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Dastardly   Listen
adjective
Dastardly  adj.  Meanly timid; cowardly; base; as, a dastardly outrage.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Dastardly" Quotes from Famous Books



... Rowlee commented on the situation editorially, He took the righteous and indignant attitude, expressing extreme journalistic horror that such a hold-up should be possible in a modern, civilized community, hurling editorial contempt on the dastardly robbers who were thus intending to shake down the innocent purchasers, etc. In fact, he laid it on thick, But he managed to insinuate a doubt. Between the lines the least astute reader could read Rowlee's belief that perhaps these first purchasers might ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White

... finally lodged in his neck: he fell, and for some time was supposed to be dead, but revived, and afterwards recovered from this severe wound. The most prompt and diligent enquiry as to the author of this cruel and dastardly act, failed to lead to his detection. No doubt was entertained that this attempt at assassination was made by a white man, stimulated perhaps by no better excuse than the memory of some actual or ideal wrong, inflicted on some of his ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake

... picture of patient, grateful, and high-minded resignation, Morton could not help bestowing an execration upon the poor-spirited rascal who had taken such a dastardly course ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... Miss Wallace herself, I trust, among the number. The man who loves, and loves truly, should not long permit its object to remain in any doubt of his feelings and intentions. It has ever appeared to me, Miss Mordaunt, as a most base and dastardly feeling in a man to wish to be certain of a woman's returning his love, before he has the manliness to let his mistress understand his wishes. How is a sensitive female to know when she is safe in yielding her affections, without this frankness on the part of her suitor? I'll answer for ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... "Oh! this dastardly wretch is profiting by his knowledge of secrets which a long intimacy has enabled him to discover. Do not believe him, I entreat ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... be a very bad man," said Elsie, slowly. Her face was white and her eyes downcast. It was evident that the sudden introduction of Ventana's personality was distressing to her, but Courtenay, preoccupied with the dastardly attempt made to sink his ship, did not observe this feature of ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy

... certainly as past the prime of life, and he was of a strong and athletic build. But it was the suddenness of his attack upon him which had given Charles Holland the great advantage, and had caused the defeat of the ruffian who came bent on one of the most cowardly and dastardly murders that could be committed—namely, upon an unoffending man, whom he supposed to be loaded with chains, and incapable of making the least ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... most dastardly thing I ever heard, Major," said Phoebe quietly with a deep note in her voice. "For one moment I sat stunned. The long line of veterans as I saw them last year at the reunion, old and gray, limping some of them, but glory in their bright faces, some of them singing and laughing, ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess

... refused to fire on the savages, who were within a paddle's length of him, but stood up in the canoe, with a loaded musket in his hand, beseeching them by his gestures to take him prisoner, rather than deprive him of his life. While in the act of making this dastardly appeal, a musket ball from the enemy entered his mouth, and killed him on the spot. The others behaved with the greatest coolness and intrepidity. The fugitives gained on their pursuers, and when they found the chase discontinued altogether, Lander stood up for the ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... was perfectly true to his leader. He had a notion—and, indeed, I don't know that it was a wrong one—that his profession was now, as before, strictly military, and according to the rules of honour. Robbing he called plundering the enemy; and hanging was, in his idea, a dastardly and cruel advantage that the latter took, and that called ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray

... that it would be far safer to replace the plank through which Wyckoff had put the auger hole in his dastardly attempt to turn ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson

... instinct is stronger at times than the trained will. Whether you give him a measure of your sympathy or not, at any rate do not believe that his short-lived liaison with Althea was a matter of deliberate and dastardly seduction. Nor must you think that I am setting down anything in disparagement of a child whom I once loved. Long ago I touched lightly on the anomaly of Althea's character—her mid-Victorian sentimentality and softness, ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... people of Athens heard of his dastardly deed, they were filled with grief and rage—grief for young Perdix, whom all had learned to love; rage towards the wicked uncle, who loved only himself. At first they were for punishing Daedalus with the death which he so richly deserved, ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin

... England mind than this brilliant capture of Harvard, by which the ancient cradle of bigotry and superstition was made the home of American liberal thought. As for the Mathers, when they found themselves beaten in fair fight, they conceived a revenge so dastardly that Pemberton declared with much emotion he would humble them, were he governor, though it cost him his head. Being unable longer to withstand Dudley by honorable means, they tried to blast him by charging him with felony. Their letters are too ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... very superficial and dastardly: they begin upon a thing, but, meeting with a difficulty, they fly from it discouraged; but they have the means ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... lived one or two privileged negroes, who, on great occasions,—days of muster, 4th of July, Washington's birthday, and the like,—were treated with more than ordinary courtesy by the other people. That a great and dastardly wrong was committed upon many, in like manner in which Simon Lee[7] was treated, is true. Many negroes at the South, who fought for American independence were re-enslaved, and this is so far beyond a doubt that no one denies it. The re-enslaving ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... ease, and to secure his low pleasures, at any price—ready to give up the honour of his country, and submit to the conqueror—that he had been secretly intriguing with the enemy, had been suspected, and this suspicion was confirmed by his dastardly capitulation when the means of defence were in his power and the spirit of ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth

... investigate this dastardly outrage," said Bunyip, "we must become detectives, and find a clue. We must find somebody who has seen a singed possum. Once traced to their lair, mother-wit will suggest some means ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay

... distress of spirit to a woman so aged, defenceless, and kind? According to the doctor, the shock of the robbery had not been the originating cause of Mrs. Maldon's death; but it might have been; quite possibly it had hastened death.... Louis was not merely a thief; he was a dastardly thief. ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett

... hanging, she thought it no great hardship, for were it not for that, every cowardly fellow would turn pirate, and so infest the seas; and men of courage would starve. That if it was put to her choice, she would not have the punishment less than death, the fear of which kept some dastardly rogues honest; that many of those who are now cheating the widows and orphans, and oppressing their poor neighbors who have no money to obtain justice, would then rob at sea, and the ocean would be as crowded with rogues ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms

... to investigate this dastardly outrage,' said Bunyip, 'we must become detectives, and find a clue. We must find somebody who has seen a singed possum. Once traced to their lair, mother-wit will suggest some means of rescuing ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay

... times his own force, it was marching away in all haste, having abandoned the siege of Valencia, which city he could now enter with his troops. The success was a wonderful one; but it is sad to think that it was gained by such a treacherous and dastardly maneuver, which might have cost a gallant officer—who was, moreover, a countryman and distant connection of the earl—his honor and ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty

... treatment she suffers; the husband alone is lord paramount; if, however, he should he convicted of murdering his wife, he would suffer death; but this is difficult to ascertain, even should she bear the marks of his cruelty or dastardly conduct, for who is to detect it? Instances have been known, when the woman has been cruelly beaten and put to death, and the parents have been informed of her decease as if it had been occasioned ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox

... attack had too probably been made from behind. As yet there was no evidence that the murderer had himself encountered any ill-usage. And Finn, if he was the murderer, must, from the time he was standing at the club door, have contemplated a traitorous, dastardly attack. He must have counted his moments;—have returned slyly in the dark to the corner of the street which he had once passed;—have muffled his face in his coat;—and have then laid wait in a spot to which an honest man at night would hardly trust himself with honest purposes. "I ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... "It was a dastardly affair," continued the Lieutenant, as we returned to the station. "The hair raised on my head as I listened to the calm description of this young woman, hardly more than a girl. Only then did I fully realize what depravity Bolshevism had brought into the world, crushing out faith, fear ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski

... sifted sand in the engine of the automobile, he had made his first move in a dastardly campaign. Most of his life had been spent surrounded by the ease and luxury of the Zaidos castle. He had had horses and automobiles to use; he had had great stretches of park and woodland to roam through and hunt ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske

... work to screw Tim's courage up to the necessary point, but his sense of obligation to Matthew finally overcame his well founded fears of Fred Worthington's strong arms, and he promised to take part in the disappointed rival's dastardly plot. ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey

... against such violence, unable to defend them. Under purely patriotic impulses we had rushed to the rescue of an invaded sister state to do the little we could toward destroying the great enemy of our country; and now to be assailed by this dastardly fire in the rear made us turn with even a sharper vengeance against the insurgents at home than we felt towards the armed hosts which confronted us. Nor had home-sickness anything to do with this feeling. It is true, the idea which ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood

... "But perhaps the most dastardly outrage occurred at the baptism of the youngest child of a prominent treasury official. It seems that the nurse, who was a suffragette in disguise, had removed the child, a girl, and substituted a mechanical doll, with a phonographic attachment. ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky

... Lieutenant Pike speaks of them as being more dreaded by their savage brethren for "their deceit and inclination for stratagem, than for their open courage." Major Thomas Forsyth, late U.S. agent among the Sacs and Foxes, calls them a dastardly and cowardly set of Indians. The correctness of these charges may be questioned. Mr. Schoolcraft, in speaking of the Foxes says, "the history of their migrations and wars, shows them to have been a restless ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake

... saved my life at the broken bridge that time, of course I would not dream of such a dastardly trick," the Spaniard resumed. "I had to make other plans. I tried to get out of it altogether, but that man would not let me. So I decided to sacrifice myself. I would myself blow up the dam, or, rather, make a little explosion that would scare prospective ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton

... person who joined Captain Hill in a dastardly attack on the actor, Mountford, on his way to Mrs. Bracegirdle's house, in Howard Street. Captain Hill was jealous of Mountford, and induced Lord Mohun to join him in this "valiant exploit." Mountford died next day, Captain Hill fled from the country, and ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... patriarchal institution, my dear lady. But I reckon it is exploded now. The Emancipation Proclamation was a dastardly war measure." ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... back by the river's bank. Whoever the devils that have done this dastardly thing, they may be still prowling about, and to meet them would be for me to get served the same as they've served him, that's sure; so I'd best take another route, though it be a bit round the corner. Let me see. I think ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid

... nothing about that. If you burnt it you were very foolish and reckless; you deserve no doubt to be punished for it, but that was comparatively nothing. But do you know, bad boy," he said, turning again to Walter, "do you know what you have done? Do you know that your dastardly spitefulness has led you to destroy writings which had cost your master years and years of toil that cannot be renewed? He treated you with unswerving impartiality; he never punished you but when you deserved punishment, and when he believed it to be for your good, ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar

... of a wrong and cowardly action, because you would have sealed her misery for the remainder of her days, and it would not have caused you to escape the suspicion of being an accomplice, while at the same time it would have attached to you the odium of dastardly treachery. Notwithstanding all I have just said, you can easily imagine that, in spite of my utter contempt for all gossiping fools, I cannot openly defy them. I therefore feel myself compelled to ask you not only to quit ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... brought a startled and troubled look to the faces of his companions. All knew that if Pete Deveaux had engineered such a dastardly trick as John hinted at, a handicap would be in store for the Sky-Bird's crew all through the remainder of the race, for it would be impossible to get a renewal of their helium-gas supply before reaching their own country again, and then it would be ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser

... all probability not even loaded, being worn more for appearances by the native than anything else, these fellows sometimes do desperate work with their ugly and ever-handy swords when cornered up, in proof of which we have the late dastardly assault on the British Consul at Erzeroum, of which we shall doubtless hear the particulars upon reaching that city. Before long the ravine terminates, and I emerge upon the broad and smiling Erzingan Valley; at the lower extremity of the ravine the stream has cut ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... France my pride of service turned to regret. I was sorry deep down in my heart that I had served the Fatherland, but I rejoiced that I was then an American, a loyal American. It was when—-when the despicable Huns sank the Lusitania, the most dastardly crime in the world's history, that my soul was suddenly filled with loathing. I offered my services to the country of my adoption, believing that they would go to war at once, but I was too old, and then America was not yet prepared for ...
— The Pony Rider Boys with the Texas Rangers • Frank Gee Patchin

... the God-like sun, animating and vivifying all things, searching into dark recesses and driving out bats and impure vermin by his intolerable presence, and unveiling ugliness and hatefulness, so is Truth. Withersoever she turns her shining mirror there Error may not abide, but like a dastardly coward, flies from the glory. Believe, Master Arundel, that He who is uncreated, Truth will magnify that wherein ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams

... these are matched with acts of ignorant and careless young husbands, who do dastardly deeds to their brides because they think the law and the contract give them the right! There is no need to go into details. The whole evil is revealed by the words of the woman just quoted: "Oh, but we are ...
— Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living • H.W. Long

... the massacre on the highway can not be suppressed. A wave of indignation sweeps over the country. Newspapers, clergymen, statesmen, ordinary citizens are of one opinion, that the sheriff and his deputies should be made to suffer for their dastardly acts. The result of the agitation is a call for trial for a case of murder. The Grand Jury of Luzerne County find an indictment against Sheriff Marlin and Captain Grout. These men are ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams

... that it was you who committed an unprovoked assault upon me—who planned to have me waylaid in that dastardly fashion?" ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... "We seem to have come to the worst of everything. Whatever may be the result and meaning of this dastardly outrage, nothing can hurt ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White

... alone amongst the Commissioners from the Northern States, and ranged themselves by the side of the Central States of the Union, upon whom the weight of the civil strife must come if come it must, they need not assure you that no dastardly fears, no feelings of base compliance, dictated the position thus taken by them. Such motives to action neither became them nor those whom they represented. It was because of generous faith and earnest sympathy, of ties which no distance of time or space, and no difference of institutions can ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden

... him no more than justice to say that he mourned Bommaney senior infinitely more than the money. He liked to trust people, and had all his life long been eager to find excuses for defaulters. He could find no excuse here. The theft was barefaced, insolent, dastardly. He puzzled over it, and grew more cynical and bitter in his thoughts of the world at large than he could have imagined himself. But then, when Bommaney junior came home, and insisted on the restoration of the missing eight thousand from his own small fortune, old Brown brightened ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray

... Mrs. Dissosway to procure the release of her husband on condition of her prevailing on her brother to stay quietly at home. "And if I could," she replied, with a look of scorn, drawing up her tall figure to its utmost height, "if I could act so dastardly a part, think you General Washington has but one ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... waver, his voice could be heard above the din of arms, exclaiming in his native tongue, "Be strong! Be strong;" and when one near him, by trepidation and reluctance to proceed to the charge, evinced a dastardly disposition, fearing the example might have a pernicious influence, with one blow of the tomahawk he severed his skull. It was perhaps a solitary instance in which terror predominated. Never did men exhibit a more conclusive evidence of bravery, in making a charge, and fortitude ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... the thrust of the lance. It penetrated the mantle, but missed his body. Then, rising upon his stirrups, Sir Huon struck Charlot so terrible a blow with his sword that the helmet was cleft asunder, and his head too. The dastardly prince fell ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... of help in clearing up this desperate tangle. The goaded woman bursts into a wild outcry, sharp as a knife by which she should hope to cut through the coil in which she is caught: "Deceit! Deceit! Dastardly deceit!... Treachery! Treachery! such as never until this moment called ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... with calm dignity, "as it appears that some of you suspect me of this dastardly deed, I am quite willing to submit to any restraint you may desire till the groundlessness of the charge appears. You may leave a guard here in the cave or I will accompany you to any of your own houses. I certainly have no desire to escape ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger

... remarks of this observing Christian, thought it most prudent to dismiss the father, on account of the nearly murdered child. His coward soul trembled for the consequences which might ensue; fear is inseparable from little minds; and this dastardly pampered priest experienced its effects so far as to induce him to assume the appearance of that he was an ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... dreadful wound—because he taunted me about my mode of dress. I was wearing the only clothes my eccentric father would provide me with. I am wearing the same style of costume yet, as penance for that dastardly act—caused by an ungovernable temper with which I have been cursed from my birth. I would have entered the service of God had it not been for that temper. I am unable to control it, except by avoiding undue contact with my fellow men. That is why. I am living ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)

... Corsicans, gives us three of the principal ingredients in the character of Napoleon, when he says, [16]"Ulcisci, prima lex est, altera, mentiri, tertia, negare Deos." To these we may add unlimited ambition, insatiable vanity, considerable courage at times, and the most dastardly cowardice at others. It must be owned, that this last is an extraordinary mixture; but I am inclined to believe, in despite of the many proofs of rash and impetuous courage, that Napoleon was in the main, and whenever life and existence was at stake, a cool and selfish coward. His rival Moreau ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... comments, becoming apprised of all that was going on in the court-room, in the order it transpired. She had known of Fluella's arrival,—her perilous passage over the river,—of the report she then made to the hunter of her discoveries,—of her bringing back the wounded Claud in safety,—of the dastardly attempt of the prisoner to take that heroic girl's life,—of his sentence, and, finally, of his departure for prison, amidst the execrations of a justly indignant people. She had known all this, and felt it, to ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... busily making money off the war, having prudently kept our own skins out of danger, are officiously ready with proposals of peace. What a peace! The only peace that could be made to-day would be a dastardly treason to every one of the millions whose blood has watered Europe, to every woman who has given a son or a father or a husband to the settlement of the cause. The parochialism of the American intelligence ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick

... knocks his antagonist down, and there an end. Pope seems to have nursed his grudge, and then, watching his chance, to have squirted vitriol from behind a corner, rather glad than otherwise if it fell on the women of those he hated or envied. And if Dryden is never dastardly, as Pope often was, so also he never wrote anything so maliciously depreciatory as Pope's unprovoked attack on Addison. Dryden's satire is often coarse, but where it is coarsest, it is commonly in defence of himself against attacks that were themselves ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... given up their youth, their manhood, the dearest things to their heart, respect to their father and loyalty to their sovereign, rather than countenance the injustice of Charlemagne to their kinsman, have at last obtained to be pardoned; to be pardoned, they, heroes, by this, dastardly tyrant, and to quietly sink, broken-hearted into nothingness. The eldest, Renaud, returning from his exile and the Holy Land, finds that his wife Clarisse has pined for him and died; and then, putting away his armour from him, and dressing in a pilgrim's frock made of the ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee

... bearing a flag of truce, was returning to Virginia, with a number of Americans who had just been liberated or exchanged in Bermuda, when she was overhauled by a British man-of-war, and both her crew and passengers robbed of all they had. The British ships which committed this dastardly deed were the Tiger, of 14 guns, and the schooner Surprise, ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge

... place in those who have degenerated through cowardice. If the hind, disentangled from the thickset toils, ever fights, then indeed shall he be valorous, who has intrusted himself to faithless foes; and he shall trample upon the Carthaginians in a second war, who dastardly has felt the thongs with his arms tied behind him, and has been afraid of death. He, knowing no other way to preserve his life, has confounded peace with war. O scandal! O mighty Carthage, elevated to a higher pitch ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... indeed. An unexpected yet ridiculously simple move had utterly routed him at the very outset of the deadly game that he was playing. He had sat there determined to have either Tremayne's life or the truth, publicly avowed, of Tremayne's dastardly betrayal. He could not have told you which he preferred. But one or the other he was fiercely determined to have, and now the springs of the snare in which he had so cunningly taken Tremayne had been forced apart ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini

... dastardly thing Thou hast done in the sight of the day, All horrors that sicken and sting Shall make ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall

... she nor I hold the creed that justifies such martyrdom. Am I to teach you such things? Shame! Have the courage of your convictions. You have released her, and you must be content to leave her free. The desire to fetter her again is ignoble, dastardly!" ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing

... Christ; and that he can longer abide to oppose, than Christ can to plead for us. Wherefore, away with, it, not only as to the notion, but also as to the heart and root thereof. Oh! When shall Jesus Christ our Lord be honoured by us as he ought? This dastardly heart of ours, when shall it be more subdued and trodden under foot of faith? When shall Christ ride Lord, and King, and Advocate, upon the faith of his people, as he should? He is exalted before God, before angels, and above all the power of the enemy; there is nothing comes ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... escape the legitimate punishment for their dastardly deed by ending their own life. But their intention was frustrated, and they were nailed ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... troops, by their dastardly desertion of the fort of the Mississi, at which they were stationed, nearly disconcerted all the arrangements. Great numbers of the inhabitants had already gone on ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston

... dishonored and humiliated before the world. The action demanded of us was such a compound of cowardice and treachery that we ask ourselves in dismay what can we ever have done that could make others for one instant imagine us to be capable of so dastardly a course. Yet that it was really supposed that we could do it, and that it was not merely put forward as an excuse for drawing us into war, is shown by the anger and consternation of the Kaiser and his Chancellor when we drew back from what the British Prime Minister had described as "an infamous ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... villain in disguise, and he used his acquaintance with Miss McKay as a cloak to elude detection. My theory is this: He got Priscilla's name out of the catalogue, and came here intending to murder her for her jools; but when he saw how big she was he was scared and so abandoned his dastardly intent. Now if he had chosen me, my body would, at this moment, have been concealed behind the sofa, and my class-pin reposing in the ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster

... the Emperor as far as Cremona, quitted him at that place, and went to Milan, where he delivered to Petrarch the Prince's valedictory compliments. Petrarch's indignation, at his dastardly flight vented itself in a letter to his Imperial Majesty himself, so full of unmeasured rebuke, that it is believed it was ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... could explain dogs and the cock of their ears and the droop of their tails and their vanity and their fidelity, and why they looked up and why they suddenly went off round the corner, and their pride in the sound of their voices and their dastardly thoughts and sniffing satisfactions, so that for the first time dogs had souls for Benham to see. And there was an Amanda with a striking passion for the sleekness and soft noses of horses. And there was an Amanda extremely garrulous, ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... fight, and I will see to it that you shall not escape as you did at Montreal. Perhaps you do not know that I have knowledge of your evil doings at Montreal—how you and others tried to loot the stores and private dwellings, and how both the French and the English soldiers turned on you and your dastardly companions and shot you down. How you escaped from justice I do not know, but perhaps, even yet, the authorities will listen ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer

... that dastardly dog? Where is that villain of a cook?" I heard him roar on the stairs. "Bring me that scoundrel that I may slit his ears!" At this moment he burst through the doors, a terrific spectacle of fury, his ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... conduct of Adam was to the last degree dastardly. When the awful time of reckoning comes, and the Jehovah God appears to demand why his command has been disobeyed, Adam endeavors to shield himself behind the gentle being he has declared to be so ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... exclusive, unprejudiced will, as well as unlimited authority; that both his greatness and his littleness, his successes and his crimes, originate entirely with himself; that the fortunate hero who marched triumphant over the Alps, and the dastardly murderer that disgraced human nature at Jaffa, because the same person, owed victory to himself alone, and by himself alone commanded massacre; that the same genius, unbiased and unsupported, crushed factions, erected a throne, and reconstructed ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith

... spoke to each other occasionally, none now referred to the dastardly conduct of the enemy in setting ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock

... rapidest and most dastardly flight you could possibly conceive; but it was a great compliment to the argumentative powers of the Parson, and he felt it as such. Nevertheless, Mr. Dale thought it right to have a long conversation, both with the Squire and Miss Jemima herself, upon the subject which his intended ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... crowning horror and ignominy of that bottle. He reflected that no man of his name had ever, so far as he knew, stained it as he had done by his life; that no man of his name had ever so stained the record of his race by the contemplation of such a dastardly death. He felt, gazing at that bottle, every whit as guilty as if he had drained the contents, and he told himself that that man was responsible, that that man had murdered him in the worst and subtlest way in which murder can be done; he had caused him to do away with ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... not sufficient prudence to employ them to the best advantage. His undertakings had been more fortunate, if he had properly estimated his own strength, and had less despised the courage and skill of the Araucanians, presuming on the dastardly example of the Peruvians, and the want of concert in the more northern tribes of Chili, against whom he had hitherto been accustomed to contend. Historians do not impute to him any of those cruelties with which the contemporary conquerors ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr

... Colonna, especially of the date now entered upon, with an elegance and a dignity not their own. Outrage, fraud, and assassination, a sordid avarice in securing lucrative offices to themselves, an insolent oppression of their citizens, and the most dastardly cringing to power superior to their own (with but few exceptions), mark the character of the first family of Rome. But, wealthier than the rest of the barons, they were, therefore, more luxurious, and, perhaps, more intellectual; and their pride was flattered in ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... as his reason forbids idolatry, that same reason commands. Accordingly, labouring under these violations done to their moral nature, they describe themselves, in the anguish of their souls, treated as a people at once dastardly and insensible. In the same spirit they make it even matter of complaint, as comparatively a far greater evil, that they have not fallen by the brute violence of open war, but by deceit and perfidy, by a subtle undermining, or contemptuous overthrow of those principles of good ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... far less regard or sympathy with this deceitful and base-minded young scamp than for any of the others. If Edwards' story was reliable, Eugene Pearson was the arch conspirator of the entire affair, and no possible excuse could be offered for his dastardly conduct. His position in the bank was a lucrative one, and his standing in society of the highest. His family connections were of the most honorable character, while the affection of his employers for him, would certainly have appealed to his sense ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton

... Silence our guns':—for in him the woman was great in the man, In that heroic heart each drop girl-gentle and pure, Dying by those he spared;—and now Death's triumph was sure! From the deck the smoke-wreath clear'd, and the foe set his rifle in rest, Dastardly aiming, where Nelson stood forth, with the stars on his breast,— 'In honour I gain'd them, in honour I die with them' . . . Then, in his place, Fell . . . 'Hardy! 'tis over; but let them not know': and he cover'd his face. Silent, the whole fleet's darling they bore to the twilight ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave

... oath of good fellowship, and so she turned to Hoegni for aid. He, too, did not wish to violate his oath, but he induced Guttorm, by means of much persuasion and one of Grimhild's potions, to undertake the dastardly deed. ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... I hold my position here, and can thus keep you at bay. And think you that I will thus surrender my advantage to please the idle fancy of a man who would not hesitate to stoop to perform any act however dastardly, so that he could effectually escape the penalty of a crime he was ready to profit by, but cowardly enough to shrink from the consequences it entailed? You say that our interest in this affair is mutual,—it is not so, and you know it. You gain nineteen thousand ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest

... a base, miserable coward!" she broke in. "Such a pitiful, dastardly wretch! Don't frown at me—I have never been afraid of you—I am not now! I tell you the ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens

... to England without any further attempts, fully satisfied they had done all in their power to execute the designs of the ministry, and choosing rather to oppose the frowns of an angry sovereign, the murmurs of an incensed nation, and the contempt of mankind, than fight a handful of dastardly militia. Such was the issue of an expedition that raised the expectations of all Europe, threw the coasts of France into the utmost confusion, and cost the people of England little less than a ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... in running away with the lady, intended to dispense altogether with ceremony, and make of Julie anything but his wife; but Georges, her father, and one Morisseau, a notary, discovered him in his dastardly act, and pursued him to the very feet of the Regent, who compelled the pair to marry and make ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... be something unmanly, something almost dastardly, in a life that does not move with dash and freedom, and that fears the bracing contact of ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Lotys, "And is it part of the oath that the monarchy should be destroyed by murder without warning? You know it is not! You know that there is nothing more dastardly, more cowardly, more utterly loathsome and contemptible than to kill a man defenceless and unarmed! We speak of a Monarchy, not a King;—not one single individual,—for if he were killed, he has three sons to come after him. You have called me the Soul of an Ideal—good! But I am not, ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... it in an instant. Since the supper of the night before he had been pestered by many misgivings, and troubled by some remorse. Capt'n Davy was bent on going away. Overwhelmed by a sense of what he took to be his dastardly conduct he was in that worst position of the man who can forgive neither himself nor the person he has injured. So much had Lovibond done for him by the fine scheme that had brought matters to such a pass. But having gone ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine

... Ephesus; his implacable hostility to the Jews; his pollution of the Holy of Holies; and his miserable death at Taba, after a tumultuous reign of eleven years, are circumstances of a prominent kind, and therefore more generally noticed by the historians of his time than the impious, dastardly, cruel, silly, and whimsical achievements which make up the sum total of his ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... of polite. Strict almost to severity as Johnston was in his management of the camp, the majority of the men, including all the best elements, regarded him with deep respect, if not affection; and that Damase Deschenaux should make so dastardly an attempt upon his life aroused in them a storm of indignant wrath which would ...
— The Young Woodsman - Life in the Forests of Canada • J. McDonald Oxley

... of the last five or six days of the election, and of the proceedings at the declaration of the poll; a report, moreover, of the "chivalrous and sympathetic references" made by the newly elected Conservative member to the "dastardly attack" upon his rival, which the "whole of West Brookshire condemns ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... handsome Monmouth, for he was beautiful and should therefore be triumphant; poor Lady Horton never got beyond externals. That her nephew and Sir Rowland, whom she had esteemed, should be leagued in this dastardly undertaking against that lovely person horrified her beyond words. She withdrew soon afterwards, having warmly praised Ruth's action in warning Mr. Wilding—unable to understand that it should be no part of Ruth's design to save the Duke—and ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini

... surprise, and appalled by so dastardly a treachery, were easily defeated. Their children and wives were captured, together with large herds of cattle, which are celebrated for their size. All these were driven ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... Alliance under Captain Landais came up, and Jones believed that the battle was won. But the Alliance instead of firing on the Serapis discharged a broadside at the Bonhomme Richard. In spite of shouts and warnings, Landais continued his dastardly work and many Americans and Frenchmen were killed or wounded by his fire. Then his craft sailed away and was seen no more ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards

... any doubt; that piteous appeal to Marian had settled the question. John Saltram, the friend whom he had loved, was the traitor. John Saltram had stolen his promised wife, had come between him and his fair happy future, and had kept the secret of his guilt in a dastardly spirit that made the act fifty times blacker than ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon

... chimneys and volcanic wood-sheds, while others stroll out after dinner in a strange city and spend a pleasant evening watching a burning oil-refinery make a Vesuvius look pale and sickly in comparison. Luck is distributed in a dastardly way, and as for myself I've quit trying. I don't run to fires at all any more. The big cities have fooled me long enough by sending out forty pieces of apparatus to smother a defective flue. I stay behind and watch the crowd. It's more amusing ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch

... Four, or more, of these tubes are thrust into the wall, I suppose, and connected in series, so that they can be fired by the same electric spark. These tubes and the wires are water-proofed. The negro is only the dastardly workman in this case. It was never he who invented the trick. But he must be an excellent workman, who ought to be employed in much more honest effort. I wonder if the fellow is going to use more ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock

... little cursed sonnet in the train how old affection outlasts youthful passion, like violets blooming in autumn. How loathsome! How incredibly base! And then, when my temper is aroused by your opposition, I am dastardly enough, heartless enough to try to humiliate you by shewing you those letters, to try to revenge myself on you. On you, Magdalen! On you! ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley

... accurately. The only thing certain is, that they did not return with him. I have heard wild tales, with I know not how much truth in them, that he put his niece and her companion ashore at Cape Breton or Newfoundland, and that De Pontbriand, who could not prevent his dastardly act, threw himself into the sea, and tried to swim to the shore, but sank ere ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis

... Gage entered the room. Gage had been Merriwell's bitter enemy at one time during the summer encampment, having made two dastardly attacks on Frank, who had been generous enough to rescue him from death after that, and had saved him from expulsion by refusing to ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish

... she should have the gratification of seeing her play win. She sought to distress and disconcert me, and to raise in your mind a doubt of my motives and my story. It may be legitimate in diplomacy, but it's dastardly and inhuman. 'Rumour also had it that he was none too happy in his marriage, and that his Mrs. Clephane was something of the same sort—she was of the type to make men's hearts flutter.' You see, I recall her exact words. And what was ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott

... were in accord. The future contained for Gabrielle Heyburn—asleep and all unconscious of the dastardly conspiracy—only that which must be hideous, ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux

... and prosecutors were all against Charles, and his trial must result in conviction. The people were excited at the dastardly murder, and began to complain at the delay in the trial, which wore tediously on day after day for ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick

... like himself, in appointing tyme, place, and choice of arms, that at once you may extirpate your inveterate enemy, or put a period to your punny (puny?) life in falling gloriously by his hands. That impertinent criticks or flatterers may not brand me for challenging a man that's repute of a poor dastardly soul, let such know that I admit of the two great supporters of his character and the captain of his bands to joyne with him in the combat. Then sure your Grace wont have the impudence to clamour att court for multitudes ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... off with a swish of invisible skirts—vanishing possibly in the same direction whence they came. They go leaving him wiping his astonished eyes disgustedly, for the act was so sudden and tragic as to excite tears. Before he is aware of it other and stronger gusts duplicate the dastardly deed of the first wingless wizard of the plains, and the hapless voyager is left gasping. Almost immediately there are to be seen the regular "desert devils," as they are called, bringing a dozen or more whirling columns of yellow silt rapidly ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan

... cry was heard in the halls of Congress. And it was heard on the banks of the Hudson by Washington. Heard and answered. A stern demand went to Sir Henry Clinton for Lippencott, the leader under whose command the dastardly deed had been committed. For Lippencott, else the act should be retaliated upon by the death of one of the British ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison

... display of the strong feelings which had been anticipated. The situation was obvious. So far as Captain Redfield was concerned, he felt that he had been forsaken, betrayed. There was no man who stood with him. In vain he pleaded with his men to stand by him in his defense against a most dastardly plan to wrong him. He then inquired their attitude towards Brisbau, and received an ...
— Money Island • Andrew Jackson Howell, Jr.

... was in the world, laughing to himself in the safety of his namelessness—knowing her futile anger and indignation—satisfied to have shamed and insulted her—and her mother—her great, resourceful, splendid mother, away and ill when this dastardly attack was made. Impulsively she turned to run to her aunt, and lay the matter before her, but paused and sat down on the little chair before her writing desk. Covering her eyes with her clenched hands she tried to think. Tante Lydia was worse than useless, scatterbrained, ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford

... of harmony betwixt them and the crimes. He gave order that one Arbaces, a Mede, that had fled in the fight to Cyrus, and again at his fall had come back, should, as a mark that he was considered a dastardly and effeminate, not a dangerous or treasonable man, have a common harlot set upon his back, and carry her about for a whole day in the marketplace. Another, besides that he had deserted to them, having falsely vaunted that he had killed two ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... into a dense cloud of driving rain and oily men, felt one sudden pang of doubt as to her future course, and almost concluded it should be to await upon the platform the Eastern-bound express due there in a few hours. This dastardly impulse, however, was speedily put to flight by the superior terror of the ridicule sure to greet such a return, and, assuming a determined mien, Miselle took ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... I have to say to you is that what you did down there has never been seen in any other war. Never in any country in the world has such a dastardly act been committed as the shooting of one who goes to ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle

... to record that Gaston gained nothing by his dastardly act. Pierre's brother, Sir Jean, stood to his post in Lourde as stoutly as Pierre had done; and the count did not obtain the fortress. In fact he does not seem even to have pursued his attempt upon it farther. ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... well-known and brave Captain Fitz-Randolph, or Randell, as commonly called, who had greatly annoyed the British. When one of their officers had consented to procure her husband's release, if she would persuade her brother to quit the American ranks, she indignantly replied: 'If I could act so dastardly a part, think you that General Washington has but one Captain ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various

... outcry against Italian Anarchists. Even greater horror and indignation were excited by the assassination of President McKinley by Czolgoscz on the 6th of September 1901, at Buffalo, U.S.A. And a particularly dastardly attempt was made to blow up the young king and queen of Spain on their wedding-day in ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... now, after having deserted those to whom he had been in honor bound to cleave, he pleaded the excuse of bad weather and the lateness of the season for abandoning them once more; and, re-embarking on his ship, he went back with all his company to England. It was the dastardly ending of the first effort, nobly conceived, and supported through five years, to engraft the English race in ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... affrighted and timid canon cast himself at his superior's feet and entreated him to spare his life, but in return only received a kick in the breast which nearly proved fatal to him. When he had partially recovered from this, and was being hurried off to prison, another dastardly attack was made on him, but that was parried by the prior's own retainers, who saw that he was beside himself with rage and fury. After this all the other canons were seized and imprisoned, but on the remonstrance of certain noble friends they were ordered to be released ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell

... finding out something which might be damning evidence against them, or by stating your opinion in Court. There is only one way of staying the trio from doing this dastardly thing, and that is by getting this case, which is now being tried, to go ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell

... despondency, before the stern virtues of the ages we call dark? When a man is so voluntarily imbecile as to regret he is not rich, if that is what he wants, before he has struck a blow for wealth; or so dastardly as to renounce the prospect of love, because, sitting sighing, in velvet dressing-gown and slippers, he does not see his way clear to ten thousand a year: when young women coiffed a merveille, of unexceptionable "style," who, with or without a prospective penny, secretly look down upon honest ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various

... West Indies, of Vasques de Coronado, which, after excedinge greate chardges bestowed for royall furnishinge furthe upon his voyadge to Ceuola and Quiuira, for wante of courage and for other priuate respectes, neglected plantinge there, had as colde welcome, at his dastardly and unconsiderate returne, of Don Antonio de Mendoza, viceroy of Mexico, as Grijalua had of his uncle above mentioned. It is written thus of him after his returne ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt

... this new world may be saved by your direction and order. The many kingdoms, the infinite number of people, and the wealth of those realms, is incredible. The Japanese are an energetic race, skilled in the use of our weapons. All the other nations lack that spirit, and are cowardly, dastardly, and abject. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair

... from banks, wished to get still more. The banks, they seem to have thought, could extend their credits to whatever sum might be wanted, without incurring any other expense besides that of a few reams of paper. They complained of the contracted views and dastardly spirit of the directors of those banks, which did not, they said, extend their credits in proportion to the extension of the trade of the country; meaning, no doubt, by the extension of that trade, the extension ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... while the occupants slept, and when Mr. Cook with his family endeavored to escape from the flames he was riddled with bullets and killed, and his wife and children were wounded. And the sole offense for which this dastardly crime was perpetrated, was that he decided to accept the honor which the government conferred upon him in appointing him postmaster of a village of 300 inhabitants. It was the color of his skin that made this acceptance odious in the ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs

... Euripides, and determines to bring him back from the infernal world. In this he imitates Hercules, but although furnished with that hero's lion- skin and club, in sentiments he is very unlike him, and as a dastardly voluptuary affords us much matter for laughter. Here we have a characteristic specimen of the audacity of Aristophanes: he does not even spare the patron of his own art, in whose honour this very play was exhibited. It was thought that the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... pence—never a question of pounds, unfortunately; and always too few of them. He understood how men have gone mad under pressure of household cares; he realised the horrible temptation which has made men turn dastardly from the path leading homeward and leave those there ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing

... themselves, quenching the swift activity of hand and eye, and making their responsive energy, that had given him victory in so many a hard-fought field, a memory of the past. But it was not so now. The tremendous tension of his heartfelt anger, when he found himself face to face with its dastardly object, made him again, for one short moment, the man that he had been in the plenitude of his early glory. Or, short of that, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... the honor to request that you will return him, that I may inflict the punishment which his dastardly offense merits. I cannot be responsible for the good conduct of my soldiers, if they are to find protection from punishment by entering ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... prayers. Again, as on his way home that morning from hearing Mass, the spirit was dominant, his whole nature and outlook purified and exalted by the Divine Indwelling. To fail any human creature calling on him for help would be contemptible, and even dastardly, in one blessed as he himself was. Thus his relation to Poppy St. John fell into line. He could afford to love and serve her well, since he loved and purposed, in all things, to ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... may be taken of Mary's conduct during the next three months depends the whole debatable question of her character. According to the professed champions of that character, this conduct was a tissue of such dastardly imbecility, such heartless irresolution, and such brainless inconsistency as forever to dispose of her time-honored claim to the credit of intelligence and courage. It is certain that just three months and six days after the murder of her husband she became the wife of her ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... dastardly impertinence has been perpetrated by some boy out of a spirit of revenge. I am perfectly amazed at the audacity and meanness of the attempt, and it may be very difficult to discover the author of it. But, depend upon it, discover him we will at whatever cost. Whoever the offender ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar

... glory in of successfully cheating people. Sometimes they will show great kindness, even bravery amounting to heroism, and proportionate affection; at another time, without any cause, they will desert and be treacherous to their sworn friends in the most dastardly manner. Whatever the freak of the moment is, that they adopt in the most thoughtless manner, even though they may have calculated on advantages beforehand in the opposite direction. In fact, no one can rely upon them even ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... lurked within the walls of the Church of England; frightening with the loudness of its voice the weak, the timid and the ailing; perpetrating, whenever it had an opportunity, that species of crime to which it has ever been most partial—deathbed robbery; for as it is cruel, so is it dastardly. Yes, it went on enlisting, plundering and uttering its terrible threats till—till it became, as it always does when left to itself, a fool, a very fool. Its plunderings might have been overlooked, and so might its insolence, had it been common insolence, but it—, and then ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... about among his friends, who told him that the critique was clearly by that brute ST. CLAIR; they knew his hand, they said; a confounded, conceited pendant, and a stuck-up puppy. The review was calculated to damage the sale of any book; it was a dastardly attack on BROWZER'S reputation as a man of wit and humour, a linguist, and a grammarian. They thought (as BROWZER wished to know) that an action would lie against the reviewer, or the review. BROWZER went to a Solicitor, who ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 31, 1892 • Various

... behind me who had not yet been provided with places. There were men who did this, and several times I felt inclined to knock one of the poltroons overboard. The deck was well lighted, the steamer was settling slowly, and there was no excuse for the dastardly proceedings which were going on ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton

... near. He has scarcely ended his warning and slipped away ere the conspirators suddenly surround the Tribune, and there, in the presence of the assembled people, they simultaneously draw their daggers, and strike him repeatedly. This dastardly attempt at murder utterly fails, however, as the Tribune wears a corselet of mail beneath the robes of state, and his guards quickly disarm and secure the conspirators while the people loudly clamour for their execution by the axe, a burly blacksmith, ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber

... ballad is the atrocious and dastardly assassination of James Sharp, Archbishop of St ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... United States, world-known and honored for his learning, talents, and stainless integrity, beaten down and all but murdered at his official desk by a South Carolina slave-holder, for the crime of speaking against the extension of slavery; and we heard the dastardly deed applauded throughout the South, while its brutal perpetrator was rewarded with orations and gifts and smiles of beauty as a chivalrous gentleman. We saw slavery enter Kansas, with bowieknife in hand and curses on its lips; we saw the life of the Union struck at by secession and rebellion; ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... Resisting a dastardly impulse to forswear my bargain, I tucked the mewing kitten under my coat, where it clawed me unobserved by any jeering boy in the street. Passing Mrs. Cudlip's house on my way home, I noticed at once that the window stood invitingly open, and yielding with a quaking heart to temptation, ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow

... my conduct. Of course I took his part, but you fell ill, and did not know that. When he came and told me that he had been mistaken I abused him like a thief. I have abused him ever since whenever I have had a chance. It was a vile, dastardly, ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford

... motive of man to practise morality must be his fear of ultimate punishment. His was an attempt to draw away the curtain which hides this world from the next, and to horrify men into living purely and kindly. But the mind only revolts against the dastardly injustice of a God, who allows men to be born into the world so corrupt, with so many incentives to sin, and deliberately hides from them the ghastly sight of the eternal torments, which might have saved them from recklessness ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson

... increasing the strength of the fortification, it becomes, with many, a pretence for an immediate surrender, under the notion that no power is able to withstand so formidable an adversary; while others brave the danger, and think it mean to surrender, and dastardly to fly. Melissa, indeed, knew better; and though she could not boast the apathy, steadiness, and inflexibility of a Cato, wanted not the more prudent virtue of Scipio, and gained the victory by ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... strangle time for them at San Carlo, or Teatro de' Fiorentini there breathes a genuine human thing; a creature with a true, pure, womanly heart beating under the velvet, gauze, and tinsel, and with blood that now and then boils under unprovoked and dastardly insult. If I were cross-eyed, or had been afflicted with small-pox, or were otherwise disfigured, I should not require Mr. and Mrs. Waul; but Madame Orme, the lonely widow deprived by death of a father's ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... ever cross. In addition to Helen, there were general allusions to his mistresses, for Cleo, having begun by converting singular into plural, now retained both singular and plural. Lastly, quieting down somewhat amid a flood of tears, she claimed that Ingram would not have acted in so dastardly a fashion—he, at least, had always valued her at her true worth. It was his misfortune, not his fault, that his money affairs had not turned out well and that he had been unable to build for her the promised theatre. It was ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill

... the courtings, the sleigh-rides, and the singing schools. Bring out the good points of the world in strong relief. Tell every piquant and pleasant and funny story you call think of. Show him that you clearly apprehend that all this warfare means peace, and that a dastardly peace would pave the way for speedy, incessant, and more appalling warfare. Help him to bear his burdens by showing him how elastic you are under yours. Hearten him, enliven him, tone him up to the true hero-pitch. Hush your plaintive ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... to the victuals!' she retorted. 'See to the victuals, forsooth! That is all you think of—to lie warm and eat your fill! A set of dastardly, drinking, droning guzzlers you are! You are!' she retorted, her voice rising to a shriek. ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman

... a group of "bulls" spread optimistic rumours and by a powerful effort put a brake upon the fall in prices. Business improved. Newspapers with big circulations supported the movement. With patriotic eloquence they depicted capital as laughing in its impregnable position at the assaults of a few dastardly criminals, and public wealth maintaining its serene ascendency in spite of the vain threats made against it. They were sincere in their attitude, though at the same time they found it benefited them. Outrages ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France

... Minister of the Interior, found no pleasure in his continued presence on a commission of inquiry in the region of Kossovo, had been throwing out very dark hints about a child which he accused the Serbs of killing in the stormy days of 1878, and then relating to the Tsar that this dastardly deed had been committed by the Turks. This was the basis of that part of the interview. As for the other absurdity, it was mentioned that some courtiers had told the Prince-Regent that he alone could establish an orderly Government in Russia, whereupon Radi['c] observed that England and France ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... right to sound this warning, as I know whereof I speak, as I have traveled this Romish road of despair for thirty years, and I know her cunning and dastardly deception so well that her history and her teachings are to me like the primer is to the school ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg

... circumstance has never (it is presumed) been noticed by any of our historians; and the examination of the whole question involves so new and important a view of the affairs of the Principality at that period, and bears so immediately on the charge made against the great rebel chieftain for dastardly cowardice or gross breach of faith, that it seems to claim in these volumes a fuller and more minute investigation than might otherwise have been desirable or generally interesting. The documents furnishing the facts on which ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler

... my reputation, and accomplish my destruction. His hatred to me is owing to a consciousness of his having wronged me in my own country—for which injury he in a cowardly manner, refused me the satisfaction of a gentleman; he knows, moreover, that I am no stranger to his dastardly behaviour in this town, which I have recounted before, and he is unwilling that such a testimony of his ingratitude and pusillanimity should live upon the earth; for this reason he is guilty of the most infernal malice to bring about my ruin. And I am afraid, madam (turning to Mrs. ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... democratic ideals of the modern Western world which our system of education has imported into India. It is easy to account for the prevalence of both these misconceptions. We are a people of notoriously short memory, and, when a series of sensational dastardly crimes, following on a tumultuous agitation in Bengal and a campaign of incredible violence in the native Press, at last aroused and alarmed the British public, the vast majority of Englishmen were under the impression that since the black days of the ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol



Words linked to "Dastardly" :   dastard, dastardliness, fearful, cowardly



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