"Livered" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not much to tell, but we are to be partners once and for all. See, my beauty. He was a kite-livered captain. There was gold on board. We mutinied and put him and four others—their livers were like his own— in a boat with provisions plenty. Then we sailed for Boston. We never thought the crew of skulkers would reach ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... know, all right," and Curly grinned. "She's pretty, isn't she? But she has no use for me. She prefers a white-livered sucker like you." ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... white man at the bottom of all this trouble," our host had been remarking, one second earlier. "The niggers know too much; and where did they get their rifles? People at Rozenboom's believe some black-livered traitor has been stirring up the Matabele for weeks and weeks. An enemy of Rhodes's, of course, jealous of our advance; a French agent, perhaps; but more likely one of these confounded Transvaal Dutchmen. Depend upon it, ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... the least to dread,—aha, how we two laughed a-good As, stealing round the midden, he came on where I stood With billet poised and raised,—you, ready with the rope,— Ah, but that's past, that's sin repented of, we hope! Men knew us for that same, yet safe and sound stood we! The lily-livered knaves knew too (I've balked a d——) Our keeping the 'Pied Bull' was just a mere pretence: Too slow the pounds make food, drink, lodging, from out the pence! There's not a stoppage to travel has chanced, this ten long year, No break ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... an' agin', which let 'em use their canvas. As for the cutter, she ran before it for New Britain, and brought up at Matupi in Blanche Bay, two hundred miles away, where old Horn knew there was a white settlement of Germans—his own kidney. He was a white-livered old swine, but a good sailor-man—as far as any man who says 'Ja' for ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... Peter. "You, too, Nicolson! Stand back, you white-livered hounds! First one of you lays a hand on me or Daddy Nep gets his head blown off! Damn you, Mosely! don't make me tell you ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... Count," said his companion, "there ain't time for all that perliteness. You leave him to me; I'll talk to him! Now then, you white-livered little airy-sneak, do you ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... coward as well as a fool," he said afterwards in the bosom of his family; "a white-livered fool who hasn't the nerve to look at ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... allow you that advantage. Meet me face to face! Damn you, be a man! Anything that you can gain by my signature, you can gain by my death. Get the best of me, if you can, in a man's fight. Pah!" He spat contemptuously. "You're a coward, Moran, a white-livered coward! You don't dare fight with me on anything like equal terms. I'll get out of here somehow, and when I do—by Heaven, I'll corner you, ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... you up to him. I'll tell him to come in and get you. I'll show him the way in, you white-livered cur!" bullied the cattleman, giving way ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... "If you've been in tow of Butsey, I'll bet you've been paying out all day. Butsey White's a low-down, white-livered cuss, who'd take advantage of a freshman. ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... "you're a-going to cash in. Savvy? You're a-going to hop off. An' first you gotta hear why. 'Tain't for the stuff. Naw! I hooked it off'n you; you hooked it off'n me; now I got it again. That's all square.... No, 'tain't that grudge, you green-livered whelp of a cross-bred, still-born slut! No! It's becuz you laid the heft o' your dirty little finger onto my girlie. ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... already it will gnaw my heart to death; the ghost of that brave fellow—once my dear friend, my rival now, by no fault of his—will rise between her and me, and reproach me with my bloody inheritance. The heart never deceives; I feel it now whispering in my ear: 'Skulking captain, white-livered soldier, that stand behind a parapet while a better man does your work! you assassinate the husband, but the rival conquers you.' There, he puts his hand to his eyes. What shall ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... place; an' he cotched his load, down north, lean seasons or plenty, in a way t' make the graybeards an' boasters blink in every tickle o' the Shore. A fish-killer o' parts he was: no great spectacle on the roads o' harbor, though—a mild, backward, white-livered little man ashore, yieldin' the path t' every dog o' Rickity Tickle. 'I gets my fish in season,' says he, 'an' I got a right t' mind my business between whiles.' But once fair out t' sea, with fish t' be got, an' the season dirty, the devil hisself would ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... to know. "Ze skindler, ze coward what beat his wife. Was evil man." What white-livered ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... commanded. "Take that chair over there, you gangrene-livered skunk. Jump! By God! or I'll make you leak till folks'll think your father was a water hydrant and your mother a sprinkling-cart. You-all move your chair alongside, Guggenhammer; and you-all Dowsett, sit right there, while I just irrelevantly explain the virtues of this here automatic. ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... boot? Can a ROMANOFF stoop to mere cowardly cant? Forbid it traditions of Muscovite pride! An Autocrat's place is the Conqueror's car, But he who that chariot in triumph would ride, Must not earn a name as the White-livered CZAR! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, 13 June 1891 • Various
... rascal; an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, superserviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, ...
