, and a bold handling of a danger. If the cricket ball were a soft affair, it would be a game for babies ...
— A Lecture on Physical Development, and its Relations to Mental and Spiritual Development, delivered before the American Institute of Instruction, at their Twenty-Ninth Annual Meeting, in Norwich, Conn • S.R. Calthrop
... same cruel and unjust manner, and so on, and so on. Nothing I could say.... It is morbid obstinacy.... She said that she felt there was something, some change in me.... If my convictions were calling me away, why this secrecy, as though she had been a coward or a weakling not safe to trust? 'As if my heart could play traitor to my children,' she said.... It was hardly to be borne. And she was smoothing my head all the time.... It was perfectly useless to protest. She is ill. Her ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... towards the fervent sunlight. But he could not speak; he could scarcely collect his thoughts, conscious though he was of the absurdity of his silence. What was he waiting for? what did he expect? He was not usually bashful, he was no coward; there was nothing in her attitude to make him hesitate to give expression to what he believed was his first real passion. But he could do nothing. He even fancied that his face, turned towards hers, was ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... he said. "In ten years I ain't run out the white flag once. It's something that ain't known in the service. There ain't a coward in it, or a man who's afraid to die. But I'll play you square. I'll wait until we're both on our feet, again, and then I'll give you twenty-four hours the start ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... went on, as if Field had spoken, perhaps a shade darker in the face, but with the same even manner and voice. "Our bears don't carry no coward's devil-fingers that kill by p'inting at twenty foot, but they ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... he ag'in refreshes hims'ef, 'it's needless to go over that hunt in detail. We hustles the flyin' demon full eighteen miles, our faithful dogs crowdin' close an' breathless at his coward heels. Still, they don't catch up with him; he streaks it like some ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... they use against us are made in our factories or sold by our firms. It is not by a cunning policy, but peacefully through our own industry, that we have won our real empire over this country, and, therefore, he who stands here as one of the conquering nation, plays a coward's part if he forsakes his post ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... am also afraid? Then I will not give up. My dear sir, I see you do not know the Miliszewskis. We do not know how to handle the women, but there is not a coward in our family. I know that people laugh at me, but the one who would dare to call me a coward would not laugh. I will show them at once that I am not a coward. ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,
... was Queen Elizabeth who made the first European law to buy and sell human beings like brute beasts. She was England's glory as a Protestant, and Scotland's shame as the murderer of their bonnie Mary. The auld hag skulked away like a coward in the hour of death. Mary, on the other hand, with calmness and dignity, repeated a Latin prayer to the Great Spirit and Author of her being, and calmly resigned herself into the hands ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... and already they could all see the base design by which the coward hoped to save his own life. He was about to betray the women. They saw the chief, with a brave man's contempt upon his stern face, make a sign of haughty assent, and then Mansoor spoke rapidly and earnestly, pointing up the hill. At a word from the Baggara, a dozen of the raiders rushed ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... said, "they may try to kill me, but I have a will, too, and I say that I will not die till I have found a successor to carry on—to the end—what I have begun. Mind, it is no coward's game! It is a walk with death, hand in ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... it thou?" she shrieked. "Joan! Whence come ye? Saw ye aught? What do they to him? who be the miscreants? Is my son there? Have they won him over—the coward neddirs [serpents] that they be! Speak I who be they?—and what will they do? Ah, Mary Mother, what will they do ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... "Amen, coward. But the woman remains with me," answered the Queen of Sheba. [Footnote: In order to maintain uninjured the tone of passion throughout this dialogue, it has been judged expedient to discard, in the Language of the Begum, the patois of ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... of Aselzion's instruction was the test of the Brain and Soul against 'influences'—the opposing influences of others— and this is truly the chief hindrance to all spiritual progress. The coward sentiment of fear itself is born in us through the influence of timorous persons—and it is generally the dread of what 'other people will say' or what 'other people will think' that holds us back from performing many a noble action. It should be thoroughly understood ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... cried Felix; "he will beat them off. See, he is forming up his men. Ah, bravo! bravo! Look, there isn't a coward ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... left her to go into the inner room Eva's fears revived and she wished to follow him. But she was ashamed to have him think her a coward. She forced herself to ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... be sorry for what you have done, when you know that I AM BLIND." He who bullies those who are not in a position to resist may be a snob, but cannot be a gentleman. He who tyrannizes over the weak and helpless may be a coward, but no true man. The tyrant, it has been said, is but a slave turned inside out. Strength, and the consciousness of strength, in a right-hearted man, imparts a nobleness to his character; but he will be most careful how he ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... with a graceful phrase was well illustrated in the case of a friend of mine, not remarkable for physical courage, of whom a tactful phrenologist pronounced that he was "full of precaution against real or imaginary danger." It is not every one who can tell a man he is an arrant coward without offending him. The same art, as applied by a man to his own shortcomings, is exemplified in the story of the ecclesiastical dignitary who gloried in his Presence of Mind. According to Dean Stanley, who knew ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... think I shall, though I am not such a coward as mortem conscire me ipso. But I 'gin to grow aweary of the sun, and when the plant no longer receives nourishment from light and air, there is a speedy ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... intrusion. The old restlessness coming over him, he paced up and down the narrow, cagelike room. Presently he approached a tiny mirror that hung upon the wall, and stood looking into it intently. "Fool!" he muttered. "Liar, and fool, and coward—you, you! You'll take care of Tom, will you? But ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... of in a woman—all that I hadn't found in that other woman. But I was afraid. So I left Montricheux—went away at once. I didn't want to care for you. I'd been too badly hit before. Cowardly, you'll say, perhaps—you were never a coward, were you, Ann? Well, it may have been. Anyhow, I did go away and I tried to forget all about you. It wasn't easy, God knows, and then, by a trick of fate, I found you again, at my cottage—living there, sister of the man with whom ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler |
