"Cowardly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... around their fingers. Some of my girl friends don't mind what the young men do, or how often they break their word to them so that they are sure of their love. I do, and I won't have it, and I have told Harry so over and over again. It's such a cowardly thing—not to be man enough to stand up and say 'No—I won't drink with you!' That's why I say I can't think of his ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... even more like my young, undisciplined mother; for the girl is mother of the woman. But I have to acknowledge her faults and mistakes as my own, while I sometimes feel like reproving her severely for her carelessly performed tasks, her habit of lapsing into listless reveries, her cowardly shrinking from responsibility and vigorous endeavor, and many other faults that I have inherited from her. Still, she is myself, and I could not be quite ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... with rage against the whole world, against the others and against himself. The spectacle seemed to him a most repugnant, cowardly atrocity. ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... stained with blood, did not so much as wince, but stood smiling at him with the same look of contempt, as if quite ready to meet his fate at the hands of his cowardly enemy, and in another minute the blow would have fallen, had not one of the mounted spectators shouted something which Frank, whose blood felt chilled, could not understand, and making his horse give a bound, ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... semi-divine personages worshipped by the Hellenes,—a being of irresistible force, and especially beloved by Zeus, yet condemned constantly to labour for others and to obey the commands of a worthless and cowardly persecutor. His recompense is reserved to the close of his career, when his afflicting trials are brought to a close: he is then admitted to the godhead, and receives in marriage Hebe."—Grote, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... sort to attack another with the odds against him and never had a notion that there was anything cowardly in that way ...
— The Hilltop Boys - A Story of School Life • Cyril Burleigh
... am really a criminal wretch: by the jury, many of whom are fathers themselves and, when they think of their own sons, will wonder what appalling visions must have passed through my mind when I was forced to believe that my boy, my own son, had committed a cowardly murder! What sort of tragedy will they think that must have been for a man like me, with sixty years of honour and of honourable life ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... the world, and not be forced to drive asses all his life. Through this whole Saturday night he could not sleep. He longed to know what would be done to Tom. He began to wish to go to school, but he had not courage—sin is very cowardly: so, on the Sunday morning, he went and sat himself down under the church-wall. Mr. Wilson passed by. It was not his way to reject the most wicked, till he had tried every means to bring them over; and even then he pitied and prayed for them. He had, indeed, ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... rather, I will endeavor, as it were, to get your vote for Chevydale. This will make the act more manly and determined on your part, and consequently one much more high-minded and creditable to your reputation. You will show them, besides, that you are not the cowardly slave of ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... this cowardly action, and his eyes, as they met the gaze of the ruffian, contracted with their characteristic steely glow, as if some powerful force within the depths of his being were at white heat and only this pale flash came to ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... and invented fresh excuses for delay, like a cowardly gambler and roue as he was, fearing to break with her, and half the time ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... the most cautiously legislated for, does the same thing when a soldier shows it "in face of the enemy." Language, gathering itself up and concentrating its force to describe base behavior, can do no more than call it "cowardly." No instinct of all the blessed body-guard of instincts born with us seems in the outset a stronger one than the instinct that to be noble, one must be brave. Almost in the cradle the baby taunts or is taunted by the accusation of ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... given a stimulus to this unwarlike people, and he has gained so great a character—victory sits so lightly on his plume—that his authority will now be obeyed; while Usop, in consequence of his cowardly flight (for so they deem it), from the want of energy he has displayed, has lost character as well as wealth, and would scarce find ten men in Bruni to follow him. Unluckily for himself, he was a great boaster in the days of ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... more,—not exactly like children, but like the members of large and happy families, who carry about with them the purity and peace of their homes, and therefore take cognisance of the pure and peaceful only whom they meet abroad; but it is childish, or indolent, or cowardly, to desire this. While there is private vice and wretchedness, and domestic misunderstanding, one would desire to know it, if one can do anything to cure or alleviate it. Dr Levitt and I have the same feeling about this; and I sometimes hope that we mutually prepare for and ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... indignantly. "You shall not give up the Bambinis to their brother, a cruel, cowardly brute like that, right at the bottom of the profession. I know ... I've seen.... You shan't do it, Jimmy, and, ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... III placed the kingdom under an Interdict, for refusing to receive as Archbishop of Canterbury his nominee, Stephen Langton, who was unacceptable both to king and people; and soon after proceeded to excommunicate John, and depose him from his throne. The king's cowardly and unconstitutional conduct in resigning his kingdom into the {148} hands of the Pope's legate (A.D. 1213), and receiving it again at the end of three days as a tributary vassal of the Roman see, caused England ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... Lord, to escape those bitter and unending punishments and that galling shame—time after time, were it not worth men's while to sacrifice their riches and bodies, nay, even their very lives? Who is so cowardly, who so foolish, as not to endure a thousand temporal deaths, to escape eternal and everlasting death, and to inherit life, blissful and imperishable, and to shine in the light of the blessed and ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... arrow with a fatal right hand. This was {the only thing} at which, after {the death of} Hector, the aged Priam could rejoice. And art thou then, Achilles, the conqueror of men so great, conquered by the cowardly ravisher of a Grecian wife? But if it had been fated for thee to fall by the hand of a woman, thou wouldst rather have fallen by the ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... that are ignorant of the nature of the fear of God, count it a poor, sneaking, pitiful, cowardly spirit in men to fear and tremble before the Lord; but whoso looks back to jails and gibbets, to the sword and burning stake, shall see, that there, in them, has been the most mighty and invincible spirit that ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of the year, General McClure, in command of the American troops on the Niagara frontier, evacuated Fort George, when he heard of the advance of the English forces under General Murray. McClure committed the cowardly outrage of destroying the town of Newark. All the houses except one were burned, and no pity was shown even to the weak and helpless