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Cowardice   /kˈaʊərdəs/   Listen
Cowardice

noun
1.
The trait of lacking courage.  Synonym: cowardliness.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Cowardice" Quotes from Famous Books



... because he had arrived at old age without dignity and without any sense of what was fine in life; he was not even susceptible to the chastening influences of a sick-room. She knew, indeed, that he hated and despised sickness in others, and that when ill himself he became a moaning mass of cowardice and vituperation. And in her heart she invented the most wonderful excuses for him, and transformed him into a martyr of destiny who had suffered both through ancestry and through environment. Was it his fault that he was thus tragically defective? ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett

... eventful history, Valerie," said the old gentleman. "I agree with you on the propriety of making your existence known to your brother, and also to your father, who has been sufficiently punished for his cowardice. Whether your father will be able to contain his secret, I doubt very much; and from what you have told me of your mother, I should certainly not trust myself in France. I am not very well informed of the laws of the country, but it is my impression that children are there under the control ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat

... general social rule, that a lady should refuse a gentleman's hand, unless the gentleman's mother were a consenting party to the marriage. She would have held any such doctrine as absurd. The lady, she would have said, would have had to look to her own family and no further. It was not virtue but cowardice which had influenced her, and she had none of that solace which may come to us in misfortune from a consciousness that our own conduct has been blameless. Lady Lufton had inspired her with awe, and any such feeling on her part was mean, ignoble, and unbecoming the spirit with which she ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... call,—he is in Mars. But the sentinel, still as marble, or moving like a well-adjusted machine that will not defy law—he stirs us by his energy, his laboring vigilance. His care for others would make him surrender his life at once. The trusted soldier has left selfishness and cowardice on the first tenting-ground, and works hard, though he stands statue-like. It is his business to be of use, and he is never useless. So with a great artist. He is brother to gentleman or churl. Hawthorne had not an atom of the poison of contempt. As I have said before, if he did not love stupidity, ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... drachmas a head. Upon the whole account, there remained two hundred and forty Romans unexchanged, and the senate now not only refused to allow money for the ransoms, but also reproached Fabius for making a contract, contrary to the honor and interest of the commonwealth, for redeeming men whose cowardice had put them in the hands of the enemy. Fabius heard and endured all this with invincible patience; and, having no money by him, and on the other side being resolved to keep his word with Hannibal and not to abandon the captives, he dispatched ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... the period is opposed to this theory of cowardice. There was nothing special for him to fear when Caesar was in Gaul, and Crassus about to start for Syria, and Pompey for his provinces. Such was the condition of Rome, social and political, that all was ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope

... and the Master were keenly aware of conditions. And they did their best,—a useless best,—to mitigate them for the dog. They labored over Cyril, to make him leave Lad alone. They pointed out to him the mean cowardice of his course of torture. They even threatened to send him to nearer relatives until his parents' return. All in vain. Faced with the most undeniable proofs, the child invariably would lie. He denied that he had ever ill-used Lad in ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune

... now continues his account of the conspiracy entered into in B.C. 64. [113] Per ignaviam, 'by means of cowardice,' here means, 'with the assistance of cowardly men,' 'such as you are not, since I have evidence of your valour and trustworthiness.' Vana ingenia are men of untrustworthy character. In both cases ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)

... drips from me like a candle spent, And e'en my sword this murderer denies, Though granting it would render him less vile. For shame! Such cowardice! He fears my thumb, For that is all that's left ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... of honour, to be judiciously valiant, to have a temperance which shall beget a smoothness in the angry swellings of youth, to esteem life as nothing when the sacred reputation of a parent is to be defended, yet to shake and tremble under a pious cowardice when that ark of an honest confidence is found to be frail and tottering, to feel the true blows of a real disgrace blunting that sword which the imaginary strokes of a supposed false imputation had put so keen an edge upon but lately; to do, or to imagine this done in a feigned ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold

... our laughter and our rage. Look on us with our sins oppressed! I, too, have trodden mine heritage, Wickedly wearying of the best. Burn from my brain and from my breast Sloth, and the cowardice that clings, And stiffness and the soul's arrest: And feed my brain with ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton

... by their lengthened defiance of the efforts to quell them, attributed cowardice and corruption with an unsparing bitterness; yet the difficulties even of the well-disposed were great, and they were often ignorant of the movements of the robbers. Their retreats were often in the forests, and known only to ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... have premonitions of coming ill, but this could not be said in the present instance of Bradley and his young companion. Bradley had the shrewdness to read the real cowardice of Mosely, who was the leader, and did not dream that he would have the courage to take the horses. But then, he did not know the danger in which their two visitors had placed themselves by their recent theft. Danger will strengthen the courage of the timid, and, in this case, it ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger

... and see if there are not many things which they can help, and if there are, by all means to help them. What is inevitable comes to us from God, no matter how many hands it passes through; but submission to unnecessary evils is cowardice or laziness; and extolling of the evil as good is sheer ignorance, or perversity, or servility. Even the ills that must be borne should be borne under protest, lest patience degenerate into slavery. Christian character ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... a thousand times, ever since I have been engaged in public matters, I have hardly heard anything else but that. It is precisely your own case, when, as a bishop, people reproach you for your impiety; or, as a musketeer, for your cowardice; the very thing of which they are always accusing ministers of finance is ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... pretty much alone in this convention. I am alone! I represent no faction, no interest except the cause of the humble who have asked for help from the masters who have been set over them. Perhaps I ought to have remained silent here to-day. My cowardice has been prompting me to keep still. It is no easy matter for me to stand up here and disturb the order of events which had been arranged by the gentlemen who have managed your public affairs for you so many years. But it would be much more difficult for some of the others here to speak, ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day

... finger, Savage and sly as aught of land could be, Erased the little wrinkling of the sea. O, in such enmity was man enisled, Such loneliness, by foolish shades beguiled, That it was bravery to see and live, But cowardice to see and to forgive, The wrong of evil, the wrong of death to life, The defeat of innocence, the waste of strife,— The heavy ills of time, injustice, pain— In field and forest and flood rose huge and plain, Brushing her mind with darkness, till she thought Not with her brain, but all ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman

... heart bounded with joy. Still, as he trudged onward through streets glittering in the morning sunlight, Caleb's conscience told him that not thus should this rival be overcome, that he who went to accuse the brave Marcus of cowardice was himself a coward, and that from the lie which he was about to act if not to speak, could spring no fruit of peace or happiness. But he was mad and blind. He could think only of Miriam—the woman whom he loved with all his passionate nature and whose life he had preserved ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard

... world does move. I never thought to be able to congratulate the Circulating Libraries on their attitude towards a work of art; and here in common fairness I, who have so often animadverted upon their cowardice, am obliged to laud their courage. The instant cause of this is Mrs. Elinor Glyn's new novel, "His Hour" (Duckworth, 6s.) Everybody who cares for literature knows, or should know, Mrs. Glyn's fine carelessness of popular opinion (either here or in the States), and the singleness of her regard ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett

... angry mon was yon tall Captain Scott [Footnote: Afterwards Major- General Scott, Commander-in-Chief of the United States army. The prisoners were sent to Montreal and Quebec. Hull was subsequently court-marshalled for cowardice and condemned to death, but he was reprieved on account of Revolutionary service.] at thae surrender. How he stamped an' ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow

... continued in his obstinate voice, resonant with proud courage: "And if Catholicism, as its enemies pretend, be really stricken unto death, it must die standing and in all its glorious integrality. You hear me, Monsieur l'Abbe—not one concession, not one surrender, not a single act of cowardice! Catholicism is such as it is, and cannot be otherwise. No modification of the divine certainty, the entire truth, is possible. The removal of the smallest stone from the edifice could only prove a cause of instability. Is this not evident? You cannot save old houses ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... her father's office was a part of a story she was writing based upon an incident that had occurred at a reunion of Captain Wilson's regiment that fall in Montgomery. A man who had been drummed out of the regiment for cowardice suddenly reappeared among his old comrades with an explanation that restored him to honored fellowship. Phil had elaborated the real incident as Captain Wilson described it, and invested it with the element ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... his bosom. I dreaded not his violence. The death that he might be prompted to inflict was no object of aversion. It was poverty and disgrace, the detection of my crimes, the looks and voice of malediction and upbraiding, from which my cowardice shrunk. ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... shrewd, sly little scamps, and appeared not to have the resolution of chickadees, but had a singular genius for getting others into trouble. They knew how to handle spirits like Harold. They dared him to do evil deeds, taunted him (as openly as they felt it safe to do) with cowardice, and so spurred him to attempt some trifling depredation merely as a piece of adventure. Almost invariably when they touched him on this nerve Harold responded with a rush, and when discovery came was nearly always among the culprits taken and branded, for his pride would not permit ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland

... inquisitors that he fled from Louvain in the autumn of 1521, and settled in Basle. He was strongly urged by both parties to come out on one side or the other, and he was openly taunted by Ulrich von Hutten, a hot Lutheran, for cowardice in not doing so. Alienated by this and by the dogmatism and intolerance of Luther's writings, Erasmus finally defined his position in a Diatribe on Free Will. [Sidenote: 1524] As Luther's theory ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... cowardice in refraining from answering such an attack. I am aware, Canon, of a growing feeling ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... learned to be ashamed of their cowardice, and their dumb lips learned to speak, and their shy, hidden love forced for itself a channel by which it could flow out into the light; because of Christ's death. And in another fashion that same ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... in a panic without any doubt, and Captain Scott was inclined to feel that "the coon had come down." Mazagan spoke to them in a savage tone, as though he was reproving them for their cowardice; but they plainly did not relish the idea of being shot down without being able to make any resistance, for there was nothing that looked like a musket to be seen ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic

... for us to judge an inspired person. That's where you men have an advantage. You are inspired sometimes both in thought and action. I have always admitted that when you are inspired, when you manage to throw off your masculine cowardice and prudishness you are not to be equalled by us. Only, how seldom.... Whereas the silliest woman can always be made of use. And why? Because we have passion, unappeasable passion.... I should like to know what he ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad

... Dupin once more; he is our official man, we have need of him." They went to look for him. They could not find him. He was no longer there, he had disappeared, he was away, hidden, crouching, cowering, concealed, he had vanished, he was buried. Where? No one knew. Cowardice has unknown holes. ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... frozen. The snow in which they stood had soaked their shoes and chilled their feet; there were holes in the shoes which some of them wore. The snow stuck to their hats and clung on their shoulders, making streaks there like fleecy epaulets done in the colour of peace, which also is the colour of cowardice and surrender. There was a cold wind which made them all shiver and set the teeth of many of them to chattering; but they ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... the strain of consistency, must conform to that as the chief of the folkways. It was at the beginning of the empire that the Romans began to breed slaves because wars no longer brought in new supplies.[137] Sex, vice, laziness, decline of energy and enterprise, cowardice, and contempt for labor were consequences of slavery, for the free.[138] The system operated, in both the classical states, as a selection against the superior elements in the population. This effect was intensified by the political system. The city became an arena ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... (gypsy) is celebrated for his sneaking cowardice, and his fiddle playing, he being a naturally gifted musician, as any one who has heard czigany music in ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai

... contrary of a good is an evil is shown by induction: the contrary of health is disease, of courage, cowardice, and so on. But the contrary of an evil is sometimes a good, sometimes an evil. For defect, which is an evil, has excess for its contrary, this also being an evil, and the mean, which is a good, is equally the contrary of the one and of the other. It is only in a few cases, however, that we ...
— The Categories • Aristotle

... dreadful tale you have told me,' I groaned. 'If you have told me the truth, and not lied in order to hide your own cowardice, the Sahib Eccles is probably dead. This, however, must be ascertained immediately, and his body must be found and brought in. You will guide me at once to the spot, and we shall follow ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... guide, "that I was disgusted at their cowardice; so, to shame them, as well as to do what I could for the travellers, I loaded a couple of my mules with meat, and said I would set off alone. This had the desired effect, for three men volunteered to go with me. When we reached the hut we found that six of the ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne

... partial, but total, coexisting, as it always does, with a noble peacefulness, with a noble inaptness for frivolous hazards, and a noble slowness to take offence, is, in its delays and forbearances, thought by the half-courageous to be no better than cowardice;—it is, as we have said, because great qualities revolve and repose in orbits of reciprocation with their opposites, which opposites are by coarse and ungentle eyes misdeemed to be contraries. Feeling transcendently ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various

... by brilliant information, was often full of interest. In nearly every case boasting quitted them with their youth, and the bravest were always the most modest. Influenced by no imaginary points of honor, they estimated themselves at their real worth; and all fear of being suspected of cowardice was beneath them. With these brave soldiers, who often united to the greatest kindness of heart a mettle no less great, a flat contradiction or even a little hasty abuse from one of their brothers in arms was not obliged to be washed out in blood; and examples of the moderation which true courage ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... fellow-senators show the right Roman nature at need. Marius sleeping quietly under the menace of death; his heroic son, with his little band of soldiers, committing suicide rather than surrender at Praeneste; Octavius scorning to imitate the vacillation and cowardice of his colleagues; Sylla plunging back alone into battle, that his example may reanimate the courage of his fleeing army: these are scenes that recall the best traditions of Rome. They are taken from Plutarch, it is true; but they are presented sympathetically and with stimulating ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... to each of the extremes, and each of these to the other extreme, though in some cases the virtue may be more antagonistic to one extreme than to the other, as courage to cowardice more than to rashness. In individual cases, it is difficult to avoid being deflected towards one ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... profane man, but the evidence is beyond question that if deeply angered he would use a hearty English oath; and not seldom the action accompanied the word, as when he rode among the fleeing soldiers at Kip's Landing, striking them with his sword, and almost beside himself at their cowardice. Judge Marshall used to tell also of an occasion when Washington sent out an officer to cross a river and bring back some information about the enemy, on which the action of the morrow would depend. The ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge

... great passion, to the ambassadors of the Quadi, who are trying to excuse their countrymen, bursts a blood-vessel, and dies.—VII. Who his father was, and what was his conduct as emperor.—VIII. His cruelty, avarice, envy, and cowardice.—IX. His virtues.—X. Valentinian the younger, the son of Valentinian, is saluted as emperor in the camp ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... risk bringing her alongside for the sake of swine like you. Over you go," and then seizing one of them by the collar of his shirt and the belt, he sent him flying over the side, the other man jumping over to avoid rougher treatment from the native seamen, who were disgusted at their cowardice. Then Morrison, Studdert, and three natives followed, and the boat pulled away clear of the ship, ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke

... 475; demur, suspense; hesitating &c v., hesitation, hesitancy; vacillation; changeableness &c 149; fluctuation; alternation &c (oscillation) 314; caprice &c 608. fickleness, levity, legerete [Fr.]; pliancy &c (softness) 324; weakness; timidity &c 860; cowardice &c 862; half measures. waverer, ass between two bundles of hay; shuttlecock, butterfly; wimp; doughface [U.S.]. V. be irresolute &c adj.; hang in suspense, keep in suspense; leave "ad referendum"; think twice about, pause; dawdle &c (inactivity) 683; remain neuter; dillydally, hesitate, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... me to suspect that I detected Mr. Wopsle with red worsted legs under a highly magnified phosphoric countenance and a shock of red curtain-fringe for his hair, engaged in the manufacture of thunderbolts in a mine, and displaying great cowardice when his gigantic master came home (very hoarse) to dinner. But he presently presented himself under worthier circumstances; for, the Genius of Youthful Love being in want of assistance,—on account of the parental brutality of an ignorant farmer who ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... exultation. In a comparison of resources this man who had plotted to crush me was to me as giant to midget. But I had the joy of realizing that man to man, I was the stronger. He had craft, but I had daring. His vast wealth aggravated his natural cowardice—crafty men are invariably cowards, and their audacities under the compulsion of their insatiable greed are like a starving jackal's dashes into danger for food. My wealth belonged to me, not I to it; and, stripped of it, I would be like the prize-fighter stripped for the fight. Finally, he ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various

... the boys helping their mounts with leg and arm; the Black holding his own with a dogged persistence that quite upset Langdon's prognostication of cowardice. ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... was properly reinforced, as his command was only an outpost. For his action in retiring so early he was severely criticized and reprimanded for his "error in judgment in retreating without sufficient reason," while his troops never forgave him for what they considered an exhibition of cowardice. ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald

... Rajput communities of Oudh or any other part of the country can hope to conceal from his family circle or village community any act of cowardice, or anything else which is considered disgraceful to a soldier, or to escape the odium which it merits ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... compelled to capitulate. But the federal government so far from being satisfied with these excuses, ordered a Court Martial to assemble, before which General Hull was tried, on the charges of treason, cowardice, and unofficerlike conduct. On the last charge only was he found guilty and sentenced to death. The Court, nevertheless, strongly recommended him to mercy. He was an old man, and one who, in other times, ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... knew. He really lived up to the standard of the New Testament. He did love his neighbor as himself. He never did good or kindness out of policy, but always from principle, from nature—which can be said of very few in this world. He was without cowardice of any kind, and without hypocrisy. I believe he had no vanity. He had the pride of a noble man and lived as generously toward the world as I have ever known man to live. This might be said of one ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane

... vanished altogether. Yet when she was quite dressed and her mirror bade her take courage she sat down and wrote a note of apology pleading a sudden indisposition. But she did not send it. Even in the writing her cowardice came home to her and she tore it up before she had signed her name. The wheels of the cab which was to take her to the big house rattled down the lane under her windows, and slipping her cloak over ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason

... is seized with terror, and conjures his master to fly. The King comforts him; and after charging the enemy six times, returns victorious from the field. Rameses, on rejoining his troops, addresses a long tirade to his captains upon their cowardice, and enlarges upon his own valor without any modest scruples. In the evening the rest of the troops came dropping in, and were surprised to find the whole country strewed with the bodies of the dead. The whole army joins in singing the praises of ...
— Egyptian Literature

... conviction. Orators of patriotic fervor came from senators who had before condemned any declaration of war as the greatest blunder the United States could commit. Others recounted the crimes of Germany against civilization, and, in face of these deeds, condemned any national unwillingness and cowardice to retaliate as showing a national degeneracy that was much ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... in his attitude towards the weaknesses of working-people. The "inertia" of the poor, which caused so many people to despair for them—their cowardice and instability—these were things about which Hal had heard all his life. "You can't help them," people would say. "They're dirty and lazy, they drink and shirk, they betray each other. They've always been like that." The idea would be summed up in ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair

... hypocrisy even sought to induce them not to leave the city. They threw perfumes, flowers, and pieces of silver to them. They gave them amulets to avert sickness; but they had spit upon them three times to attract death, or had enclosed jackal's hair within them to put cowardice into their hearts. Aloud, they invoked Melkarth's favour, and in ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert

... smites Sebald's heart like a hammer of God. He repents, but in the cowardice of repentance curses her. That baseness I do not think Browning should have introduced, no, nor certain carnal phrases which, previously right, now jar with the spiritual passion of repentance. But his fury with her passes away into the ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... having paused to allow the prince to speak, if he so wished. Like all great men engaged in plotting, whose system it is to conceal their hand until the decisive moment, the prince kept silence—but not from cowardice. In these crises he was always the soul of the conspiracy; recoiling from no danger and ready to risk his own head; but from a sort of royal dignity he left the explanation of the enterprise to his minister, and contented himself with ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac

... to him the thought to put an end to this maddening grief, by violence to period this miserable existence. But always he cast from him the horrible thought. He was not a coward, and the cowardice of suicide was abhorrent to him. Poverty he might leave her, but not the legacy of a suicide. If only it might be God's kindly will to let him die, once this abominable bargain was consummated! Death is the seal of silence; it locks alike the lips of the living and the dead. And she might live in ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath

... not cowardice," he returned, blushing. "It is being so constantly upset. I don't know what has come to me. ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds

... sent to Scotland and I, cast off, determined to plan a sure escape for Clare and for myself. This false monk, whom you are about to condemn with me, promised to carry to Clare the drugs by means of which she would soon have been the bride of heaven. His cowardice has undone us both, and I now reveal the story of the crime, that none may wed with Marmion, that his perfidy may be made known to the King, who, when he reads these letters, will see his favorite deserves the headsman's ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins

... Nobles, artisans, peasants, even priests, enrolled their names; and to decline this meritorious service was branded with the reproach of impiety, or, what perhaps was esteemed still more disgraceful, of cowardice and pusillanimity. The infirm and aged contributed to the expedition by presents and money; and many of them, not satisfied with the merit of this atonement, attended it in person, and were determined, if possible, to breathe their last in sight of that city where their ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... spot, he fastened on it with unerring instinct. His line was rather admonitory than persuasive. When he thought that the person whom he was addressing had an inkling of the truth, but was held back from avowing it by cowardice or indecision, he would utter the most startling warnings about the ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... bound into the camp and take somebody, unless they kept up the watch-fires and drove him away with brands. The next day, before sunrise, I called Hassan and Hadji Ali, whom I lectured severely upon their cowardice on a former occasion, and I received their promise to follow me to death. I entrusted them with my two Reillys No. 10; and with my little Fletcher in hand, I determined to spend the whole day in searching every thicket of the forest for lions, as I felt convinced that the animal that had disturbed ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker

... live much to God and honour; but I will not wilfully turn my back on both. I am, like all the rest of us, falling ever lower from the bright ideas I began with, falling into greed, into idleness, into middle-aged and slippered fireside cowardice; but is it you, my bold blade, that I hear crying this sordid and rank twaddle in my ear? Preaching the dankest Grundyism and upholding the rank customs of our trade - you, who are so cruel hard upon the customs of the publishers? O man, look at the Beam in our own ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... for its successful working, was ever set up by, or even discussed between, two parties, one of which thought the other so unreasonable that it should be carefully denied everything it asked for and as unfit for any sort of political co-operation as mendacity, cowardice, and ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.

... have not scrupled to do in France, to Notre Dame de la Haine, Our Lady of Hate, yet I cannot forget that the corruption of good-nature is the generation of laxity of principle. Good-nature is our national characteristick; and though it be, perhaps, nothing more than a culpable weakness or cowardice, when it leads us to put up tamely with manifold impositions and breaches of implied contracts, (as too frequently in our publick conveyances,) it becomes a positive crime, when it leads us to look unresentfully on peculation, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... snapped Lady Fermanagh. "Your only hope of saving yourself is to forgive Tony for his cowardice and marry him. He will be grateful to you all his life. Don Carlos can tell him that the marriage ceremony was only a farce, and that he arranged with the bandit for your liberation immediately afterwards, or else explain that he helped you to ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage

... Winston's sister, with a spark of his spirit, "I will take the waiter up myself. I cannot sleep with this horror hanging over me—the fear lest, through my neglect or cowardice, a fellow-being—whose only offence against society, so far as we knows is his dropping down in a faint or stupor under a hedge on the Ridgeley plantation—should ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... off a burden of doubt; his theorising intellect loved the sensation of life thrown open to new, however vague, possibilities. At present he was convinced that Andrew Peak had done him a service. In this there was an indication of moral cowardice, such as commonly connects itself with intense pride of individuality. He desired to shirk the combat with Chilvers, and welcomed as an excuse for doing so the shame which another temper would ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... probably this wish was made at some distance from the destined period of its accomplishment. On the eve of her nine-and-twentieth birth-day, the lady perhaps might have felt inclined to retract her prayer. At least we should provide for the cowardice which might seize the female mind at such an instant. Even the most wretched life has power to attach us; none can be more wretched than the old age of a dissipated beauty:—unless, Lady V——, it be that ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth

... of mankind have no other reason for their opinions than that they are in fashion, it cannot be doubted but this persuasion made a rapid progress, since vanity and credulity co-operated in its favour, and it had a tendency to free cowardice from reproach. The infection soon reached the parliament, who, in the first year of king James, made a law, by which it was enacted, chap. xii. That, "if any person shall use any invocation or conjuration of any evil or wicked spirit; 2. or shall consult, covenant ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... Here the bishops themselves occupy the foreground (there are complaints about their cowardice and serving of two masters in the treatise de fugo). But it would be very unjust simply to find fault with them as Tertullian does. Two interests combined to influence their conduct; for if they drew the reins tight they gave over ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... possible, he declared war against France and Russia honorably, before the beginning of hostilities, thus bringing into contrast the moral courage to assume the responsibility for the beginning of the conflict as against the moral cowardice of both opponents, whose fear of public opinion was such that they did not dare openly to admit ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various

... human nature, deals with a frontier army officer who exposed continually himself to danger, desiring to work out in an indirect way this feeling of conquering one person by another, only it was himself, his own cowardice, that he wished eventually to conquer. I would ask Dr. Hall if the notion of which Royce has made so much, namely, the social concept, is not one which perhaps would act as the common denominator in these cases. We ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... as so many bodies to be seen. These men were lords of great riches, but excelled more in birth than bravery; hungry for life because owning great possessions, they were forced to yield to the sway of cowardice rather than nobleness. There were others, again, who brought show to the war, and not substance, and who, foisting themselves into the rear of their comrades, were the first to fly and the last to fight. One sure token of fear ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... they put spurs to their horses, and galloped away to a distance of some five hundred yards. There they halted, and set up such a screeching as almost deafened us, fired off some of their old rusty guns, and then rode away. We all laughed at their bragging and cowardice, except Asa, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... change of situation, age, and so forth; and perhaps it does not signify much which it is, if the faults are fairly gone, and if there be no danger of their returning: all our former misunderstandings arose on Cecilia's part from cowardice of character; on mine from—no matter what—no matter which of ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth

... (l. 126) is correct. Enkidu replies by again drawing a lurid picture of what will happen "When we go (together) to the forest......." This speech of Enkidu is continued on the reverse. In reply Gilgamesh emphasizes his reliance upon the good will of Shamash and reproaches Enkidu with cowardice. He declares himself superior to Enkidu's warning, and in bold terms says that he prefers to perish in the attempt to overcome Huwawa ...
— An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic • Anonymous

... cowardice sha'n't hang you," said Joe Brownbie to him on their way home. "Do you think we're going to fight the battles of a fellow like you, who hasn't pluck ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope

... mine laughingly tells of an incident which she says happened a number of years ago, but which I have forgotten. She says that she asked me one night as she carried her hot-water bottle to bed, "Doctor, what makes cold feet?" and that I lightly answered "Cowardice!" Whereupon she threw away her beloved water-bag and has never ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury

... big black bear. If I don't trouble him, he'll be sure to let me alone. What if I call the dogs off, and go back? But what tale can I manufacture to tell Mr. Glenn? Pshaw! What should I fear, with such a musket as this in my hand? I can't help it. I really believe I am a little touched with cowardice! I'm sorry for it, but I can't help it. It was born with me, and it's not my fault. Confound it! I will screw up courage enough to see what it is, anyhow." Saying this, he strode forward desperately, and urging the hounds ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones

... its fate had the Anglo-Saxons remained its undisturbed possessors. "In the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries," says Mr. Worsaae, "the Anglo-Saxons had greatly degenerated from their forefathers. Relatives sold one another into thraldom; lewdness and ungodliness were become habitual; and cowardice had increased to such a degree that, according to the old chroniclers, one Dane would often put ten Anglo-Saxons to flight. Before such a people could be conducted to true freedom and greatness it was necessary that an entirely new vigor should ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various

... Arsdale behind him alive in such a condition as this would be to leave the curse upon the girl,—would be to desert her to handle this mad-man alone. He had seen red at the thought of it. It would be to brand his own act with unpardonable cowardice; it would be to go down into his grave with the helpless cries of this woman ringing in his ears; it would be to shirk the greatest and most sacred duty that can come to a man. The cold sweat had started upon his forehead at the ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... weakness in denying themselves; to the idealistic ones who, unable to confound their neighbors with their own superiority, join causes in the hope of confounding each other with the superiority of their betters (involved, but I am not done with them); to the idealistic ones whose cowardice converts the suffering of others into a mirror wherein stares wretchedly back at them a possible image of themselves; to the idealistic ones who, frightened by this possible image of themselves, join Movements for the triumph of Love and Justice and the overthrow of ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht

... characteristic of the brave leader: "If you had been as loyal to your king in hindering the entry of these pirates as I shall be in preventing their going out, you had never brought this trouble upon yourselves nor upon our nation, which has now suffered so much through your cowardice. In a word, I shall never grant your request, but shall endeavor to maintain to its fullest the respect which ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... sense of honour and dishonour, without which neither states nor individuals ever do any good or great work. And I say that a lover who is detected in doing any dishonourable act, or submitting through cowardice when any dishonour is done to him by another, will be more pained at being detected by his beloved than at being seen by his father, or by his companions, or by any one else. The beloved too, when he is found in any disgraceful situation, ...
— Symposium • Plato

... and was quite sick with indignation at the cowardice of the men; and my lord was in as great a fret as I, but there was no remedy. We durst not go about to retreat, for we should have been in such confusion that the enemy must have discovered it; so my lord resolved to keep the post, ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe

... but Clement Lambert, with some five or six others, professed their determination to follow Mr. Fremont to the uttermost limit of his journey. The others yielded to their remonstrances, and somewhat ashamed of their cowardice, concluded to advance at least as far as Laramie fork, eastward of which they were aware no danger was to be apprehended. Notwithstanding the confusion and excitement, we were very early on the road, as the days were extremely hot, and we were anxious to profit by the freshness ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont

... du Guesclin, the ally of Enrique of Trastamare, to remain quietly in his camp of Navaretta, and allow hunger to do its work with the invading force, but this prudent plan was prevented by the folly of Don Tello, brother of Enrique, who, accusing Bertrand of cowardice, so stung his fiery spirit that he resolved on instant combat, though knowing how little dependence could be placed on his ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge

... flowers of the 'jenan' (gardens) of knowledge (a pun on the name of the magazine) now opened to us. Let us pluck the fruits of wisdom, lifting up our heads in gratulation and true pride, and remain no longer in that cowardice and avarice which were imputed to the women of the Arabs ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup

... inspires, and to enter over the breach rather than through the hospitable gate. She will try and command wherever she goes; and trample over dependants and society, with a grim consciousness that it dislikes her, a rage at its cowardice, and an unbending will to domineer. To be old, proud, lonely, and not have a friend in the world—that is her lot in it. As the French lady may be said to resemble the bird which the fables say feeds her young with her blood; this one, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... a company composed of colored men, and historians like to tell of their cowardice compared with the colored men of the American side.[72] Evidently a scarlet coat does not well fit a colored skin. To the eternal credit of the State troops composed of the men of color, not one act of desertion or cowardice is recorded against ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... fury. Why should he think of her in this hour? Six months back he would have looked with jealous eyes upon the right to lead the Vigilantes, but this change that had mastered him—what was it? Not cowardice, nor caution. No. Yet, being intangible, it was none the less marked, as his friends had shown ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach

... over the disasters of the Union army before Richmond, and other lesser affairs in which the North had gained no advantage; invectives against the President's July proclamation, his impudence and his cowardice; and prophecies of ruin to him and his cause. Papa listened and said little. I heard and was silent; with throbbing forebodings ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell

... should turn out men who will throw open the doors of industry, so that all men, everywhere, regardless of colour, shall have the same opportunity to earn a dollar that they now have to spend it. I know of a good many kinds of cowardice and prejudice, but I know none equal to this. I know not which is the worst,—the slaveholder who perforce compelled his slave to work without compensation or the man who, by force and strikes, compels his neighbour to refrain from ...
— The Future of the American Negro • Booker T. Washington

... one of the Fathers tried to correct the growing disorders. We learn from them that many fled from society, not to become holy, but to escape slavery and famine; and that many were lazy and immoral. Their "shaven heads lied to God." Avarice, ambition, or cowardice ruled hearts that should have been actuated by a love of poverty, self-sacrifice or courage. "Quite recently," says Jerome, "we have seen to our sorrow a fortune worthy of Croesus brought to light by a monk's death, and a city's ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart

... inhabitant of Vanity Fair had as free notions about religion and morals as Monsieur de Voltaire himself could desire, but when illness overtook her, it was aggravated by the most dreadful terrors of death, and an utter cowardice took possession of the prostrate ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... circulation, driving the surging, tumultuous blood back upon it), with the sun scorching his bare temples, a crown of thorns stabbing him at every helpless turn of his restless head; when such a man, under such circumstances, can rise above the wickedness, cowardice and cheap treason that have nailed him to the cross, and pray (and pray sincerely) that his guilty murderers, villainous detractors and unscrupulous slanderers may be forgiven, that man bears witness that he has, at ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman

... perhaps, in justice to the reiters, to be noticed that Coligny attributes their failure not to cowardice, as in the case of both the French and the German infantry, but to their not understanding orders, and to the ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... your insolent sneers about women's nerves and female cowardice. Now, nothing but Lambay will ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... Prudent for about three years. Over and over again had his master threatened to kick him out, but had kept him on for fear of doing worse. With a master ever ready to venture on the most audacious enterprises, Frycollin's cowardice had brought him many arduous trials. But he had some compensation. Very little had been said about his gluttony, and still less ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne

... snakes; but, by the by, how am I ever to get out again? We should have acted more wisely had we walked up boldly to Mynheer Bunckum, and apologising for having entered his grounds, wished him good morning. It is entirely owing to the Baron's cowardice that I am placed in this ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston

... asserted ostensibly in the interest of Slavery, in order to get rid of the power of Congress over that subject; but the real source of it was the cowardice of those invertebrate and timorous politicians who desired to evade the responsibility of expressing opinions concerning this power. General Cass was the putative father of it, and it might well have come from one of his pliancy and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various

... come back without her?" And she heaped upon him the bitterest reproaches. It was he who, through his cowardice, had been the cause of Virginia's night adventure. It was he who had ruined everything by concealing her departure until it was too late. Then he might have found her, if he had so resolved. But if he could not, why had he remained ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge

... adventurers from those States that, without cohesion and without a history, offer to humanity only infamous traditions and the sorry spectacle of Chambers in which appear united insolence and defamation, cowardice and cynicism. ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... laughing, "I mean you no harm. I am a young Englishman, lately come from the Plantations, and seeking employment. I see you struggling yonder, and likely to give up the ghost, and I pull you out; and then you call me Rogue and charge me with striking of you. Was it cramp or cowardice that made you bawl so? Give me something to drink better manners to you, and I will leave you and ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... given evidence of both the guilt and cowardice of these hotel keepers. When men concoct plans of evil which they dare not execute in person, and then hire a foreigner to carry them out, it is not strange if they prove too cowardly to face justice when their part in the crime has been made known. It is little wonder if they ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith

... erway from dat dar door!" bawled Washington. The black man was as timid as a fawn as a usual thing; but he was devoted to the old professor and he had that feeling of gratitude for Mr. Henderson that overcame his natural cowardice. When the Indians, without giving him a glance, rushed at the door, and a single shot from the half-opened window missed them by ten feet, Wash uttered another yell and sprang to reach ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood

... with her trepidation and flung it from her, chid Cinders for his foolish cowardice, and fell again to whistling Bertrand's ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell

... reprimand from the English Government. "You might better have resisted than you did, considering the many defensible houses and castles possessed by the undertakers, who, for aught we can hear, were by no means comforted nor supported by you, but either from lack of comfort from you, or out of mere cowardice, fled away from the rebels on the first alarm." "Whereupon," says Cox, the Irish historian, "the Munsterians, generally, rebel in October, and kill, murder, ravish and spoil without mercy; and Tyrone made James ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church

... powder, which set off in a new but not a pleasing manner the beauties of his complexion of about the same colour as a horse chestnut. Balbi was under forty, but he was decidedly ugly, having one of those faces in which baseness, cowardice, impudence, and malice are plainly expressed, joining to this advantage a tone of voice and manners admirably calculated to repulse anyone inclined to do him a service. I found him comfortably housed, well looked after, and well clad; he had books and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... pretended delicacy of conscience revolts at it; the mere cowardice of a boy. Who are you, that now takes the part of conscience against me? Are you a better man ...
— The Lawyers, A Drama in Five Acts • Augustus William Iffland

... and a thrall; That forces up a smile upon my lips. Olaf, one hears indeed that thou art young; It is by mockery and arrogance That one can judge thy age. Now, look at me Full in the eyes; consider well my brow: Hast thou among the thralls e'er met such looks? Dost think that cunning or that cowardice Could e'er have carved these wrinkles on my brow? I did entice thee hither. Ha! 'tis true I knew that thou didst wait but for a sign To flutter after the enticing bait; That in thy soul thou didst more highly prize Thy kinship with an extinct race of kings Than great Earl Hakon's world-renowned ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various

... Nicanor, well known to the Jewish commandant, to take him. Josephus, professing prophetical powers, offered to surrender, and quieted his conscience by a secret prayer to God, which is a sad compound of cant and cowardice: ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich

... own acts, by his own cowardice, he himself had precipitated, was here now. Fatality had overtaken him. Whether the whole truth would come to light he did not know. Truly at this moment he hardly cared. He did not feel as if he were himself, but another being before whom ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy

... as well as temper, and there are points beyond which neither can be stretched without sinking into cowardice or plunging into credulity. This, my friends, I conceive to be your situation; hurried to the verge of both, another step would ruin you forever. To be tame and unprovoked, when injuries press hard upon you, is more than weakness; but to look up for kinder usage, without ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... Mr. King. I—I've always thought I loved a storm. Ooh! But this is too terrible! Aren't you really afraid you'll be struck? Thanks, ever so much." He had squared himself between her and the door, turning his back upon the storm: but not through cowardice, as ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... The softest of her sex, if wronged in love, or thinking that she's wronged, becomes a tygress in revenge. I'll instantly to Beverley's—No matter for the danger—When beauty leads us on, 'tis indiscretion to reflect, and cowardice to doubt. [Exit. ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore

... and waste of war. The stern military character, brave but tender, is a type of human nature for which we cannot pay too much. Consider physical courage alone, how valuable it is, and how rare. With what speed the citizen runs at the first glimpse of danger! With what pleasure or shamefaced cowardice citizens look on while women are being violently and indecently assaulted when attempting to vindicate their political rights! How gladly everyone shouts with the largest crowd! Consider how many noble actions ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson

... the other revolver, for rifles were of no use at such short range. I man[oe]uvred cautiously to keep most of the soldiers in front of me, and stealthily backed toward the door, where a soldier stood guard with the other weapon. I was reckoning on the cowardice of most of those in front of me, but I had failed to count on the men I had shot. As I now backed quickly towards the door, I suddenly felt the arms of the fallen man about my legs, and I stumbled backwards over him. In a twinkling the whole ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass

... die by the hands of these cowardly Boers, but by the hand of a black and courageous nation like myself . . ." He then took leave of his people, told his brother to read the Bible, and expired. The Swazies were so infuriated at the cowardice displayed by the Boers on this occasion that they returned ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard

... to his friend of Graustark until nearly two weeks after his arrival in the city. He had discussed with himself the advisability of revealing his plans to Anguish, fearing the latter's ridicule with all the cowardice of a man who knows that scoffing is, in a large measure, justifiable. Growing impatient to begin the search for the unheard-of country, its capital and at least one of its inhabitants, he was at last compelled ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... appearances by saying a word for him from time to time in Parliament, which he knew would be useless, and which he certainly took no measures to make effective. It is sometimes said that Buckingham never knew what dissimulation was. He was capable, at least, of the perfidy and cowardice of utter selfishness. Bacon's conspicuous fall diverted men's thoughts from the far more scandalous wickedness of the great favourite. But though there was no plot, though the blow fell upon Bacon almost accidentally, there ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church

... for some time, speaking both Shawnee and Miami, and also a little Wyandot and Delaware. His vocabulary acquired a sudden richness and depth. He called them names that implied every manner of cowardice and meanness. Their ancestors had been buzzards feeding on offal, they themselves were mangy, crippled and deformed, and, when the few that were left alive by the white men returned home, they would be set to work cooking, and caring for the lodges. When they died they ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler

... Bob, "there is a loathsome, sickly stench of cowardice and distrust about all this kind of French delicacy that is enough to drive an honest fellow to the other extreme. True love ought to be a robust, hardy plant, that can stand a free out-door life of sun and wind and rain. People who are too delicate and courteous ever fully to speak their minds ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various

... But the Nicene party was the home of the ascetics. In an age of indecision and frivolity like the Nicene, the most earnest striving after Christian purity will often degenerate into its ascetic caricature. Through the selfish cowardice of the monastic life we often see the loving sympathy of Christian self-denial. Thus there was an element of true Christian zeal in the enthusiasm of the Eastern Churches; and thus it was that the rising spirit of asceticism naturally attached itself to the Nicene faith ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin

... in danger. He was compelled to double the guards around his tent, and to move it from place to place to avoid continual insults. He was several times fired at when he ventured out of his marquee. Porter openly attributed the abandonment of the invasion of Canada to the cowardice of Smyth." ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... of all this; for though I do want bravery for the warfare of life, I could wish, like some other soldiers, to have as much fortitude or cunning as to dissemble or conceal my cowardice. ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... to invite the sergeant into the room, so absorbed was she in the nature of the business at hand. Expectancy breeds cowardice. When great issues are at stake every act wears an awful meaning. For this reason she stood transfixed at the threshold, before this unexpected arrival, whom she associated with the image of Stephen. With the sudden and ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett

... Unfortunately, I was the cause. From the black looks of the young men I half suspected, if the Sioux chief would accept me in lieu of material gifts, I might be presented as a peace-offering. This would certainly not forward my quest, and prudence, or cowardice—two things easily confused when one is in peril—counseled discretion, and discretion seemed to ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut



Words linked to "Cowardice" :   cowardliness, spirit, cowardly, fearful, cravenness, fearfulness, dastardliness, courage



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