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More "Cowardly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been a mighty people sprung from the loins of a mighty race, no one of you would be here this day to worship the God of your fathers in the faith of your fathers. The victory upon which you are entering at last is never the reward of the feeble, the cowardly, the faint-hearted. Out of your strength alone you have won ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... that it would be better to keep out of Mrs. Carmichael Smith's way, and learned afterwards that she had a reputation for asserting the faith that was in her, and for expressing her disapproval of everybody who believed less. For my part, I confess to a cowardly dread of elderly religious Englishwomen. They have examined me many a time, and I have never come out of the ordeal with satisfaction, either to ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... over my passion is due to my honor, and this terrible duty, whose [imperious] command is slaying me, compels me to exert myself [lit. labor or work] for thy destruction. For, in fine, do not expect from my affection any morbid [lit. cowardly] feelings as to thy punishment. However strongly my love may plead in thy favor, my steadfast courage must respond to thine. Even in offending me, thou hast proved thyself worthy of me; I must, by thy death, ...
— The Cid • Pierre Corneille
... cut on the neck and two on the head, at which he appeared much surprised and began to cry, which, being a cowardly thing, is just what I should have expected from ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... a carriage whirled him and his baggage away. His reckless anger having evaporated, the base and cowardly instincts of his nature resumed their sway, and he was glad to slink off to New York, thus escaping further ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... narrow road through the woods, which was thronged with the debris of the conflict, hurled back by the fierce assaults of the rebels. The cowardly skulkers and the noncombatants of the engaged regiments were here with their tale of disaster and ruin; and, judging from the mournful stories they told, the once proud Army of the Potomac had been utterly routed and discomfited. Cowards with one bar, cowards with two bars, cowards with no ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... White's Ranch; thence to the celebrated ruins of the Casa Blanca, so graphically described by Mr. John R. Bartlett in his "Personal Narratives" of the Boundary Commission; thence to Rattlesnake Spring; thence to old Fort Breckenridge, which had been so cowardly deserted the year before by our regular troops; thence to Canon de Oro. As we now approached Tucson, everything was in fighting trim. A short halt was made near the town, and the cavalry company, in two divisions, approached the place from the north and west. The infantry marched in by the ...
— Frontier service during the rebellion - or, A history of Company K, First Infantry, California Volunteers • George H. Pettis
... and Elizabeth sit quietly upon their horses. They have come home. Not by the low road of cowardly surrender; not by the crooked road of compromise and falsehood; not by the soft road of ease and self-indulgence; but by the straight road of faith and courage and self-sacrifice—the ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... "—To release from cowardly imprisonment his liege lady and rightful Sovereign, ROSALBA, Queen of Crim Tartary, and restore her to her royal throne: in default of which, I, Giglio, proclaim the said Padella sneak, traitor, humbug, usurper, and coward. ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... emphatic scorn.) You little snivelling, cowardly whelp. (Releasing him.) Go, before you frighten yourself ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... ground, one of those bright ideas, common to minds of men of genius, struck me. I forthwith sprang to my feet, drew forth my cutto, circulated the same with much vivacity among their several and respective corporeal systems, and every time I circulated the same I felt their iron grasp relax. As cowardly recreants, even to their own guilty friendships, two of these miscreants, though but slightly perforated by my cutto, fled, leaving the other two, whom I had disabled by the vigor and energy of my incisions, prostrate ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... to the commander. Many of the operators were faithful and intelligent men, but there were some who were not; and an incident occurred in the Nashville campaign in the next year which showed what mischiefs were likely to happen when a telegraph operator was cowardly or untrustworthy. [Footnote: See "The Battle of Franklin," by the present writer, pp. ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... JOLYON,—I can't bear to write anything that may disappoint you, but I was too cowardly to tell you last night. I feel I can't come down and give Holly any more lessons, now that June is coming back. Some things go too deep to be forgotten. It has been such a joy to see you and Holly. Perhaps I shall still see you sometimes when you come up, though I'm sure it's ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... present looked with scorn. They had known Cazeneau to be cruel and unscrupulous; they had not suspected that he was cowardly as well. Pere Michel also preserved an ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... existence here it is difficult to imagine. Before the day is out one gets sick and tired of the one single topic of conversation. We are like the people at Cremorne waiting for the fireworks to begin; and I really do believe that if this continues much longer, the most cowardly will welcome the bombs as a relief from the oppressive ennui. Few regiments are seen now during the day marching through the streets—they are most of them either on the ramparts or outside them. From 8 to 9 in the morning ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... to let her betray her father, and then run away! Besides, we don't know enough, and they mightn't believe us. It's a cowardly course, however you look ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... said Count Robert; "our guardian. angel has watched his charge carefully. Here have we come among an, ignorant set of pedants, chattering their absurd language, and holding more important the least look that a cowardly Emperor can give, than the best blow that a good knight can deal. Believe me, I was wellnigh thinking that we had done ill to take the cross—God forgive such an impious doubt! Yet here, when we were even despairing to find the road to fame, we have met with one of those ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... various blows at the two defenders of the position; but both of them were skilled in this sort of play, and warded off the strokes, delivering telling blows in the faces of the enemy. Mr. Alwayn had partially closed the door; but he was not so cowardly as to shut out his two volunteer defenders. As soon as they understood his object, they backed in at the door, dispersing the ruffians with well-directed blows, and the consul closed and locked the door. Before any further mischief could be done, the police came and dispersed ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... give the King protection. The winter of 1823 was passed in intrigues; in May, 1824, Miguel arrested the Ministers and surrounded the King's palace with troops. After several days of confusion King John made his escape to the British ships, and Miguel, who was alternately cowardly and audacious, then made his submission, and was ordered to leave the country. King John died in the spring of 1826 without having granted a Constitution. Pedro, his eldest son, had already been made Emperor of Brazil; and, as it was impossible that Portugal and Brazil could again be united, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... us as we passed through the gate with a chorus of barks, sending the word down the line. To his credit be it said, Jack paid little attention to them, tittupping along, head up, tail up, only when they came too close turning on them with a flash of white teeth that sent the cowardly brutes flying and brought cries of delight from the village folk who crowded nearer to inspect the strange dog, so small, ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... on the Piazza Navona, quite dazed, no longer knowing what to believe or hope. A cowardly idea was coming over him; why should he continue this struggle, in which his adversaries remained unknown and indiscernible? Why carry obstinacy any further, why linger any longer in that impassionating ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... he dared Helms to make a hostile motion. He was a true Alabamian and could be neither scared nor driven. He soon sold out, however, and went to a more congenial camp for he said these people were cowardly enough to waylay ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... allied to a resignation of moral accountability from feudal attachment, is the contemptible and cowardly doctrine of fatalism, which Dryfesdale also professes. It is not with him the philosophic doctrine of the concurring impulses of circumstance, or of natural laws, but rather the stupendously nonsensical notion of the Arabian kismet, that from the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Aggie thought, been choosing her words judicially, so that each unnecessary eulogy of John should strike at some weak spot in poor Arthur. She felt that Susie was not above paying off her John's old scores by an oblique and cowardly blow at the man who had supplanted him. She wished that Susie would either leave off talking about John, ...
— The Judgment of Eve • May Sinclair
... States has, through a mistaken policy, been constantly engaged in sending to the western borders all the eastern Indian tribes that were disposed to sell their land, and also the various tribes who, having rebelled against their cowardly despotism, had been overpowered and conquered during the struggle. This gross ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... through an error which sprang from the similarity of his cognizance to that of Edward, or as the Lancastrians alleged while themselves in the act of deserting to the enemy. Warwick himself was charged with cowardly flight. In three hours the medley of carnage and treason was over. Four thousand men lay on the field; and the Earl and his brother were found ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... young fellow!" Major Browne remarked as the door closed behind him. "I don't quite know what to make of him, but I don't think he could have committed that murder. It was a cowardly business, and although I believe he might have a hand in any desperate affair, as indeed this story he has just told us shows, I would lay my life he would not do a ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... days I am free and the wife of my deliverer, the noble and brave Tallien, who will have freed the world from the monster Robespierre, or else, in eight days, I mount the scaffold; and my last thought will be a curse for the cowardly, heartless man who has not had the courage to risk his life for her he loved, and who suffers for his sake, for his sake meets death—who had not the mind to consider that with daring deed he must destroy the bloodthirsty fiend or be ruined by him. Therese ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... feather! In Timpany's drapery establishment she raked the girls at the counter with a searching glance. At the cathedral services she studied the demure faces of her contemporaries. Now that Doggie was a soldier she held the anonymous exploit to be cowardly and brutal. What did people know of the thousand and one reasons that kept eligible young men out of the Army? What had they known of Marmaduke? As soon as the illusion of his life had been dispelled, he had marched ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... hers, and they both fell silent before the common thought. In the practice of his profession he had done this for her, in obedience to the cowardly rules of that profession. He had saved life—animation—to this mass of corruption. Except for his skill, this waste being would have gone its way quietly to death, thereby purifying all life by that little. He added at last in ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... as a nun is she; One weak chirp is her only note. Braggart, and prince of braggarts is he, Pouring boasts from his little throat: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink, Never was I afraid of man; Catch me, cowardly knaves, if you can, ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... with Mr. Obstinate, who will not listen to him, and wants to pull him back. We all get the company of Mr. Pliable, who is persuaded without being convinced, who at the first splash into difficulty crawls out and turns back with a cowardly adroitness. We have all encountered the stupidity of Mr. Ignorance, which nothing can enlighten. We know Mr. Turnaway, who comes from the town of Apostacy, whose face we cannot perfectly see. Others merely ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... more ill-matched could not have been found; the man by nature coarse, brutal, and cowardly; the woman, insolent, fearless, and of ungoverned temper. From the first things went badly, and when, within a week of the wedding, Helen's father was drowned in attempting to ford the Tweed on horseback, she chose to consider that her part of ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... few muslins, and there I am. Lace lasts forever, and nothing is lost on trimmings. Lack of sense, lack of sense—" she waved her beaded bag in the air—"is what's the matter with the world. Women are slaves of custom; their most despairing quality is their cowardly devotion to the usual and their sheepy following of silly fashions. Woman's vanity and man's pampering of it are the cause of more trouble in most homes than fires and pestilence. Man is to blame for it. Through the ages he's been woman's dictator, and being too sensible ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... boat left for Newfoundland the middle of November, and they concluded that if there was no news of Peter by that time they would sail on it. "I feel cowardly to go," said Shelby, whose brain was weary, working out the problem ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... known, and it will be known later. Up to date about two hundred Bisayan Indians have died, most of them from diseases. Don Pedro Cotoan died while en route from Jolo to Sanboangan, in order to take back the Bisayans, who are a most cowardly race. Those who have done deeds of valor are the Caragas, and the Joloans tremble at sight of them. Don Pedro Almonte remains as governor and lieutenant for the captain-general at Sanboangan, with one ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... answered the fearless head of the hunchback, while the frail, cowardly body shivered and trembled inch ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... Horace justice, he did mean to tell his mother. He had been taught to speak the truth, and the whole truth, cost what it might. He knew that his parents could forgive almost anything sooner than a falsehood, or a cowardly concealment. Words cannot tell how Mr. Clifford ...
— Captain Horace • Sophie May
... captain of an Ohio regiment was shot through the head and instantly killed while reading a newspaper. He was violating no rule whatever, and when shot was from eight to ten feet inside the window through which the bullet came. This was a wholly unprovoked and wanton murder; the cowardly miscreant had fired the shot while he was off duty, and from the north sidewalk of Carey street. The guards (home guards they were) used, in fact, to gun for prisoners' heads from their posts below, pretty much after the fashion of boys after squirrels; and the whizz of a bullet through ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... the manito always watches over the Indians. He is glad when they are brave, but if they are cowardly, he is angry. ...
— The Book of Nature Myths • Florence Holbrook
... death: then sealing up the letters, he put them into their place again. Soon after the ship was attacked by pirates, and a sea-fight commenced; in the course of which Hamlet, desirous to show his velour, with sword in hand singly boarded the enemy's vessel; while his own ship, in a cowardly manner, bore away, and leaving him to his fate, the two courtiers made the best of their way to England, charged with those letters the sense of which Hamlet had altered to ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... as a boor. Among the tradesmen who supply that plutocracy with its meals, a husband who is not jealous, and refrains from assailing his rival with his fists, is regarded as a ridiculous, contemptible and cowardly cuckold. And the laboring class is divided into the respectable section which takes the tradesman's view, and the disreputable section which enjoys the license of the plutocracy without its money: creeping below the law as its exemplars prance above it; cutting ...
— Overruled • George Bernard Shaw
... the King, roused at once; "secured, sayest thou? In our bitter grief we had well-nigh forgotten justice. Bring forth the dastardly craven; we would demand the reason of this cowardly blow ere we condemn him to the death of torture which his crime demands. Let him confront his victim. Why do you pause, ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... think me very weak and cowardly to seek shelter and comfort at such a time," she said, raising her gray eyes to me. "But I feel as though all my strength had slipped away from me. I mean to go back to my work; I only need a few days ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... be the fact or not, nay, even if the reestablishment of the Union had been hopeless from the first, a government which should have abandoned its capital, which should have flinched from the first and plainest duty of self-preservation, which should have admitted by a cowardly surrender that force was law, that treason was constitutional, and fraud honorable, would have deserved and received the contempt of all civilized nations, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... the man, "is found in this: it is so deep a sin to kill; it is so easy a thing to die—for what is death? The ignorant dread it because they do not analyze it; their lack of thoughtfulness makes them cowardly; for death is going out of bondage into liberty. He who passes through the dark gate finds himself, when he has passed, standing in the cloudless sunshine. In dying, the sorrowful become glad; the small become greater; ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... come down here to support the case of a poor man who is I think being trampled on by this do-nothing legislator. But I am bound to say that the lord in his kind is very much better than the poor man in his. Such a wretched, squalid, lying, cowardly creature I did not think that even England could produce. And yet the man has a property in land on which he ought to be able to live in humble comfort. I feel sure that I have leagued myself with a rascal, whereas I believe the lord, in spite of his ignorance ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... and Mary would go round to have tea with her sister and him. How often she went I don't know, but I followed her one day, and as I broke in at the door Fairbairn got away over the back garden wall, like the cowardly skunk that he was. I swore to my wife that I would kill her if I found her in his company again, and I led her back with me, sobbing and trembling, and as white as a piece of paper. There was no trace of love between us any longer. I could see that she hated me and feared ...
— The Adventure of the Cardboard Box • Arthur Conan Doyle
... rejected. Returning in a bad temper he meets Robin and cuffs him soundly, a correction which Robin does not take in the heroic manner. Marion runs to rescue him, and the Knight threatens to carry her off—which Robin, even though his friends have come up, is too cowardly to prevent. She, however, is constant and escapes; the piece finishing by a long and rather tedious festival of the clowns. Its drawbacks are obvious, and are those natural to an experiment which has no patterns before it; but the figure of Marion is exceedingly ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... and nobility. The doctrine that in a democracy the government must exactly express the numerical preponderance in the social synthesis, and that, if this happens to be ignorant, mannerless and corrupt, then the government must be after the same fashion, is a low and a cowardly doctrine. Government should be better than the majority; better than the minority if this has advantage over the other. It should be of the best that man can compass, resting above him as in some sort an ideal; the visible expression of his better self, and the better self of the ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... looking as we stood there under the star-light drawn up over the whole field, like a spectral host. Was there a rebel ambuscade over yonder in the woods, watching for us to take up our unsuspecting march toward Carlisle in order to swoop down upon us unawares? A cowardly suggestion, but still one which occurred very naturally to raw troops thrust in this way into what, for aught they knew to the contrary, was the very front of danger. This was the first feeling; but soon we grew calmer ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... be made to feel it's cowardly to use a nom de plume if you want to. It isn't likely to do any harm, and it may save you ...
— The Writer, Volume VI, April 1892. - A Monthly Magazine to Interest and Help All Literary Workers • Various
... be a number of men who would fain set themselves to the accumulation of wealth as the sole object of their lives. Necessarily, that class of men is an uneducated class, inferior in intellect, and, more or less, cowardly. It is physically impossible for a well-educated, intellectual, or brave man to make money the chief object of his thoughts; just as it is for him to make his dinner the principal object of them. All healthy people like their dinners, but their dinner is not the main object of their lives. So ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... number of standing advertisements in the family newspapers, in which feticide is warranted safe and secret. It is not the poor only who take advantage of such nefarious opportunities; but the rich shamelessly patronize these professional and cowardly murderers of defenseless infancy. Madame Restell, who recently died by her own hand in New York, left a fortune of a million dollars, which she had ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... the terrier began to prick up his ears, and, in dog language, he told his big friend that the enemy was approaching. They waited quietly till he was near them, and then they both sprang upon the cowardly fellow, gave him a good drubbing, and sent him off with his ...
— True Stories about Cats and Dogs • Eliza Lee Follen
... in the black catalogue of crime, most horrible among the fiendish deeds of all the dreadful centuries, was the St. Bartholomew Massacre. The world still recalls with shuddering horror the scenes of that most cowardly and cruel onslaught. The king of France, urged on by Romish priests and prelates, lent his sanction to the dreadful work. A bell, tolling at dead of night, was a signal for the slaughter. Protestants by thousands, sleeping quietly in their homes, ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... volunteers was arranged, the greatest fun started among the four thousand prisoners. They would make all kinds of humorous remarks about the deserter volunteers. When one would step out, "You are welcome to him; he is as cowardly as any of your hirelings. There goes another; we are glad to get rid of him, for he never was any good," etc. About thirty volunteered and were removed from their fellows. Then he called for three hundred volunteers who wished ...
— The Southern Soldier Boy - A Thousand Shots for the Confederacy • James Carson Elliott
... of the brutal inhumanity of these cowardly ruffians," he added, speaking of the guards; "they will not allow me to approach her! I had planned an open attack upon them some leagues from Paris; having secured, as I thought, the aid of four men, who for a considerable sum hired me their services. The traitors, however, ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... punishments inflicted by the civil magistrate, and even hastens to bless the banners and baptize the deadly weapons of the warrior. Meekness, which endures injury without resentment, is regarded as the sign of a servile and cowardly spirit, and is the subject of ridicule and contempt. No Christian society exists in which a Peter would be freely pardoned his offense; the best that could be hoped would be the infliction of humiliating penance, and a reluctant reinstatement in the apostleship after ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... Yet is it not that I conclude. We must seeke to mortifie our flesh in vs, and to cast the world out of vs: but to cast our selues out of the world is in no sort permitted vs. The Christian ought willingly to depart out of this life but not cowardly to runne away. The Christian is ordained by God to fight therein: and cannot leaue his place without incurring reproch and infamie. But if it please the grand Captaine to recall him, let him take the retrait in good ...
— A Discourse of Life and Death, by Mornay; and Antonius by Garnier • Philippe de Mornay
... honestly from that trouble! But how? It is just that trouble from which there is no honest escape,—unless a man may honestly break his word. He had engaged himself to her so much that, simply to ignore her would be cowardly as well as false. There was but one thing that he could do, but one step that he could take, by which his security and his self-respect might both be maintained. He would tell her the exact truth, and put it to her whether, ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... he said, "that I submit to your cowardly treatment because I am afraid of you. When that Lion leaves, I'll teach you a lesson ...
— The AEsop for Children - With pictures by Milo Winter • AEsop
... anticipated, and as little deserved, the cowardly and scoundrel treatment that was in store for him upon the publication of his second composition, the "Endymion." It was in the interval of the two productions that he had moved from the Poultry, and had taken a lodging ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... glorious reign of my anniversary? Where is the villain that dares to say it is not? Then that is a settled question. I hear no contradiction. Who dares contradict? I hear no reply. Who is afraid of the King of Babylon? If ye know of such an one, bring the cowardly dog to me, and I will take off his head—Ha! ha! ha! Old Jeremiah! Where is he? Ah, I'll soon put him out of the way. Can there be any danger while the King of Babylon is fighting ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones
... Croppo who got away?" I asked. "Yes. He could not get his cowardly men to stand on ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... quarter having, with their Carboceer at their head, retreated early in the action, it being, as they afterwards explained, "against their Fetish to fight on a Monday," and thus created in the remainder of the body apprehensions of weakness. This cowardly conduct of the Danes compelled the centre to fall back, and abandon all the advantages their valour had obtained, a movement which immediately exposed them to a galling fire from the enemy, who now rushed onwards in immense numbers to crush the retiring troops. At this important crisis ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... cent, you cowardly hound!" he roared. "Not one cent shall you have; do you hear? I thank God that I am here to stop you robbing these, your mother and sister." Mrs. Malling tried to interfere, but he waved her back. ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... In what manner had the Chief Commissary of Police been already apprised of this affair? The whole thing was, of course, a swift and vengeful blow dealt to me by that cowardly Rochez. But how, in the name of thunder, had he got to work so quickly? But, of course, there was no time now for reflection. The gruff voice was going on more peremptorily ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... are but fourteen, beside myself, who are fit for duty. The others, including Captain Le Mesurier, have either been killed outright or severely wounded in the murder-trap which that dastardly transport of yours set for us. It was a base, cowardly act of theirs to permit us to approach them within biscuit-toss, and then ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... to say we are out to put down warfare and militarism, and all the time to encourage in our own lives, and in our Church and Empire Leagues and other institutions, the most sordid and selfish commercialism—which itself is in essence a warfare, only a warfare of a far meaner and more cowardly kind than that which is signalized by the shock of troops or the rage of rifles ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... your throat any more than you can make a horse drink by leading him to the trough. Now look here, boy, with all your faults you are no coward; haven't you the pluck to get to know yourself and stop being a shirker? Think what that means! A fellow never to be trusted, a lazy, good-for-nothing, cowardly loafer. Remember, if you don't work, you are taking your father's money under false pretences, which is only another word for dishonesty. Think about what I've said; turn over a page and start a new chapter. You can ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... cornered. What he hoped, what he expected, was to make his escape and get back before any one learned of the charges. That hope was frustrated. In his wrath and perplexity he resorted to the invariable device of the cowardly and the low. He must divert their sympathy for Ray into distrust of him, and before he had fully considered his words they were spoken,—crafty, ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... passionately. 'Must I keep reminding you what she has done to me? Is a woman that will behave in that way likely to be innocent? Is her husband to be kept in the dark about her, deceived, cheated? I can't understand you. If you are too cowardly to do your plain duty—Hugh, how am I talking? You make me forget myself. But you know that it's impossible to spare your friend. It wouldn't be just to him. Here's a form; ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... caitiff and captive, another pair of doublets, have quite different meanings from each other. Both come from the Latin word captivus, "captive," the one indirectly and the other directly. Caitiff, which is not a word used now except occasionally in poetry, means a "base, cowardly person;" but captive has, of course, the original ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... her, shake her out of the cowardly refuge of sleep, and resume the wrangle that had ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... but none of them with the brilliance of the story-teller himself. The wilderness picture—with the cowardly horse sitting in the mud—was again before his eyes; and none of the hardship of the journey could cost him his joy in it. Bill Bronson was no longer just a dim form on the twilight hilltop. The lamplight showed ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... field-hands living in the south but have, at some time or other, witnessed the barbarities used at a negro execution, sudden death by pistol or bowie knife being far preferable to the brutal sneers and indignities heaped upon the victim by the cowardly assassins ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... wife had not always been on the best of terms, although his sudden death had driven her nigh frantic, Godwin, relying on certain previous expressions of affection for himself by Mrs. Reveley, proposed within a month after her husband's death, and begged her to set aside prejudices and cowardly ceremonies and be his. As in the previous case, a second and a third lengthy letter, full of subtle reasoning, were ineffectual, and did not even bring about an interview till December 3rd, when Godwin and Mrs. Reveley met, in ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... unharmed. Jeremiah was a hero. He shrank from nothing. He faced his king and countrymen with dauntless bravery, and the result was he suffered no harm, but came through the siege of Jerusalem without a hair being injured. Zedekiah, the cowardly king, was always afraid to obey God and be true, and the result was that he at last met the most cruel punishment that was ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... her lover be untrue. Plutina had never a doubt as to the faith of the absent one. A natural jealousy sometimes leaped in her bosom, at thought of him exposed to the wiles of women whom she suspected of all wantonness. But she had no cowardly thought that the fairest and most cunning of them could oust her from the shrine of Zeke's heart. Her great grief lay in the failure of any word from the traveler. The days became weeks; almost a month had gone since he held her in his arms, and still no message came. This was, ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... no royal state could be permitted her, in token of which he commanded her servants to remove the canopy over her chair. They all flatly refused to touch it, and the women began to cry "Out upon him," for being cowardly enough to insult their mistress, and she calmly said, "Sir, you may do as you please. My royal state comes from God, and is not yours to give or take away. I shall die a Queen, whatever you may do by such law as robbers in a forest might use with a ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was afraid that he meant at last to use that "pull" he had hinted at on the hill; and I had an intuitive shrinking from the idea of his doing that. This open defiance was fine and upright. The other attitude suggested to my mind the conception of something cowardly, a little base and underhand. He looked, I admit, the picture of sturdy virtue as he stood there challenging his late master to permit this test of old Jervaise's attitude, but the prize at stake was so inestimably ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... Maurice cried out: "Captain Traverse of the Sabrina, my dear! Here, Frarnie, Frarnie! none of your airs and graces! Come and give your sweetheart an honest kiss!" And Andrew, doubting if the minister were not behind the door and he should not find himself married out of hand, irresolute, cowardly, too weak to give up the Sabrina and that sweet new title just ringing in his ears, was pushed along by Mr. Maurice's foolish, hearty hand till he found himself bending over Frarnie with his arm around her waist, his lips ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... she had spent a most miserable morning. Why was it to be the last ride? She had not cared to go out. Though the papers had suppressed all details of the cowardly assassination, the glare of publicity had been focussed too keenly on her for comfort by that explosion of the old frontiersman in the court room. She had remained in all morning watching the motley crowds of a frontier town surge past the hotel windows down the dusty hot main street, with ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... sorrow and ignominy which your father is bound to feel when this thing becomes public, as it certainly must if a murder has been done. The only way in which you can atone for your error is to go back and face the consequences with him—do not throw it all upon him; that would be cowardly." ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a discontented spectator of these proceedings. The governor was as overbearing as ever, the Burgesses were overawed, the plans for reform were set aside, the Indian war was mismanaged. He must have been disgusted that the Burgesses were too cowardly to vote down a resolution requesting the governor not to resign. The Assembly did not prove "answerable to our expectations", he said later, for which he thought they should be censured. So, telling Berkeley that his wife was ill, he got permission to visit her. No sooner had he gone than ...
— Bacon's Rebellion, 1676 • Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker
... They thought, as nearly as I can recollect, that there were three good reasons against this mode of obtaining honey: first, I should be likely to get pretty badly stung; secondly, the act would be a very mean and cowardly piece of mischief; and, thirdly, I should ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... transacting business and the folly of the bureaucracy. They waited till the whole army was once more united in Libya, and then endeavoured to curtail the pay promised to the men. Of course a mutiny broke out among the troops, and the hesitating and cowardly demeanour of the authorities showed the mutineers what they might dare. Most of them were natives of the districts ruled by, or dependent on, Carthage; they knew the feelings which had been provoked throughout these districts by the slaughter decreed by the government ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... deer was not greatly hurt by the cowardly hunter. John and the Hermit nursed her tenderly, and so great was their knowledge of healing balms that she was soon nibbling the grass about their dooryard, as sprightly as ever, save for a ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... Cross does not constitute a staff officer. My only perceptible qualification for the post offered is my crocky condition. The brains of the Army should surely be made up not of long pedigrees and gallant cripples, but of genius fit to cope with that of the German High Command. A cowardly criminal with a capacity for intrigue would probably be a greater acquisition than that of the most gallant officer who ever ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... blood, but also as the relative of the Marquise, Henry had ever shown a favour which he little merited. Such an adversary the monarch could, however, afford to despise, for he well knew the Count to be more dangerous as a friend than as an enemy; his cowardly dread of danger constantly impelling him, at the merest prospect of peril, to betray others in order to save himself; while his cunning, his gratuitous and unmanly cruelty, and the unblushing perfidy which recalled with only too much vividness the character of his father, ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... talk such wicked folly as that," said Inez Catheron, her strong, steady eyes fixed upon his face, "I have no more to say. You did your duty once: you acted like a hero, like a martyr—it seems a pity to spoil it all by such cowardly rant as this." ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... deal of difference," I said. "He is old and good; and you are young, and I wish you were as good as Darry. And then he can't help himself without perhaps losing his place, no matter how you insult him. I think it is cowardly." ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... note had never been written by the girl whose signature it bore, that it had been dictated by a man who sought to lure him to a spot where it would be an easy matter to put a bullet in him in safe, cowardly fashion. Suppose that he went, that he entered Pollard's place, and at such an hour? Pollard, himself, could kill him, admit the deed and claim that he was but protecting his own premises. Any one of the Bedloe boys could shoot ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... sound different somehow, from what they did when we were sitting around the cheery camp-fire, listening to stories told by the guides," Thad admitted. "But then, wolves as a rule are cowardly brutes. They may do a heap of howling, but they seldom show any bravery. Only when in packs are they feared by hunters, away up in the frozen-up parts ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... shattered! The burden of all these disillusions, all these disgusts and disappointments, is too heavy to bear any longer. I must get away from it all before my health and intellect are completely shattered. I have always thought suicide a cowardly death for an Anarchist. Before taking leave of life it is his duty to strike a final blow at Society and I, at least, mean to strike it. Here the moment is in every way ripe. Ever since the explosion in Madrid, eight months ago, the Anarchists have ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... to sensual excess and then crept back miserably to search for some spiritual flagellation. Above all, it was restless, as some one presses round a dark room searching for the lock of the door, restless and lonely, cowardly and selfish, but searching and sensitive and even faithful, faithful to something or to some one ... pursued also by something or some one. A figure to whom this world offered only opportunities for sin and failure and defeat, but a figure to whom this world was the merest ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... hundred feet. The puma, or maneless American lion, has an immense range, both in latitude and altitude, being found from Oregon to the Straits of Magellan, and nearly up to the limit of eternal snow. It is as cowardly as the jaguar of the lowlands is ferocious. It is a very silent animal, uttering no cry even when wounded. Its flesh, which is very white, and remarkably like veal in taste, is eaten in Patagonia. Squirrels, hares, bats (a small ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... my work or finish me," thought Caesar, walking about his room. "That poor old woman is worthy of compassion; that is undeniable. She believes her son is a good boy, and he really is a low, cowardly ruffian. I ought not to pay any attention to this plea, but insist on their condemning that miserable wretch to death. But I haven't any more energy; I haven't any more strength. I can feel that I am going to yield; the mother's grief ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... might'. He recalls the fact that Saturn himself was not the first ruler, but received his kingdom from his parents, the earth and sky, and he prophesies that progress will continue in the overthrow of Jove by a yet brighter and better order. Enceladus is, however, furious at what he considers a cowardly acceptance of their fate, and urges his brethren ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... became a strict and binding necessity. May I, by this national vengeance, indicate to all upright and loyal consciences where the true danger lies, and save our vilified and calumniated societies from the imminent danger that threatens them! May I, in short, spread terror among the cowardly and wicked, and courage and faith among the good! Speeches and writings lead ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - KARL-LUDWIG SAND—1819 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... ding, dong, ding! Pip! Pip! Pip! One hundred pounds of clay reward for Pip; five feet high—looks cowardly—quickest known by that! Ding, dong, ding! Who's seen ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... hounds has been severely criticised by many writers and I was among them. I believed it a cowardly business, and that was why, if I chased bears with dogs, I wanted to chase the kind that could not be treed. But like many another I did not know what I was writing about. I did not shoot a bear out of a tree and I would not do so, except ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... least able to say in that day,—Lord, I am no hero. I have been careless, cowardly, sometimes all but mutinous. Punishment I have deserved, I deny it not. But a traitor I have never been; a deserter I have never been. I have tried to fight on Thy side in Thy battle against evil. I have tried to do the duty which lay nearest me; and to leave whatever ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... he exclaimed, turning to Petra. "What right had that blockhead to insult him? In this place every boss has a right to attack his neighbour if he doesn't do as all the others wish. What a cowardly gang!" ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... late," he cried. "We say a man saves his soul by it—his soul! We are a base, cowardly lot. Our own souls are saved—yes! And we hug ourselves and are comforted. But what of the thing we have hurt—for no man ever lost his soul unless he lost it by the wound he gave another—by inflicting in some other ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... hole, and before he could stop the cowardly guide found himself over the brink and struggling in the muddy water. His cries for help were piercing, but as Mr. Bell and the boys were busy, and as they knew that the Mexican was in no actual peril, they left ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... thing to worship with his family. It involved nothing that hurt her conscience, and it prevented many disputes which would probably have begun in some small household disarrangement, and bred only dislike and religious offense. Her Methodism had neither been cowardly nor demonstrative, but had been made most conscious to all by her sweet complaisance ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... unprofitable, and dangerous, and if any one holds his State founded upon mercenary armes, he shall never be quiet, nor secure, because they are never well united, ambitious, and without discipline, treacherous, among their friends stour, among their enemies cowardly; they have no fear of God, nor keep any faith with men; and so long only defer they the doing of mischief, till the enemy comes to assul thee; and in time of peace thou art despoyled by them, in war by thy enemies: the reason hereof ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... self-respect and the respect of one's fellow men; and therefore, the best way in which to train a man to be brave is to cultivate his self-respect and a desire to have the respect of his fellow men; and to foster the idea that he will lose both if he acts in a cowardly way. ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... the storm and certainly contracting pneumonia, I walked boldly into the library to investigate the causes of the very extraordinary incident. You may rest well assured, however, that I took care to go armed, fortifying myself with a stout stick, with a long, ugly steel blade concealed within it—a cowardly weapon, by-the-way, which I permit to rest in my house merely because it forms a part of a collection of weapons acquired through the failure of a comic paper to which I had contributed several articles. The editor, when the crash came, sent ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... excuse," goes on Mr. Robert, "for the sneaking, cowardly way in which you left little Sally Slater waiting in her bridal gown, the house full of wedding guests, while you ran off with ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... only portion. Squeers was jealous of the influence which his man had so soon acquired, and his family hated him, and Smike paid for both. Nicholas saw it, and ground his teeth at every repetition of the savage and cowardly attack. ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... consider the love of a strong man. And you were right, Helen. But, dear, it was for me a bitter, bitter lesson. I went from you, ashamed to look men in the face. I felt myself guilty—a pitifully weak and cowardly thing, with no right to exist. In my humiliation, I ran from all who knew me—I came out here to escape from the life that had made me what I was—that had robbed me of my manhood. And here, by chance, in the contests at the celebration in Prescott, I saw a man—a cowboy—who ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... I have been lying at the gate of death, smitten down with a sore sickness. It seems that the long exposure and weariness of my journey to the Peak threw me into a fever: but of this I should soon have recovered, were it not for my head, which I fear will never be wholly right again. That cowardly blow upon Malabar Hill has made a sad wreck of me; twice, when I seemed in a fair way to recovery, has my mind entirely given way. Mr. Eversleigh, indeed, assures me that my life has more than once been despaired of—and then what would have ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the way. I can show you my through tickets —I've kept them all. I have not will enough to run away from you! I am struggling. I am struggling horribly; but what the devil am I good for if I have no backbone, if I am weak, cowardly! I can't struggle with Nature! Do you understand? I cannot! I run away from here, and she holds on to me and pulls ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... and there I am. Lace lasts forever, and nothing is lost on trimmings. Lack of sense, lack of sense—" she waved her beaded bag in the air—"is what's the matter with the world. Women are slaves of custom; their most despairing quality is their cowardly devotion to the usual and their sheepy following of silly fashions. Woman's vanity and man's pampering of it are the cause of more trouble in most homes than fires and pestilence. Man is to blame for it. Through the ages he's been woman's dictator, and being ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... tragedy in Euripides, He is a melodramatist, but not according to the modern acceptation. His plays might end either happily or the reverse. A deity conveniently brought in, the arrival of a messenger, however unexpectedly, together with a liberal allowance for a cowardly revenge upon the vanquished—these are the Euripidean elements for giving a tragic end to a play. Nay, so great is the prodigality of slaughter throughout his dramas, that we can but imagine morbid cruelty to have formed a considerable ingredient in the disposition of Euripides. Even his pathos ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... it might be five years of his youth in state prison; that it might be five years of sorrow and shame for his mother and sister; that it might be an everlasting stain on the name of his dead father—my friend. He talked of killing himself: I told him he was a cowardly fool. He asked me to give him up to the authorities: I told him I intended to take the law in my own hands and give him another chance; and then he broke down. I transferred him that very day, without giving him time to communicate with ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... often given his Master pain and trouble through his impulsive ways. But the culmination of it all came on the night of the betrayal, when, in the hall of the high priest's palace, Peter denied being a disciple of Jesus, denied even knowing him. While for the third time the base and cowardly words were on his lips, Jesus turned and looked upon his faithless disciple with a look of grieved love, and then Peter remembered the forewarning the Master had given him. His heart was broken with ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... very circumspect, and have often been compelled to give her pain by avoiding many of her dearest friends when I have encountered them in public places, because of their complexion. I feel mean and cowardly whilst I'm doing it; but it is necessary—I can't be white and coloured at the same time; the two don't mingle, and I must consequently be one or the other. My education, habits, and ideas, all unfit me for associating with the latter; and I live in constant dread that something ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... of Falmouth, Lord Muskerry, and Mr. Boyle, were killed by one shot at his side, and covered him all over with their brains and gore. And it is not likely, that, in a pursuit, where even persons of inferior station, and of the most cowardly disposition, acquire courage, a commander should feel his spirits to flag ana should turn from the back of an enemy, whose face he had not been afraid ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... know what the outcome of this movement will be. The only settled policy of government is inertia. The House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations, I believe, proposes to abolish the appropriation for the Court, which looks like a cowardly way to get at the thing, but perhaps it is most effective. However, I really doubt if they will have the nerve to do this. It is a mighty critical year, I think, in our history. It looks to me as if the reactionaries were going to get ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... Hand, Mr. Wardlaw's clerk. And, oh, Mr. Burt, that wretched creature came and confessed the truth. It was he who forged the note, out of sport, and for a bet, and then was too cowardly to own it." ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... the best policy on the morrow of the catastrophe of 1870, when one single indiscretion might have set Europe aflame. But after forty-four years, and under entirely altered conditions, an ostrich policy of reticence, a cowardly policy of mental reservation, cannot be the best means of ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... passion on the other. Vainly he strove to find some middle ground. Gradually, as his brain grew calm, the various courses of action which had at first suggested themselves to his mind appeared weak and cowardly, and the only course open to him was that ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... word "CROATAN" inscribed on the bark of a tree. It was the name of an island further down the coast; and had White gone thither, he might even yet have found the lost. But he was a man unfitted in all respects to live in that age and take part in its enterprise. He was a soft, feeble, cowardly and unfaithful creature, yet vain and ambitious, and eager to share the fame of men immeasurably larger and worthier than he. He could draw pictures, but he could not do deeds; and now, after having deserted those to ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... them. People would die, too, while Leo was talking and singing and laughing; for the Archer and the Scorpion and the Crab and the other Houses were as busy as ever. Sometimes the crowd broke, and were frightened, and Leo strove to keep them steady by telling them that this was cowardly; and sometimes they mocked at the Houses that were killing them, and Leo explained that this was even more ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... Edith. Then she told herself that to hold her tongue at the present moment would be cowardly. "Florian, father, has misbehaved himself, and has gone away cross. I would leave him, if I ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... vessels at sight without warning, killing the crews and passengers, murdering both French and British and Belgians, as well as Dutchmen and people of other nationalities. Mon Dieu! they are beasts these Germans. They are cowardly bullies. That Kaiser will surely rue the day that he ever commenced this war, and will most certainly regret the frightfulness which he has taught his subjects to show to the people of ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... unteachable of all animals: their capacity never reaching higher than to draw or carry burdens. Yet I am of opinion, this defect arises chiefly from a perverse, restive disposition; for they are cunning, malicious, treacherous, and revengeful. They are strong and hardy, but of a cowardly spirit, and, by consequence, insolent, abject, and cruel. It is observed, that the red haired of both sexes are more libidinous and mischievous than the rest, whom yet they much exceed ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... of the clean-limbed grace and almost feminine beauty ("ladyfaced," Melville had called him once) of this "long lad of nineteen" who came a-wooing her, had soon discovered, in matrimony, his vain, debauched, shiftless, and cowardly nature. She had married him in July of 1565, and by Michaelmas she had come to know him for just a lovely husk of a man, empty of heart or brain; and the knowledge ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... And it is this, perhaps, that makes us feel his courage—not a self-courage, but a sympathetic one—courageous even to tenderness. It is the open courage of a kind heart, of not forcing opinions—a thing much needed when the cowardly, underhanded courage of the fanatic would FORCE opinion. It is the courage of believing in freedom, per se, rather than of trying to force everyone to SEE that you believe in it—the courage of the willingness ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... the same way," agreed Walter, "but it would be cowardly to go now and leave the Seminoles to ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... instrument of chastisement never before needed in his own house. He took me to another room, and said, "Child, it will pain me more to punish you thus, than any blows I can inflict will pain you; but I must do it; you have told a lie—a dreadful sin, and a base, mean, cowardly action. If I let you grow up a liar, you will reproach me for it one day; if I now spared the rod, I should hate the child." I took the punishment in a most extraordinary spirit: I wished every stroke had been a stab; I wept because the pain was ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... sturdiest. Those with good bank accounts and a disinclination to take any bodily or gastronomic risks, the young idler who stands on the street corner ogling girls and the girls who are always in the street to be ogled, the flighty-minded, the irresponsible, the tramp, the selfish, and the cowardly, are bound to be in the van of flight from any sudden disaster and to make the most of the generous sympathy of those who ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... gates to him. In 330 he overran Susa and took that city, Persepolis, and Pasargada, which contained the tomb of Cyrus. In 329 he directed his course northward, entered Ecbatana, and extended his conquests to the coasts of the Caspian, punished Bessus, the cowardly assassin of Darius, penetrated into Scythia, and subdued ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... of his cowardly "braves" had stolen the paleface's kettles. The chief denied the theft. My father, allowing all his weapons to be plainly seen, again demanded the return of his kettles, and said if they were not returned by the next morning ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... cowardly ruffians; save our wounded comrades," shouted Carlton, as, with a vigorous thrust he sent his weapon deep into the chest of his dusky opponent, placing him at once and forever hors de combat. Imitating the dashing ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... like it. I don't hev no love fer a train robber, fer all I ever come in contact with wuz a bunch o' cowardly murderers, who fight like rats when they're cornered, an' kill innercent express messengers fer amoosement er devilment. But if Uncle Sammy sez so, an' needs my help, he's got it ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... abuse and condemnation followed the introduction of torpedo warfare. All countries and all peoples pronounced it treacherous and cowardly, and the English press was particularly loud in its denunciations. Yet the torpedo had won its place in the armaments of nations; and to-day we see all the nations of Europe vieing with each other in the invention and construction ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... speak of her," said the Doctor, "in the open air, and among the throng of people; not for fright, like yon cowardly dog Anster, but because I would give no occasion for a fray, having no leisure to look to stabs, slashes, and broken bones. Men call the old hag a prophetess—I do scarce believe she could foretell when a brood of chickens will chip the shell—Men say ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... who had a chance, dozed off. Hen didn't have any chance; his cowardly soul wasn't made for sleep when there was any ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... longer are we to endure this?' cried Barton. 'Must we stand here and suffer ourselves to be murdered by these cowardly attacks? Let us shoot a couple of them, and make a rush ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... had been left in his charge the only manly thing to do, he argued, was to go directly to Mr. Crowninshield and himself acquaint him with the direful tidings. It would be cowardly to shunt this wretched task off on somebody else. It was his duty and his alone. Nevertheless, as he stood for a moment summoning his courage, he would have given all he possessed to escape the ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... subjugator of all the semi-divine personages worshipped by the Hellenes,—a being of irresistible force, and especially beloved by Zeus, yet condemned constantly to labour for others and to obey the commands of a worthless and cowardly persecutor. His recompense is reserved to the close of his career, when his afflicting trials are brought to a close: he is then admitted to the godhead, and receives in marriage Hebe."—Grote, vol. ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... was splendidly played—if he had not been uneasily apprehensive that he might be asked to sing after it. And while on some accounts he would have been glad of the opportunity to "have it over," he felt a cowardly sense of relief when the violinist came forward for the next number. There had been enthusiastic applause at the north end of the room, and more or less clapping of hands at the south end, but not enough to impel the ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... care. It's weak, it's cowardly, but it's so. And yet I want to face the situation—I'm trying to get you to face it, to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... whose heroic deeds were confined to cutting down defenceless men, and to forcing and disembowelling unhappy women; and yet I have seen this wretched fellow termed by French journals (Carlist of course) the young, the heroic general. Infamy on the cowardly assassin! The shabbiest corporal of Napoleon would have laughed at his generalship, and half a battalion of Austrian grenadiers would have driven him and his rabble ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... Review,' too, in a peculiarly venomous article, compared the relative positions of Greville and Reeve with those of Bolingbroke and Mallet, as painted by Dr. Johnson. Bolingbroke, he had said, was a cowardly blackguard, who loaded a gun which he was afraid to fire off himself, and left a shilling to a beggarly Scotchman to pull the trigger after his death. The inference was inevitable; and though Reeve was neither a Scotchman nor a beggar, he unquestionably felt the sting, coming, as it ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... killing. The pursuit of those charged with crime shows that all people like the chase when the emotions are thoroughly aroused. Under certain impulses, communities gloat over hangings and commend judges and juries because they have the courage to hang, when, in fact, they were too cowardly not to hang and when their reason did not approve the verdict and judgment. Men who do not kill often wish others might die and are pleased and happy when they do die. We approve of death when it is the right ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... your miserable Jeromes and Augustines and Cyrils brought in the abominable meannesses and cruelties of the Jewish Old Testament, and stamped out the sane and lovely Greek elements in the Church, that Christians became the poor, whining, cowardly egotists they are, troubling about their little tin-pot souls, and scaring themselves in their churches by ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... to every relation. It makes no difference how many friends I have and what content I can find in conversing with each, if there be one to whom I am not equal. If I have shrunk unequal from one contest, the joy I find in all the rest becomes mean and cowardly. I should hate myself, if then I made ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... environments, and always catching at the moment as it flew, he had not to fight with the timidities and irritations of a nervous temperament. His cheery courtesy was only disturbed when he became conscious of some sentiment which appeared to him mean or cowardly. On such occasions, not perhaps infrequent, his face looked as if his heart were physically fuming, and since his shell of stoicism was never quite melted by this heat, a very peculiar expression was the result, a sort of calm, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... cry was loosed the pent-up wrath of hundreds of American sailors who resented the cowardly death of their comrades. It bespoke the terrible vengeance that was about to be dealt out to the defenders of a ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... principal obligation of a bishop was to defend the deposit of doctrine and faith which had been confided to him, and, if threatened by any great potentate, to remonstrate with respect and submission, to the end that he might not be a participator in crime by a cowardly condescension. God had constituted bishops as the pastors and guards of the flock, and he tells us, that we are not to be cowards in the presence of the greatest potentates on earth, but, if necessary, we must shed our blood, and lay down ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... peter after longe goenge to scole/ axed wether men shuld forgeue .vij. tymes/ thynkinge [that] .viij. tymes had bene to moch. And at [the] last soper Peter wold have died with christe/ but yet within fewe howres after/ he denied hym/ both cowardly & shamefully. And after [the] same maner/ though he had so longe herd that noman might auenge him selfe/ but rather turne [the] other cheke to/ then to smyte agayne/ yet when Christ was in takinge/ peter axed whether it were lawfull to smyte with [the] swerde/ and taried none answere/ but layed ...
— The prophete Ionas with an introduccion • William Tyndale
... un-Lutheran spirit and the false principles and doctrines manifested and defended by the opponents. In so far as divine truth was defended and error opposed, these controversies were truly wars to end war, and to establish real peace and true unity within our Church. A cowardly surrender to the indifferentistic spirit, the unionistic policy, the false principles, and the erroneous doctrines of the Interimists would have been tantamount to a complete transformation of our Church and a total ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... other people which made it difficult for her to understand or tolerate the little artificialities of society, or the trivial weaknesses of her own sex. Women to whom she had shown special kindness—and they were many—maintained an attitude of grateful admiration in her presence, and of cowardly silence in her absence when she ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... the objects of royal vengeance; if he were detained in prison, the public tranquillity would be disturbed by a succession of plots in his favour. In private assassination there was something base and cowardly from which the majority revolted; but to bring him to public justice, was to act openly and boldly; it was to proclaim their confidence in the goodness of their cause; to give to the world a splendid proof ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... with new apprehension, the eyes of Snake le Vasquez glittered with new hope. He faced his steely eyed opponent for an instant only, then with a snarl like that of an angry beast sprang upon him. Benson met the cowardly attack with the flash of a powerful fist, and the outlaw fell to the floor with a hoarse cry of rage and pain. But he was quickly upon his feet again, muttering curses, and again he attacked his grim-faced antagonist. Quick blows rained upon his defenseless ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... would be justified in joining in the attack, with what remained of his band. "If I were to get directly in their rear they would, on finding their retreat cut off, fight so fiercely that I might be overpowered. Even the most cowardly troops will fight, under those circumstances. Therefore, while threatening their line of retreat, I still leave it open to them. It is a maxim in war, you know, always to leave a bridge open for a ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... upon his back,—an excellent recipe in such cases, but somewhat difficult in a heavy sea. Others said that there was a doomed man on board, and proposed to cast lots till they found him out, and cast him into the sea, as a sacrifice to Aegir the wave-god. But Hereward scouted that as unmanly and cowardly, and sang,— ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... usefulness, however, in this Department lies in prevention, The knowledge that the oppressed poor have in us a friend able to speak for them will often prevent the injustice which cowardly and avaricious persons might otherwise inflict, and the same considerations may induce them to accord without compulsion the right of the ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... Carry on! Things never were looming so black. But show that you haven't a cowardly streak, And though you're unlucky you never are weak. Carry on! Carry on! Brace up for another attack. It's looking like hell, but—you never can tell: Carry on, ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... cause has moved you to slay my sister, the most excellent woman that ever lived, and this in so cowardly a fashion that under pretence of sleeping with her you have hanged and strangled her ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... necessary to the defense of society, and the Church applauds the punishments inflicted by the civil magistrate, and even hastens to bless the banners and baptize the deadly weapons of the warrior. Meekness, which endures injury without resentment, is regarded as the sign of a servile and cowardly spirit, and is the subject of ridicule and contempt. No Christian society exists in which a Peter would be freely pardoned his offense; the best that could be hoped would be the infliction of humiliating ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... that all your fears are groundless, my dear Emma, and that you need not have any alarm about a skulking, cowardly wolf," ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... out his hand to her, and when she unseeingly accorded him hers gave it what he thought an awkward, cowardly pressure and left her. There are no graceful ways for leaving Circe's isle, Alston thought, as he hurried away, unless you have at least worn the hog's skin briefly and given her a showing of legitimate ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... afternoon, about four o'clock, Madame Gilbert called again upon me. When her card was brought in I trembled, and for a moment had in mind to deny myself to her. But I thrust away the cowardly thought. Be brave, said I to myself, advance boldly, attack the terrible delightful siren, say "no" to her once, and you will be saved! She entered, and though my knees shuddered as I rose to greet her, my mien was bold and ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... spite of the orders of Maitre Lucas, he would economize on the nag's food, only giving him half measure. Hatred grew in his confused, childlike mind, the hatred of a stingy, mean, fierce, brutal and cowardly peasant. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... world has its counterpart among men, then these were the wolves, jackals and hyenas of the race at once cowardly and fierce—audaciously bold when the power of numbers was on their side, and cowardly when confronted with resolution by anything ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... I know your patience well: That same cowardly giant-like ox-beef hath devoured many a gentleman of your house: I promise you your kindred hath made my eyes water ere now. I desire you of more acquaintance, good ...
— A Midsummer Night's Dream • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... whom she loved so loyally, and for whom she died, spoiled all her plans. He, with his political advisers, prevented her from driving the English quite out of France. These favorites were lazy, comfortable, cowardly, disbelieving; in their hearts they hated the Maid, who put them to so much trouble. Charles, to tell the truth, never really believed in her; he never quite trusted her; he never led a charge by her side; and in the end, he shamefully deserted her, and left the ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... can come into the heart in the narrowest creed, so long as the holder of that creed is at his true point of growth and not trying to stifle God's gift of ever-advancing truth by cowardly want of trust, or fear of being worse off in the end, by being absolutely honest to himself and his own convictions in ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... herself, without undressing, on the bed, and lay sleepless, in the darkened room. The vision of Richard, as she had seen him, his face within the circle of light, the night before, tortured her incessantly. It seemed somehow so wrong, so cowardly of her, to lie here in comfort doing nothing to aid him who, in name at least, was united to her forever, and in love was more dear to her than her own soul. She could not sleep, and presently rose and sat at the window, her elbows resting upon the sill, gazing hungrily out at the little ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... to the girl, gave her a touch of courage sufficient for cowardly protestations. It seemed to relieve the tension drawn by the other woman's torment. It was more like the abuse that was familiar to her. A ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... both Asia and Africa," Max explained. "I'm not sure of any being met with in Europe, though there are plenty of wolves. They feed on carrion mostly, and are cowardly by nature; but all the same, they're nasty looking brutes, and always snarling the worst you ever heard. It makes your flesh creep just to hear them growl, worse than the ugly tempered wildcat ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... those who really served. Frank Wilkeson's Recollections of a Private Soldier in the Army of the Potomac is a true voice from the ranks when he explains "how the resort to volunteering, the unprincipled dodge of cowardly politicians, ground up the choicest seed-corn of the nation; how it consumed the young, the patriotic, the intelligent, the generous, and the brave; and how it wasted the best moral, social, and political elements of the Republic, leaving the cowards, shirkers, egotists, and moneymakers ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... not convene the people into an assembly, for fear lest they should force him to act against his judgement; and many of his enemies threatened and accursed him for doing as he did, and many made songs and lampoons upon him, which were sung about the town to his disgrace, reproaching him with the cowardly exercise of his office of general, and the tame abandonment of everything to the ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... prompting was to close her ears against knowledge that might only make her mental burden heavier. But it had become so thoroughly her habit to reject her impulsive choice, and to obey passively the guidance of outward claims, that, reproving herself for allowing her presentiments to make her cowardly and selfish, she ended by compliance, and ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... judge of the acts of the rulers of earth," replied he gloomily. "Perhaps the deeds which in ordinary people would be called cowardly, may with them be great and noble. I know nothing about it; but I know what my beloved empress once said to me. She was then young and energetic, and she had not forgotten the oath she had taken when the archbishop crowned her at St. ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... FitzGerald was in the most awful funk and talked of writing his proposal, but I choked him off, and told him that it was a cowardly way of putting his fate to the touch—the telephone would have been better—and that he must face the ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... end of the continent to the other, without opposition from the cowardly Yankees," said ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... that's so, Gib. This feller did us an awful dirty trick, but at the same time there ain't a cowardly bone in his hull carcass. I ain't forgot how he stood to the guns that day off the Coronados when we was ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... and calm. He seated himself at the end of an alley leading into one of the larger streets. His brain was clear to-night, keen, intent, mastering. It would not start back, cowardly, from any hellish temptation, but meet it face to face. Therefore the great temptation of his life came to him veiled by no sophistry, but bold, defiant, owning its own vile name, trusting to one bold blow ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... and shy as a nun is she; One weak chirp is her only note. Braggart, and prince of braggarts is he, Pouring boasts from his little throat: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink, Never was I afraid of man; Catch me, cowardly knaves, if you can, ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... belts, bands, and long robes. The whole was a strange mixture of tragedy and farce; and the group of natives were not far removed in appearance from the supernumeraries that a Turkish tragedy might have brought together in the green-room of a theatre. A set of more cowardly-looking miscreants I never saw. They appeared ready either to trade with us, pick our pockets, or cut our throats, as an opportunity ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... the proprietor of this regenerated journal submitted without complaint and without reply to the cowardly insinuations with which a venal press insults all citizens who, strong in their convictions, refuse to pass beneath the Caudine Forks of power. Long enough has a man, who has already given proofs of devotion and ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... here would be a political volcano if revolutions were made with the mouth; so long as it requires blood and strength they will obey anyone who has courage to command and, if necessary, to draw the sword; they would be dangerous only under cowardly governments. ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... you can bet it won't be a accident. However, it ain't for me to go 'round impugnin' the motives of no mountain lion; partic'lar when the entire tribe is strangers to me complete. But still a love of trooth compels me to concede that if mountain lions ain't cowardly, they're shore cautious a lot. Cattle an' calves they passes up as too bellicose, an' none of 'em ever faces any anamile more warlike than a baby colt or mebby a half-grown deer. I'm ridin' along the Caliente once when I hears a crashin' in the bushes on the bluff above—two hundred ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... to remain here," she said; but alas! her voices were regarded no longer by the King, whose foolish head and cowardly heart were under other influences than that of the Maid, to whom he had promised so much such ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... said Edith, "you're perfectly sweet, the way you take my scoldings. It's cowardly of me, when I'm lying here safe, and you can't scold back again. But I wouldn't do it if ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... devils, to scatter his thoughts and over-cloud his conscience, assailing him at the gates of the cowardly and sin-corrupted flesh: and, praying God timidly to forgive him his weakness, he crawled up on to the bed and, wrapping the blankets closely about him, covered his face again with his hands. He had sinned. He had sinned so deeply against heaven and before God that he was not ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... out behind the barn! There would seem to be some show of justice in a hand-to-hand encounter, where the best man wins, but modern warfare has not even the faintest glimmering of fair play. The exploding shell blows to pieces the strong, the brave, the daring, just as readily as it does the cowardly, weak, or base. ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... morgen of crop lands that could be irrigated in the dry season, well fenced in with walls built of loose stones. But no one would make a bid for it, for there were few English about, and most of the farmers were trekking, so at last he parted with it to a cowardly fellow, a Boer by birth, but, as I believe, a spy of the British Government, who gave him fifty pounds and an old waggon in exchange for the place and everything upon it except the stock ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... absent from Corsica for many years. When he returns she finds that his love for Lydia, the daughter of the Count de Nevers, has driven thoughts of revenge from his mind. She succeeds, however, in rousing him to action, and one day he kills both the murderers, though wounded himself by a cowardly ambush. He has to take to the mountains for refuge, and there he remains, tended by Lydia and Colomba, until news of his pardon comes. It is too late, however, to save the life of Colomba, who has been mortally wounded in endeavouring to divert the soldiers ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... pointed her finger at me, singling me out to the idle crowd which surrounded her; it was she, it was those lips so many times pressed to mine, it was that body, that soul of my life, my flesh and my blood, it was from that source the injury came; yes, the last of all, the most cowardly and the most bitter, the pitiless laugh that spits in the face ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... in this case at least, to defend Shakespeare. There is no need to make much of the fact that Johnson attributes the speech to Macbeth. The essence of the crime is that it is the treacherous and cowardly crime of an assassin, committed on a guest while he sleeps. Implements of war are out of place here; it is the very crime for a knife, and Lady Macbeth shows her sense of this when she uses the word. Again, the darkness that she invokes is not the solemn shadow of night, but the ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... the money and the land divided up in a new deal. You two don't. You don't believe in anything except getting a living without working for it—and trying to make honest men do the same. You, Jacobi, are only a fool—a cowardly fool at that—who hides behind the coat-tails of ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... to hear any explanations," rejoined Rachel, "and you are not bound to give me any; but I repeat what I said. It is cowardly." ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... "such a selfish being? Have you forgotten his attempting to jump into the boat, at the hazard of oversetting it, and of drowning my father and Godfrey, who went out to save him—and when my father warned him—and promised to return for him—selfish, cowardly creature!" ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... not brave, but cowardly. I was so afraid you would be prejudiced against me; and you must know that I have taken a great fancy to you. I am a very strange creature: I always like or dislike a person at first sight, and I never—perhaps I should say I ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Plato derives woman and all the animals from man, by successive degradations. Cowardly or unjust men are born again as women. Light, airy, and superficial men, who carried their minds aloft without the use of reason, are the materials for making birds, the hair being transmuted into feathers and wings. From men wholly without philosophy, who never looked heavenward, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... galleries had been driven for mines. At all times soldiers, even the bravest, have found it difficult to withstand the panic brought about by the explosion of mines, and by that underground warfare in which bravery and strength were alike unavailing, and where the bravest as well as the most cowardly were liable at any moment to be blown into the air, or smothered underground. The dangers of this service, at all times great; were immensely aggravated by the extraordinary pains taken by those who had constructed ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... collected, which the sentries continued slowly forcing back, although they were then fifty yards from the wire. As the news spread the crowd became larger, but remained ominously quiet, the two Germans not seeming to realise the danger of their position. It is the worst feeling I know to watch a cowardly display of this sort and yet be able to do absolutely nothing. It only needed a spark to set everything in a blaze, which must have ended in the guard being turned out for machine-gun practice. Meanwhile, the news reached some Britishers ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... since I've thought on th' matter to-day I've thought we han all on us been more like cowards in attacking the poor like ourselves; them as has none to help, but mun choose between vitriol and starvation. I say we're more cowardly in doing that than in leaving them alone. No! what I would do is this. Have at the masters!" Again he shouted, "Have at the masters!" He spoke lower; all ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... different somehow, from what they did when we were sitting around the cheery camp-fire, listening to stories told by the guides," Thad admitted. "But then, wolves as a rule are cowardly brutes. They may do a heap of howling, but they seldom show any bravery. Only when in packs are they feared by hunters, away up in the frozen-up parts of ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... that it might be five years of sorrow and shame for his mother and sister; that it might be an everlasting stain on the name of his dead father—my friend. He talked of killing himself: I told him he was a cowardly fool. He asked me to give him up to the authorities: I told him I intended to take the law in my own hands and give him another chance; and then he broke down. I transferred him that very day, without giving him time to communicate ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... acceptance, it is dangerous to act upon them? that for an individual here and there to go out of the common course is only to make himself notorious, a stranger or a bore to his friends? Were such statements true, they would still be cowardly. We should be faithful to our convictions of what is due to truth and manhood and self-respect, be the consequences what they may. Because a few are so, the world moves. The general voice always comes in as a chorus to a few particular voices. As for friends who cannot appreciate independence ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... retaliates on "Mr. Southey and his 'pious preface'" in many words; but when it comes to the point, ignores the charge of having "published a lascivious book," and endeavours by counter-charges to divert the odium and to cover his adversary with shame and confusion. "Mr. S.," he says, "with a cowardly ferocity, exults over the anticipated 'death-bed repentance' of the objects of his dislike; and indulges himself in a pleasant 'Vision of Judgment,' in prose as well as verse, full of impious impudence.... I am not ignorant," he adds, "of Mr. Southey's ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... to the last degree in some matters, just as he is cowardly in others. I would give something to know if ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... you were the most cowardly girl on earth—afraid of your own shadow—and always in hysterics over something, so that she and Ela were sorry you came, dreading that you ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... call it very cowardly to want to get out of your difficulties in that way. Think what you inflict on other people. You men, you're all selfish. The burden is ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... you could be so mean and cowardly,' she cried. 'You ought to be ashamed to talk about people behind their backs, when—when—besides, if he's what you say, how did it happen that you engaged me on ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... erroneously. Travelers crossing the plains were always on the defensive, and ever ready to commence war on any Indian who came within the radius of their firearms. When I was a boy I read in my reader: "Lo, the cowardly Indian." The picture above this sentence was that of an Indian in war paint, holding his bow and arrow, ready to shoot a white man ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... wher (as I said afore) thei haue in all handi worckes a passing subtiltie of witte, yet in the knowledge of heauenly thinges, thei are altogether to learne: that is to saie, the are vtterly ignoraunt. A cowardly people and very feareful of death. Yet exercise thei a maner of warre, but that thei handle rather by witte, and pollicie, then by strength and hardinesse. In their fighte thei use a kinde of shaftes, and certaine other weapons of ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... measure as they believed the Governor would have stamina enough to select commissioners who would enforce the prohibitory law. This board was abolished at the special session of the Legislature in 1897, as it was made a scapegoat for city and county officers who were too cowardly or too unfriendly to enforce the liquor ordinances, and it did not effect the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... battle—they will not face the unknown, the terrible, the harpies that come at night, borne on the hurricane wings of panic. Unhappily, De Sylva and his bodyguard were the messengers of their own disaster. The cowardly genius at Pesqueira had planned a surprise. He would not lead it, of course, but in Dom Miguel Barraca he found an eager substitute. It was a coup of the Napoleonic order; an infantry attack along the entire front of the Liberationist position cloaked the launching against the center of a formidable ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... our neighbour to light his candle at our lamp. To do so will enrich him, without making us a jot the poorer. We should indeed respect the right of private judgment, and scarcely in any case allow our will to supersede his will in his own proper province. But we should on no account suffer any cowardly fears for ourselves, to induce us to withhold from him any assistance that our wider information or our sounder judgment might ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... strangely silent here, the few bird-cries that reached me coming from a long distance. I had flattered myself that the voice had become to some extent intelligible to me: its outburst of anger caused no doubt by my cowardly flight after the Indian; then its recovered friendliness, which had induced me to return; and finally its desire to be followed. Now that it had led me to this place of shadow and profound silence ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... excellent recipe in such cases, but somewhat difficult in a heavy sea. Others said that there was a doomed man on board, and proposed to cast lots till they found him out, and cast him into the sea, as a sacrifice to Aegir the wave-god. But Hereward scouted that as unmanly and cowardly, and sang,— ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... bullies he was cowardly, and the unexpected resistance and the pain of the blow quite overcame his fortitude, and he cried ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... Francis Effendi, is one of the most powerful writers of modern Syria. The paper of the Sitt Mariana is long, and the introduction is most ornate and flowery. She writes on the condition of woman among the Arabs, and refutes an ancient Arab slander against women that they are cowardly and avaricious, because they will not fight, and carefully hoard the household stores. ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... it, how we often are reminded of funny things even in the midst of danger? Bill, a cripple and unable to move about with the agility needed to fend off a cowardly attack by this miserable piker, showed the stuff he was made of when he burst out laughing, for he was reminded by this threat of that old yarn about a softy's threatening to break the umbrella of his rival found in the vestibule of his girl's ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... the situation for me, and although I am, I hope, neither more selfish nor more cowardly than other men, I could not help doing that. Here was I, the chief and head of his Majesty's garrison at Corgarff Castle, standing defence on the door-step of a Jacobite household. Why was I there at all? What was I there to accomplish? How was I to ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... the floor, as though to intercept the word; but Louis continued, apparently unmoved by his anger—'Those poor little children. If misfortune and injury be no disgrace to the injured, I call it cowardly pride to fly off by night to hide oneself, instead of living in your own ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... brother's bicycle on the porch and pedaled off after Dick. She knew exactly the way he would take. From Migwan's house he would go up Adams to Locust Street and from there to ——th Avenue, and keep on going until he came to the dark tunnel. Sahwah nearly burst with indignation when she thought of Joe's cowardly conduct. He was calmly getting Abraham to do the dirty work for him, so he would never be suspected of having anything to do with it in case Dick recognized Abraham. She could see how the thing would work out. Abraham lived just the other side ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... it was. His behaviour might seem cowardly, but—to say nothing of the loathsomeness of a wrestle with Slimy—he knew very well that any struggle, or a shout for help, would mean his death. He hesitated, felt ashamed, but looked at Slimy's red eye, and lay down. In taking the position indicated, he noticed ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... second attack. The Parthians, carrying the head of Publius fixed on a spear, rode close up to the Romans, and, displaying it insultingly, asked who were his parents and family, for it was not decent to suppose that so noble and brave a youth was the son of so cowardly and mean a man as Crassus. The sight of this broke and unstrung the spirit of the Romans more than all the rest of their dangers; and it did not fill them with a spirit for revenge, as one might have supposed, ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... recognised the sound, but, uncanny as it was, he wondered why the howl of a wolf should disturb a lot of Indians who must know, even better than he, the cowardly nature of the beast, and that there was no chance of his ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... them!' since, as I think in mine heart, many men and women trust so mickle in me in this case, that I would not, for the saving of my life, do thus to them. For if I thus should do, full many men and women would, as they might full truly, say that 'I had falsely and cowardly forsaken the Truth, and slandered shamefully the Word of GOD!' For if I consented to you, to do hereafter your will, for bonchief and mischief that may befall to me in this life, I deem in my conscience that I were worthy ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... starts, aside) From my father-in-law. (reads to himself) "Have learnt from local registrar your cowardly conduct in eloping with my daughter—am on my way to ...
— Oh! Susannah! - A Farcical Comedy in Three Acts • Mark Ambient
... willing, then, wretched Dick—are you willing, false friend—that this glory should belong to another? Must I then be untrue to my past history; recoil before obstacles that are not serious; requite with cowardly hesitation what both the English Government and the Royal Society of London ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... why he gave this advice, but he knew very well that if they were to remain quiet for an instant the cowardly sharks would make a dart at them, and that only by splashing vigorously could they keep off the monsters. He himself did so with his legs and one hand, while he placed the other under his friend's back. ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... abashed at the remembrance of my wild flights, and had a laugh at the thought of myself floundering around in the marshes and fields a mile from home, when Harriet, no doubt, had breakfast waiting for me! What absurd, contradictory, inconsistent, cowardly creatures we ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... She despised us still. And I would have staked my last dollar, or, better, my hopes of escaping from Farallone, that as man and wife she and the groom would never live together again. I felt terribly sorry for the groom. He had, as had I, been utterly inefficient, helpless, babyish, and cowardly—yet the odds against us had seemed overwhelming. But now as we journeyed down the river, and the distance between us and Farallone grew more, I kept thinking of men whom I had known; men physically weaker than the groom and I, who, had Farallone ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... and they both fell silent before the common thought. In the practice of his profession he had done this for her, in obedience to the cowardly rules of that profession. He had saved life—animation—to this mass of corruption. Except for his skill, this waste being would have gone its way quietly to death, thereby purifying all life by that little. He added at last ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... and headstrong, but unfortunately Hector was inflexible and wilful: when once he had made up his mind upon any point, he had too good an opinion of his own judgment to give it up. At last, he declared his intention, rather than remain a slave to such cowardly fears as he now deemed them, to go forth boldly, and endeavour to ascertain what the Indians were about, how many there were of them, and what real danger was to be apprehended ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... him, not because he had taken food from the woman—she had bestowed it with the friendly and unpatronizing graciousness of poor women—but because he had been too cowardly to play the mouth-organ. When Mother had begun to walk wearily and Father had convinced himself that he wouldn't be afraid to play, next chance he had, they approached a crude road-house, merely a roadside saloon, with carriage-sheds, a beer sign, and one lone rusty iron outdoor ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... to do it himself, assisted by one of the party. When he returned to camp with the horses, he found that his men had killed McIntire. At this act of cruelty to a prisoner, he was exceedingly indignant; declaring that it was a cowardly act to kill a man when tied and a prisoner. The conduct of Tecumseh in this engagement, and in the events of the following morning, is creditable alike to his courage and humanity. Resolutely brave in battle, his arm was never uplifted against a prisoner, nor did he suffer violence to be inflicted ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... Judge Nelson said, "to inform you three that this court cannot convict you of the cowardly murder of that learned and honorable old man, Silas Cumshaw, nor can you be brought to trial in any other court on New Texas again for that dastardly crime. Here are your weapons, which must be returned to you. Sort them out yourselves, because I won't dirty my fingers on them. And ...
— Lone Star Planet • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... have wondered, why no letter has come from me. What you wrote at your return, had in it such a strain of cowardly caution as gave me no pleasure. I could not well do what you wished; I had no need to vex you with a refusal. I have seen Mr. ——[596], and as to him have set all right, without any inconvenience, so far as I know, to you. Mrs. Thrale had forgot ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... so scared," the younger lad replied, with the characteristic desire of a boy not to be thought cowardly, "I just got to wondering, ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... right. Something in what you say, I suppose. Consider you treacherous worm and contemptible, spineless cowardly custard, but have booked Spink-Bottle. Stay where you are, then, and I hope you get run over by an omnibus. ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... together, Owen County boys are as brave as a warrior; single-handed and alone, they are as cowardly as ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... initials "X.X."; but it had plainly been floated for the first time into the business at a period of great depression some six years ago. The name of a distinguished royal personage had been mentioned by rumor in connection with this sum. "The cowardly desperado"—such, I remember, was the editorial expression—was supposed to have escaped with a large part of this mysterious fund still ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... soldiers happened to elbow a lieutenant the other day, and the chap ran him through with his sword, and no one called him to account. The officers jostle and browbeat any civilian who will submit to it, and then try to get him into a duel, but I believe they're a cowardly lot at bottom. No man of real courage would bluster all ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... whither he had retreated. He was stigmatized by Napoleon as a "sort of robber, who had covered himself with crimes in the last Prussian campaign." In repeated public utterances the Emperor of Austria was characterized as cowardly, thankless, and perjured, while the Viennese were addressed as "good people, abandoned and widowed." The last acts of their flying rulers had been murder and arson; "like Medea, they had with their own hands ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... Lady L——, who had been spoken to, I believe, by Lady Gertrude, were both on his side—[I shall have this man utterly ruined for a husband among you]— When there were three to one, it would have looked cowardly to yield, you know. I was brave. But it being proposed for Sunday, and that being at a little distance, it was not doubted but I would comply. So the night passed off, with prayings, hopings, and a little mutteration. [Allow me that word, or find me a better.] ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... into the background and thought over the work he had in hand. It was of great importance and dangerous. When war came he might be shot at any time if his doings were discovered. He was accustomed to dangers; many times had he risked his life; bad though he was, there was nothing cowardly about him. He had some contempt for death, although he dearly loved life. There are bad men who are brave, and such was he—brave, that is, in so far as he cared little for risks so long as ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... once on my feet my voice shook and my mind wandered. I hated the thought of people behind me looking at me. I rarely summoned the courage to turn my head either one way or the other. I vastly admired the "bravery" of the small, 15-year-old boy who recited so calmly and so well. I was too cowardly to play foot-ball and base-ball, and I dreaded even my favorite tennis because the spectators put me in a state of scared self-consciousness. Knowing my own condition, I was yet so blind to it most of the time, and such a Jekyll-and-Hyde, that ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the citizen Tallien. Either in eight days I am free and the wife of my deliverer, the noble and brave Tallien, who will have freed the world from the monster Robespierre, or else, in eight days, I mount the scaffold; and my last thought will be a curse for the cowardly, heartless man who has not had the courage to risk his life for her he loved, and who suffers for his sake, for his sake meets death—who had not the mind to consider that with daring deed he must ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... done homage, and who remained hard-hearted in order that he might go on praising her and making her famous, and he gives her a hint that he will try the effect of a little blame. Sannazaro, in two magnificent sonnets, threatens Alfonso of Naples with eternal obscurity on account of his cowardly flight before Charles VIII. Angelo Poliziano seriously exhorts (1491) King John of Portugal to think betimes of his immortality in reference to the new discoveries in Africa, and to send him materials to ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... loud and decidedly: "Jeanne, you have no right to make disposition of this life. What you are doing is cowardly and almost criminal; you are sacrificing your child to ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... threatening to cut down any one who again attempted to strike him. Huckstep cursed my awkwardness, and told Harry to put down his hoe and came to him. He refused to do so and swore he would kill the first man who tried to lay hands on him. The cowardly tyrant shrank away from his enraged bondman, and for two weeks Harry was ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... JOHN, a character in Shakespeare's "Henry IV." and the "Merry Wives of Windsor"; a boon companion of Henry, Prince of Wales; a cowardly braggart, of sensual habits and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... told you, is too cowardly to meet my cousin in open fight. Since he got the challenge he has never stuck his nose out of doors without two or three of the duke's guard about him. Therefore we have the right to get at him as we can. We have paid a man in the house to tell of his movements. He is to fare out secretly ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... Herald complains significantly, at a later date, of "the cowardly and hypocritical Socialistic platforms of the two older parties," while Mr. Berger was lately predicting that Senator La Follette would be "told to get out" of the Republican Party. The reformer who was so recently "retrogressive" had now become a ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... tried to discover some refuge or chance for escape; but, as it was an open bit of the road, and a straight way to the lane, she could have no excuse for scrambling over the stone wall and cutting short the distance. However, her second thought scorned the idea of running away in such cowardly fashion, and not having any recent misdemeanor on her ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... repeated, in an indifferent tone. "Oh, Cuthbert is of no consequence: his father always said so. A lame, sickly, cowardly child! If we had had a strong, healthy lad of our own, Mark would not have put Wyvis in Cuthbert's place, but with a boy like Cuthbert, what would you expect him ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... the French Presidency there were those who regarded the act as weak, cowardly, undutiful and otherwise censurable. It seems to me the act, not of a feeble man, but of a strong one—not that of a coward, but that of a gentleman. Indeed, I hardly know where to look in history ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... to whirl on her, shake her out of the cowardly refuge of sleep, and resume the wrangle that had ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... antagonists, who lays out for himself that way of repairing the shortcomings of fortune, who looks to that resource as an aid to his means,—is worse, much worse, than the public robber! He is meaner, more cowardly, and has I think in his bosom less of the feelings of an honest man. And he probably has been educated,—as you have been. He calls himself a gentleman. He should know black from white. It is considered ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... her a little 'blue' ragamuffin, father," said Harry, who ran in looking very angry; "but I have given it to them; they won't insult my sister again. I have given them a thrashing they will remember; a set of cowardly, ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... done, I am conscious, to expose messieurs the sergeants of the watch to the liability of cudgelling beneath this cassock the humerus of a Pythagorean philosopher. But what would you have, my reverend master? 'tis the fault of my ancient jerkin, which abandoned me in cowardly wise, at the beginning of the winter, under the pretext that it was falling into tatters, and that it required repose in the basket of a rag-picker. What is one to do? Civilization has not yet arrived at ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... picturesque comparison as every witty Irish peasant uses in talk, to the delight of himself and his hearers. But the individuality lies deeper than phrases: Falstaff takes his private standard into battle with him. There is nothing more obviously funny than the short paunchy man, let us not say cowardly, but disinclined to action, who finds himself engaged in a fight. Lever has used him a score of times (beginning with Mr. O'Leary in the row at a gambling-hall in Paris), and whether he runs or whether he fights, his efforts to do either are grotesquely laughable. ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... declared,(99) that the Pythia "philippized;" and bade the Athenians and Thebans remember that Pericles and Epaminondas, instead of listening to, and amusing themselves with, the frivolous answers of the oracle, those idle bugbears of the base and cowardly, consulted only reason in the choice ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... assent from two or three sailors standing round, for in those days the use of the knife was almost unknown in England, and was abhorrent to Englishmen, both as being cowardly and unfair, and as being a ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... Panay, chiefly on the villages of Bataan, Domayan, and Mahanlur, and in those of Aclan and Bahay, where they captured many of our Indians, and burned the churches of the visitas. The visitas are usually deserted, and have no houses to defend them; and those Camucones are very cowardly and very different from the Joloans and Mindanaos, who are valiant, and much more so the latter named. The Camucones entered by the river and bar of Batan, which is salt water, where a very grievous jest happened to two or three of their craft. The river of Batan has another river a short distance ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various
... what I supposed you would say, Mr. Kenton, but I must say I didn't expect it of you. I think it's cowardly." ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... never understand myself about that. I'm always in a gloomy mood or else indifferent. I'm timid, without self-confidence; I have a cowardly conscience; I never can adapt myself to life, or become its master. Some people talk nonsense or cheat, and even so enjoy life, while I consciously do good, and feel nothing but uneasiness or complete indifference. I explain all that, ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... no matter at what price. To these motives of condescending kindness there had come to be joined of late a sentiment of pity and indignation in the face of the tenacity with which the unfortunate man was being persecuted, the cowardly and merciless war so ably managed, that public opinion, always credulous and with neck outstretched to see which way the wind is blowing, was beginning to be seriously influenced. One must do to Mora the justice of admitting ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... spirits are as much stronger than our bodies as they are nobler and more permanent? The historic muse appears in her loftiest character as the nurse of Hope. It is her appropriate praise that her records enable the magnanimous to silence the selfish and cowardly by appealing to actual events for the information of these truths which they themselves first learned from the surer ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... necessary to speak here against the practical morality of Old Testament saints; the very names of Lot, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, Samuel, David, etc., bring before the mind's eye a list of crimes so foul, so cowardly, so bloody, that no enumeration of them can be needed. Of them, we may fairly say ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... under the feathers and were warm, and when the sealskin dwarfs tried to take the feathers away, the grouse and his friends flew in their faces with flappings and screams, and drove the dwarfs back. They are a cowardly folk. ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... and any number of persons may ride in the cab without extra charge. Nothing exceeds my scorn for the English taxi-driver who demands another ninepence for an additional passenger, even though only a child—nothing except my scorn for the cowardly official ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... observation, "Where much is attempted, something is done." Firmness, both in sufferance and exertion, is a character I would wish to be thought to possess: and have always despised the whining yelp of complaint, and the cowardly, feeble resolve. ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... about you I don't know," she repeated, leisurely inspecting him. "Shall I tell you something? I am not afraid to; I am not a bit cowardly ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... got shot in the thigh, by whom or how I do not now remember, but he was a different sort of man from the boy just mentioned. We knew him to be quite a brave, nervy man in action, having been in one of our fighting scrapes with rustlers; but as a patient he showed a most cowardly disposition, developing a ferocious temper, rejecting medical advice, cursing everybody who came around, so that he lay for months at our charge, until we really got to wish that he would carry out his threat of self-destruction. He did not, but he was crippled for life and did ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... been anything in the experience of which I need feel ashamed, I should have felt it necessary to let him know it before we were married. I thought it all over then, and decided it was wiser not to bring the matter up. It was weak and cowardly not to do it, I can see that now, but at the time I thought I was acting ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... to the girl, it left one thought sharp, alive, in the exhausted quiet of her brain: a cowardly dread of the trial of the day, when she would see him again. Was the old struggle of years before coming back? Was it all to go over again? She was worn out. She had been quiet in these two years: what had gone before she never looked back upon; but it made her thankful for even this stupid quiet. ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... into a "Party of Order." The next thing to do was to remove the bourgeois republicans who still held the seats in the National Assembly. As brutally as these pure republicans had abused their own physical power against the people, so cowardly, low-spirited, disheartened, broken, powerless did they yield, now when the issue was the maintenance of their own republicanism and their own legislative rights against the Executive power and the royalists I need not here narrate the shameful history ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... hunting set in England. A gay young lord wins in love against his selfish and cowardly brother ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... beast about three feet long, with a short stubbed tail, and might easily be mistaken for a large wild-cat. Its fur, which is short and very thick, and of a beautiful silver gray, is much used for muffs, tippets, and fur trimming. The lynx is a cowardly beast, and seldom attacks anything larger than hares, squirrels, and birds. It will sometimes rob a sheep-fold, as the gentle and pretty lambs have no means of defense ...
— Harper's Young People, January 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... seated opposite Jacinth, and as she got to her last words, some consciousness made her glance across the table at her elder niece. In an instant she saw her mistake, and recalled her own vague warnings to the girls to avoid allusions to Lady Myrtle's family history. But she was far from cowardly, and essentially candid. And in her mind there had been no mingling of any selfish motive; nothing but the desire to prevent any possible annoyance to their kind old friend had prompted her few words of advice to the girls. And now the strange look—a look almost of restrained ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... false shame whispered that it would be cowardly to give way, and that doubtless the fulfillment of the pretended witch's former prediction ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... been torn by doubt. At the back of his mind he had always known he was going. Had he not written saying he was going, and wasn't that enough? And he thought for a moment of what her opinion of him would be if he stayed in Garranard. In a cowardly moment he hoped that something would happen to save him from the ultimate decision, and ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... were any such cowardly males among them, but they could not prove it. The men were growing more and more silent, partly through anxiety and partly with grim confidence that no way could be found to force this issue of suffrage on the voters of the county. The women remained maliciously silent on this point. ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... are recurrent evermore. Christianity itself has been an uninterrupted series of supernatural events. The physical miracles of Christ are nothing to the spiritual miracles which Christianity is always working. Bad men are made good, weak men strong, cowardly men brave, ignorant and foolish men wise, by a supernatural influence given in answer to prayer, poured down into hearts and minds which open themselves to receive it. The conversion of a bad man by the power of Christianity is a miracle. The power of faith, hope, ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... bidding, Senorito," said Paco, "were it only for old acquaintance sake. But let that cowardly Asturian beware how he meets me in the mountains. I have missed him once, but will answer for not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... a nun is she; One weak chirp is her only note. Braggart and prince of braggarts is he, Pouring boasts from his little throat: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink; Never was I afraid of man; Catch me, cowardly knaves, if you can! ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... gravely. "When you've basely deceived and tricked somebody it's cowardly to run away. The straightest thing is to stay with that person and try ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... having attempted murder, and having betrayed his country for money, the devil considered him as his own, and this Mr Vanslyperken did not approve of; for, like many others in this world, he wished to commit every crime, and go to heaven after all. Mr Vanslyperken was superstitious and cowardly, and he did believe that such a thing was possible; and when he canvassed it in his mind he trembled, ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... long for any one. When it was over, the soul of Jurgis was a song, for he had met the enemy and conquered, and felt himself the master of his fate.—So it might be with some monarch of the forest that has vanquished his foes in fair fight, and then falls into some cowardly ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... Allerton looked round for the policeman who occasionally passed that way; but though a lighted car crashed down Madison Avenue there was no one in sight. He might have called in the hope of waking the men upstairs, but that seemed cowardly. Though in a physical encounter with a ruffian like this he could hardly help getting the worst of it—especially in his state of half intoxication—it was the encounter itself that he loathed, even more than the defeat. "Oh, ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... Captain Dalton the conversation she had overheard at the mela. Her father had scoffed at it, and Tommy had treated it with indifference, explaining that all pioneers of progress in India had to put up with opposition, threats, and bluff. The natives of Bengal were too cowardly to risk their necks—didn't she remember her Macaulay? After all, there was really nothing ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... exclaimed the butcher who was now completely crestfallen. "Why, that's the very dog! That's the very dog that came by my shop late last night in the howling storm, and my dog Tiger went at him and tousled him up completely. I never saw such a cowardly cur; he wouldn't show any fight, although he was pretty near as big as a donkey; and there my dog Tiger nearly ate half of him, and dragged the other half about the gutter, till he looked more like an old door-mat than dog; and I thought he must have killed him; and here ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... examination, unfortunately forestalled by his death. All explanations, and all accusations have failed before the severe justice of history and the infallible instinct of the public conscience. The odious burden of a cowardly assassination was constantly weighing upon him who had ordered it. The blood of his victim created round him an abyss that all the efforts of supreme power could ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... having again commenced aggressions on our people, and the Great Spirit having taken pity on me, I took a small party and went against them. I could only find six of them, and their forces being so weak, I thought it would be cowardly to kill them, but took them prisoners and carried them to our Spanish father at St. Louis, gave them up to him and then returned ...
— Autobiography of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, or Black Hawk • Black Hawk
... not one sound, healthy sentiment in the whole of our religious state of being. You frequently hear it said: "Everyone can't be a hypocrite." True enough. But begin, in the middle classes, to deduct hypocrisy, and gross affectation and cowardly dread of Hell, and see ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... personal cowardice and pusillanimity of witnessing fifteen hundred of his devoted adherents cut down, among whom were a great number of the leading gentlemen of the clan, who deserved to fight under a better and less cowardly commander. Among those who fell were Campbell of Auchinbreck, Campbell of Lochnell, his eldest son, and his brother Colin; Macdougall of Rara, and his eldest son, Major Menzies, brother to the Chief of Achattens Parbreck, and the Provost of the Church ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... these animals, would rush at them as far as the lariat would allow, and would either strike at them with his fore feet, or, swinging around quickly, would so vigorously lash out with his hind legs that the cowardly brutes would quickly skulk ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... revolver and threatening to fire, I hold it utter idiocy. I have never tried it, however, so I speak from prejudice which arises from the feeling that there is something cowardly in it. Always have your revolver ready loaded in good order, and have your hand on it when things are getting warm, and in addition have an exceedingly good bowie knife, not a hinge knife, because with a hinge knife you have got to ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... his horse and labored with desperation to rally them. His pains were thrown away. The lansquenets continued their course, and D'Andelot, who scarcely escaped falling into the enemy's hands, probably concurred in the verdict pronounced on them by a contemporary historian, that no more cowardly troops had entered the country in fifty years.[210] It was at this moment that the Duke of Guise, who had with difficulty held his impatient horse in reserve on the Roman Catholic right, gave the ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... Hordeonius Flaccus stood by and watched their 56 treachery. He had not the courage to check the storm or even to rally the waverers and encourage the faithful. Sluggish and cowardly, it was mere indolence that kept him loyal. Four centurions of the Twenty-second legion, Nonius Receptus, Donatius Valens, Romilius Marcellus, and Calpurnius Repentinus, who tried to protect Galba's statues, were swept away by ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... pretend to judge of the acts of the rulers of earth," replied he gloomily. "Perhaps the deeds which in ordinary people would be called cowardly, may with them be great and noble. I know nothing about it; but I know what my beloved empress once said to me. She was then young and energetic, and she had not forgotten the oath she had taken when the archbishop crowned her at St. Stephen's—the oath which bound her to be a faithful ruler over ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
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