women, all of whom were driven from their comfortable houses and forced to stand on the snow-clad earth, while they saw the flames ascend from their homes and household ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... scoundrel!" burst out Conniston, angrily. "A fair fight in the open is one thing. Such cowardly means as you take to gain your ends is another. And if you will turn your horses and drive back off of Crawford territory I'll be glad to see ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... these Bones rattled, and this Head So often in thy Quarrel bled? Nor did I ever winch or grudge it, For thy dear Sake. (Quoth she) Mum budget. Think'st thou 'twill not be laid i' th' Dish. Thou turn'dst thy Back? Quoth Eccho, Pish. To run from those th' hadst overcome Thus cowardly? Quoth Eccho, Mum. But what a-vengeance makes thee fly From me too, as thine Enemy? Or if thou hadst not Thought of me, Nor what I have endur'd for Thee, Yet Shame and Honour might prevail To keep thee thus for turning tail; For who will grudge ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Hamlin, or even the Master himself in The Master of Ballantrae, one can feel a sincere affection or at least have a grudging sort of admiration, but it is not possible to even faintly like or hesitatingly pity a cowardly Robert Herrick, whose self-pity is so strong, and who from first to last is, as his creator intended him to be, a thorough inefficient. Half-hearted in his wickedness, self-saving in his repentance, he ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... snoring in bed, while the castle is being attacked by a band of robbers or privateers; and that, unless you stir yourselves to defend it, you may all be murdered as you deserve. Quick!—get your arms, and try to defend the place. Where is Mr Lawrence? Is he as cowardly as the ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... about yourself,' he rejoined, with cold emphasis. 'Sometimes great men are foolish. To-night your Excellency would have let'—here he raised his voice so that all could hear—'your Excellency would have let a dozen cowardly gentlemen drag a dying prisoner from his prison, forcing back his Majesty's officers at the dungeon doors, and, after baiting, have matched him against a common criminal. That was unseemly in a great man and a King's chief officer, the trick of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... much gratitude to Tristram, but in the bottom of his heart he cherished bitter jealousy of him. One day Tristram and Isoude were alone together in her private chamber. A base and cowardly knight of the court, named Andret, spied them through a keyhole. They sat at a table of chess, but were not attending to the game. Andret brought the king, having first raised his suspicions, and placed him so as to watch their motions. The king saw enough to confirm his ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... long in the thickest of the fire. The earl of Falmouth, Lord Muskerry, and Mr. Boyle, were killed by one shot at his side, and covered him all over with their brains and gore. And it is not likely, that, in a pursuit, where even persons of inferior station, and of the most cowardly disposition, acquire courage, a commander should feel his spirits to flag ana should turn from the back of an enemy, whose face he had not ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... youre throwing away all your chances for nothing. You think that people are what they pretend to be: that the way you were taught at school and college to think right and proper is the way things really are. But it's not: it's all only a pretence, to keep the cowardly slavish common run of people quiet. Do you want to find that out, like other women, at forty, when you've thrown yourself away and lost your chances; or won't you take it in good time now from your ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... subject of bloodshed. While averse to all warfare by disposition, and without the smallest trace of what might be called the military spirit, General Gordon had none of that timid and unreasoning shrinking from taking life, which is often cruel and always cowardly. He punished the guilty without the least false compunction, even with a death sentence, and if necessity left no choice, he would have executed that sentence himself, provided he was quite convinced of its justice. As a rule, he went unarmed in the Soudan, as in China; but there were exceptions, ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... attempted murder, and having betrayed his country for money, the devil considered him as his own, and this Mr Vanslyperken did not approve of; for, like many others in this world, he wished to commit every crime, and go to heaven after all. Mr Vanslyperken was superstitious and cowardly, and he did believe that such a thing was possible; and when he canvassed it in his mind, he trembled, ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... sufficient to keep the whole in motion for centuries, provided there was no attempt to introduce new wheels among the old. She had never been singularly distinguished for her military qualities; not that she was cowardly, and shrank from facing death, but because she lacked energy and enthusiasm for warlike enterprise. The tactics and armaments by which she had won her victories up to her prime, had at length become fetters which she was no longer inclined to shake ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... mean time, the conspirators were hunting for him from room to room, and at last they reached the one beneath which he was hidden. The queen and her ladies kept the door shut as long as they could, but you will remember that the cowardly conspirators had broken the locks and carried off the bars; and this brings us to one of the most devoted and heroic acts in Scottish history. Catherine Douglas, one of the noblest (both by rank and nature) and loveliest of the queen's ladies, when she found that the bar was ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... infection of consumption and pneumonia in the belief that these diseases were not "catching." Nowadays the troubles of consumptive patients are greatly increased by the growing disposition to treat them as lepers. No doubt there is a good deal of ignorant exaggeration and cowardly refusal to face a human and necessary share of the risk. That has always been the case. We now know that the medieval horror of leprosy was out of all proportion to the danger of infection, and was accompanied by apparent blindness to the infectiousness of smallpox, which has ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... shout, and turning hastily round, observed Peterkin struggling in the arms of the gorilla! Amazed beyond measure at the sight, and firmly persuaded that a cowardly assault had been made upon my friend, I seized the old woman's umbrella, as the only available weapon, and ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... sound of many feet, and then I knew that they were carrying her out, out of the house where she had lived, out of the house wherein she had died, carrying her forth for burial,—forth to the grave her only son had made for her; and I, little, shivering, cowardly soul, hid my face in my hands, and let my tears fall,—not because I knew this proud lady dead,—not because a fibre from my warm heart was being drawn out to be knitted into that fathom-deep grave, for it never would be one of my graves,—but because this death and sorrow were in the world, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... seriously, and the professor must, if he saw them, have enjoyed mightily the various letters and articles which have endeavored in solemn earnest to show that Milton was not justly entitled to the rank of a scientific expositor, and that it was a cowardly thing in the lecturer to attack Moses over Milton's shoulders. Whenever Professor Huxley enters on the defence of his science, as distinguished from the exposition of it, there are traces in his language of the gaudium certaminis which has found expression in so many hard-fought fields in ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... hands the veil that only the lost or the desperate suffer to be torn. He had noted before that it was generally men like Guion of a high strung temperament, perhaps with a feminine streak in it, who reached this pass, and because of his own reserve—his rather cowardly reserve, he called it—he was always impelled to run away from them. As there was no possibility of running away now, he could only dodge, by pretending to misunderstand, what he feared Guion ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... to his opinion; but since I've thought on th' matter to-day I've thought we han all on us been more like cowards in attacking the poor like ourselves; them as has none to help, but mun choose between vitriol and starvation. I say we're more cowardly in doing that than in leaving them alone. No! what I would do is this. Have at the masters!" Again he shouted, "Have at the masters!" He spoke lower; ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... at Paris, and if they find this letter upon him, those who have supported him will pass for his accomplices.' I confess I had my fears, in the state in which politics then were, and I held my tongue. It was cowardly, I confess, but it ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... with blood, one of his legs was hurt, but still the spirit burned. It was cowardly. Maurice's jaws assumed a particularly ferocious angle. Her dog! Rage choked him. With an oath he flung this student aside and that, fought his way to the center. A burly student, armed with a stout cane, was ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... was horrible!" said Mr. Link, gravely. "Some people might think such an act incredible; but I have seen so much of the worst side of human nature that I am not surprised. Clyne was too cowardly to kill the man himself, so he thought to make Clear his own executioner by leaving the stiletto in his way. Well, sir, the weapon proved to be useful in the way it was intended by Clyne, for Clear was killed with that ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... of admiration for his talents, and should lose all my respect for his morals. Junius was essentially a sophist. His religion was infidelity, his abstract ethics depraved, his temper bitterly malignant, and his nervous system timid and cowardly. The concealment of his name at the time when he wrote was the effect of dishonest fear. The perpetuation of it could only proceed from the consciousness that the disclosure of his person would be discreditable to his fame. The object of Junius, when he began to write, was ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... not "find the woman," but find the child. The high-spirited bantlings had a way of pummelling one another in fistic duels, and of calling in their respective mothers when they got the worse of it—which is cowardly, but human. The mother of the beaten belligerent would then threaten to wring the "year," or to twist the nose of the victorious party—sometimes she did it. In either case, the other mother would intervene, and then the two bantlings would retire ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... for you—we were deceived! Four moons have scarcely run, Since cowardly you've forfeited what we so bravely won! Squandered and cast to every wind the gain our death had brought! Aye, all, we know—each word and deed our spirit-ears have caught! Like waves came thundering every sound of wrong the country through: The foolish war with Denmark! Poland ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... them," he said; "not in the least; and I hope you will not enlighten them. We don't want terrified women and cowardly men to add to our embarrassment; the crew are under orders to keep a strict silence on the subject. ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... in the black catalogue of crime, most horrible among the fiendish deeds of all the dreadful centuries, was the St. Bartholomew Massacre. The world still recalls with shuddering horror the scenes of that most cowardly and cruel onslaught. The king of France, urged on by Romish priests and prelates, lent his sanction to the dreadful work. A bell, tolling at dead of night, was a signal for the slaughter. Protestants ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... from the highest of motives, from love for the Saviour who died for you, not to give way to sin; and I would point out to you how utterly low, and degrading, and unmanly it is to yield to such a foe—a foe so base and cowardly, that if you make any real effort to withstand him, he will fly before you. Don't be ashamed to pray for help through Him, and you are not on equal terms unless you do. That's not unmanly. Sin has got countless allies ever ready to come to its support. By prayer ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... yield. Grant me nothing, most valiant man, beyond this life; the rest be thine." Upon his saying such things, and not daring to look upon him, whom he is entreating with his voice, {Perseus} says, "What am I able to give thee, most cowardly Phineus, and, a great boon to a craven, that will I give; lay aside thy fears; thou shalt be hurt by no weapon. Moreover, I will give thee a monument to last forever, and in the house of my father-in-law thou shalt always be seen, that my wife may ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... grow to love. I think it was your sincerity, your transparent honesty that won me. You were all I'd dreamed 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 ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... not for the other.") It is the method of Spanish America where it is applied more frankly and logically, and where still, in many places, elections are a military affair, the questions at issue being settled by killing and being killed, instead of by the cowardly, pacifist methods current in Europe. The result gives us the really military civilisations of Venezuela, Colombia, Nicaragua, and Paraguay. And, although the English system may have many defects—I think it has—those defects exist in a still greater degree ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... be frightened into ignominious supplication. But Hillsborough undoubtedly did think so, and he always acted consistently in support of his strong conviction that the independent colonists were nothing more than a mob of cowardly malcontents. He acted on this conviction to such good purpose that his name has earned its place of honor with that of Grenville, of Townshend, and of Wedderburn, in the illustrious junta who were successfully busy about the ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... golf, and see at once that, with the miserable and cowardly exception of laying the stymie, there is no stroke in this game that fulfils the proper conditions which should govern athletic contests involving the use of spherical objects with or without instruments ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 15, 1920 • Various
... like being in jail. We were locked up and guarded like prisoners. Even then, if I could have liked the other boys it might have been all right. But they were mostly street-boys of the worst kind—lying, and sneaking, and cowardly, without one spark of manhood or one idea of square dealing and fair play. There was only one thing I did like, and that was the books. Oh, I did lots of reading, I tell you! But that could n't make up for the rest. I wanted the freedom and the sunlight and the salt water. And what ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... exclaimed. "We know that the people conquered by our ancestors were unwarlike and cowardly; but it would be shame indeed were we Saxons so to be overcome by the Danes, seeing moreover that we have the help of God, being Christians, while the Danes ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... candidly admit I was in mortal fear, and when a shell dropped right in the middle of us, and was, I thought, going to burst (as it did), I fell down on my face. Lord John, who was close to me, and looking as cool as a cucumber, gave me a severe kick, saying, 'Get up, you cowardly young rascal; are you ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... don't see where you come in to ask me what I'm doing here. What are you doing here? " She lifted her eyes and shot the half of a glance at Marjory. Into her last question she had interjected a spirit of ownership in which he saw future woe. It turned him cowardly. " Why, you know I was sent up here by the paper to rescue the Wainwright party, and I've got them. I'm taking them to Arta. But ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... it; there is evidence enough that they were greatly frightened. They were not United States soldiers, but volunteers from the streets of Boston, who, for their pay, went into the Court House to assist in kidnapping a brother man. They were so cowardly that they could not use the simple cutlasses they had in their hands, but smote right and left, like ignorant and frightened ruffians as they are. They may have slain their brother or ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... helping me." He thereupon resumed his beating of me and I cried, "Shame, shame! Aren't you ashamed to beat American women in this brutal way?" I offered no other resistance. "If we are breaking any law, arrest us! Don't beat us in this cowardly fashion!" ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... desolate, and must remain so forever, if she stayed here. Other thoughts were at work, too, tempting her on. The recollection of Sir Ronald's words about her recreant lover—the thought of his insolent and cowardly boast stung her to the soul. Here was the way to revenge—the way to give him the lie direct. As Sir Ronald Keith's wife, a life of splendour and power awaited her. She thought of Glen Keith as she had seen it once, old and storied, and gray and grand, with ivy ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... thing was still more dampened, to the boy's appreciation, by a sudden suspicion. Why had his companions thrust the most perilous part of the enterprise upon him, the youngest of the party? It was mean; it was cowardly; and the whole affair was intended to make sport for the rest, by getting him into a scrape. So, at least, ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... killed, only stunned by Reginald's cowardly blow. The soft flakes melting on his face revived him, and sitting up he looked about him trying to remember where he was. Slowly it all came to him, and stiff and sore, he got upon his feet. There were no signs of the twins, ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... Susie's speech a vindictive and critical intention. All the time she had, Aggie thought, been choosing her words judicially, so that each unnecessary eulogy of John should strike at some weak spot in poor Arthur. She felt that Susie was not above paying off her John's old scores by an oblique and cowardly blow at the man who had supplanted him. She wished that Susie would either leave off ...
— The Judgment of Eve • May Sinclair
... civilization—a condition for which familiarity had bred contempt. He hated the shams and the hypocrisies of it and with the clear vision of an unspoiled mind he had penetrated to the rotten core of the heart of the thing—the cowardly greed for peace and ease and the safe-guarding of property rights. That the fine things of life—art, music and literature—had thriven upon such enervating ideals he strenuously denied, insisting, rather, that they had ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Pagans should own thee; By Christian hand alone be held. Vast realms I shall have conquered once that now are ruled By Carle, the King with beard all blossom-white, And by them made great emperor and Lord. May thou ne'er fall into a cowardly hand." Aoi. ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier
... who can be honest as long as he is forced to be; but, who, the moment the pressure is taken off, can perpetrate crime for his own interests, without pity or remorse. I know the type well—cold-blooded, cunning, selfish, hypocritical, secretive, without much intellect, cowardly, but still, under certain circumstances, capable of great boldness. So Gualtier seems ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... to cut down any one who again attempted to strike him. Huckstep cursed my awkwardness, and told Harry to put down his hoe and came to him. He refused to do so and swore he would kill the first man who tried to lay hands on him. The cowardly tyrant shrank away from his enraged bondman, and for two weeks ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... freedom and boldness, though with frankest sympathy and reverence for the great Spirit, whose religion is the most significant fact in the history of the world. 'I must confess,' says he, 'that even regarded from a material and historical point alone, that is a poor, cowardly soul, which does not feel the deepest earnestness of truth in acknowledging the Wonderful One, Jesus Christ, as the Lord and Saviour of the whole world.' His sublime soul, profound, universal, loving ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... I will wait as long as you please for the time when you shall feel free from this mistake; but you shall be mine at last. Remember that. I might go away for months—a year, even; but that seems a cowardly and guilty thing, and I'm not afraid, and I'm not guilty, and I'm going to stay here and try ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... that of the latter. His very garb, as it is antique and venerable, feeds his self-respect; as it is a badge of dependence, it restrains the natural petulance of that age from breaking out into overt acts of insolence. This produces silence and a reserve before strangers, yet not that cowardly shyness which boys mewed up at home will feel; he will speak up when spoken to, but the stranger must begin the conversation with him. Within his bounds he is all fire and play; but in the streets he steals along with all the self-concentration of a young monk. He is never known to mix with ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... "And you, cowardly dogs, forsook me; and held back, when by a bold rush we might easily have slain him, and cut our ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... don't hev no love fer a train robber, fer all I ever come in contact with wuz a bunch o' cowardly murderers, who fight like rats when they're cornered, an' kill innercent express messengers fer amoosement er devilment. But if Uncle Sammy sez so, an' needs my help, he's got it right ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... there were plenty of antelopes to be found, if one went to look for them, and the cowardly slinking coyote was often to be seen as one rode across the prairie; and often in walking I found tortoises with bright red eyes. These were small, about six inches long. In the creeks were plenty of mud turtles, which ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... by him with Mr. Trelawney, as reported by this latter gentleman, when they were on their way together to Greece. After some remarks on the state of his own health[1], mental and bodily, he said, "I don't know how it is, but I am so cowardly at times, that if, this morning, you had come down and horsewhipped me, I should have submitted without opposition. Why is this? If one of these fits come over me when we are in Greece, what shall I do?"—"I told him (continues Mr. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... with which we were received did us no damage. I, at any rate, saw no saddles emptied near me, and in a few moments we were dashing through the advancing lines. A shout of triumph went up from our men, for our cowardly foes were flying before us in all directions. On we rode in triumph till we reached the bottom of the hill, then we reined up, for before us was the stream of San Paulo, and the few scattered men who had crossed ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... to be killed, and after the departure of the murderer, was able to drag himself a certain distance. Before being taken to Compiegne, where he died next day, the unfortunate man was able to describe to the Abbe Boulet, cure of Marqueglise, the cowardly deed of which his companions and himself had ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... "soldiering," and striking him in the face, broke his nose, and as the man lay on the deck he kicked him brutally. Challoner, who was on deck at the time, jumped down off the poop, and seizing Harman by the arm, called him a cowardly hound. ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... of Order." The next thing to do was to remove the bourgeois republicans who still held the seats in the National Assembly. As brutally as these pure republicans had abused their own physical power against the people, so cowardly, low-spirited, disheartened, broken, powerless did they yield, now when the issue was the maintenance of their own republicanism and their own legislative rights against the Executive power and the royalists ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... cad—a cruel, cowardly ruffian. I know all about him and what has happened. It would give me the greatest pleasure to kick him down the street. Failing that, I shall do my best to upset and spoil his schemes, ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... speaking have not necessarily been wise, brave, and true men, but, on the contrary, have very often been wanting in one or two or all of the qualities these words imply, I should expect to find a good many doctrines current in the schools which I should be obliged to call foolish, cowardly, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... one of her communications was intercepted, and the cowardly bearer, intimidated by the terrors of impending death, was persuaded to betray his employer. He revealed all that he knew of her practices, and one of his statements, namely, that she usually drew from her shoe the paper which she gave him, served to fix conclusively upon her ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... that harsh treatment had made him. But his spirit was roused at last; the cruel insult to his dead mother had set his blood on fire. His breast heaved; his attitude was erect; his eye bright and vivid; his whole person changed, as he stood glaring over the cowardly tormentor who now lay crouching at his feet; and defied him with an energy he had never ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... although the children of the caves did not go to such schools as we have, they had lessons to learn and tests to take. Those who lived together had to learn to work together. Each one must learn to be patient, brave, and self-controlled. The thoughtless, impatient, and cowardly were apt to prevent the capture of wild animals in the hunt, and to risk the lives of their clansmen. Hence, from early childhood the old men and women gave attention to teaching the children, preparing them for the tests which ...
— The Later Cave-Men • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... with immense splendor for this occasion; greatly to her own satisfaction and my disappointment. Having hired a small private box in the least conspicuous part of the theatre, I had committed the cowardly mistake of endeavoring to transform my grisette into a woman of fashion. I had bought her a pink and white opera cloak, a pretty little fan, a pair of white kid gloves, and a bouquet. With these she wore a decent white muslin dress furnished out of the limited resources of ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... exactly he would stick to the matter in hand; and the moment she turned her back, or ceased to praise him, he would stop. His physical strength was wonderful; and to have a woman stand by and admire his achievements, warmed his heart like sunshine. Yet he was as cowardly as he was powerful, and felt no shame in owning to the weakness. Something was once wanted from the crazy platform over the shaft, and he at once refused to venture there—"did not like," as he said, "foolin' round them kind o' places," and let ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not then? A pang of self-reproach followed they thought. Could he so lightly throw aside the love that had bent over his cradle. The sacred name of mother rose involuntarily to his lips. Was it not cowardly to yield up without a struggle the life when he should guard for her sake? Was it not his duty to the living and the dead to face the difficulties of his position, and overcome them if it were ...
— A Struggle For Life • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... I said it, utterly ashamed of my cowardly quibbling with death. What in the name of God could possibly ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... what's the use"; the business man who says "business is business," and has no time to waste on voting; the citizen who "will wait to see how the cat jumps, because he doesn't want to throw his vote away"; the cowardly American who "doesn't want to antagonize" anybody; the fool who "washes his hands of politics." These are the real Tammany, the men after the boss's own heart. For every one whose vote he buys, there are two of these who give him theirs for nothing. We shall get rid of him when these withdraw ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... to a friend of mine on the subject of courage in men, and spoke of a man whose name is associated with a book that has become a classic. "I knew him well," he said, "and I knew him as a brave man. Yet he once did the most cowardly thing I have ever heard of any man. He was in a shipwreck, and as the ship was going down he snatched a lifebelt from a woman passenger and put it on himself. He was saved, and she was drowned. And in spite of that frightful ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... they had a regard for their own lives or ears! cries Mr. Warrington, who loved this grave way of dealing with his noble kinsman, and used to watch, with a droll interest, the other choking his curses, grinding his teeth because afraid to bite, and smothering his cowardly anger. ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... one of the principal objects of their attention. I have made a pretty good slam amongst such kind of officers as the Massachusetts government abounds in, since I came into this camp, having broke one colonel and two captains for cowardly behavior in the action on Bunker Hill, two captains for drawing more pay and provisions than they had men in their company, and one for being absent from his post when the enemy appeared there and burnt a house just by it. Besides these I have at this time one colonel, one major, one captain, ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... despondency in which it crouched, leads it into the ways of the world, and persuades it that the best means of forgetting the losses and ruin undergone in the civil wars, is to recuperate on the riches of the cowardly Orientals. As little by little the treasures of Mithridates, conquered by Lucullus in the Orient, arrive in Italy, Italy begins anew to divert itself, to construct palaces and villas, to squander in luxury. Pompey, ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... out his hand to her, and when she unseeingly accorded him hers gave it what he thought an awkward, cowardly pressure and left her. There are no graceful ways for leaving Circe's isle, Alston thought, as he hurried away, unless you have at least worn the hog's skin briefly and given her a showing of legitimate triumph. And that night, because he had a distaste for talking about it further, ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... there were crocodiles or alligators of a vast size, which go on shore to sleep, and they scatter a scent as if all the musk in the world were together: They are fierce and ravenous, so that if they find a man asleep they drag him to the water and devour him, but they are fearful and cowardly when attacked. These alligators are found in many other parts of the continent, and some affirm that they are the same with ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... of the path of the flying wheel. It sounds a cowardly thing to have done, and doubtless the knights of old would have contrived a way of rescue. To the latter-day knight, however, there was something inevitable in the on-coming of the wheel, with its rider's feet kicking in a futile search for the pedals. It reminded him of his own futile ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... shop there was a little dark room for the shop-boy. There sat Petter Nord of to-day and came to an understanding with Petter Nord of yesterday. How pale and cowardly the churl looked. Now he heard what he really was. A thief and a miser. Did he know the seventh commandment? By rights he ought to have forty stripes. That was what ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... next morning our guard prepared to start us again towards the Lumpiya. Then we three semi-corpses collected what little strength remained in us, and suddenly made an attack on them with stones; whereupon, incredible as it may seem, our cowardly guard turned tail and bolted! We went on in the direction of Taklakot, followed at a distance by these ruffians, who were entreating us to make no further resistance and to go with them where they wanted us to go. If we did not, they said, they would all have their ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... had, even from the earliest ages of Rome, given way to the hopes of conquest, and a just sense of military discipline. The dictator, or consul, had a right to command the service of the Roman youth; and to punish an obstinate or cowardly disobedience by the most severe and ignominious penalties, by striking the offender out of the list of citizens, by confiscating his property, and by selling his person into slavery. [7] The most sacred rights of freedom, confirmed by the Porcian and Sempronian ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... with a gun and the man of straw with a broomstick under his arm. They will turn upon and attack the young dog, and chase him away with his tail between his legs. He will also work too furiously for his strength and then collapse, with the result that he will make a cowardly sheep-dog, or, as the shepherds ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... which Ozma always invited to her banquets and seated at a table by themselves, where they talked and chatted together as people do but were served the sort of food their natures required. The Hungry Tiger and Cowardly Lion and the Glass Cat were much admired by Rinkitink, but when he met a mule named Hank, which Betsy Robbin had brought to Oz, the King found the creature so comical that he laughed and chuckled until his ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... to Bull for a reason that would not have affected most men. That a man who had had the courage to stand up and face Uncle Bill in a fair duel should have been so cowardly, so venomous as to take a mean advantage of a gambling companion seemed to Bull altogether too strange to be reasonable. Certainly, if he had had a difference with this fellow, thought Bull, Pete Reeve was the man to let the other use his ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... such a cur, such a fool, as to do it!" he said, sinking back. "And yet that is what I am! See how weak and cowardly I am, Nell! I promised that I would never again trouble you with my love; that I would be content to be your friend—your friend only; and yet a few days' sickness, and I am crawling at your feet and begging you ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... a measure, at least as far as wanton or idle lying is concerned, or cowardly lying either, But he had lied to me concerning his knowledge of the strange maid, Lois, which kind of untruth all Indians consider more civil than a direct refusal ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... we often are reminded of funny things even in the midst of danger? Bill, a cripple and unable to move about with the agility needed to fend off a cowardly attack by this miserable piker, showed the stuff he was made of when he burst out laughing, for he was reminded by this threat of that old yarn about a softy's threatening to break the umbrella of his rival found in the vestibule of his girl's house, ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... oppressed him any more than he can cope physically with a powerful full-grown man. True, he may allow himself to be killed rather than yield, but this is being so morbidly heroic as to come close round again to cowardice; for it is little else than suicide, which is universally condemned as cowardly. ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... mechanical man,—the ordinary animal. Such a creature has cunning, and is either cowardly or ferocious; seldom in these qualities he preserves a medium. He is not by any means easy to dupe. Nature defends her mental brutes by the thickness of their hide. Win his mistress if possible; she is the best person to manage him. Such creatures are the natural prey of artful ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... doubled, Spurlock rushed: only to be met with a kick which was intended for the groin but which struck the thigh instead. Even then it sent Spurlock spinning backward, to crash against the wall. He felt no pain from this cowardly kick. That would come later. Again he rushed. He dodged the boot this time, and smashed his left upon the Wastrel's lips, leaving ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... These last words were cowardly of me; but as far as I could, I wanted to protect my professorial dignity and not lay myself open to laughter from the Americans, who when they do laugh, laugh raucously. I had left myself a loophole. Yet deep down, I had accepted the existence of ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... wellbeing: if liberty be not that, I for one have small care about liberty. You do not allow a palpable madman to leap over precipices; you violate his liberty, you that are wise; and keep him, were it in strait-waistcoats, away from the precipices! Every stupid, every cowardly and foolish man is but a less palpable madman: his true liberty were that a wiser man, that any and every wiser man, could, by brass collars, or in whatever milder or sharper way, lay hold of him when he was going wrong, and order and compel him to go a little righter. O, if ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... A little thought will, I think, convince any of my readers that emotions are as purely automatic as the movements of the frog's hind leg. The Irishman who said that he was really a brave man, although he had a cowardly pair of legs which always ran away with him, was far from speaking absurdly. It is plain that passion is something entirely beyond the conscious will, because it is continually excited from without, and because we are unable to produce it by a mere effort of the will ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... novel in this wise: "Yes, they are all alike, even the best and most tender-hearted among them. At home they are splendid fathers of families and excellent husbands; but as soon as they approach the barracks they become low-minded, cowardly, and idiotic barbarians. You ask me why this is, and I answer: Because nobody can find a grain of sense in what is called military service. You know how all children like to play at war. Well, the human race has had its childhood—a time of incessant and bloody ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... case of the thing that I mean. Why on earth do the newspapers, in describing a dynamite outrage or any other political assassination, call it a "dastardly outrage" or a cowardly outrage? It is perfectly evident that it is not dastardly in the least. It is perfectly evident that it is about as cowardly as the Christians going to the lions. The man who does it exposes himself to the chance of being torn in pieces by two thousand people. What the thing ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... that Arthur had pushed her down, and thus the story was told to his father. The old gentleman was very angry, for he had a great contempt for such cowardly deeds; and said before all the guests that if it were so, Arthur should ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... made itself master of her, came to a head, and, bursting through the floodgates of the eye, came rolling down, and in its fall, wetted her hand as it lay on her lap. "What a fool! what an idiot! what an empty-headed cowardly fool I am!" said she, springing up from the bench ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... through. The public should learn as little as possible of the fate of these criminals. The public punishment of an assassin who failed to strike me, only instigates ten others to try if they cannot hit me better. But the noiseless disappearance of a culprit fills their cowardly souls with horror and dismay, and the ten men shrink back from the intended deed, merely because they do not know in what manner their eleventh accomplice has expiated his crime. The disappearance of prisoners, the oubliettes, are just ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... very venturesome upon the part of the warrior thus to enter the lion's den. But while, as a rule, the Indians of the Southwest are treacherous and cowardly, there are occasional instances in which they show an intrepidity equal to that of the most ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... of hounds has been severely criticised by many writers and I was among them. I believed it a cowardly business, and that was why, if I chased bears with dogs, I wanted to chase the kind that could not be treed. But like many another I did not know what I was writing about. I did not shoot a bear out of a tree and ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... go free, to perpetrate more cowardly interference, after spoiling that well-laid plan? Hee-hee! You poor fool! Busy-bodies such as you invariably overreach themselves. Having tricked me two or three times, you thought, didn't you? that you could draw me here to kill Scharnhoff, that poor old sheep. You were careful, weren't ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... there escape. Certainly this long since was more agreeable to Jove and to the far-darting son of Jove, who formerly, propitious, preserved me; but now, on the contrary, Fate overtakes me. Nevertheless I will not perish cowardly and ingloriously at least, but having done some great deed to be ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... for the ages then. I say that you both were about to commit a selfish, cowardly, unmanly act that would have been an outrage in its cruelty to an innocent girl, to whom you had been making false ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... family. It involved nothing that hurt her conscience, and it prevented many disputes which would probably have begun in some small household disarrangement, and bred only dislike and religious offense. Her Methodism had neither been cowardly nor demonstrative, but had been made most conscious to all by her sweet complaisance ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... and fortunes, is natural, and perhaps just; but that she should have revenged the wrong, if indeed that be the motive, by depreciating him seems out of character with the Josephine of our imaginations. She describes him as vain, cruel, often weak, and at times abjectly cowardly. She dwells with great fullness upon his crimes, and passes rapidly and coldly over the many great and good things he achieved for France. In some instances positive misrepresentations are resorted to, calculated to blacken his character. Thus, in relation to the ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... he answered sharply, "that this is all a matter of sentiment. I regret extremely that my son should have behaved in such a cowardly and dastardly manner—it has hurt and surprised me more than I can say—but, were that all, it were surely better to bury the whole affair as soon as may be. I cannot believe that you are keeping the letters with no intention of making public ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... before he saw Viola, seated on the porch. Involuntarily he slackened his pace. A sort of panic seized him. Was she waiting there to question him? He experienced a sudden overwhelming dismay. What was he to say to her? How was he to face the unhappy, stricken,—but even as he contemplated a cowardly retreat, she arose and came swiftly down the path. He groaned ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... much preferred to be allowed to withdraw of his own accord rather than remain to be beaten. But his friends had all opposed the idea as cowardly, and he had given in to them. He now took his defeat very placidly, and even joined in the laughter which ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... "O cowardly and shameless men," answered King Minos, "why do you ask this foolish question, since you can but know the cause of my wrath? I had an only son, Androgeos by name, and he was dearer to me than the hundred cities ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin
... directed his ships towards Marseilles, where he hoped to get his son crowned Count of Provence, thanks to his strange marriage with Marie of Durazzo. But this cowardly act of treason was not to go unpunished. The wind rose with fury, and drove him towards Gaeta, where the queen and her husband had just arrived. Renaud bade his sailors keep in the open, threatening to throw any man into the sea who dared to disobey him. The crew at first murmured; soon cries ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... you should speak thus, Teule, for surely these white men are not cowardly murderers, still I take your words as an omen, and though the feast must be held, for see already the nobles gather, I will not ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... streets of the City of Charleston,"—so the papers say. Whether true or not, the Greek-fire of the righteous indignation of a loyal people is fast shattering the offspring of his infamous teachings,—the armed treason of the South, and its more cowardly ally the insidious treachery that lurks under doubtful cover in the loyal States. In thunder tones do the masses declare, that now and for ever, they repudiate the Treason and despise the Traitor. Nobly are the hands of our Honest President sustained ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... for the Austrians would shoot them as deserters. Of course, the Austrian and the German generals would make no peace with them. Therefore, this army, 200,000 strong, kept their own officers and their order and their arms and refused to have anything to do with the cowardly peace made by the Bolsheviki. Several thousand of them made their way across Siberia, across the Pacific Ocean, across America, across the Atlantic to France and Italy, where they are fighting by the thousands in the armies of the Entente. The main body of them, however, ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet
... docet—Don't be made to feel it's cowardly to use a nom de plume if you want to. It isn't likely to do any harm, and it may save you ...
— The Writer, Volume VI, April 1892. - A Monthly Magazine to Interest and Help All Literary Workers • Various
... dare to hurt you, M'sieu. They must not do it." She rose and stood before him. "When I think of that,—that you, who have done so much that I might be safe, are in danger, I feel that it would be cowardly for me to go away without you. You would not have left me, on the river. I know you would have died without a thought. And I—if anything should happen, M'sieu; if Father Claude and I should be set free, and—without you—I could never put it from my thoughts. I should always feel that I—that ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... evil. There are blots black as pitch in that picture. There are forms, more fiend-like than human, photographed on those sheets of paper. Crimes of worse than brutal violence, savage cruelty, crimes of treachery and cowardly cunning and conspiracy, breach of trust, tyrannical extortion, groveling intemperance, sensuality gross and shameless—the heart sickens at the record of a week's crime! It is a record from which the Christian woman often turns aside appalled. Human ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... [Sidenote:—3—] When the Parthians and the Medes, greatly enraged at the treatment they had received, equipped a large body of troops, he fell into an ecstasy of terror. He was very bold in threats and very reckless in daring, but very cowardly in following a slow course involving danger, and very weak in hard labor. He could no longer bear either great heat or armor, and consequently wore sleeved tunics made in such a shape as more or less to resemble ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... at any price we must hold out till daybreak. The AGUARA only prowls about at night, and goes back to his lair with the first streak of dawn. It is a cowardly beast, that loves the darkness and dreads the ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... which during those first months had been justifiable was now a source of anxiety. But whether fear or hope predominated in her expectancy, she still could not decide. She had said to herself that her next reply should not be cowardly, yet she was as far as ever ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... great work has ever been done in the world save by those who have met with bitter rebuffs and severe trials at the beginning of their career. It seems as though the ruling powers imposed an ordeal on every human being, in order to single out the strong and the worthy from the cowardly and worthless. The weakling who meets with trouble uplifts his voice in complaint and ceases to struggle against obstacles; the strong man or woman remains silent and strives on indomitably until success is achieved. It is strange to see how many complaining weaklings are living around ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... uncertainty of her future destinies? 'Where are my colonies? Where are my Batavian provinces? Where is my gigantic power, and the glory of Spain, which resounded from one hemisphere to the other? What have you done with my inheritance, ye cowardly and unskillful men? Where are my treasures; where the victorious fleets that crossed the ocean to bring back in profusion to my empire the gold and gems of the New World?' The question naturally arises, what can be the cause of ...
— The Christian Foundation, June, 1880
... immediately to lay down their arms. This, with insolent looks of defiance, they refused to do. "Down with your guns this moment," I shouted, "sons of dogs!" And at the sharp click of the locks, as I quickly cocked the rifle that I held in my hands, the cowardly mutineers widened their line and wavered. Some retreated a few paces to the rear; others sat down, and laid their guns on the ground; while the remainder slowly dispersed, and sat in twos, or singly, under ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... to attend," he would say, "will be my own. May if be far off! No; I don't care about funerals and the suggestion they convey. A cowardly attitude? I think not. The coward refuses to face a fact. Death is a fact. I have often faced him. He is not a pretty fellow. Most men only give him a shy glance out of a corner of their eye. It scares them out ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... raids on the Hurons at Quebec and carried off captives from under the very walls of Fort St Louis. Learning of this, the Onondagas sent an expedition to Quebec to demand that some Hurons should be given to them also, and the weak administrator of the colony, Charles de Lauzon-Charny, being too cowardly to resist, complied with this demand. On the way back to Onondaga the Indians slew some of the captives. On arriving at home they tortured and burned others, among them women and helpless children. The colonists at Onondaga ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... him!" interrupted her son in a low tense voice. "He's a white-livered, cowardly hypocrite, that's my name for ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... a cowardly animal backed into a corner. "I told you what was going on. You can be ready for it now. I can't help it if I couldn't find out how all ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... with his face to his associates but with his voice addressed to those other three in the aisle: "We were invited on this boat in pure cowardly malice." (Applause.) "To have our weapons stolen from us by servants and locked up by underlings and to have the boat's ordinary refreshments forbidden us." (Laughter and applause.) "To be thrust into contact ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... one extreme, and detrimental to the interests of the child, its opposite extreme, viz., that of bringing up the child to no pursuit whatever, is still more injurious. We had better have too many irons in the fire than none at all. It is a base and cowardly desertion of duty to shrink from the task of human occupation. Constituted as human society is, the members of it being mutually dependent upon each other for support, it is evident that our happiness materially depends upon the active concurrence of each individual in the general system ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... with us indeed, the Brazilians would not have turned us away as they did, from the doors of an hospital! for they are neither a cruel nor cowardly people. To turn sickness away would be cruel and stupid, to say the least! What we were expelled for I ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... the ramparts, sprinkling them with holy water and promising salvation. Charles the Fat, the Lord's anointed, now appears with a multitude of a hundred tongues and encamps on Montmartre, but while the Parisians are preparing to second him in crushing their foes, they learn that the cowardly emperor has bought them off with a bribe and permission to winter in Burgundy. The Parisians, however, refused to give them passage and by an unparalleled feat of engineering they transported their ships overland for two miles and set sail again above the city. Next year, as Gozlin's ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... did act very cowardly about this matter. But Connecticut showed great wisdom and humanity in making a just and equitable provision for such poor and decrepit slaves as might find themselves turned out to charity after a long life of unrequited toil. Slavery ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... helped a great deal, but I've shown I was willing to give my life, and perhaps I've got to; but I don't blame any body, and if it was to do over again, I'd do it. I'm a little sorry I wasn't wounded in front. It looks cowardly to be hit in the back; but I obeyed orders, and it don't matter much ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... the loss of character resulting from the public persistence in an opinion privately abandoned, not only by considering carefully every change in their own conclusions, but by a delay, which often seems cowardly and absurd, in the public expression of their thoughts upon all questions except those which are ripe for immediate action. The written or reported word remains, and becomes part of that entity outside himself which the stateman is always ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... warm," thought I, "while I prove to my complete satisfaction that it is more cowardly to live than to die. There is no very ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... resist the first efforts of the French valor, and their firmest battalions began to give way. But the fortune of the day was quickly changed. The Swiss in the service of France, unmindful of the reputation of their country for fidelity and martial glory, abandoned their post in a cowardly manner. Leyva, with his garrison, sallied out and attacked the rear of the French, during the heat of the action, with such fury as threw it into confusion; and Pescara, falling on their cavalry with the imperial horse, among whom he had prudently intermingled a considerable number of Spanish foot ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various |