— The Tragedy of King Lear • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... STRANGWAY with his eyes—like a bull-dog who sees red] That's for one chake; zee un turn t'other, the white-livered buty! Whu lets another man 'ave 'is wife, an' never the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... wickedness! On the first day of the next term he whispered to me half a word that perhaps he had been wrong. With all a stupid boy's slowness, I said nothing; and he had not the courage to carry reparation further. All that was fifty years ago, and it burns me now as though it were yesterday. What lily-livered curs those boys must have been not to have told the truth!—at any rate as far as I was concerned. I remember their names well, and almost wish ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... "Well, he's a white-livered scoundrel. He's a type of your Northern gentlemen. A Southern man would starve rather than act so pusillanimously. Of course I'm not going to talk of family secrets, or say anything not befitting a high-toned gentleman, but I taught that snob how a man of honor regards his cowardice and ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... anxiety, such as he had never known before, had crept over him; and, what had never before happened to him, his heart beat with fear. "That was just wanting to me," he murmured. "I have become a white-livered coward, whose legs are trembling, and whose heart is throbbing! What am I afraid of, then? Is that wrong which I am about to do? My heart has never acted thus even in the storm of battle. What does ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... one of Lady Dawdley's boys, and hers is the only house where I am allowed to smoke unmolested; but I have never been able to admire Dawdley, a sly, sournois, spiritless, lily-livered fellow, that took his name off all his clubs the year ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... deserted; Shaftesbury, Sturminster, and Sherborne, shared in her ruin; and Swindon became one of the most flourishing places in the kingdom." We cannot think so meanly of our countrymen, as to suppose that they will yield like white-livered cravens, and die without a struggle; and in thus raising the voice of Maga to warn them of their danger, and instruct them how to avoid it, we consider that we are doing the state some service, and pointing out new means profitable employment for the capital of the rich, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... hear it!" cried St. Maur, and half a dozen young bloods without vests, and with shirt-bosoms falling over their waistbands nearly to the knee. "Do let us hear, by all means, what the white-livered fellow has ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... for those words, you white-livered frog-spawn, with a speck in the middle for the black heart of you! You're going? Well, here's the bones of my fist and the toe of my ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... The tyrant was lily-livered; seldom he witnessed what others died under; he intended nothing further then;—many men who faint at sight of blood can probe a soul to its utmost gasp. Now he motioned, and they paused. Then others lifted the woman and held her beside him, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... anyhow," said Mr. Screw, which was not fair to himself, for he was an honest man, acting very properly according to his lights. It was not his fault if Barker deceived him, and if that hot-livered Swede was angry. ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... Mountain cut-throats by shooting down their comrades and leaders, and never offering to hide or fly, Slade showed that he was a man of peerless bravery. No coward would dare that. Many a notorious coward, many a chicken-livered poltroon, coarse, brutal, degraded, has made his dying speech without a quaver in his voice and been swung into eternity with what looked liked the calmest fortitude, and so we are justified in believing, from the low intellect of such a creature, that it was not moral courage that enabled ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... professor," he said, with the utmost apparent sincerity. "Think of the disgrace! It would be in all the papers that Professor Scotch, a white-livered Northerner, after insulting Colonel La Salle Vallier and presenting his card, had taken to his heels in the most cowardly fashion, and had fled from the city without giving the colonel the satisfaction that is due from one gentleman to another. The Northern papers ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... exasperation swept through him at the thought of his own white-livered irresolution. He was about to step forward to face the end of his dilemma when an unlooked-for movement occurred between him ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... "I know I'm white-livered," I said with a species of laugh. "I never crowd and stare when somebody is hurt in the ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... kalkilate what kind of a pardner that 'ar yaller-livered Mayfield would make up on that box, partik'ly ez I heard before we started that he'd requested the kimpany's agent in Sacramento to select a driver ez didn't cuss, smoke, or drink. ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... steps bounded Laramie, and, with a ringing whoop as a prelude, began whistling a clear, musical trill, while 'Pache, growling out, "Dance, dance, ye white-livered coyotes," sent a bullet through the outer edge of the chief ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... a toss, darling," said Dick, sitting with an arm round her. "And the white-livered accomplice is dithering with funk in there." And he thumped the cushion of the partition. "We shall pull up at Todsmoor in a few minutes. Let's compose ourselves. You must be ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... Dolphin. "You're a cock-tail. In your old age you've grown white-livered. I guess, Garstang, you'd better retire, and leave those to carry out the work who don't ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... at her from under his eyebrows. "He's all in, but he's got to make it," he said. "I've been that way myself—and made it. What I can do, a horse can do. Come on, you yella-livered bonehead!" ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... one score for labor. We'll sail into that pair like a ton of brick. Use 'em up! Don't be gentle, or turn faint-hearted! Remember, there's enough of us to swear to a good 'frame-up' if this thing gets into court. Don't be chicken-hearted or white-livered! Line up, ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock
... "Heru taken from the palace by a handful of men and none of you infernal rascals—none of you white-livered abortions lifted a hand to save her—curse on you a thousand times. Out of my way, you churls!" And snatching up coat and hat and sword I rushed furiously down the long, marble stairs just as the short Martian night was giving place to lavender-coloured light of morning. ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... moment the Red Un was possessed for the river and a lifebelt. So were the other three. The signs were responsible. Permitted, a ship's lifebelt was a subterfuge of the cowardly, white-livered skunks who were afraid of a little water; forbidden, a ship's lifebelt took on the qualities of enemy's property—to be reconnoitred, assaulted, captured and turned ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... benefit of the cook I informed him that Scotty was a damned liar; that it was I who had been with him; that he ran like a white-livered cur under fire from his cookhouse and didn't stop until he had reached the wagon lines; that he was there without being relieved and that he would shortly have another ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... in opposition to the will of the majority meant nothing; his voice raised in opposition meant much. For very soon the avowed pacifists and the secret protagonists of Kultur, the blood-eyed anarchists and the lily-livered dissenters, the conscientious objectors and the conscienceless I.W.W. group, saw in him a buttress upon which to stay their cause. The lone wolf wasn't a lone wolf any longer—he had a pack to rally ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... soon find out. You white livered Abolitionist, come out, damn you! we are going to give you a coat of tar and feathers, and your black wench nine-and-thirty. Yes, come down—come down!" shouted several, "or we will ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... rooibaatje," he broke out. "You used not to be like this before. Curse him, the white-livered Englishman! I will be even with him yet; and I tell you what it is, Bessie: you shall marry me, whether you like or no. Look here, do you think I am the sort of man to play with? You go to Wakkerstroom and ask what sort of a man Frank ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... mad," Cullingworth sobbed at last. "He's a nervous, chicken-livered kind of man; and when I look at him he turns the colour of putty. If I pass his shop I usually just drop in and stand and look at him. I never speak, but just look. It paralyses him. Sometimes the shop is full of people; but it is ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... 623; show, the white feather. Adj. coward, cowardly; fearful, shy; timid, timorous; skittish; poor- spirited, spiritless, soft, effeminate. weak-minded; infirm of purpose &c 605; weak-hearted, fainthearted, chickenhearted, henhearted^, lilyhearted, pigeon-hearted; white- livered^, lily-livered, milk-livered^; milksop, smock-faced; unable to say 'boo' to a goose. dastard, dastardly; base, craven, sneaking, dunghill, recreant; unwarlike, unsoldier-like. in face a lion but in heart a deer. unmanned; frightened ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... senior class, and a new junior class has been set on foot which begins its recreational exercises in the service of William II., Got and Allah, at the age of eight. It is all great fun, but those pigeon-livered little boys who are not diverted by it have to go on with their fun all the same, for, needless to say, the Izji is compulsory on all boys. Of course they wear a uniform which is made in Germany and is ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... hellish glory; when she treads under foot the half-hearted goodness, the wordy and windy though sincere abhorrence, which is all that the mild and impotent revolt of Albany can bring to bear against her imperious and dauntless devilhood; when she flaunts before the eyes of her "milk-livered" and "moral fool" the coming banners of France about the ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... chicken-curses and come to the point," urged the junior member of the firm impatiently. "It is no news to me that your brain is diseased and your heart rotten. What is it you want me to do? Calm yourself, you white-livered maniac. I gather that I am in some way to meddle with this mine. If I but had your head for my very own along with the sand in my craw, I'd tell you to go to hell. Having only brains enough to know what ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... once began to twist his head towel around his nose. With feeblest protest Isuke saw him take the torch and disappear into the passage. Soon his voice was heard. "Isuke! Isuke! Is he milk livered? How about the gold and silver? Would Isuke abandon it?" Isuke would not. In a trice he was on hands and knees, to rejoin his master who was roaring with laughter. "Gold and silver may be here," ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... the first. Harry Glen was one of them Wide-Awakes that marched around on pleasant evenings last Fall with oil-cloth capes and kerosene lamps. I told you that those fellows'd be no where when the war they were trying to bring on came. I'm not at all astonished that he showed himself lily-livered when he found the people that he was willing to rob of their property standing ready to fight for their ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... could only hang some one for this! Joe Johnson's the white-livered sneak that would not go. I've hanged a ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... in fourteen days and nights. 'T was luck That he still lived.... And queer how little then He seemed to care that Dick.... perhaps 't was pluck That hardened him—a man among the men— Perhaps.... Yet, only think things out a bit, And he was rabbit-livered, blue with funk! And he'd liked Dick ... and yet when Dick was hit He hadn't turned a hair. The meanest skunk He should have thought would feel it when his mate Was blown to smithereens—Dick, proud as punch, Grinning like sin, and holding up the plate— But he had gone on ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... "...dirty-livered Jew..." striking in the breast, and, as Frankl fell, he gave him one other in the temple, with "Down, down to hell, and sye I sent thee thither"; and to dead O'Hara near he gave one in the cheek, with "Go up, thou bald-head, it is": all in two seconds' space; and he was ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... have no time to talk about such matters now; but eat you shall, or I will have you crammed, as they stuff fat-livered geese! Come, Niger, we must lose no minute. If they attack again, and miss me from the battlements, they will be suspecting something, and will perhaps come prying to the rear.—Have you seen any soldiers, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... the idea of equality with him—the Star of the Morning—one breath of whose nostrils would wither me into nonentity. So I presumed to stand up and face him, who had, in his time, scattered the hosts of heaven! If it were not for those cursed, white-livered things (angels) that stood in the way, he would swoop down and ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... my part, such a white-livered, baby-faced chap as you are would have been better off at your mother's apron strings, than coming so far from ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... that wa'n't mixed was so goldinged black you couldn't tell 'em from niggers. You know how kind o' lily-livered Lawyer Ransom is? Wal, he looked like ol' black Joe; he was the maddest man of the hull bi'lin'. He throwed the book in the fire, and tromped around like a ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... If they've done anything to Mr. Reade, then break the necks of every white-livered rascal ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... the eleventh commandment you white-livered cowards, who think you are lost when there is no leader to put himself at your head? Do you not know the eleventh commandment, saying that he who trusts in God and fights well will overpower his enemies? But you will never overpower your enemies; ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... out, anyhow," said Johnson, addressing his remarks exclusively to Mr. Bates, but his glare exclusively to Mr. Applerod. "I'm going to put this check into the hands of Mr. Chalmers, so Mr. Robert don't get cheated by any yellow-livered snake in the grass!" And he spit out those last violent words with a sudden vehemence which made Mr. Applerod ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... they are, flabby, bony, white-livered, or'nary suckers. Niggers and Injuns won't touch 'em, ony in the ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... into my annoyance when I suddenly find a glass of claret or a brandy-and-water give me a splitting headache the next morning. No mistake about it; drink anything, and there's your headache. Tobacco just as bad for me. If I live through this breach of habit, I shall be a white-livered puppy indeed. Actually I am so made, or so twisted, that I do not like to think of a life without the red wine on the table and the tobacco with its lovely little coal of fire. It doesn't amuse me from a distance. I may find it the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he said tonelessly. "Better do a clean job, you white-livered coward, or I'll see you hang yet ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... 'Milk-livered man, That bear'st a cheek for blows, a HEAD for WRONGS; Who hast not in thy brows an eye discerning Thine honour from thy sufferance; that not know'st, FOOLS do those villains pity, who are punished Before they have done their mischief. ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... said the stranger. "Are your senses playing bo-peep with the ghost of some pigeon-livered coast captain, eh? Come, take another pull at the keg, to clear your head-lights, and tell us a bit of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 286, December 8, 1827 • Various
... let us be henceforth, and comrades to boot!" cried Rick. "Jolly Clerks o' Saint Nicholas to share and share alike—ha? So then 't is accorded. And now what o' yon lily-livered imp? 'T is a sickly youth and I love him not. But he hath a cloak, look'ee—a cloak forsooth and poor Rick's a-cold! Ho, lad—throw me ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... he was saying the same this morning, that we'd better stamp out any upraisings in the start, now that it's likely to be a staying on, 'stead of a visit. When I select a teacher," Jude was following his guest to the outer door, "I ain't going to take up with no white-livered infant. See you to-morrow, ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... answered Duncan with measureless contempt in his tone, "you are a miserable coward, a white-livered wretch, whose life wouldn't be worth saving if it were in danger. Go back to your bed! Go to sleep! or go to hell, damn you, for the ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... with some salt will soothe not amiss The ravening stomach. You ask, how is this? Because for delight, at the best, you must look To yourself, and not to your wealth or your cook [1] Work till you perspire. Of all sauces 'tis best. The man that's with over-indulgence oppressed, White-livered and pursy, can relish no dish, Be it ortolans, oysters, or finest of fish. Still I scarcely can hope, if before you there were A peacock and capon, you would not prefer With the peacock to tickle your palate, you're ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... dare tell, Sir Jasper Kingsland!" cried a high, ringing voice, as a young woman rushed impetuously into the church and up the aisle. "Coward and liar! False, perjured wretch! You are too white-livered a hound even to tell the truth! What should you know of such a wretch as that, forsooth! Double-dyed traitor and dastard! Look me in the face and tell ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... ease Gymnast of that trouble, said Panurge, who wanted to be upon the run; you may have occasion for him here. By this worthy frock of mine, quoth Friar John, thou hast a mind to slip thy neck out of the collar and absent thyself from the fight, thou white-livered son of a dunghill! Upon my virginity thou wilt never come back. Well, there can be no great loss in thee; for thou wouldst do nothing here but howl, bray, weep, and dishearten the good soldiers. I will certainly come back, said Panurge, Friar ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... become quite white-livered," she exclaimed to him with a harsh, derisive laugh. "You were not so a year ago—in ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... cause to rue this day,' roared he, nearly choking in his wrath; 'you dog, you white-livered cur!' but Amys only smiled, and ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... there was quite a meeting of our folks here. My back gate kept a-clicking till sundown. All but Paterson came, Miss Jenkins, and he's less than half a Roscoe, and no Collamer at all. His mother was one of them white-livered Lulls, from Pomfret. He's bound, anyway, to stand by you, because he's getting wages from your uncle. Well, I settled it all then and there, this fair business, I mean, but I told them to wait, for I ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... I have observed these three swashers. I am boy to them all three: but all they three, though they would serve me, could not be man to me; for, indeed, three such antics do not amount to a man. For Bardolph,—he is white-livered, and red-faced; by the means whereof 'a faces it out, but fights not. For Pistol,—he hath a killing tongue, and a quiet sword; by the means whereof 'a breaks words, and keeps whole weapons. For Nym,—he hath heard, that men of a few words are the best men; ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... crime Booth found on whom he could rely. John Surratt was sent northward by his mother on Thursday. Sam Arnold and McLaughlin, each of whom was to kill a cabinet officer, grew pigeon-livered and ran away. Harold true to his partiality, lingered around Booth to the end; Atzerott went so far as to take his knife and pistol to Kirkwood's, where President Johnson was stopping, and hid them under the bed. But either his courage failed, or a trifling accident deranged ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... hours before fancied themselves masters of all the wealth of both Indies may easily be imagined. The Directors, in their fury, lost all self command, and, in their official letters, railed at the betrayers of Scotland, the white-livered deserters. The truth is that those who used these hard words were far more deserving of blame than the wretches whom they had sent to destruction, and whom they now reviled for not staying to be ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... are repeated until they became conventionalized. There is always a very bad and a very good woman, a very generous and noble man and one so bad as to seem a monster. There is the type of the "love-lorn maiden," of "the lily-livered" hero, of the faithful friend, of the poltroon. It is supposed by many that such types repeated in play after play do not mark the highest original power, but rather poverty of invention, weak and shadowy ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... belief that at the worst they merely advanced the day of execution. For had they not killed, and what is quite as bad in the Moro code of ethics, stolen? No punishment following this outrage, the Moros would have looked on the Americans as white-livered, cowardly, pusillanimous, and that first crime would doubtless have been succeeded by raids on the town, and massacres, and feuds, which only a ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... "Bah! You white-livered murderer!" Joe hissed. He well knew it was not wise to give way to his passion; but he could not help it. This beast in human guise, whining for love, maddened him. "Any white woman on earth would die a thousand deaths and burn for a million ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... Dastard, fast and loose, Thou weathercocke of mutabilitie, White-livered Paisant, wilt thou vowe and sweare, Face and make semblance with thy bagpipe othes Of that thou never meanst to execute? Pure cowardice, for feare to cracke thy necke With the huge Caos of thy bodies waight, Hath ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... Destiny; the infinite Future is his vassal; History holds her iron stylus as his scribe; Lachesis awaits his word to close or to suspend her fatal shears;—but the moment his vote is cast, he becomes the serf of circumstance, at the mercy of the white-livered representative's cowardice, or the venal one's itching palm. Our only safety, then, is in the aggregate fidelity to personal rectitude, which may lessen the chances of representative dishonesty, or, at the worst, constitute a public opinion that shall make the whole ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... a curse. "You white-livered clod!" he cried. "Who is running this scheme? You or I? Who delivers the whiskey to the Indians? And who pays you your money? I do the thinking for this outfit. I didn't come down here to ask you to run this consignment. I came here to tell you to do it. This thing of playing ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... yer mother, gel; she was a bad woman." There followed a coarse and vivid description of her badness and the manner of it. "That kinder thing no man can let pass by in his wife. I found her"—again the rude details of his discovery—"an' I found him, an' I let him go fer the white-livered coward he was, but her I killed. I shot her dead after she'd said her prayers an' asked God's mercy on her soul. Then I walked off, but they kotched me an' I was tried. They didn't swing me. Out in them ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... bolted, has he, the white-livered hound!" ejaculated Williams furiously. "Well, he shall not escape us. Take your boats' crews, both of you; give each man a rifle and half a dozen rounds of ball cartridge, and pull ashore again and hunt the cur until you find him, and bring him aboard here to me, dead or alive! I'll ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... "Who's afraid, Black Cat? Only white-livered cowards fear the Sioux! Surely no Mandane brave fears the Sioux—ugh! ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... comin' back," the darky blurted out. "I'm gwineter do de cookin' and de chamber-wo'k. Dere ain't 'nough to eat fo' mo'n two. When dem white-livered, no-count, onery gemmens dat stole Marse George's money git in de chain-gang, whar dey b'longs, den may be we'll hab sumpin' to go to market on, but dat ain't yit; an' don't ye tell Marse George I tol' yer or I'll ha'nt ye like dat witch I done heared 'bout down to Wesley—ha'nt ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... ARR men of honour, we are bound to stick to our word; and, hark ye, you dirty one-eyed scoundrel, if you don't immadiately make way for these leedies, and this lily-livered young jontleman who's crying so, the Meejor here and I will lug out and force you." And so saying, he drew his great sword and made a pass at Mr. Sicklop; which that gentleman avoided, and which caused him and his ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "Let the white-livered cowards have their way," the old sailor said, contemptuously. "Put their captain on the top of them. Now which is ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... second was Dorcas Doolittle, aunt to Jabe Slocum; she didn't know enough to make soap, Dorcas didn't.... Then there was Delia Weeks, from the lower corner.... She didn't live long.... There was some thin' wrong with Delia.... She was one o' the thin-blooded, white-livered kind.... You couldn't get her warm, no matter how hard you tried. ... She'd set over a roarin' fire in the cook-stove even in the prickliest o' the dog-days. ... The mill-folks used to say the Whittens burnt more cut-roun's 'n' stickens 'n any three fam'lies in the ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... "Don't be white-livered, Martin!" sneered Norton. "You may get some cold steel from your own countrymen for uttering such sentiments. My information is all right, it comes from his lordship himself. Washington is too dangerous to leave longer alone; should he find ...
— Then Marched the Brave • Harriet T. Comstock
... dream of apologizing for the three murders he commits, is always apologizing because he has not yet committed a fourth, and finds, to his great bewilderment, that he does not want to commit it. "It cannot be," he says, "but I am pigeon-livered, and lack gall to make oppression bitter; else, ere this, I should have fatted all the region kites with this slave's offal." Really one is tempted to suspect that when Shylock asks "Hates any man the thing he would not kill?" he is expressing the natural ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... and haggard you look. It has told upon you, as it must necessarily tell upon all cowards. Let me note carefully how you look, now; so that I may compare it with your appearance a few hours hence, when you face the muskets of your executioners. Pah! why you are quailing already, you white-livered poltroon; what will ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... each to that loafer, Si Martin, his lazy wife, and their eight badly brought-up children, with instructions to be generous to any additions to said children through matrimony or natural causes; Fanny Wood and that poor, white-livered creature she married, thereby proving her own idiocy if it needed proof; Uncle James's cross-eyed third wife and her two silly daughters; Rebecca's sister's scoundrelly second husband, with his foolish wife and their ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... fear of a poor drownded woman! T'ree more would ha' bin stunned and drownded but for me. Holy saints above! I bes minded to leave ye to fish an' starve—all o' ye save them as has stood to me like men an' them o' me own blood—an' go to another harbor. Ye white-livered pack o' wolf-breed huskies! Ye cowardly, snarlin', treacherous divils. Take yer money. I gives it to ye. Go home an' feed on the good grub I gives to ye an' drink the liquor ye'd never have the wits nor the courage to salve but ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... cowboys, not to speak of the claims he will be staking, and the gold he will be washing out of those parish streams of his. Don't I wish I were going! I am, too, when I can persuade those old iron-livered professors to let me through. However, next year I'm to pass. Mrs. Macgregor is ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... in, eh?" cried Tim Sullivan. "Well, they will thot! If there's a divil inside there's a worse one outside, an' thot's me! Git in there now, ye black-livered spalapeens!" and catching up a big club the Irishman made a rush for the hesitating laborers. With a howl they rushed into the tunnel, and were soon loading rock ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton
... A mob is not an orderly body, and a drunken mob is hard to manage. General charges were freely made without much point. One cried out, because I refused to drink with them: "This should hang him; he is too white-livered to take a dram with gentlemen, let him swing." "Yes," shouted another; "he is a cursed Yankee teetotaler, hang him." In a quiet way I showed them that this was not the indictment, and that hanging would ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... names, Mars Lennox. If there's one mean thing I nachally despises as a stunnin' insult, it's being named white-livered; and my Confederate record is jest as good as if I wore three gilt stars on my coat collar. You might say I was a liar and a thief, and maybe I would take it as a joke; but don't call Bedney Darrington no coward! It bruises my feelins mor'n I'le stand. Lem'me ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... The waters, and coolest The face of the foolish With the touch of thy death, I, Sadler, a Yankee, Lean, leathery, lanky, Red-livered and cranky, ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... "You chicken-livered wharf-rat, ain't you got no spunk to answer wid?" Dan jerked a slice-bar from the fire and hurled it to the floor at Larry's feet. The little man leaped in the air; the white-hot end of the bar, bounding from the floor, missed his legs by ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... of one thing, my friend," the duke observed. "I shall never give Lorance de Montluc to a white-livered flincher." ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... in character, he is frequently allured into a relapse. If a prisoner endeavours to behave himself in gaol and keep aloof from evil contagion, he is bullied by his fellow-prisoners, and even his keepers regard him with suspicion. The one twit him with being a white-livered coward, the other consider him to be either a sneak or a "deep fellow." He is almost sure to fall and identify himself with the ranks of crime. An instance that the writer has personal knowledge of is that of a man, passionate in nature, and moved by the tears of a young woman ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... moment; "How dreadful does that name sound upon your lips!"—"Ha! Do you call your own cowardice God?" He raises against her his maddened hand: "Ortrud!..."—"Do you threaten me? Threaten a woman?" she sneers, unmoved; "Oh, lily-livered! Had you been equally bold in threatening him who now sends us forth to our miserable doom, full easily might you have earned victory in place of shame. Ha! He who should manfully stand up to the encounter with him would find him weaker than a child!"—"The ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... year of Cartouche's supremacy that a lily-livered comrade fell in love with a pretty dressmaker. The indiscretion was the less pardonable since the dressmaker had a horror of theft, and impudently tried to turn her lover from his trade. Cartouche, discovering the backslider, resolved upon a public exhibition. ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... first to be conceived of apart from the rest of the body, and a separate name devised for it, before the belief that the hair was the source of strength could gradually come into existence. The evolution of these ideas may have extended over thousands of years. The expression 'white-livered,' again, seems to indicate that the quality of courage was once held to be located in the liver, and the belief that the liver was the seat of life was perhaps held by the Gonds. But the primary idea seems necessarily to have been that the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... rogue's morals. It entered my head once to believe that if I could succeed in getting him to believe he had lain frozen for eight-and-forty years, he might be seized with a fright (for he was a white-livered creature), and in some directions mend, and so come to a sense of the service I had done him, of which he appeared wholly insensible, and qualify me to rid my mind of the fears which I entertained concerning our ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... tone best understood by hinds of their lily-livered quality. It quelled their faint spark of mutiny, and a moment later one of those knaves had caught the bridle of the leading mule and the litter moved forward, whilst Giacopo and the others came on behind at as brisk a pace as their ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... not intend to recognize or carouse with him, William Bludger now changed his tone; "Yah, you lily-livered Bible-reader," he exclaimed, "what are you going about in that toggery for: copying Mr. Toole in Paw Claudian? You call yourself a missionary? Jove, you're more like a blooming play hactor in a penny gaff! Easy, then, my hearties," he added, seeing that the fishermen were approaching ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... with an oath and a thud. "Hush it, you white-livered swine! Hush it, or by—" His hand went behind him ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... if I was a boy again! But no, no; I'm a fool,' exclaimed he, springing up, apparently swallowing his emotion at one fierce gulp, and in an instant becoming as hardened as ever. 'Am I crazy, to-night, or what ails me, that I've become as white-livered as a girl? Where's the grog? Give us a sup; and we'll ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... the cigar-band and exhibited it. "I found that in my room last night. You're one of the few, Mallow, who smoke them out here. He was a husky Chinese, but not husky enough. Makes you turn a bit yellow; eh, Craig, you white-livered cheat? You almost got my money-belt, but almost is never quite. The letter of credit is being reissued. It might have been robbery; it might have been just deviltry; just for the sport of breaking a man. ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... good luck if you'd git plumb drownded, you white-livered son of misery. Whatever in Gawd A'mighty's world you was borned for certainly is more'n I can tell—and I your Maw at that, that orto know if ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... woman" stirred up Mrs. Crull. She left the old gentleman's side, and advanced to within a yard of the profligate. "Old as I am," said she, "I'm strong enough to spank such a white-livered, broken-down puppy as you are. But I'll leave you to the hands of the law. It's a long lane that hasn't any turning, remember; and you'll pull up at the gallows at ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... for letters had been received from New York announcing that a few miserable men, the remains of the colony, had arrived in the Hudson. Grief, dismay, and rage seized the nation. The directors in their rage called the colonists white-livered deserters. Accurate accounts brought the realization of the truth that hundreds of families, once in comparative opulence, were now reduced almost to beggary, and the flower of the nation had either succumbed to hardships, or else were languishing in prisons in the Spanish ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... justice,' said his companion. 'By my father's blessing, he was the man for a charge. They may say what they like, but compared with him, Alp Arslan is a white-livered Giaour.' ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... a wad of tobacco from his mouth and swearing in an undertone about "white-livered Greasers." He cocked his ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... we started. I'm a marked man in this coast country. It's Orloff's work, the renegade. 'Father,' he calls himself. Father to these devils he rules and robs for himself in the name of the Church. His hate is bitter, and he'd have my life if these watery-livered curs didn't dread the sound of my voice. God help ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... was carrying his lily-livered pacifism right to the White House, and I couldn't see it. So I fought him every inch of the way. I'll fight what he stands ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse
... in the grip of the pirate king, who hissed in her ear, "Ha, ha, fair damsel! Thou art mine at last. 'Twas for love of thee I committed this deed. Thy lily-livered husband lies at my mercy, and once in Davy Jones's locker will be out of my path. Then the wedding bells shall ring and we will sail together over the bounding main. Gently, gently, pretty dove! Do not struggle. I ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... without a word, not so much as a momentary knitting of thy fist When ignorance has waxed proud, and put thee to the mock, thou hast sat meek, and uttered never a word. It must needs be thou art pigeon-livered and lack gall! There is not in thee the swagger, the rustle, the braggadocio of a true swashbuckler manhood. ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... as I am, I have observed these three swashers. I am boy to them all three: but all they three, though they would serve me, could not be a man to me; for, indeed, three such anticks do not amount to a man. For Bardolph,—he is white-livered and red-faced; by the means whereof 'a faces it out, but fights not. For Pistol,—he hath a killing tongue and a quiet sword; by the means whereof 'a breaks words, and keeps whole weapons. For Nym,—he hath heard that men ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... I'd have the life of the man who split upon me. That's my maxim, and pass me the liquor—You wouldn't turn on a man. I know you. You're an honest feller, and will stand by a feller, and have looked death in the face like a man. But as for that lily-livered sneak—that poor lyin', swindlin', cringin' cur of a Clavering—who stands in my shoes—stands in my shoes, hang him! I'll make him pull my boots off and clean 'em, I will. Ha, ha!" Here he burst out into a wild laugh, at which Strong got up and put ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... cried, "ain't you goin' to say your prayers, you white-livered electrician? Come, git up! If I'm to fight, you must pray! D'ye hear? Turn out, ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... your plunder. I owed you nothing. Offal that you are! to me you owed drink, and meat, and good fellowship. I gave you mirth, and I gave you Law; and in return ye laid a plot amongst you to get rid of me;—how, ye white-livered scoundrels? Oho! not by those fists, and knives, and bludgeons. All your pigeon breasts clubbed together had not manhood for that. But to palm off upon me some dastardly deed of your own; by snares and scraps of false evidence—false ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sergeant, in a whisper, "you're right about the chaplain's sermon. It's the duty of every man who can carry a gun to fight for his country. I saw the chaplain looking straight at you, and he was as mad as fire. A white-livered coward stands a mighty poor chanst of salvation, is ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... "Are you too white-livered for that sort of job? If so, then you are no man for me. It is a long voyage to Porto Grande, and no reason why we should hurry home; the welcome there will be better if we bring chests of gold aboard. Ay, and the ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... I didn't believe that there was something more in you than texts and litanies and the Athanasian creed, I'll be hanged if I'd ever have let you look twice at Edith. That girl has got blood in her veins, David; she's not to be thrown away on any lantern-jawed, white-livered doctor of ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... money in; and this man ended up with manslaughter. I got him convicted, though they were scared of the Mountain even at Nettleton; and then a queer thing happened. The fellow sent for me to go and see him in gaol. I went, and this is what he says: 'The fool that defended me is a chicken-livered son of a—and all the rest of it,' he says. 'I've got a job to be done for me up on the Mountain, and you're the only man I seen in court that looks as if he'd do it.' He told me he had a child up there—or thought ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... strange in him. Any low hound will sell out to save his hide. No, Dan, I mean the other. I mean the old man. He's the one who used to run the blockade off Mobile, and a whiter-livered, more contemptible old grandmother I never hope to see anywhere, no, never! Yet not a month ago, the day of that Cimatario scrimmage, I found him on the battlefield, and he had been wounded. But he didn't seem to know it. He didn't even seem ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... he interrupted, slapping his knee with delight. "Sneak-livered poltroon, eh? Well, well, well. Go ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... "White-livered varlets! Pigeon-hearted rogues! Unmanned by a motley fool! A witling the lords beat with their slippers! Because of a chance blow against an imbecile, or a disabled man, you hesitate. A fig for them! What if they be dead? The spoil ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... death would not save me!" Count Hannibal answered coolly. "If it would, he would die! But it will not; and we must even do again as we have done. I have spared him—he's a white-livered hound!—both once and twice, and we must go to the end with it since no better can be! I have thought it out, and it must be. Only see you, old dog, that I have the dagger hid in the splint where I can reach it. And then, when the exchange has been made, and my lady has her ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... said the skipper; "though I reckon I don't kinder like to be bothered with b'ys—'specially sich as are mother's darlin's. They're gen'rally powerful sassy, or else white-livered do-nuthins! I've taken a fancy to this lad, howbeit; an' thet's the reason I wants fur to hev ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... You fellers is afeerd o' yore shadders; what does the gang mean by sendin' out sech white-livered chaps?" The only sound for a moment was the gurgling of the whiskey as it ran into the jug. "How's Toot like his isolation?" concluded Dill, grunting as he lifted the jug down ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... fellows!" I cried, very red in the face, they tell me. "You answer me a few questions. Are we or are we not partners? Are we or are we not friends? Do you or do you not consider me a low-lived, white-livered, mangy, good-for-nothing yellow pup? Why, confound your pusillanimous souls, what do you mean by talking to me in that fashion? For just about two cents I'd bust your fool necks for you—every one of you!" I glared vindictively at them. "Do you suppose ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... cannot be But I am pigeon-livered and lack gall To make oppression bitter; or 'ere this I should have fatted all the region ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... "Thou white-livered [our ancestors believed literally that cowards had white livers] dolt!" cried Dr Thorpe sharply, and took the matchlock out of his hands. "Go behind for a child ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... this but a more perfect expression of Hamlet's nature than Hamlet himself gives? Hamlet declares bitterly that he is "pigeon livered," and lacks "gall to make oppression bitter"; he says to Laertes, "I loved you ever," ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... side to win over the few doubtful voters Lincoln had taken his part. Right or wrong, he was not the man to see a great and beneficent Act in danger of postponement without being tempted to secure it if he could do so by terrifying some unprincipled and white-livered opponents. With the knowledge that he was always acquiring of the persons in politics, he had been able to pick out two Democratic Congressmen who were fit for his purpose—presumably they lay under suspicion of one of those treasonable practices which ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... great curse. We too readily assume that everything has two sides and that it is our duty to be on one or the other. We must be defending or attacking something; only the lily-livered hide their natural cowardice by asking the impudent question, What is it all about? The heroic gird on the armor of the Lord, square their shoulders, and establish a muscular tension which serves to dispel doubt and begets the voluptuousness of bigotry and fanaticism.[28] ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... see what's wrong. Just because Jake and Sako don't come back right away, you guys seem to think the ship's haunted! Haunted! By Betelguese! A sweet bunch of white-livered cowards I've ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore
... friends bailed them out, and I have no father, or anybody who cares for me. But"—and he swore a fearful oath—"if ever I catch that white-livered Jim Hulsey, who was the ringleader in the whole scheme, and got me into the scrape, and then blowed me, to save himself, I'll beat him ...
— The Runaway - The Adventures of Rodney Roverton • Unknown
... he shouted, "are a lot of hogs who've chawed so much gold their digestion won't work and their brains are torpid; and there's nothing to do but to kick them into this war—the whole greedy, white-livered, Trust-owned, thieving lot of them, including that great immaculate Joss up at the White House with his manners. Damn his manners! ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... listen to that white-livered hypocrite, it is useless for me to try to convince you. But, if you must know it,—though, mind you, I tell you this only because you compel me,—I once interfered, because my conscience forced me to do so, in a very disgraceful love-affair ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... "Jee-rusalem, ye white-livered Dutchman!" screamed out the other, now white with rage, and with his eyes glaring like those of a tiger, as he threw out his arms and rushed at Jan Steenbock, "I'll give ye goss fur ev'ry lyin' word ye hev sed agen me, ye bet. I'm a raal Down-East alligator, I am, ye durned furrin ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... truculently, "that there palaver makes me sick. I reckon you're too damn white livered to criticize a man that's lookin' at you. There ain't no tenderfoot (here he applied the unprintable epithet again) got nerve enough to ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... off his mask, and confronting his ruffian leader with an unquailing eye—'dare! Why, thou white-livered hound, I dare spit upon and spurn ye! And forsooth, ye call me a villain—you coward cut-throat, traitor, monster, murderer of weak women and helpless babes! I tell you, Dead Man, your Power is at an end ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... Loquiferne offering themselves for the adventure, Aigres undertakes it very readily, and is accompanied by a knight named Acars, who has charge of a casket of jewels destined for the princess as a wedding-gift. Young Aigres encounters and kills the lions singlehanded, and the lily-livered and faithless Acars envies him the glory of his exploit. On their way back to Loquiferne with the Princess Melia, as they pass near a deep well Acars purposely allows the casket of jewels to fall into it and pretends to ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... required and regularly trained to office routine. English Home Rulers, unable to see a yard in front of them, whose training and instincts are of the goody-goody, milk and water type,—the lily-livered weaklings, who measure the courage of others by their own,—may be excused their inability to conceive the situation. They cannot understand the dour, unyielding spirit of the Ulsterman in a matter which affects his property, his religion, his ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... angry,—ah, she can be very angry, poor Martine!—she has a shrill tongue and a wild eye, and she said out flatly that she would not go, and furthermore that she would not be caught in a priest's trap, or words to that effect. And this clerk, Cazeau,—a miserable little white-livered rascal, crawled away from my door in a rage with us all, and was never seen again. The police have hunted high and low for trace of him, but can find none. ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli |
