"Dastard" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... A dastard, who in his talk brags of his prowess, and is devoid of courage,[11] imposes upon strangers, but is the jest of all ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... brake, and he stopp'd not for stone, He swam the Esk river where ford there was none; But ere he alighted at Netherby gate, The bride had consented, the gallant came late: For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war, Was to wed the fair ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... safety in a sudden and inglorious dive under the table. Yet quick as he was, the old retainer was quicker. His heavy axe came down with a sweep, and never more would the fickle Stanley have played the dastard had not a carved chair arm stayed, for an instant, the weapon's fall. Ere it had shorn its way through the oak, Stanley was safe from death, though the edge scraped his head glancingly, sending the blood flying and leaving him unconscious on ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... gazed At the wild havoc, like a monarch dazed In woodland hoar, who felt the shrieking saw— He, living oak, beheld his branches fall, with awe. Chiefs, soldiers, comrades died. But still warm love Kept those that rose all dastard fear above, As on his tent they saw his shadow pass— Backwards and forwards, for they credited, alas! His fortune's star! it could not, could not be That he had not his work to do—a destiny? To hurl him headlong from his high estate, Would be high treason in his bondman, ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... recluse. "Not call me! Villain Dastard! Cur! I have four queens, miscreant." His voice grew so mighty that it could not fit his throat. He choked wrestling with his lungs for a moment. Then the power of his body was concentrated ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... little of the art of arranging or composing the matter so as to produce an unity of effect: the narrative straggles or condenses itself as if by accident; skill in transitions is unknown. The study of character is rude and elementary: a man is either heroic or dastard, loyal or a traitor; wholly noble, or absolutely base. Yet certain types of manhood and womanhood are presented with power and beauty. The feeling for external nature, save in some traditional formulae, hardly appears. The passion for ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... with a sudden, intense note of passion, "Only tell me where her grave is, I'll let you go free. You couldn't, you dare not, dastard that you are, go away from where ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... buxom girls and sturdy boys tell of the healthfulness and invigorating qualities of the climate. Is it not always spring or summer in Canada? Would not the man who whispered of snow and ice be a renegade, a dastard, a rebel? North Queenslanders do not attempt to belittle the reputation of Canada as a field for the activities of the surplus population of the old country. We are of the same blood and breed, and merely ask for a proper understanding of our own good land. ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... especially amongst professional fighters, who in England at least have chosen their trade? That there are poltroons, and plenty of them, amongst our soldiers and sailors, I do not dispute. But with the fear of shame on one hand, the hope of reward on the other, the merest dastard will fight like a wild beast, when his blood is up. The extraordinary merit of his conduct is not so obvious to the peaceful thinker. I speak not of such heroism as that of the Japanese, - their deeds will henceforth be bracketed with those of Leonidas ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... pace in order to allow the people to see the King for themselves, and make sure he was uninjured, as they cheered, and followed it in surging throngs to the very gates of the Palace,—while in another and reverse direction the wretched youth whose miserable effort to commit a dastard crime had so fortunately failed, was marched off, under the guard of a strong body of police to the State-Prison, there to await his trial and condemnation. A small crowd, hooting and cursing the criminal, pursued him ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... amazement seized 470 The whole assembly, and the antient King O'erwhelmed with wonder at that sight, the hand Grasp'd of Telemachus, whom he thus bespake. My friend! I prophesy that thou shalt prove Nor base nor dastard, whom, so young, the Gods Already take in charge; for of the Pow'rs Inhabitants of heav'n, none else was this Than Jove's own daughter Pallas, who among The Greecians honour'd most thy gen'rous Sire. But thou, O ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... suppose she would like me better for sacrificing you? She is not a woman to be flattered because I made myself despicable—to believe that I must be true to her because I was a dastard ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... then I will slay myself, For living idly here in pomp and ease, Whilst such a worthy leader, wanting aid, Unto his dastard foemen is betray'd. ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... flame of wrath. A sudden buffet of his resistless hand Smote 'neath the railer's ear, and all his teeth Were dashed to the earth: he fell upon his face: Forth of his lips the blood in torrent gushed: Swift from his body fled the dastard soul Of that vile niddering. Achaea's sons Rejoiced thereat, for aye he wont to rail On each and all with venomous gibes, himself A scandal and the shame of all the host. Then mid the warrior Argives cried a voice: "Not ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... apprehensions had imagined, only two men were on the spot, one of them old and diminutive, and the other encumbered with the exhumed body. In the glow of fanatic fury, he forgot all personal fears, and while his dastard creatures held on their terrified course, he sprang back alone to the burial-ground, and seizing the old man with one hand, he stretched forth the other to grasp from the Moriscoe's hold his still ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various
... me the honour to make, to throw it in my face now, that I have—have in any way rendered myself unworthy of the position of your wife because people have been civil and kind to me in my sorrow, you are a greater dastard than I took you to be. Tell me at once, sir, ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... the soldier who had attended to Maitre Menard came over to me and taught me how it feels to be hanged. I said to myself that if I had talked like a dastard I was not one, and every time he let me speak I gasped, "I don't know." The room was black to me, and the sea roared in my ears, and I wondered whether I had done well to tell the lie. For had I said that my master was ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... won't escape. His money can't buy him off. He will be hanged by the law. Don't think it's mercy I'm preaching; it's vengeance!" Bowen shook his clenched fist at the gaol. "That wretch there has been in hell ever since he heard your shouts. He'll be in hell, for he's a dastard, until the time his trembling legs carry him to the scaffold. I want him to stay in this hell till he drops through into the other, if there is one. I want him to suffer some of the misery he has caused. Lynching is over in a moment. I want ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... before; Comparison of times, the Lab'rer's hire, And many a truth Reflection might inspire, Sunk powerless. 'Dame, I am a fool,' he cried; 'Alone I might have reason'd till I died. 'I caus'd those tears of Jane's:—but as they fell 'How much I felt none but ourselves can tell. 'While dastard fears withheld me from her sight; 'Sighs reign'd by day and hideous dreams by night; ''Twas then the Soldier's plume and rolling Drum 'Seem'd for a while to strike my sorrows dumb; 'To fly from Care then half ...
— Rural Tales, Ballads, and Songs • Robert Bloomfield
... cipher; he showed it to me a week ago; and so, evidently, do you, in spite of the fact that you have had barely fifty words with him since he came to the house. Let me read—ah!—give over that piece of paper you have there, Steele, if you would not have me think you as great a dastard as we know ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... in side and slackened rein, he dashed upon the heathen, mad with rage. Through shield and hauberk pierced his spear, and the Saracen fell dead ere his scoffing words were done. "Thou dastard!" cried Roland, "no traitor is Charlemagne, but a right ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... dared so to treat her had her father been alive or had we been blessed with a brother," says Miss Priscilla, sternly. "He proved himself a dastard ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... hand in hand, brave Americans all, To be free is to live, to be slaves is to fall; Has the land such a dastard as scorns not a lord, Who dreads not a fetter much more than a sword? In ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... had justly anticipated, yet believe not that our nation is truly alienated from yours, or apostate to the great principles of freedom which were once our glory. The heart of England is sound at the core: Slavery is now and ever an abomination in our eyes; nor has the dastard proposition to recognize the Confederate States failed to call forth indignant rejection, and that even with peculiar earnestness from those suffering operatives whose relief such a measure might have secured. It is to assure ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... would shortly get very bored; and when he got very bored he became, in spite of himself, reserved and self-contained to the point of rudeness. For the exact reason that he saw thus clearly, his conscience was smiting him hard. Mrs. Morrell had done nothing to deserve this treatment. He was a dastard, a coward, ashamed of himself. If she wanted to see him, it was her due that he obey her summons promptly. He went with the vague idea of making amends by doing whatever she seemed to ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... former ill; myself I am not of them. Colonel Burr desired that duel; he lay in wait for the affront which should be his opportunity; he murdered Hamilton. He risked his own life—very true, the majority of murderers do the same. The one who does not is a dastard in addition—voila tout! ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... is the chief cynic of the story, and to him are assigned the best of the dialogue and all of the small stock of humour to be found in the novel. But the man who is both his associate and enemy, Cyril Chatteris, is a common sort of dastard, and altogether disagreeable. ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... dares answer to the proud demand. Presuming of his force, with sparkling eyes Already he devours the promis'd prize. He claims the bull with awless insolence, And having seiz'd his horns, accosts the prince: "If none my matchless valor dares oppose, How long shall Dares wait his dastard foes? Permit me, chief, permit without delay, To lead this uncontended gift away." The crowd assents, and with redoubled cries For the ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... strong and crafty. She has accepted you at her mother's instance; and were I base enough to keep from you your father's inheritance, her mother would no more give her to you now than she would to me then. This is true; and if you know it to be true—as you do know—you will be mean, and dastard, and a coward—you will be no Fitzgerald if you keep from me that which I have a right to claim as my own. Not fight! Ay, but you must fight. We cannot both live here in this country if Clara Desmond become your wife. Mark my words, if that take place, you and I cannot live here alongside of each ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... lead us astray from the lessons of history and from the Spirit of God. An irresistible and solemn duty impels me to this deed, ever since I have recognised to what high destinies the German; nation may attain during this century, and ever since I have come to know the dastard and hypocrite who alone prevents it from reaching them; for me, as for every German who seeks the public good, this desire has became a strict and binding necessity. May I, by this national vengeance, indicate to all upright and loyal consciences ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... 87 The dastard crow that to the wood made wing, And sees the groves no shelter can afford, With her loud caws her craven kind does bring, Who, safe in ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... said, "let the dastard live. But if I ever git another chanst at Jasp Swope I'll kill him, if I swing for it! He's the boy I'm lookin' for, but you see how he dodges me? I've been movin' his sheep for two days! He's afraid of me—he's afraid to come out and fight me like a man! But ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... than I. Revenge would keep, and could be slept upon; while with emotions such as mine, a quiet heart was out of the question. She whom I loved was not only in danger of being lost to me for ever, but in danger of becoming the victim of a dastard coquin—diabolic as dastard! Suffering under the sting of such a fearful apprehension, it required me to exert all the self-restraining power of which I was possessed. Had I but known where to go, I should have rushed to horse, and ridden ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... veterans held their peace, the blood mantled in his cheek, and, overcoming his modesty, he broke forth with a generous warmth: 'I know not, cavaliers,' said he, 'what is passing in your minds, but I believe this pilgrim to be an envoy from the devil; for none else could have given such dastard and perfidious counsel. For my own part, I stand ready to defend my king, my country, and my faith. I know no higher duty than this, and if God thinks fit to strike me dead in the performance of it, his sovereign will ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... weight) With her bless'd Master's unmaim'd image shine; Why should she longer droop? why longer act As an accomplice with the plots of Rome? Why longer lend an edge to Bourbon's sword, And give him leave, among his dastard troops, To muster that strong succour, Albion's crimes? Send his self-impotent ambition aid, And crown the conquest of her fiercest foes? Where are her foes most fatal? Blushing truth, "In her friends' vices,"—with ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... bargain with the Adams forces had been duly closed. Clay's rage was ungovernable. Through the columns of the National Intelligencer he pronounced his unknown antagonist "a base and infamous calumniator, a dastard and a liar," called upon him to "unveil himself," and declared that he would hold him responsible "to all the laws which govern and regulate men ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... think of nothing else when they convey me to yonder still more dreadful place of confinement; it is his, and it is but meet that it should be his son's.—And thou, Alice Bridgenorth, the day that I renounce thee, may I be held alike a traitor and a dastard!—Go, false adviser, and share the fate of seducers ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... would support the general on similar terms. When the friends of Jackson spurned these overtures, Clay sold out to Adams. With quite unnecessary heat Clay branded the author of this letter as "a base and infamous calumniator, a dastard, and a liar." His first instinct was to challenge the author whoever he might be; but when Representative George Kremer, an odd character who was chiefly conspicuous by reason of the leopard-skin coat which he wore avowed himself the writer of the offensive letter, Clay ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... centuries and a half after the Tartar invasion. During all that period Russia had been the vassal of the khans. Only now was its freedom to come. It was by craft, more than by war, that Ivan won. In the field he was a dastard, but in subtlety and perfidy he surpassed all other men of his time, and his insidious but persistent policy ended by making him the autocrat ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... but indignation. They confounded the leader with the army—the deserted with those who had abandoned him, and El Zagal, from being their idol, became suddenly the object of their execration. He had sacrificed the army; he had disgraced the nation; he had betrayed the country. He was a dastard, a traitor; he ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... Mr. Clay, by which the support of the friends of the latter had been transferred to the former, "as the planter does his negroes, or the farmer his team and horses." Mr. Clay at once published a card, over his signature, in which he called the writer "a base and infamous calumniator, a dastard, and a liar." Mr. Kremer replied, admitting that he had written the letter, but in such a manner that his political friends were ashamed of his cowardice, while the admirers of Mr. Clay were very indignant—the more so as they ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... 'Thou dastard!' Katharine screamed aloud. She tried to speak but she choked; she grasped Udal's hand as if to wring from him the denial of his foolish lies, but a sharp and numbing pain shot up her maimed wrist to her shoulders and ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... only to that unresponsive picture. Two ways there were in which the Indians could know of his presence. One by being informed through some half-breed spy, lurking about Frayne; but then who would be dastard enough to send such word? The other by being seen and recognized by some of the Ogallalla band, and thus far he believed they had come undetected, and it was now after five o'clock—after five o'clock and all was well. In a few hours they could again be on their starlit way. With the morrow they ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... always. Denman delights me. I am glad to think I have always liked him so well. I am sure that whenever he makes a mistake, it is a mistake; and that no man lives who has a grander and nobler scorn of every mean and dastard action. I would to Heaven it were decorous to pay him some public tribute of respect . . . O'Connell's speeches are the old thing: fretty, boastful, frothy, waspish at the voices in the crowd, and all that: but with no true greatness. . . . What a relief to turn to that noble letter of Carlyle's" ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... oars, hurling the wild water right and left with the mighty share of its beak, while from the bows some gorgon or chimaera, elephant or boar, stared out with brazen eyes toward the coast of Africa, as if it, too, like the human beings which it carried, was dead to every care but that of dastard flight. Past they rushed, one after another; and off the poop some shouting voice chilled all hearts for a moment, with the fearful news that the Emperor's Neapolitan fleet was in full chase.... And the soldiers on board that little vessel looked silently ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... Sylvia?" he said, between inquiry and wonder. "Well, well! We are both fools together, child. The man is a dastard, a blackguard, a Judas, to be repaid with betrayal for betrayal. Forget him, girl. Believe me, he isn't ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... the swains repair In social bands, and give a loose to care. Rash councils now, with each malignant plan, Each faction, that in evil hour began, At your approach are in confusion fled, Nor, while you rule, shall rear their dastard head. Alike the master and the slave shall fee Their neck reliev'd, the yoke unbound by thee. Ere now our guiltless isle, her wretched fate Had wept, and groan'd beneath th' oppressive weight Of Cruel woes; save thy victorious hand, Long fam'd in war, from Gallia's hostile land; And wreaths ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... shame she had put upon me! I could not credit. "You shall not—I tell you, you sha'n't. I won't have it—it's monstrous, preposterous. You sha'n't go, I sha'n't go. But wherever we go we'll go together. We'll stand them off. Then if they can take us, let 'em. You make a coward of me—a dastard. You've no right to. ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... watching, married men will bear a most minute scrutiny. Mrs. Pennycook knew that as a wife she was approaching the unlovely age when fickle husbands tire and cast about for younger and prettier women. Hence she decided to trim her mental lamps and light the dastard Daniel ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... Empire. She has sorrowed with the sorrow of the great commonwealth, whose chief has been struck down, in the fulness of his strength, in the height of his usefulness, in the day of universal recognition of his noble character, by the dastard hand of the assassin. We have felt in this as though we ourselves had suffered, for General Garfield's position and personal worth made his own and his fellow citizens' misfortune a catastrophe for all English-speaking races. The bulletins telling of his calm ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... different. A summons had come to his loyalty, to the fundamental manhood of him. If he left David Dingwell to his fate, he could never look at himself again in the glass without knowing that he was facing a dastard. ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... the holy cross of our Saviour! I will have revenge upon that dastard; there is no time to lose; five minutes for reflection, and then to act," thought Ramsay, as he twisted up this timely notice, which, it must be evident to the reader, must have been sent by one who had been summoned to the council. Ramsay's ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... This was on the 13th of the present month of April. On the 14th, Mr. James Cooke, Lord Devon's bailiff, was seen showing the purchaser Quirke over the newly-acquired holding. Poor Quirke little knew what was at that moment hanging over him. He had not long to wait. The dastard demon of moonlight ruffianism ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... Finn, but that's what I should like. I think, however, that I should be tempted to feel a dastard security in the conviction that I might advocate my views without any danger of seeing them carried out. For, to tell you the truth, I don't at all want to put down ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... entered, and without observing that he was drunk, went on with her writing, which was ever a painful ceremony with her. Dropping his coat where he stood, and with his hat awry on the red globe of his head, the dastard staggered towards her, his eyes lit with a glare ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... poor Ethel, and this was that her good uncle Thomas Newcome believed the charges against her. He was willing enough to listen now to anything which was said against that branch of the family. With such a traitor, double-dealer, dastard as Barnes at its head, what could the rest of the race be? When the Colonel offered to endow Ethel and Clive with every shilling he had in the world, had not Barnes, the arch-traitor, temporised and told ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... as though now speaking exclusively to herself, "the only ground in Italy which has as yet made no struggle on behalf of freedom—a fitting residence for such a dastard!" ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... wooing Peace. But soon up-springing from his dastard trance The boastful bloody Son of Pride betray'd His hatred of the blest and blessing Maid. One cloud, O Freedom! cross'd thy orb of Light, And sure he deem'd that orb was quench'd in night: ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... obsolete ethics recognized the individual prerogative of wiping out blow with blow, they could not bear to think of two good comrades, such as Bettles and McFane, meeting in deadly battle. Deeming the man who would not fight on provocation a dastard, when brought to the test it seemed wrong that he ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... fight To say a womans dreame could me affright. Cal. O Caesar no dishonour canst thou get, In seeking to preuent vnlucky chance: Foole-hardy men do runne vpon their death, Bec thou in this perswaded by thy wife: No vallour bids thee cast away thy life. 1620 Caes. Tis dastard cowardize and childish feare, To dread those dangers that do not appeare: Cal. Thou must sad chance by fore-cast, wise resist, Or being done say boote-les had I wist. Caes. But for to feare wher's ...
— The Tragedy Of Caesar's Revenge • Anonymous
... overthrown! And we are left, or shall be left, alone— The last that dares to struggle with the foe. 'Tis well!—from this day forward we shall know That in ourselves our safety must be sought, That by our own right-hands it must be wrought; That we must stand unprop'd, or be laid low. O dastard! whom such foretaste doth not cheer! We shall exult, if they who rule the land Be men who hold its many blessings dear, Wise, upright, valiant, not a venal band, Who are to judge of danger which they fear, And honour which they ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... he answered, and put aside his pipe, which had gone out. "The spirit of revenge was educated into me until I came to look upon revenge as the best and holiest of emotions; until I believed that if I failed to wreak it I must be a craven and a dastard. All this seemed so until the moment came to set my hand to the task. And then—" ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... "Dastard!" exclaimed La Tour, indignantly; "this jealous care accords well with the baseness of his heart; and I wonder not that he fears to lose the affection which was so unjustly gained, if, indeed, it were ever ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... of her note in Field's room the night the adjutant was so mysteriously missing. The note itself was held forth by the inspector general and she was asked if she cared to have it opened and read aloud. Her answer was that Field was a coward, a dastard to betray a ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... a year!" she said fiercely. "You mock me with such words. I tell you again that my forbearance will last but little longer. More of this laggard love, and I will shame you before your fellow-men as an ingrate and a dastard! I will; by my ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... happenings which had led to our present condition. The only result was to enlist me yet more strongly to her service. Believing her statement I could see nothing in her conduct to criticize, and she appealed to me in all womanhood. I would be a dastard to doubt, or desert, her cause now, and the warm blood throbbed in my veins responsive to the memory of what had already been between us. No one disturbed me, the Captain was still in his stateroom, where, once or twice, I imagined I heard him pacing the floor. The steward had apparently retired ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... master, forward and fear not! Out amongst them; they be but faint-hearted losels,[1] and for Adam Spencer, if he die not at your foot, say he is a dastard." ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... Lincolnshire Idyll: I will bet on Miss Ingelow now: he should never have left his old County, and gone up to be suffocated by London Adulation. He has lost that which caused the long roll of the Lincolnshire Wave to reverberate in the measure of Locksley Hall. Don't believe that I rejoice like a Dastard in what I believe to be the Decay of a Great Man: my sorrow has been so much about it that (for one reason) I have the less cared to meet him of late years, having nothing to say in sincere praise. Nor do I mean that his Decay is all owing to ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... join the great renegade bands gathering under Crazy Horse and Gall to reinforce Sitting Bull, Hawk had held aloof. "The people of Red Cloud," said he, "have no grounds for war. The Great Father has done everything he promised them and more," and Red Cloud called him dastard and squaw; but when an Indian girl was missing from her lodge, and the gossips told how she had been lured by a white soldier to the distant banks of the Laramie, Hawk rode thither, rode into the presence of the post commander and told her story ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... W. "I'm making a statement! He's not only a liar—he's a thief! He robbed me, the dastard; he got two thousand dollars of my money without giving me the scratch of a ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... you would, do it; I told Jack so in Richmond, almost the last words I said before he set out on this miserable adventure. I told him you were not the girl I took you for if you could believe him to be such a dastard, when you had time to get over the shock of poor Wesley's death. You never heard the whole story of that dreadful night. I must tell it to you—as he would if he were here, and I know you would believe him." The two girls sat down, hand ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... been written by Mr. Kremer, a member of the House of Representatives from Pennsylvania. Mr. Clay immediately published a card in the National Intelligencer, denying, in unequivocal terms, the allegation, and pronouncing the author "an infamous calumniator, a dastard, and a liar!" ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... mixture of religious asperity and pride, vainly disguised under the cloak of humility. However, Martha was far from practising the rigid austerities her whole appearance seemed to indicate. She only assumed this outward demeanor, in the same manner that a dastard mimics courage, the better ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... the game had resolved itself into an Homeric combat between the two protagonists, of which the main bodies of the Balbus and Caramel armies were merely neutral spectators—neutral, that is, so far as they had not been hired out for some dastard service by one or other of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 22, 1920 • Various
... lightly on the shoulder; "let your prayers wait until they can be of thanksgiving. Listen. By the vigilance of Peppe there, who, good soul that he is, never lost faith in me or deemed me a dastard, we were informed last night—Fortemani and I—of this that Gonzaga was preparing. And we have made our plans and prepared the ground. When Gian Maria's soldiers enter, they will find the outer doors barred and locked, ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... that nearest us? what wretch Is that with eyebrows white and slanting brow? Listen! him yonder who, bound down supine, Shrinks yelling from that sword there, engine-hung; He too amongst my ancestors! [I hate The despot, but the dastard I despise. Was he our countryman?' 'Alas,][499] O king! Iberia bore him, but the breed accurst Inclement winds blew blighting from north-east.' 'He was a warrior then, nor fear'd the gods?' 'Gebir, he feared the Demons, not the gods, Though them indeed his daily face adored; And was ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... charged that (p. 181) Mr. Clay had sold his friends in the House of Representatives to Mr. Adams, "as the planter does his negroes or the farmer his team and horses;" when Mr. Clay promptly published the unknown writer as "a base and infamous calumniator, a dastard and a liar;" when next Kremer, being unmasked, avowed that he would make good his charges, but immediately afterward actually refused to appear or testify before a Committee of the House instructed ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... Villain! dastard! perjured wretch! I hate you, and I curse you, here in the church you call holy! I curse you with a ruined woman's curse, and hot and scathing may it burn on your head and on the ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... despise herself for having once—on the day on which, in answer to her intercessions, he had spared her brother's life—entertained a kindly, almost wistful, thought concerning this man whom she now deemed a dastard. ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... friends - my labouring friends, for I rejoice and triumph in that stigma - my friends whose hard but honest beds are made in toil, and whose scanty but independent pots are boiled in hardship; and now, I say, my friends, what appellation has that dastard craven taken to himself, when, with the mask torn from his features, he stands before us in all his native deformity, a What? A thief! A plunderer! A proscribed fugitive, with a price upon his head; a fester ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... strike him again; or if she cannot clench her fists, and he advises all women in these singular times to learn to clench their fists, to go at him with tooth and nail, and not to be afraid of the result, for any fellow who is dastard enough to strike a woman, would allow himself to be beaten by a woman, were she to make at him in self-defence, even if, instead of possessing the stately height and athletic proportions of the aforesaid Isopel, she were as diminutive in stature, and had a hand as delicate and a foot as small ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... fatal to Florence Kearney, and only the veriest dastard would have taken advantage of it. But this Santander was, and once more drawing back, and bringing his blade to tierce, he was rushing on his now defenceless antagonist, when Crittenden called "Foul play!" at the same time springing ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... overcome the fear of death, to devote yourself to the great cause of civil and religious Liberty, to be the Soldier of all that is just, right, and true; in the midst of pestilence to deserve your title of Knight Commander of the Temple, and neither there nor elsewhere to desert your post and flee dastard-like from the foe. In all this, you assert the superiority and right to dominion of that in you which is spiritual and divine. No base fear of danger or death, no sordid ambitions or pitiful greeds or base considerations can tempt a true Scottish Knight ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... defenders, Thy lady alone Saw the cross-blazoned banner Float over St. John." "Let the dastard look to it!" Cried fiery Estienne, "Were D'Aulnay King Louis, I'd ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... heedless, he would betray me to the uttermost of the wrath of my mistress. For needs must I say of him, though he be a goodly man, and now fallen into thralldom, that he hath no bowels of compassion; but is a dastard, who for an hour's pleasure would undo me, and thereafter would stand by smiling and taking my mistress's pardon with good cheer, while for me would be no pardon. Seest thou, therefore, how it is with me between these two cruel ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... to face the shuddering reality of existence in some such form as that. And the question which it brought to my heart is, if it came to me, as terrible as that, and as sudden and implacable, would I show myself the man or the dastard? And that filled me with a fearful awe and humility, and a guilty wonder whether somewhere in the world there might not be a wall from which I should be throwing myself, instead of nursing my illness as I do, and being content to read about greatness. ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... whited sepulchre, full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness?—a fellow posing in the pulpit as an example to the faithful, but knowing all the time that somewhere in the land lived a woman—once a loving, trusting woman—who could with a word hold him up to the world a hypocrite and a dastard— ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... to say, Madame Danglars, the poor, insane creature—had escaped from Fanfar's house by the door which Sanselme left open, and having found her son thus strangely, lavished on him tender words, which in the ear of the dastard were like curses. Thus they reached the shore, and it was not until Benedetto saw the Seine once more before him that he realized what he was doing. He shook off the hand on his wrist and began to run. He saw the wreck a foot or two from ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... 'Haill and sain? Dastard and forlorn,' cried Malcolm, with passionate weeping. 'I—I to flee and leave my sister—my uncle! Oh, where are they? Halbert, let me go; ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Age was never more fully-shewn than in its treatment of this writer—its love of paradox and change, its dastard submission to prejudice and to the fashion of the day. Five-and-twenty years ago he was in the very zenith of a sultry and unwholesome popularity; he blazed as a sun in the firmament of reputation; no one was more talked of, more looked up to, more ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... when Neapolis had fallen, the brave Gothic warriors felt that they had submitted too long to the rule of a dastard like Theodahad. They met in arms, a nation-parliament, on the plain of Regeta, about forty-three miles from Rome in the direction of Terracina. Here there was plenty of grass for the pasture of their horses, and here, while the steeds grazed, the dismounted riders ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... out: "Who shot the swan? The King had hailed it as a happy sign, Whene'er a swan came near him in its flight For since the earliest ages has this bird Meant hope and health and holiness to men.— Who dared to do this dastard ...
— Parsifal - A Drama by Wagner • Retold by Oliver Huckel
... either slain or taken prisoner: then were they ware where he came riding. And when he was come unto them he told all how he had sped and escaped in despite of them all: And some of the best of them will tell no tales. Thou liest falsely, said the damosel, that dare I make good, but as a fool and a dastard to all knighthood they have let thee pass. That may ye prove, said La Cote Male Taile. With that she sent a courier of hers, that rode alway with her, for to know the truth of this deed; and so he rode thither lightly, and asked how and in what manner that La Cote ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... hands, made a forward movement, as if to carry into execution the dastard work his heart had conjured up. One step, and he came to a ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton
... the dastard, falling on his knees before his stern antagonist—"I am rich, let me depart in safety, and I'll give you a cheque ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... silence of contemptuous disgust. To such as these I will never condescend to advert or to allude further than by the remark now as it were forced from me, that never once in my life have I had or will I have recourse in self-defence either to the blackguard's loaded bludgeon of personalities or to the dastard's sheathed dagger of disguise. I have reviled no man's person: I have outraged no man's privacy. When I have found myself misled either by imperfection of knowledge or of memory, or by too much confidence in a generally trustworthy guide, I ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... most is, however,—Did Bushido justify the promiscuous use of the weapon? The answer is unequivocally, no! As it laid great stress on its proper use, so did it denounce and abhor its misuse. A dastard or a braggart was he who brandished his weapon on undeserved occasions. A self-possessed man knows the right time to use it, and such times come but rarely. Let us listen to the late Count Katsu, who passed through one of the most turbulent times of our history, when ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... fire. Vs martireth this blinde desire To staie our life from flieng! How ceasleslie our minds doth rack, How heauie lies vpon our back This dastard feare of dieng! Death rather healthfull succor giues, Death rather all mishappes relieues That life vpon vs throweth: And euer to vs doth vnclose The doore, wherby from curelesse woes Our wearie soule out goeth. What Goddesse else ...
— A Discourse of Life and Death, by Mornay; and Antonius by Garnier • Philippe de Mornay |
