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More "Coward" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... knowledge that he had done only what was right. Martyrdom has its drawbacks. He had lost his position with the team and had been publicly branded a quitter. The fact that his conscience was not only clear but even approving didn't help much. Being thought a quitter, a coward, hurt badly. If he could have got at Harry Walton any time during the ensuing half-hour it would have gone hard with that youth. After a time, though, he got command of his feelings again and, since there was nothing better to do, he seated himself at the window and watched ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... Dan, and the bully fell back with a cry of terror, for, as old readers know, Dan was a coward at heart. ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... the reputation of being an arrant coward. It had often been said, "It is very well for him to send us into the field, while he secures his own life in a good fort, out of which he has not slept a single night in all the years he has been here." They therefore shrewdly ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... certainly; though, were it not for such a case as this, we should not have thought of considering Richard Jones a coward. It seems he did not dare to try to take away a sled from a boy who was as big as himself, but attacked little James, for he knew he was not strong ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... stab, but bring him to the block: Let God's eye be upon the multitude, Theirs on the scaffold, the attesting sun Shine on the bare axe and th' uncover'd head. It is no coward act, lest he might sin; For he hath sinn'd, until our very dreams Bid England's ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... a coward—-that's what he is!" muttered the turnback. "If he weren't, I said enough to him just now to cause him to leap at my throat. Humph! Anyone can beat a coward, and without credit. Prescott, your days at the Military Academy are numbered! ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock
... that. Unpleasantness of that kind is apt to rankle long. But I wasn't going to give up my rights. Nobody but a coward does that. They talked of going to law and trying the will, but they wouldn't have got much by that. And then they abused me for two years. When they had done and got sick of it, I told them they should have it all back again as soon as I am dead. It won't be long now. This Burgess ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... scruple Of thinking too precisely on the event— A thought which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom, And ever three parts coward; ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... with gentleness and love. No rancor should remain, no vengeance should be sought; they who met in mortal conflict on the battle-field should be no longer enemies, but embrace as comrades, as friends, as brothers. None but a coward kicks a fallen foe; a brave people is generous, and the victors in the late war can afford to be generous generously. They fought for the Union, and the Union has no longer an enemy; their late enemies are willing and proud to be their countrymen, fellow-citizens, ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... another disciple, says that to alarm men and prevent them from committing crimes, they menaced them with strange humiliations and punishments; even declaring that their souls would pass into new bodies,—that of a coward into the body of a deer; that of a ravisher into the body of a wolf; that of a murderer into the body of some still more ferocious animal; and that of an impure sensualist into the body of ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... Temperance, prudence, fortitude, are those qualities likewise admired from a principle of regard to our fellow creatures? Why not, since they render men happy in themselves, and useful to others? He who is qualified to promote the welfare of mankind, is neither a sot, a fool, nor a coward. Can it be more clearly expressed, that temperance, prudence, and fortitude, are necessary to the character we love and admire? I know well why I should wish for them in myself; and why likewise I should wish for them in my friend, and in every person who is an object of my affection. But to what ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... glance told me all. He cast down his eyes so that he might not hurt me again. ... And I—coward that I was—I accepted without interrupting him the tender words he spoke, and even ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... Liza was a coward. She could not help thinking of her enemy's threat; it got on her nerves, and she hardly dared go out for fear of meeting her; she would look nervously in front of her, quickly turning round if she saw in the distance anyone resembling Mrs. Blakeston. She dreamed ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... and published a cruel libel, in which the Holy Father was held up to the scorn of all right-thinking men as an "intruder," "an enemy of Religion," "the chief of Young Italy." In the estimation of such men discretion is the better part of valor. But whilst they fought with the coward's weapon—slander—they could not wholly escape detection. Their libel was seized in the hands of a colporteur. This wretched man offered to disclose the names of the libellers. Pius IX. declined his offer, generously forgave him the offence, and even bestowed upon him ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... sooner heard me scream and appear frightened than he yelled most loudly, and, running to me, caught my clothes, clinched his fists, and appeared really alarmed for two minutes. It was not affectation. Do you think this trait ominous of a coward? You know my abhorrence and contempt of those animals. Really I have been uneasy ever since it happened. You see I follow your injunction to the letter. How do you like this essay? Have ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... sex is not inferior to the male. [Footnote: Ibid. 455 c.] Similarly, Aristotle insists again and again on the natural inferiority of woman, and illustrates it by such quaint observations as the following: "a man would be considered a coward who was only as brave as a brave woman, and a woman as a chatterbox who was only as modest as a good man." [Footnote: Arist. Pol. III. 1277 b 21.—Translated by Welldon.] But the most striking example, perhaps, because the most unconscious, of this habitual way of regarding women ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... that from his pen Were flung upon the fervid page, Still move, still shake the hearts of men, Amid a cold and coward age. ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... wagon-train, the buffalo frightening the mules so that it became necessary to throw out flankers to shoot the leading bulls and thus turn off the herds. In the wake of every drove invariably followed a band of wolves. This animal is a great coward usually, but hunger had made these so ravenous that they would come boldly up to the column, and as quick as a buffalo was killed, or even disabled, they would fall upon the carcass and eagerly devour ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 6 • P. H. Sheridan
... and perhaps get off); the captain calls up his crew, tells them, "Gentlemen, you see how it is; I don't question but we may clear ourselves of this caper, if you will stand by me." One of the crew, as willing to fight as the rest, and as far from a coward as the captain, but endowed with a little more wit than his fellows, replies, "Noble captain, we are all willing to fight, and don't question but to beat him off; but here is the case: if we are taken, we shall be set on shore and then sent home, and lose perhaps our clothes and a little ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... stepping into the playground, saw my little friend plastered, as it were, up against the fence, and Conway standing in front of him ready to deliver a blow on the upturned, unprotected face, whose gentleness would have stayed any arm but a coward's. ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... unveiled. Was, then, a very formidable person, Bonne Maman, that M. Joyeuse should stand in such fear of her? By no means. A little stern, that was all, with a pretty smile that instantly forgave one. But M. Joyeuse was a coward, timid from his birth; twenty years of housekeeping with a masterful wife, "a member of the nobility," having made him a slave for ever, like those convicts who, after their imprisonment is over, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... and pursuits of none, amiable in every relation of life, a stanch friend, a fond husband, a devoted father, as useful a member of society as you might find in a day's journey, and obnoxious only to political opponents, who fear him more than he dislikes them, is called a 'liar,' a 'coward,' and a 'heartless ruffian.' He is nothing of the kind; he is proudly conscious of this fact; his accusers do not even believe it; the world—that portion of it in which he moves—is satisfied that he is a remarkable ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... bravely advanced to attack the supposed Trojan chief, upon which the spectre, wheeling about, hastily retreated towards the river. Turnus followed, loudly upbraiding AEneas as a coward. It happened that at the shore there was a ship, connected with the land by a plank bridge or gangway. Into this ship the phantom fled, closely pursued by Turnus; and no sooner had the latter reached the deck of the vessel than Juno, bursting the cables which held it ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... not hear Jonathan Moore, the stout old mower, rallied on his address to the bull, when it pursued him till he escaped into a tree? How Jonathan, sitting across a branch, looked down with the utmost contempt on the bull, and endeavored to convince him that he was a bully and a coward? "My! what a vaporing coward art thou! Where's the fairness, where's the equalness of the match? I tell thee, my heart's good enough; but what's my strength ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... no coward, but I think there is much more to be feared, Peter. The arm of the Pope is long, and the arm of the crafty Ferdinand is longer, and both of them grope for the throats and ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... frightened!" exclaimed her father. "The daughter of all the Dantons that ever fought and fell, turn coward! Kate, deny ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... thy great story Lose somewhat of its miracle and glory. I wish thy merit, laboured cruelty; Stout vengeance best befits thy memory. For I would have posterity to hear, He that can bravely do, can bravely bear. Tortures may seem great in a coward's eye; It's no great thing to suffer, less to die. Should all the clouds fall out, and in that strife, Lightning and thunder send to take my life, I would applaud the wisdom of my fate, Which knew to value me at such a rate, As at my fall to trouble ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... out from the old coachman that I was not the coward they deemed me," he thought. "If so, I'll see he has ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... from the gable window of the Trumans' quarters, shook a hard-clinching Irish fist and showered malediction after the swiftly speeding ambulance. "Wan 'o ye," she sobbed, "dealt Pat Mullins a coward and cruel blow, and I'll know which, as soon as ever that poor bye can spake the truth." She would have said it to that hated Frenchwoman herself, had not mother and mistress both forbade her leaving the room until ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... animals he is perhaps the most silent walker, for in the night a band of five or six lynxes may pass close beside one's tent and never be heard, though a single rabbit, passing at the same distance, may make enough noise to awaken a sound sleeper. Though he often behaves like a coward, hunters approach him with care when he is caught in a steel trap, as he can make a great spring and when he chooses, can fight desperately. While in summer he is a poor runner, in winter he is greatly aided by his big feet, which act as snowshoes and help him over the soft snow and the ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... requisite for an undertaking of this nature. From an ill-grounded diffidence of his men, he neglected to attack Albemarle; an easy enterprise, by which he might both have acquired credit, and have supplied himself with arms. Lord Gray, who commanded his horse, discovered himself to be a notorious coward; yet such was the softness of Monmouth's nature, that Gray was still continued in his command. Fletcher of Salton, a Scotchman, a man of signal probity and fine genius, had been engaged by his republican principles in this enterprise, and commanded ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... were quivering, but in response to his admonishing tone she forced them to smile. "I know I am silly," she said, with an effort. "I—I'm not nearly good enough for Eustace. And I'm a dreadful little coward, I know. But he does frighten me. When he kisses me—I always want to ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... these excessive characters are singularly contrasted. Jezebel scoffs at approaching retribution, and, shining with paint and dripping with jewels, is pitched to the dogs; Lady Macbeth goes like a coward to her grave, and, curdled with remorse, receives the stroke ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... always endeavored to make it as unpleasant for that man as possible. The Colonel was not in an amiable frame of mind. He was on foot, old "Billy" had been killed the night before, and he felt like having a dialogue with someone. He asked this man some questions which satisfied him he was a coward. His wrath broke out vehemently. He cursed and swore at him and called him a variety of unpleasant and detestable things and then he began to punch him with his fist wherever he could hit. Finally he partly turned him around, and gave ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... and so; and your dogged persistence was so and so; and you get another star for your breast; and all the world sings your praises. And who is to court-martial a great hero for reckless waste of human life? Who is to tell him that he is a cruel-hearted coward? Who is to take him to the fields he has saturated with blood, and compel him to count the corpses; or to take him to the homesteads he has ruined throughout the land, and ask the women and sons and the daughters what they think of this marvellous courage? Oh no; he is away ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... man, who had it in him, by devotion to affairs of state, to exalt his city and win honour himself thereby, were to shrink and hesitate and hang back—would he too not reasonably be regarded as a coward? ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... ring which Sigard had given to Gudrun, and she knew it and knew all, and she turned as pale as a dead woman, and went home. All that evening she never spoke. Next day she told Gunnar, her husband, that he was a coward and a liar, for he had never ridden the flame, but had sent Sigurd to do it for him, and pretended that he had done it himself. And she said he would never see her glad in his hall, never drinking wine, never playing chess, ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... against the interests of his brothers, against the interests of his own country—Bohemia. Well then, was it cowardice on the part of this soldier when he, exposed to the fire of Austrian and German guns and machine guns from behind, went over to the other side? Was he a coward when, while free to remain in his captivity as a prisoner of war safely waiting until the end of the war, he volunteered to fight again and was ready to risk his life and health once more? Is that Czech soldier a coward who went once more into the trenches, although aware that ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... this just so that you shall think a little differently, if you can. You and I between us have made an infernal mess of things. It was chiefly my fault. And as regards Palliser—well, I am sorry. Only the fellow—he may have been lovable to you, but he was a coward and a sneak to me—and he ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... weak imagination!" replied La Corriveau; "your sickly conscience frightens you! You will need to cast off both to rid Beaumanoir of the presence of your rival! The aqua tofana in the hands of a coward is a gift as fatal to its possessor as ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... thy Heauen-borne Art and Zeale, Or at the least her selfe but thankfull showe Her ancient Glories that do'st still reueale: Sing thou of Loue, thy straines (like powerfull Charmes) Enrage the bosome with an amorous fire, And when againe thou lik'st to sing of Armes The Coward thou with Courage do'st inspire: But when thou com'st to touch our Sinfull Times, Then Heauen far more then Earth ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... must watch for him. We cannot be too careful, but if he is the same fellow who fired on us and nearly killed Black Eagle's son, 'way back on the Pennsylvania border, I think I can guess who it is, and I can tell you, he is a coward. But let's ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... divinest softness! cried he, be assured I will put nothing to the venture that might take me from Louisa!—Your kindness, my angel, has shewed me the value of life, and almost made a coward of your lover:—no farther will I go than the duties of my post oblige me, and that honour, which to forfeit, would render me unworthy of ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... attacks and confiscates a country single-handed could be called a coward. The worst you can be charged with is plagiarism or imitation. If Anthony Hope and Roosevelt let you get away with it, nobody else will have any right ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... me, it was a pleasure to pit my knowledge of war against their brute strength and courage. Ever since the first men did their business upon the great waters, they fulfilled their instincts in fighting the beasts with desperation. Hiding coward-like in a hold was useless, for if this enemy could not find men above decks to glut them, they would break a ship with their paddles, and so all would be slain. And so it was recognised that the fight should go forward as ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... perfect life would be a harmony between (selfless or non-attached) doing and suffering. Worship the terrible. Worship Death, for its own sake; despair for its own sake; pain for its own sake. Yet this is not the coward's or the suicide's or the weakling's morbid love of Death, but it is the cry of the philosopher who has sounded everything to its depths and knows intensely the vanity of the desire for happiness on the relative plane of limitations. Remember the triumphant cry of St. Francis of Assisi: "WELCOME, ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... seat with a pale face, and a death-like sinking at his heart. "Yes, Lord Jesus," he uttered with dry lips, "I am at Thy command. Forgive my coward halting. If Thou wilt send ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... side, now that, one moment on the perch above, the next on the edge of the dish, plainly longing to be in, yet the mere approach of the smallest bird in the room drove him away. Not that he was afraid, he was not in the least a coward; he met everybody and everything with the dignity and bravery of a true thrush. Neither was it that he was disabled when wet, which makes some birds hesitate; he was never at all disordered by his bath, and however long he soaked, or thoroughly he spattered, his plumage remained ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... argument,—rational enough, but perfectly useless and sometimes dangerous, for Monsieur de Lessay was very irascible, and Clementine was very beautiful. Between her and him I passed many hours of torment and of delight. I was in love; I was a coward, and I granted to him all that he demanded of me in regard to the political and historical aspect which the Earth—that was at a later day to bear Clementine—presented in the time of Abraham, ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... they thought he was right from the first; and some others says: "Well, it wouldn't make no difference what he was, rabbit or no rabbit, if he'd just come down and meet the bunch of us fair and square; but the dirty coward is afraid to fight us, except one at a time." The leader is very firm, though. He tells 'em that if this here object ain't a rabbit they got no right to molest him, and if he is a rabbit he's gone crazy, and wouldn't be good to eat, anyway; ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... one fear in his life. He had to escape regeneration. To do that, he was willing to take any chance, coward though he was—even if it meant that he had ...
— Divinity • William Morrison
... is a fixture communicating with the Thames, or could be cleared away for a dance; he sees the horrible parlour where there are no patients in it, and he could reveal, if he would, what becomes of the Every-Day Book then. The conviction of my coward conscience when I see that man in a professional light, is, that he knows all the statistics of my teeth and gums, my double teeth, my single teeth, my stopped teeth, and my sound. In this Arcadian rest, I am ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... their peeky children; see their patience and their hopelessness; see them working day in and day out, and coming on the parish at the end! See all that, and then talk about reason! Reason! It's the coward's excuse, and the rich man's excuse, for doing nothing. It's the excuse of the man who takes jolly good care not to see for fear that he may come to feel! Reason never does anything, it's too reasonable. The thing is to act; ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Now Bob was no coward, but there were five men arrayed against him with a probable sixth in the form of the counter-man who was watching the turn of affairs with great interest from the safe vantage-point of his high counter. It was too much to expect that any men who had dealt with a ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... what it did so freely? From this time Such I account thy love. Art thou afeard To be the same in thine own act and valor As thou art in desire? Wouldst thou have that Which thou esteem'st the ornament of life, And live a coward in thine own esteem; Letting "I dare not" wait upon "I would," Like the poor ...
— Macbeth • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... right! You know, he must be an awful coward—and yet, the way he goes after you, he takes a lot of chances, doesn't he? It does look as if, no matter how much it may frighten him to do what he does, he's still more afraid not ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the March - Bessie King's Test of Friendship • Jane L. Stewart
... a little bit of a coward in the business, I confess, Milly,' he said, in the midst of this talk, 'and hadn't courage to tell you anything till the deed was done; and then I thought it was as well to let Julian make ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... in human nature, to feel in ourselves, or to contemplate in another, is, perhaps, cowardice. To see a coward done to the life upon a stage would produce anything but mirth. Yet we most of us remember Jack Bannister's cowards. Could any thing be more agreeable, more pleasant? We loved the rogues. How was this effected but by the exquisite art of the actor in a perpetual sub-insinuation ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... had one good point—at least, it turned out to be such in this case. She was a coward naturally, and her bad life made her dread nothing so much as death. Her former flippant indifference to his remonstrances now changed into abject fear. He saw her weak side, learned his power, and from that time ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... life; you have just left me, to go to your caller, after having probed my heart to its very core. I can never make you know the bitterness of spirit that I experience, as I write these lines, for the questions you have just asked me have completely unmanned me—have made a veritable coward of me when I should have boldly told you the truth, let the consequence be what it would; whether it would have touched your heart with pity and fresh love for a sorrowing and repentant man, or driven you away from ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... 'Coward!' she whispered, and away we flew. I just had time to hear behind me the iron voice of the legions, like a peal of thunder ... then all ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... young girl stood up very straight and tall, her brown eyes flashing, and one hand pointing at me; "will you let that pass? That animal has been wronged, it looks to you to right it. The coward who has maimed it for life should be punished. A child has a voice to tell its wrong a poor, dumb creature must suffer in silence; in bitter, bitter silence. And," eagerly, as the young man tried to interrupt her, "you are doing the man himself an injustice. If he is ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... telling shape. Many people then and since disliked and disapproved of Bolingbroke. But has there ever, then or at any other time, been a man who could find such language for his disapproval as Johnson? "Sir, he was a scoundrel and a coward: a scoundrel, for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality: a coward, because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half-a-crown to a beggarly Scotchman to draw the trigger after his death." It is at once as devastating as a volcano and as neat ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... coward and rarely adventured himself in battle with the Fianna, it is told that once a good man fell by his hand. This was on the day of the great battle with the pirate horde on the Hill of Slaughter in Kerry.[21] For Liagan, one of the invaders, stood out before the hosts and challenged the bravest ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... Protestant, infidel—fell on their knees, and, if they did not pray, they paid that outward homage to Religion which sometimes the most indifferent and irreligious cannot resist paying her. Infidelity is a great coward, as well as a false guide. In her hour of ease and satiety, she pretends to scorn the threats and judgments of the Most High, and, like Satan in his pandemonium, to make war on Heaven; but no sooner does the roaring of the thunderbolt shake the earth, or the vast abyss open its devouring ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... left in the wilds by robbers, bare of carriage and clothes? they asked. His answer was worthy of a man who lived in holy fear and no other. "We are all well aware what things can happen—fearful to the fearful—on this journey. But I think it a thing much more fearful that I should be coward enough to fail my late lord and king, by being away at such a crisis, by witholding my faith and grace from him in death, which I always showed him warmly in his life. What of the trouble he gave us, by giving in too much to the evil advice of those who flattered him? Certainly when ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... is a bullying tyrant, now he is courteously answering those who speak to him, now words come from his lips that shock the hearer. Now he would scorn to have his word doubted by a comrade, now he does not hesitate to lie to escape punishment. Now fearless, now a coward, now full of spirits, now in the depths of woe—sunshine or joy, wind and calm, silence and tumult, all seem to have their place, and to make up that incomprehensible and yet ...
— Boys - their Work and Influence • Anonymous
... on Jim's face to see how the shorter guide took it. He realized that Jim was at least no coward, even though he might fear the wrath of such a forest bully as the ex-logger, and present lawless poacher Cale Martin; for he had shut his teeth hard together, and there was a grim expression on his face, as if he ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... can't let this beast escape. If they have him, the police may get his mate. He looks a coward and sneak." ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... no, he knew her better than that. He could trust her on that score, and so the dastardly coward affected to sneer at what he called her primness, charging 'Lina to be careful what she did, if she did not want a lecture, and asking if there were any ragged children in Kentucky, as she would not be happy unless she was ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... twice, when you have done so, I have not forbidden it, as I should have done. Very well, sir, as you have nothing to tell me, I will leave you. I must confess that I did not think you were such a coward." And she prepared to go, gathering up the skirts of her habit, and taking up the whip which she had ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... torrent of invective, having no eyes for his writhings and threats, he had no longer the courage to perpetrate this dark deed. After the first fury of his rage had passed, he could not bring himself to it, and quitted the room like a coward and a man taken in crime, stung to the quick by those prayers continuously said for the monk. The night was passed in tears, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... You are a liar, M. de Rohan. A coward, for you calumniate a woman; and a traitor, for you ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... satisfied. Nor is it easy, perhaps hardly possible, to call up with complete vividness the feeling, for instance, of hunger; nor indeed, as has often been remarked, of any suffering. The instinct of self- preservation is not felt except in the presence of danger; and many a coward has thought himself brave until he has met his enemy face to face. The wish for another man's property is perhaps as persistent a desire as any that can be named; but even in this case the satisfaction of actual possession is ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... courteous remarks, which implied that, though the duke might be a coward, the viscount was not, ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... marry us now, sir?" said Canute, laying one iron hand on his stooped shoulder. The little preacher was a good man, but like most men of weak body he was a coward and had a horror of physical suffering, although he had known so much of it. So with many qualms of conscience he began to repeat the marriage service. Lena sat sullenly in her chair, staring at the fire. Canute stood beside her, listening with his head bent reverently and his ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... hesitated. It would be a bold thing to give the answer that was on her tongue, but she was no coward, and this was a crisis of importance. A proper impression made upon this woman might be productive of more good results than if made upon any ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... rehearsing a comedy in her own home? Even at this moment she trembled more than Juliette; what maddened her was the consciousness of her own passion amidst the quiet cheerfulness of this drawing-room; she was terrified lest she should burst out into some angry speech. Was she a coward, then? ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... and I saw what was passing through his mind. And I went up to him and laid my hand on his shoulder and said: 'You know what I mean, and you know what manner of man I am that talks to you like this; for you're no coward,' I said; 'but you marry Fanny Montrose within a week after she gets her freedom, or I am going to kill you wherever you stand. And that's the choice you've got to make, ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... has slain Patroclus, but has not stripped him of the armour of Achilles, which, in Homer, he is wearing. Achilles then meets Hector, but far from rushing to avenge on him Patroclus, he retires like a coward, musters his men, and makes them surround and slay the ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... around; Every shade and hallow'd fountain 75 Murmur'd deep a solemn sound: Till the sad Nine, in Greece's evil hour, Left their Parnassus for the Latian plains. Alike they scorn the pomp of tyrant Power, And coward Vice, that revels in her chains. 80 When Latium had her lofty spirit lost, They sought, O ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... business for me. My imagination began to construct dangers out of nothing, and they multiplied faster than I could keep the run of them. All at once I imagined I saw shoal water ahead! The wave of coward agony that surged through me then came near dislocating every joint in me. All my confidence in that crossing vanished. I seized the bell-rope; dropped it, ashamed; seized it again; dropped it once more; clutched it tremblingly one again, and pulled it so feebly that I ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the girl; "such a supposition is an insult to Norbert. He would sooner die than give in. He may be timid, but he is not a coward; the thoughts of me will give him the power to resist his ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... him; and thus, negligently strengthening these inclinations with habit, and idly deriving some amusement from his talk, he had glided into a way of having him for a companion. This, though he supposed him to live by his wits at play-tables and the like; though he suspected him to be a coward, while he himself was daring and courageous; though he thoroughly knew him to be disliked by Minnie; and though he cared so little for him, after all, that if he had given her any tangible personal cause to regard him with aversion, he would have had no compunction ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... to an end when Grady, following the glances of his auditors, turned and saw who was coming. Bannon noted with satisfaction the scared look of appeal which he turned, for a second, toward the men. It was good to know that Grady was something of a coward. ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... his general softly. "You are turning tail like the veriest coward. Right about, face! Would you surrender to a slip of a girl whose only weapons are a pair of innocent blue eyes and a roguish smile? Be a man! Stand by your guns. Outwardly you are the equal of R. ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... that he and Hilliard were seriously suspected by the syndicate and were being traced by their spy! What luck would the spy have? And if he succeeded in his endeavor, what would be their fortune? Merriman was no coward, but he shivered slightly as he went over in his mind the steps of their present quest, and realized how far they had failed to cover their traces, how at stage after stage they had given themselves away to anyone who cared to make a few inquiries. What fools, he thought, they were ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... looked at him, and felt surprised at the fearful expression of his eye; in the meantime, we must say, that he had not an ounce of coward's flesh on his bones. ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... proved you to be a coward, and I don't think there is any use of going now. I don't like to be in a boat with a fellow who is skittish when the wind blows," continued Paul, who was determined to make the most of their previous experience. "It isn't safe to have a fellow jumping about in ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... stomach and dealt unmercifully with him. Atli and Bersi and a number of the others ran up and separated them. Grettir said they need not hold him like a mad dog, and added: "The thrall alone takes instant vengeance, the coward never." ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... uneasy air, then, seeing that I was still there, they began to run about again looking quite desperate. Of course this dream was nothing extraordinary; yet I think Our Lord made use of it to show me that a soul in the state of grace has nothing to fear from the devil, who is a coward, and will even fly from the gaze of ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... remember that you signed these bills, for money lost in my rooms: money LENT to you, by Madame de Florval, at your own request, and lost to her husband? You don't suppose, sir, that I shall be such an infernal idiot as to believe you, or such a coward as to put up with a mean subterfuge of this sort. Will you, or will you not, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... enough and strong enough to crush the infuriated lad, but drink had made him a coward at heart. He stooped over and picked up an ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... Fourth of the Third Act? That is the situation I have endeavored to portray. Macbeth, wretched criminal, suspects every one of his own dark purposes, or fears their hatred, because he feels himself hateful. He is not a coward, either physically or morally; his fears are all intellectual; he knows that Banquo is too noble to serve him, too powerful to be permitted to serve against him,—so he must out of the way. The murderers have received their commission; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... that it would enable you to face a degree of cold, or contagion, else menacing to life, a duty would arise, pro hac vice, of getting drunk. We had an amiable friend who suffered under the infirmity of cowardice; an awful coward he was when sober; but, when very drunk, he had courage enough for the Seven Champions of Christendom. Therefore, in an emergency, where he knew himself suddenly loaded with the responsibility of defending a family, we approved highly of his getting drunk. But to violate a trust ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... few minutes there came up from under the mountain that long, peculiar bark which the hound always makes when he has run the fox in, or when something new and extraordinary has happened. In this instance he said plainly enough, "The race is up, the coward has taken to his hole, ho-o-o-le." Plunging down in the direction of the sound, the snow literally to our waists, we were soon at the spot, a great ledge thatched over with three or four feet of snow. The ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... let you go, sir, till you clear up this. A gentleman must see that he is bound to do so. If I prove to be wrong, I will apologise. What! Are you going to fire at me? You would never be such a coward!" ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... on the night of the arrest—don't wait to think—save her, and leave me without a word! If I die alone, I can die as a man should; if she goes to the scaffold by my side, my heart will fail me—I shall die the death of a coward! I have lived for her life—let me die for it, ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... her Virtue she is without Blemish: She has not the least Charity for any of her Acquaintance, but I must allow rigidly Virtuous. As the unthinking Part of the Male World call every Man a Man of Honour, who is not a Coward; so the Crowd of the other Sex terms every Woman who will ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... not come before your last letter. 'Twas dated the 24th of August, but I received it not till the 1st of September. Would to God your journey were over! Every little storm of wind frights me so, that I pass here for the greatest coward that ever was born, though, in earnest, I think I am as little so as most women, yet I may be deceived, too, for now I remember me you have often told me I was one, and, sure, you know what kind of heart mine is ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... that first day is but the story of many more days that followed. Showers of arrows flew from the cross-bows, volleys of stones fell from the mangonells, until we got so used to the sound of them, that by the third week the veriest coward among the maidens would go boldly up and wipe the dust away where a stone had been chipped, or another displaced, as calmly as our lady herself had done on ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... thinks you a coward, but that's not the point. Ask Denisov whether it is not out of the question for a cadet to demand ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... renown'd, The dread of Israel's foes, who with a strength Equivalent to Angels walk'd thir streets, None offering fight; who single combatant Duell'd thir Armies rank't in proud array, Himself an Army, now unequal match To save himself against a coward arm'd At one spears length. O ever failing trust In mortal strength! and oh what not in man Deceivable and vain! Nay what thing good 350 Pray'd for, but often proves our woe, our bane? I pray'd for Children, and thought barrenness In ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... narrow range. A subtle serpent then has Love become. I had the eagle in my bosom erst: Henceforward with the serpent I am cursed. I can interpret where the mouth is dumb. Speak, and I see the side-lie of a truth. Perchance my heart may pardon you this deed: But be no coward:—you that made Love bleed, You must bear all the venom of ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... he could ever learn in all his life. Harry saw that he was perspiring freely and that he looked more like the hunted than the hunter. His eyes expressed bewilderment. He was obviously lonely and apprehensive, not because he was a coward, but because the situation was ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... minister was no coward. He measured the slight, wiry figure of his wrathful opponent with ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... stories of one of my grandmothers, and that I had to make a strong effort of will before I could bring myself to walk across a churchyard in the dark. This shows how much our character is shaped by circumstances, even when we are least aware of it. I did not believe in ghosts and I was not a coward, but I felt through life a kind of shiver in dark passages and at the sound of mysterious noises, and the mere fact that I had to make an effort to overcome these feelings shows that something had found its way into my mental constitution that ought never to have been there, and that ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... warmth of her expression,—of which old Barty was well aware. He hated, and knew that he was hated in return. And he knew, or thought that he knew, that his enemy was not a woman to relent because old age and weakness and the fear of death were coming on her. His enemy, with all her faults, was no coward. It could not be that now at the eleventh hour she should desire to reconcile him by any act of tardy justice,—nor did he wish to be reconciled at this the eleventh hour. His hatred was a pleasant ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... fact that he had not stopped the desertions because, if enough men jumped ship, the Ceres would be unable to take off again. Lord could then have embraced Niaga's temptation without having to make the decision for himself. But that was a coward's way out and no solution. There would always be people like Ann Howard who would not accept the situation. They would eventually make radio communication with the Federation, and the location of Niaga's world would no longer ...
— Impact • Irving E. Cox
... had remembered, Moyse, what a coward I am, you would have done differently, and not have made me so wretched as I now am. Why did you not bid me bring the red water, without saying what it was, and what for? If you had put it to my lips—if you had not given me a moment to fancy what is to come afterwards, ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... crowd of boys strove to hold Martin Rattler back, while they assured him that he had not the smallest chance in the world, Bob turned towards the kitten, which was quietly and busily employed in licking itself dry, and said, "Now, Martin, you coward, I'll give it another ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... against the president and the treaty, and to form a public opinion that should bear with potency upon the supreme legislature. "The president," said one of these addresses, "has thrown the gauntlet, and shame on the coward heart that refuses to take it up. He has declared war against the people, by treating their opinions with contempt; he has forfeited his claim to their confidence, by acting in opposition to their will. Our liberties are in jeopardy, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... his garment, and turned back to his seat. As he passed Sam he looked him full in the face, and there was that in the glance which boded no good to that sneaking coward when ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman
... was thinking just what Parks had thought, that Nannie had none of her blood in her. "Afraid!" said Sarah Maitland. Well, Blair had never been afraid, she would say that for him; he was a fool, and pig-headed, and a loafer; but he wasn't a coward. He had even thought it fine, that scene of power, where civilization made itself before his very eyes! When would he think it fine enough to come in and go to work? Come in, and take his part in making ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... the explanation, is it? I suspected as much! And pray who is the coward who hired you to do his ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... not say so!' cried he wildly, 'or you will give me such a desire to live as will make a coward of me.' ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... if you like to the Waterfall Cottage," she said, "and wait for me. There is something about the place that makes a coward of me. It will be worse than ever now ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... "it may be that you are right, and I am of too fearful a spirit to venture far away from you by myself; I will remain here if you think me a coward." ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... who, being a great coward, immediately turned about and fled. But Charlie was upon him in a moment, and with the leg of pork dealt him a blow on the back of the head, which sent him sprawling on the ground. A knife fell from his hand and Charlie ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... battle is set, The field to be won; What foes have you met, What work have you done? To courage alone Does victory come; To coward and ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... attempt to slay Aegisthus: There is no wounding sword here save my own. Aegisthus, ho! Where art thou, coward! Speak! Aegisthus, where art thou? Come forth: it is The voice of Death that calls thee! Thou comest not? Ah, villain, dost thou hide thyself? In vain: The midmost deep of Erebus should not hide thee! Thou shalt soon see if I be Atrides' son. El. ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... you coward!" he cried, when at length Farrington remained sprawling upon the floor. "Get up if you ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... his feet, his slow features working. "That ain't right, Cap," said he. "I know I'm scared to do some things, but I—I don't believe I'm no coward. I ain't afraid to go down there, but I won't go to-night, ner let you go, fer it's the same as death to start now. We couldn't maybe make it in the daytime, but I'm willin' to try it then. Don't you call no coward to me. ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... airs of benefactor toward beggar; who address you in the language of master to slave, and are answered in the language of slave to master; who are worshiped by you with your mouth, while in your heart—if you have one—you despise yourselves for it. The first man was a hypocrite and a coward, qualities which have not yet failed in his line; it is the foundation upon which all civilizations have been built. Drink to their perpetuation! Drink to their augmentation! Drink to—" Then he saw by our faces how much we were hurt, and he cut his sentence short and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... voice found its way through a passion which had almost choaked him, and he cried out, "Sister, what have I done to deserve the opinion you express of me? which of my actions hath made you conclude that I am a rascal and a coward? look at that poor sword, which never woman yet saw but in its sheath; what hath that done to merit your desire that it should be contaminated with ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... shrouded in mystery by a hundred conflicting stories, the principal and most credited of which was that Davis had demanded from Nelson an apology for language used in the original altercation, and that Nelson's refusal was accompanied by a slap in the face, at the same moment denouncing Davis as a coward. However this may be, Nelson, after slapping Davis, moved toward the corridor, from which a stairway led to the second floor, and just as he was about to ascend, Davis fired with a pistol that he had obtained ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... for the blessing of God upon our opportunity, intending to have preached the Word of the Lord unto them there present;[1] but the constable coming in prevented us; so that I was taken and forced to depart the room. But had I been minded to have played the coward, I could have escaped, and kept out of his hands. For when I was come to my friend's house, there was whispering that that day I should be taken, for there was a warrant out to take me; which when my friend heard, he being somewhat timorous, questioned whether we had best have our ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Sir Edmund afraid? We have no information as to the physical courage of the man, further than that in 1675 he had been frightened into submission by the farmers and fishermen at Fort Saybrook. But he need not have been a coward to feel the blood rush to his heart during those few blind moments. Men of such lives as his are always ready ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... He's a man, of course; else you wouldn't be afraid. You think that I'd go straight off and murder him. Perhaps he told you that it would come quite natural to a man like me—a ruffian like me—to smash him up. That comes of being a coward. People run my profession down; not because there is a bad one or two in it—there's plenty of bad bishops, if you come to that—but because they're afraid of us. You may make yourself easy about your friend. I am accustomed to get well paid for the beatings ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... my being a coward, Colonel Todd," replied Boone, mildly, with dignity, "when the word's explained so as I know the full meaning on't, prehaps I'll be able to decide ef I be or not. Ef it means prudence in a time o' danger, ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... jumping. That did not satisfy his tormentors, who decided that the obstacle was not high enough, and they built it up until it became a regular break-neck affair. Jean-Christophe tried to rebel, and declared that he would not jump. Then the little girl called him a coward, and said that he was afraid. Jean-Christophe could not stand that, and, knowing that he must fall, he jumped, and fell. His feet caught in the obstacle; the whole thing toppled over with him. He grazed his hands and almost broke his head, and, as a crowning misfortune, ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... terrorism, reign of terror. [Object of fear] bug bear, bugaboo; scarecrow; hobgoblin &c (demon) 980; nightmare, Gorgon, mormo^, ogre, Hurlothrumbo^, raw head and bloody bones, fee-faw-fum, bete noire [Fr.], enfant terrible [Fr.]. alarmist &c (coward) 862. V. fear, stand in awe of; be afraid &c adj.; have qualms &c n.; apprehend, sit upon thorns, eye askance; distrust &c (disbelieve) 485. hesitate &c (be irresolute) 605; falter, funk, cower, crouch; skulk &c (cowardice) 862; let 'I dare not' wait upon 'I would' [Macbeth] take fright, take ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... in such rubbish," said Mrs. Badger, whose courage had come back with the absolute silence in the attic chamber. "I believe you're a coward, Nathan Badger. I'll go upstairs myself and see if I can't succeed better than ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... give place to a worse. Was all this accident or fell design? Conscience had made a coward of me, and yet what reason had I to disbelieve the worst? We were pirouetting on the edge of an abyss; sooner or later the false step must come and the pit swallow us. I began to wish myself back in London, and I did get back to my room in our old house. My dancing days were ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... have all they will; For is it a grief to you that I have part, Being woman merely, in your male might and deeds Done by main strength? yet in my body is throned As great a heart, and in my spirit, O men, I have not less of godlike. Evil it were That one a coward should mix with you, one hand Fearful, one eye abase itself; and these Well might ye hate and well revile, not me. For not the difference of the several flesh Being vile or noble or beautiful or base Makes praiseworthy, but purer spirit and heart Higher ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... all that had happened since the day their marriage was fixed—since the day when he first saw a troubled look on Charlotte's face—and she had told him, though unwillingly, that queer story of Mrs. Home's. Yes, of course, he knew there was a mystery—a strange and dark mystery; like a coward he had turned away from investigating it. He had seen Uncle Jasper's nervous fear; he had seen Mrs. Home's poverty; he had witnessed Mr. Harman's ill-concealed disquietude—all this he had seen, all this he had known. But for Charlotte's sake, he had shut his eyes; Charlotte's ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... perhaps, he would not come. Perhaps he would write to her. And yet, no; that would not be like him; he was no coward; he would come and tell her the truth, would ask her to ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... Mr Hoggins's worn-out hats to hang up in her lobby, and we (at least I) had doubts as to whether she really would enjoy the little adventure of having her house broken into, as she protested she should. Miss Matty made no secret of being an arrant coward, but she went regularly through her housekeeper's duty of inspection—only the hour for this became earlier and earlier, till at last we went the rounds at half-past six, and Miss Matty adjourned to bed soon after seven, "in order to get ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... home; how Mr. Scawen had taken him to see the House of Commons, and how Lady Abney carried him out in her coach to Newington; how soon his wrist-bands got soiled in the smoke of London, and how his horse had fallen into Mr. Coward's well at Walthamstow; and how he had gone a fishing "with extraordinary success, for he had pulled a minnow out of the water, though it made shift to get away." They also contain sundry consultations and references on the subject of fans and damasks, white and blue. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... too—by adoption. It is related that he expostulated with Gates for fighting so unprepared at Camden, and that Gates intimated cowardice. "Tomorrow will tell, sir, who is the coward," the old fellow rejoined. And tomorrow did tell. As the battle reddened, exit Gates from Camden and from fame. We have recounted elsewhere how like a bull De Kalb held the field. A monster British ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... whole aspect sublimely terrible and wondrously beautiful, even in that fit of agitated passion—"listen, Fernand!" she cried, in her musical, flute-like voice, which, however, assumed the imperious accent and tone of command: "thou art a coward, and unworthy such an earnest—such a profound, such a devoted love as mine, if thou refusest to consummate a sacrifice which will make us both powerful and great as long as we live! Consider, my Fernand—the ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... doctor, "listen. Everything you say springs from mistaken and blind selfishness. Yours is the spirit of the suicide and coward; surely, this is unworthy of you. And, besides, what you say is not true. Your life is not wrecked, only as you determine to wreck it. You say you have nothing to live for. I know of no young man that has more to live for. You foolishly ...
— The Mystery of Monastery Farm • H. R. Naylor
... heard before was that at a masquerade three masks insulted the Prince of Wales, when the Duke interfered, desired the one who was most prominent to address himself to him, and added that he suspected him to be an officer in his regiment (meaning Colonel Lennox), and if he was he was a coward and a disgrace to his profession; if he was not the person he took him for, he desired him to unmask, and he would beg his pardon. The three masks were supposed to be Colonel Lennox, the Duke of Gordon, and Lady Charlotte. This did not lead to any immediate consequences, but perhaps indirectly ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... ain't pisen!" said Sneak; "they're nearly all black racers, and they don't bite. Come on, don't be such a tarnation coward; the rattlesnakes, and copper-heads, and wipers, won't run after us; and if they was to, they couldn't reach up to our legs. This is a glorious ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... have another child," she said abruptly, like a coward throwing himself headlong into ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... "I see that it's all up with me, so I'm not going to lie like a coward. I've played for a big stake and lost, but if I hadn't been such a fool I'd have cashed that cheque the next morning, and been far away by ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... Fox, who had been listening. "You're a coward. I wouldn't have run! I would have waited and found out what it was. You and Peter Rabbit would run away from your ...
— The Adventures of Prickly Porky • Thornton W. Burgess
... as yourself, you could not love me more; perhaps less. Women like to feel their superiority; you are as clever as I am, and have more judgment; you are generous, and I am selfish; honourable, and I am a villain; brave, and I am a coward; rich, and I am poor. Let that satisfy you, and do not trample on the fallen;' and Fakredeen took her hand and bedewed it ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... be no question of marriage between them; but, none the less, as long as he was going under another name, he wanted people to believe they had legalised their union, and to respect Lalage accordingly. Had he not belonged to a family of position, he might have seen himself as a coward or a cad; but the Griersons were essentially of the Victorian age, and so he was able to quiet his conscience with platitudes; whilst under the seeming calmness with which Lalage had accepted his proposal, she was too glad of any change from the ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... proof that the man who had met death here upon this wild, lonely mountain was none other than the owner of the gray roadster, the coward who had fled from the consequences of his negligence, and turned it ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... and I made and make no presences to myself. I answer to myself, and I do not play false with the world or with you. Whatever I am the world can know, for I deceive no one, and I have no fears. But you—oh, why, why is it I feel now, suddenly, that you have the strain of the coward in you! Why it comes to me now I do not know; but it is here"—she pressed her hand tremblingly to her heart—"and I will not act as though it wasn't here. I'm ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... before, he had received a wound on the wrong side, a spear having transfixed him between the shoulders. "Tell how I died like a brave man," said he, "and tell your mother that I am gone to Paradise." From an intimate knowledge of my honoured father's character, in the qualities of thief, liar, and coward, although I promised to deliver the message, I very much ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... shoot!" Her eyes moved quickly in a cautious, side-long glance that commanded impatiently. Her straight eyebrows drew together imperiously. Then, when he met her eyes with that same helpless look, she said another word that hurt. It was "Coward!" ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... involuntarily, of its own accord, kept glancing sideways towards it. Finally, he became afraid to walk about the room. It seemed as though some one were on the point of stepping up behind him; and every time he turned, he glanced timidly back. He had never been a coward; but his imagination and nerves were sensitive, and that evening he could not explain his involuntary fear. He seated himself in one corner, but even then it seemed to him that some one was peeping over ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... well as possible, then with the whole army of the Goths we must fight it out with Belisarius. And let no one of you, I say, try to dissemble regarding this withdrawal, nor hesitate to call it flight. For the title of coward, fittingly applied, has saved many, while the reputation for bravery which some men have gained at the wrong time, has afterward led them to defeat. For it is not the names of things, but the advantage which comes from what is ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... dying Menodorus. In his last agonies, the gasping coward, Amidst the tortures of the burning steel, Still fond of life, groan'd out the dreadful secret, Held forth this fatal ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... would die a coward, and so add one more crime to the first. You'd shirk a duty, and desert those who need you. You'd leave me in the lurch, and those women dependent on ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... horrid, severe, and eminently matronly old lady put up a pair of gold eye-glasses, looked at me awhile in silence, and pronounced in a clangorous voice her verdict. "You give me very much the effect of a coward, Mr. Stevenson!" I had very nearly left two vices behind me at Glenogil—fishing and jesting at table. And of one thing you may be very sure, my lips were no more opened ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ascetic creed had cut him off from property or pleasures. True, he had been an enemy, but he now professed a duty of having no enemies. Some concession to his cause, some appeal to his principles, would probably get the mere money secret out of him. Otto was no coward, in spite of his network of military precautions, and, in any case, his avarice was stronger than his fears. Nor was there much cause for fear. Since he was certain there were no private arms in the whole principality, he was a hundred times ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... "You're a coward," she accused herself, angrily. "Any one would think you had touched a snake. If you don't hurry up, Jeanette will be here and spoil everything. I think she's coming now," and spurred on by the sound of ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... captain of the boat,' said Dunbar, 'and Tranter was about the worst sort of coward you are likely to meet on this side of Jordan. E. W. Smith, on the other hand, never ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... jumped back, eyes widening, to face his oncoming opponent in an open space. He was no coward, that kid, and he knew how to handle a vibroblade. In his own unwise, suicidal way, he was perfectly capable of proving himself. He held out the point of that shimmering metal shaft, ready to parry any offensive thrust that Mike ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... legitimate channels of thought and action, under the shadow of the royal prerogative, which survived the genuine power of the older kings, art flourished and bloomed, unsuspected and unpersecuted by the coward ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... robbers, bare of carriage and clothes? they asked. His answer was worthy of a man who lived in holy fear and no other. "We are all well aware what things can happen—fearful to the fearful—on this journey. But I think it a thing much more fearful that I should be coward enough to fail my late lord and king, by being away at such a crisis, by witholding my faith and grace from him in death, which I always showed him warmly in his life. What of the trouble he gave us, by giving in too much to the evil advice of those who flattered him? Certainly ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... dies of her own accord. Bertram stabs himself, and dies by her side, and that the play may conclude as it began, to wit, in a superfetation of blasphemy upon nonsense, because he had snatched a sword from a despicable coward, who retreats in terror when it is pointed towards him in sport; this felo de se, and thief-captain—this loathsome and leprous confluence of robbery, adultery, murder, and cowardly assassination,—this monster, whose best deed is, the having saved his betters from the degradation of hanging ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... sister whom you love? Help Senor Thorne to save me. He is a soldier. He is bound. He must not betray his honor, his duty, for me.... Ah, you two splendid Americans—so big, so strong, so fierce! What is that little black half-breed slave Rojas to such men? Rojas is a coward. Now, let me waste no more precious time. I am ready. ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... a Sadducee; but he probably thought as little about a resurrection as if he had been, and, in any case, did not expect dead men to be starting up again, one by one, and mingling with the living. His conscience made a coward of him, and his fear made that terrible which would else have been thought impossible. In his terror he makes confidants of his slaves, overleaping the barriers of position, in his need of some ears to pour his fears into. He was right in believing that he had not finished with John, and in expecting ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... answered the governor, quickly. And then he added to the fellow who had thus questioned him: "You will never get near enough to be hit with a bullet, or within five miles of it." At this many burst into applause, and the man, who was a coward at heart, sneaked from the hall in a hurry. He was no soldier and had never suffered the hardships of any campaign, and many hooted him ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... the Thames, or could be cleared away for a dance; he sees the horrible parlour where there are no patients in it, and he could reveal, if he would, what becomes of the Every-Day Book then. The conviction of my coward conscience when I see that man in a professional light, is, that he knows all the statistics of my teeth and gums, my double teeth, my single teeth, my stopped teeth, and my sound. In this Arcadian rest, I am fearless of him as of a harmless, ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... paragraphs; its vim and vehemence. At length its columns were turned against Major Selover with unrestrained virulence. He had no equal means of reply or defence at his command, but he had at last uttered threats of personal nature, and published King as a liar, a swindler and a coward. To all this Mr. King responded in his Bulletin, by stating in that paper that he defied Selover; and he went on to state the place of his residence; the time he left home to go to his office in the morning; the route thither he usually took: and also the same details of his customary way home every ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara
... have thought you'd be such a coward? It's all over now, and we can't go away all of a sudden like this, even if we wanted to, and I don't. I want to stop and see what will happen next, and help if ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... down, good - for - nothin' scamp!" growled Captain Cy. "All this day I've been hatin' myself for the way I've acted to you. I've hated myself and been tryin' to spunk up courage to say 'It's all off!' But I was too much of a coward, I guess. And now the Lord A'mighty has MADE me say it. You want your rights, do you? So? Then get 'em if you can. It's you and me for it, and we'll see who's the best man. Teacher, if you're ready I'll walk ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... "but I wish it was over. I dread something, and I do not know what it is. Though nothing shall induce me to waver, I am afraid, Munro. I am not ashamed to say it: I am afraid, as I was the first night I stayed in this house. I am not a coward, but I am afraid." ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... and found him kissing her—disgusting at his time of life, is it not?—and when I reproved her for allowing such liberties, she turned round saucily, and said she was engaged to be married to my brother, and she saw no shame in allowing him to kiss her. Edmund is a miserable coward, you know, and looked frightened; but when she asked him to say whether it was not so, he tried to summon up courage and say yes. I left the room in disgust, and this morning I have been questioning Edmund, and find that he is bent on marrying this woman, and ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... answer. "Why not? I will draw a trigger in this business, but perdition be my lot if I do more." To this, the first voice returned, in a tone which rage had heightened in a small degree above a whisper, "Coward! stand aside, and see me do it. I will grasp her throat; I will do her business in an instant; she shall not have time so much as to groan." What wonder that I was petrified by sounds so dreadful! Murderers lurked in my closet. They were planning the means of ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... Her mind was fully awake now, and she would be able to see. But, knowing that, she did not dare to look towards Arabian. She was miserable in her uncertainty, but she was afraid of having her horrible suspicion confirmed. She was a coward at that ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... change without the necessity of explaining it, he would gladly have put those drawings out of sight. Whenever, as now, he consciously regarded them, they plucked painfully at his heart-strings, and threatened to make him a coward. ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... lowlander and in a way a member of that vile Kenton brood. He hated him, too, because he belonged to those who had more of prosperity and education than himself. But Skelly was a man of resource and not a coward. ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... died in England as brave knights and true as even your valiant Cid. I would not have the man I am to wed guilty of an unknightly act. Therefore be generous. You have been mutually wounded; but it was in fair duello,"—this I said feigning ignorance of the coward blow that so nearly reached my dear love's heart,—"and now, Don Pedro, it would be the more honourable to set free the countryman of your promised bride and send him in ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... Fred, good-humouredly; "laugh away. I dare say I am a coward, but I don't believe everybody is brave. Coming ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... even taken part in the expedition which cheated Igraine) and Antor, down to Bedivere, Lucan, and the most famous of this group, Sir Kay, who, alike in older and in later versions, bears the uniform character of a disagreeable person, not indeed a coward, though of prowess not equal to his attempts and needs; but a boaster, envious, spiteful, and constantly provoking by his tongue incidents in which his hands do not help him out quite sufficiently.[53] Then there is the younger and main body, of whom ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... allows the clearest perception of disagreeable consequences, such as pain, loss of ease, loss of reputation, loss of money, or any other harmful results that may follow, to frighten him out of the road that he knows he ought to take, is a worse fool still, for he is a coward and recreant to his ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the full knowledge of the threat hanging over my future. She and I have dreamed a fresh dream. And she's even now fulfilling her part of that dream. Yes, you're right. I'm going to fight for our dream with every ounce that's in me. I know my failings. I'm at heart a coward. But I'm out to fight though the gates of hell are agape waiting for me. And when I'm beaten, and Hellbeam's satisfied his kick, my boy, my little son, will step into my shoes and carry on the work till it's complete. Oh, yes, I say 'my son.' Nancy will see to it that ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... upbraiding him for a coward, and threatened to follow him up and fetter him some other day; but his present care was to release the sisters from their long captivity. So he seized and girded on the sword, took a load of old ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... (for thus he always addressed his men), "the Dahcotahs are all braves; never has a coward been known among the People of the Spirit Lakes. Let the women and children fear their enemies, but we will face our ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... That was ten years ago. The frank, manly young knight stepped forth, and declared proudly that he dared do all that might become a man. But he had some awful experience in the course of the quest that changed him from the soul of honor to a whimpering coward. His own companions spat ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... a curl of infinite contempt upon her soft, red-ripe, moist lips, "You are a coward, and ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... BLENCH? Did he die like a craven, Begging those torturing fiends for his life? Was there a soldier who carried the Seven Flinched like a coward or fled from the strife? No, by the blood of our Custer, no quailing! There in the midst of the devils they close, Hemmed in by thousands, but ever assailing, Fighting like tigers, all ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... would like to be thought a confidential co-conspirator, now suddenly realized that his retreat was cut off. No explanation had been offered, but the fact was obvious and conscience made the usual coward of him. He would rather have bearded ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... no longer felt as in the previous September, that the United States had no immediate interest in the war, this group included influential men of business and many writers. They had lost patience with Wilson's patience. His policy was, in their opinion, that of a coward. On the other hand, Wilson was assailed by pro-Germans and die-hard pacifists; the former believed that the British blockade justified Germany's submarine warfare; the latter were afraid even of strong language in diplomatic notes, lest it lead to war. At the very outset of the diplomatic ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... assented falteringly, for his guilty conscience made a coward of him. "You're a fine fellow, Mr. Driggs, and I'm glad to oblige anyone like you. ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... soon as her uncle was out of breath, and she had an opportunity of speaking, "But, my dear uncle, you know his character, and why, oh! why, will you sacrifice me, whom you have always treated with so much affection and kindness, to one whom every one knows to be a fool and a coward?" ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... him A child for his might; Or you may deem him A coward from his flight; But if she whom love doth honour Be conceal'd from the day, Set a thousand guards upon her, Love will find ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... foot of topsoil, then some hard rock and then more hard rock. Can we harness enough energy to last through the diggin'? Do you mind if I change my mind for a very good reason which is that I'm an awful coward?" ...
— Operation Earthworm • Joe Archibald
... us again, if you would only be so kind. It would make no difference now; the poor man is so sadly altered. I must add, most reluctantly, that the doctor recommends your staying at home. Between ourselves, he is little better than a coward. Fancy his saying; 'No; we must not run that risk yet.' I am barely civil ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... said he, "that little Prosper Leclere! He thinks himself one of the strongest—a fine fellow! But I tell you he is a coward. If he is clever? Yes. But he is a poltroon. He knows well that I can flatten him out like a crepe in the frying-pan. But he is afraid. He has not as much courage as the musk-rat. You stamp on the bank. He dives. He ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... she said, releasing him, but with a menace in her tones which suggested that to disobey would mean a second ducking. The drunken coward climbed into his buggy, muttering imprecations on the head of the obdurate hostess of the tavern as he did so. But he had no stomach for further resistance. Mr. Conors and Mr. O'Hagan had been interested spectators, and now came forward ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... temples. "Ma cherie, I have not even thought! All I know is that youth comes but once, and that youth is courage. I have been a coward—I am going to ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... Promised Land, because he allowed the children of Israel to provoke him, and "he spake unadvisedly with his lips." Peter was the most zealous and defiant of the disciples, bold and outspoken; yet he degenerated for a short time into a lying, swearing, sneaking coward, afraid ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... glance Almamen cast upon his victim, and then, with a wild laugh that woke every echo in the dreary aisles, he leaped from the place. Brandishing his bloody weapon above his head, he dashed through the coward crowd; and, ere even the startled Dominican had found a voice, the tramp of his headlong steed rang upon the air; ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... dealer in horses, and that my father was lagged; that is all you could tell of me, and that I don't mind telling myself: but there are two things they can't say of me, they can't say that I am either a coward, or a screw either, except so far as one who gets his bread by horses may be expected to be; and they can't say of me that I ever ate up an ice which a young woman was waiting for, or that I ever backed out of a fight. Horse!" said he, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... to be deceitful than to be vain," Tillie answered. "If I am going to let my hair curl week-days, I won't be a coward and deceive ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... hastened to its denouement. On the night of the 9th, the tocsin was sounded, and the King and the Royal Family looked upon their fate as sealed. Notwithstanding the personal firmness of His Majesty, he was a coward for others. He dreaded the responsibility of ordering blood to be shed, even in defence of his nearest and dearest interests. Petion, however, had given the order to repel force by force to De Mandat, who was murdered ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 7 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... entirely opposite direction? She looked up and down and across for some familiar landmark, and looked in vain, growing momentarily more frightened at the attention she was attracting by standing irresolutely there. Flossy Shipley, in her girlhood days, had been almost a hopeless coward; and Flossy Roberts felt, by the throbbing of her heart, that she had not yet outgrown her girlish character. Suddenly she gave a little exclamation of delight, and with a spring forward laid her hand on the arm of one whom she recognized, none ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... of a coward, however passive, brings an element of treachery into a dangerous situation. Nostromo's nervous impatience passed into gloomy thoughtfulness. Decoud, in an undertone, as if speaking to himself, remarked that, after all, this bizarre event made no great difference. He could not conceive what ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... lessened her acute suffering, stilled her heart. She told herself with a show of vigor that she was a coward, a charge that roused an unexpected activity of denial. She discovered that cowardice was intolerable to her. What had happened, too, was so far out of her hands that a trace of philosophical acceptance, recognition, came to her support. ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... gave himself up, the coward—the lying turn-tale! The treacherous dog! Swearing it off on me to save a few years of his miserable life out of jail. See here!" stopping suddenly before Mr. Pinkerton, "That traitor made me swear I would ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... he went on aloud to himself. "Or shall I fade out, and let her learn the worst after I'm gone? Yet would not that be a coward's action? And I'm no coward. I went through the war—that hell at Vimy, and I did my best for King and Country. Now, when love happens and all that life means to a man is just within my grasp, I have to retire to ignominy or death. ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... he thought. For the first time in his life he felt what abject fear was. His knees trembled under him, and to save his life he could not have run farther. Still James Grey was no coward. In a good cause he could have fought as well as any man. Soon he heard a voice behind him cry out, "Jump up, James; I guessed what you were after. It was my idea you were going to enlist; so will I. Jump up, I say; ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... conflicting stories, the principal and most credited of which was that Davis had demanded from Nelson an apology for language used in the original altercation, and that Nelson's refusal was accompanied by a slap in the face, at the same moment denouncing Davis as a coward. However this may be, Nelson, after slapping Davis, moved toward the corridor, from which a stairway led to the second floor, and just as he was about to ascend, Davis fired with a pistol that he had obtained from some one near by ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... Mithridates in Boeotia, and afterwards had left him, and was now in the Roman army, maintained that if Lucullus would only show himself in Pontus, he might make himself master of everything at once, Lucullus replied that he was not a greater coward than huntsmen, which he should be if he passed by the wild beasts and went to their empty dens. Saying this he advanced against Mithridates, with thirty thousand foot-soldiers and two thousand five hundred cavalry. On arriving in sight of the ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... ashes from his over-alls, rose and shaking with rage, pointed a trembling finger at the trader. "You're a doggone liar! You're a doggone coward! You're a ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... day the coward Muslims spend on him rage and spite; If ye have thought to help him, 'twere good ye ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... me clench my hands and nerve my soul, and fight again, and still again! Arthur, I did that for days, and did not once know why-only because David had told me to, because I was filled with a fearful terror of proving a coward soul, because I had heard him say that if one only held the faith and prayed, the word would come to him at last. And it was true—it was true, Arthur; it was like the tearing apart of the skies, it was as if I had rent my way through them. I saw, as I had never dreamed I could ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... He is a coward and a liar, and deceived me. And you? Excuse my frankness; what are you? He deceived me and left me to take my chance in Petersburg, and you have deceived me and abandoned me here. But he did not mix up ideas with his deceit, and you ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... himself that he would stand by that boy through thick and thin, and cheer him, and help him, and bear his burdens, for the good deed done that night. Then he resolved to write home next day and tell his mother all, and what a coward her son had been. And then peace came to him as he resolved, lastly, to bear his testimony next morning. The morning would be harder than the night to begin with, but he felt that he could not afford to let one chance slip. Several times he faltered, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... climb out," rejoined Mark. "Well, den! dat showed I warn't no coward," crowed the black man, though in a very shaky voice. "If I'd been scart', would I really have wanted ter jump? It was a might long way to de ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... and transported with rage, remained immovable, looking grimly at the fallen creature. He was satisfied with his brutality; it had been an opportune relief; he could breathe better. At the same time he was beginning to feel ashamed of himself. "What have you done, you coward?..." For the first time in his existence ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... a delicate, feeble boy; not good at work; womanish in his ways; inclined to go in for petty bullying, until a boy showed fight, when he discovered himself to be an arrant coward. Four or five years later I met him at the university. His greeting was cool. My next affair was with a boy who was about my age (13), strong, full-blooded, coarse, always in 'hot water.' He was the son of the headmaster of one of the best-known public ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... instantaneous change in Horace Lansing's demeanour. From a blustering braggart, he became a pale and cringing coward. But with a desperate attempt to bluff it out, he exclaimed, "What do you mean?" but even as he spoke, he shivered and staggered backward, as if dreading ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... battalions to fight in the armies of Kerensky. At Zborov, we pierced six enemy lines but were forced to retreat because the other fighters failed to advance as fast as we. Then came the long wait for the time when Russia should find herself, as she is still trying to do. The Slav is not a coward once his mind is trained. There is hope for his ultimate recovery. The power of Czardom was enforced ignorance, and this made possible the infamous treaty of Brest-Litovsk. But we saw that there was no hope for a mere handful of us to hold the Russian ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... tells, that on that ever-blessed day, When Christian swords with Persian blood were dyed, The furious Prince Tancredi from that fray His coward foes chased through forests wide, Till tired with the fight, the heat, the way, He sought some place to rest his wearied side, And drew him near a silver stream that played Among wild ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... quickly backwards with a queer, nervous jerk of the head that was the precise counterpart of the parrot-like twist his mother had given at the luncheon table. It was an odd movement, at once timid and vicious, and in an instant I saw the spirit of Frank Jervaise revealed to me. He was a coward, hiding his weakness under that coarse mask of the brooding, relentless hawk. He had winced and retreated at my unspoken threat, as he had winced at the thought of his thrashing at school. He had taken his ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... they could wish; and Charley Mason, who was not by any means a headstrong lad, and not used to such adventures, said he would rather not attempt to cross it. But the other two boys laughed at him, and told him not to be a coward; and he finally determined he would venture, if the others succeeded. They did succeed, and Charley, not without some trembling—which, of course, made his danger the greater—prepared to follow. 'Take care, Charley! take ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... utterly and entirely repudiate the suggestion of the right honourable gentleman. (Opposition shouts of "Liar" and "Coward.") The information the right honourable gentleman has gained during his intrigues with the rank and file of the Welsh ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... to the authorities at Denver, that he will kill him." When we got to within five miles of Denver, Mark Shearer went around to the driver and told him to get back in the wagon, and if he stuck his head outside that wagon sheet, he would use it for a target. The driver was a born coward and quietly obeyed and remained under the wagon sheet until we were forty miles beyond Denver when Mark told him to "come to" now and try ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... Connie any more. You can punish me any way you like, and I'll be glad of it. It was all my fault. I made her go and get the apples for me, and I ate them. Connie didn't eat one of them. She said stolen apples would not taste very good. It was all my fault, and I'm so sorry. I was such a coward I didn't dare tell you last night. Will you forgive me? But you must punish me as hard as ever you can. But please, Prudence, won't you punish me some way without letting Lark know about it? Please, please, Prudence, don't ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... and stout of girth and limb as the other was puny and misshapen, he had plucked off his sandal that with it he might drive the full force of his arguments through the jester's skull. At that the fool, being a very coward, had fled incontinently ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... even could this terrible thing be hidden he must denounce himself and bear the penalty. How could he exist with the knowledge that he was under the ban of the gods? His life would be a curse rather than a gift under such circumstances. Physically, Chebron was not a coward, but he had not the toughness of mental fibre which enables some men to bear almost unmoved misfortunes which would crush others to the ground. As to the comforting assurances of Amuba and Jethro, they failed to give ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... Sylvia as they did on a stranger; and besides, she felt as if the less reply Molly received, the less likely would it be that she would go on in the same strain. So she coaxed and chattered to her child and behaved like a little coward in trying to draw out of the conversation, while at the same time ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... express. It is enough for the great martyrs and criminals of the French revolution, that they have surprised for all time the secret weakness of the strong. They have awakened and set leaping and quivering in his crypt for ever the coward in ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... something—and on the impulse I made up that fib. I'm not sorry even now—I think. Yet I did mean to tell you, sooner or later, the truth. Honestly, I shouldn't have kept silence long if you hadn't found out. I'm not a coward when it's ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the truth. Already he had that day stopped at more than one road-side ale-house and drunk several glasses of beer. "In vino-veritas," is a true saying. Blackall when sober might pass for a very brave fellow: his true character came out when he was drunk, and he showed himself an arrant coward, as he had done on this occasion. The boys who remained with him looked very foolish, and some of them felt heartily ashamed of their leader. Some resolved to break from him altogether, but he had thrown his chains too firmly over others ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... our goodly train How few will find our banquet hall! Yet why with coward lips complain That this must ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... stranger and no traitor rules o'er me, Or unchastised inveigles humbled Spain. Covilla, gavest thou no promises? Nor thou, Don Julian? Seek not to reply - Too well I know, too justly I despise, Thy false excuse, thy coward effrontery; Yes, when thou gavest them across the sea, An enemy wert thou to Mahomet, And no appellant to his faith ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... in his hot brain. His heart whispered, 'She will never do it over my body!' And the thought calmed him at once. He saw Cairy's trembling arm and angry face. 'He'll shoot,' he said to himself coldly. 'It's in his blood, and he's a coward. He'll shoot!' Standing very still, his hands in his pockets, he looked quietly at the enraged man. He ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... of Erasmus and Luther were irreconcilable: and bitterness soon arose between them. From both sides Erasmus was assailed with unmeasured virulence. The strict Catholics called him a heretic, the Lutherans a coward. But throughout these stormy years he never wavered. At the end he was still pursuing the ideal which he had sought at the outset of his public career—reform guided by knowledge. He lived to see some ...
— Selections from Erasmus - Principally from his Epistles • Erasmus Roterodamus
... for that, however. The Intendant was no coward, and could brazen a thing out with any man alive. But there was one thing which he knew he could not brazen out or fight out, or do anything but miserably fail in, should it come to the question. He had boldly and wilfully lied at the Governor's council-table—sitting ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... believes that I am shop-gazing in Regent Street, and that's all he is going to hear about this visit. He is delicate himself, and puts an altogether exaggerated value on his old wife. Indeed, he'd worry us both to death if he knew I were ill. Don't be frightened to speak plainly. I am not a coward! I can bear the truth, whatever it may be. It is the heart that ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... one admits, and even the faults of which one faintly suspects oneself, and yet supposes that one conceals from the world at large, are the very faults that are absolutely patent to every one else. If one dimly suspects that one is a liar, a coward, or a snob, and gratefully believes that one has not been placed in a position which inevitably reveals these characteristics in their full nakedness, one may be fairly certain that other people know that one is ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Snug in beneath him. Such a heaven was his. Now, honest Teddy, think of such a wretch, And learn to shun his vices, one and all. Though richer than a Jew, he was more poor Than is the meanest beggar. At the cost Of other men a glutton. At his own, A starveling. A mere scrub. And such a coward, A cozener and liar—but a coward, And would have been ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various
... got a notion of how children ought to play, And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way. He stays so close beside me, he's a coward, you can see; I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... struck down maimed and bleeding, or perhaps killed outright, and I have a horrible feeling that when I see these things for the first time I shall turn sick and faint, and perhaps misbehave in some way. And I wouldn't act like a coward for the world; my father is a very proud man, and I don't think he would ever forgive me for bringing such disgrace on ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... Amazement fled before rage upon that furious face, perspiration streamed from every pore. His eyes shot this way and that like black bullets. No other man in the world can become so infuriated as the coward, for the brave man knows that he can satisfy his anger. He reserves it as a force to use in vengeance. He is temperate in that. But the worm-soul, which must crawl and be satisfied with merely stinging the heel of his enemy, knows no such temperance. He ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... few minutes. Perhaps she was a little startled, almost frightened—many a torturer is a great coward—by the sight of that white face, its every feature trembling with righteous indignation or, perhaps, some touch of nature in the hard woman's heart pleaded against this unwomanly persecution of one who bad never injured her. But she could not hold ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... down, pale now and trembling with rage. He was not a coward, but on board this ship he must give heed to the words of the ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... shows us that anything which adds to our facility of communication, and organization of means, adds to our security of life. Only let a bridegroom try to disappear from an untamed Katherine of a bride, and he will soon be brought home, like a recreant coward, overtaken by the electric telegraph, and clutched back to his fate by ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... and bloodshed, bent on bringing down their game; But they searched in vain for the Cattle Thief: that lion had left his lair, And they cursed like a troop of demons—for the women alone were there. "The sneaking Indian coward," they hissed; "he hides while yet he can; He'll come in the night for cattle, but he's scared to face a man." "Never!" and up from the cotton woods rang the voice of Eagle Chief; And right out into the open stepped, unarmed, the Cattle Thief. Was that the game they had coveted? ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... whose coward hand Forsook the consecrated brand, When one bold thrust, or fearful stroke, At once the powerful spell had broke, And silently dissolved in air The mock array of warriors there— Now take thy doom, and rue the hour Thou look'dst on Dunstanborough tower! Be thine the canker of the soul, ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... a shingle, are commonly as innocent as lambs of the shedding of blood on the ground. They can sometimes screw themselves up to meet an adversary, but it exceeds their powers to use their weapons properly, when it comes to serious work. The swaggerer is ever a coward at heart, however well he may wear a mask for a time. But enough of this.—We understand each other, and are to remain friends, under all circumstances. ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... nakedness and hunger garbs himself in clean linen and develops the round of his belly. He is a bloodsucker and a vampire. He lays unholy hands on heaven and hell at cent. per cent., and his very existence is a sacrilege and a blasphemy. And yet here am I, wilting before him, an arrant coward, with no respect for him and less for myself. Why should this shame be? Let me rouse in my strength and smite him, and, by so doing, wipe clean one ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... by debauched favourites, now by godly ruffians; James naturally grew up a dissembler, and betrayed his father's murderer with a kiss. He was frightened into deceit: he could be cruel; he became, as far as he might, a tyrant. But, though not the abject coward of tradition, James (as he himself observed) was never the man to risk his life in a doubtful brawl, on the chance that his enemies might perish while he escaped. For him a treachery of that kind, an affair of sword and dagger fights ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... thought it of Cornelius O'Farrelly," said Jimmy sadly. "I had a better opinion of him, so I had. I knew he was a Papist and a rebel and every kind of a blackguard, but I'd never have thought he was a coward." ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... take a fair start, as Flossy says, it isn't pleasant to go in after the exercises have fairly opened?" As she said this, for the first time in her life Miss Ruth Erskine began to have a dim idea that possibly she might be a coward; this certainly sounded ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... Kildare was Lord Deputy, and in September he made his way to Cornwall. Followed by 6,000 Cornishmen he reached Taunton, but the news of the defeat of the Cornish at Blackheath depressed him, and the poor coward ran away from his army and took sanctuary in Beaulieu Abbey. He was brought to London, where he publicly acknowledged himself to be an impostor. Henry was too humane to do more than place ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... intelligent, even artistic looking, shaking his fist at the gallery). "You dare not come down here and say that, you coward!" ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... replied, and walked over to him, well pleased to bring his argument with Charlie to an end. Charlie was not really a very formidable opponent for a grown man, but Skipper Drummond, like many bullies, was a great coward. ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... understanding the reasons for them as little as I do, seeing no deeper than her devotion and knowing nothing of the King's wise reasons, were moved by this same devotion to some desperate effort which would right this wrong at any cost? Supposing that were so, what would hold her back? Fear? She is no coward, and there is no such courage on God's earth as the courage of a loving woman. Weakness? Love is strong as death and stronger, for love builds up where death can only destroy. The crime? In her eyes the crime lies in the unhappiness and neglect of Amboise, and ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... a short-sport!" she burst forth. "Any fellow that'll go on making debts when he can't pay his old ones, that'll get things in a muddle and run off and let somebody else face the racket is a coward—I think—" ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... oppose you if you prefer to let matters stand as they are; but if you start on fresh enterprises, and embark on the tempestuous sea of danger, then I put down my foot and very boldly 'halt.' I will not take another step with you. I can see by the looks of both of you that you think me a fool and a coward. Heaven grant that the future may not show you only too plainly that I have been in the right. Think over this. For twenty years fortune has favored us, but, believe me, it is never wise to tempt her too far, for it is well known that at some time or ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... be, certainly; though, were it not for such a case as this, we should not have thought of considering Richard Jones a coward. It seems he did not dare to try to take away a sled from a boy who was as big as himself, but attacked little James, for he knew he was not strong enough to ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... said the king, taking his favorite's hand tenderly; "have you nothing to say? Or have the Prince of Prussia's fears infected you, and made of you a coward?" ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... misspelled and ungrammatically composed. Mr. Hardy had received threats before, and paid little attention to them. He prided himself on his steady nerves, and his contempt of all such methods used to scare him. Only a coward, he reasoned, would ever write an anonymous letter of such a character. Still, this morning he felt disturbed. His peculiar circumstances made the whole situation take on a more vivid colouring. Besides all that, he could not escape the conviction that he ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... asked, contemptuously; "why, if my old man was within sound of my voice, you would run like a sheep from a dog. You are the biggest coward connected with the gang, and they only keep you 'cos you can mend their clothes. A tailor! Bah, you are only the ninth part of a man, ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... explain to the world that the engagement was only the outcome of a thoughtless wager, his friends would surely censure him for trying to back out; they would accuse him of acting the part of a coward. He could not endure the thought of their taking that view of it. All his friends knew his ideas concerning honor, particularly ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... those fiends that I confess a qualm of fear surged over me for a second or two; for I saw at once that, unlike my captors, these ruffians were not endeavouring merely to frighten me, but were in deadly earnest. Not that I feared death; no man who ever knew me could dub me coward. In the heat of battle, or under most ordinary circumstances I can face death—ay, and have faced it a hundred times—without a tremor; but to be triced up, helpless, and to have one's strength sapped and one's life slowly drained ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... Hill, "equal rights" were a golden dream which only the most optimistic ever hoped to see realized. From then onwards, as old colonists have so often told me, the Boers brought up the younger generation in the belief that the "Roinek"[1] was a coward, and in consequence their arrogance in the country districts became wellnigh intolerable, while at the Cape the Bond party grew so strong it bid fair to elbow out the English altogether. Now, while the country is still young, the fair prospect opens ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... something to conceal—particularly Cargrim. In the presence of that good young man, this spiritual lord, high-placed and powerful, felt that he resembled an insect under a microscope, and that Cargrim had his eye to the instrument. Conscience made a coward of the bishop, but in the case of his chaplain his uneasy feelings were ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... exceedingly keen," said I; "and though only a coward will boast of his nerves in situations wholly unfamiliar to him, yet my nerves have been seasoned in such variety of danger that I have the right to rely on ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... your good," said Jack Swing, or the man who passed for him, wearing a long Punch-like nose. "We are come to help you; and where's the mean coward that won't come along with us in his own cause? There will be no living for poor folks if those new-fangled machines be allowed to go on, and them Parliament folk vote out all that makes for the people. Down with them, I say! Up with Reform, and down with all the fools and cowards who won't stand ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the forces under Gen. Lewis, two of his men (Clay and Coward) who were out hunting and at some little distance from each other, came near to where two Indians were concealed. Seeing Clay only, and supposing him to be alone, one of them fired at him; and ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... we borrow a clout from the Boer — to plaster anew with dirt? An Irish liar's bandage, or an English coward's shirt? We may not speak of England; her Flag's to sell or share. What is the Flag of England? ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... again; he conceals himself, trembling, in the caverns of his mountains; he has become a coward; why should he affect a courage he does not feel? No ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... wary Wisbich walks and breathes His active body, and in fury wreathes His comely crest, and often with a sound, He whets his angry beak upon the ground. This done, they meet, not like that coward breed Of Aesop; these can better fight than feed: They scorn the dunghill; 'tis their only prize TO DIG FOR PEARLS ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... tears into my eyes, for it was so true and real, and the sailors who spoke it seemed so false-hearted and insincere; but for all that, in spite of the sickness at my heart, it made me mad, and stung me to the quick, that they should speak of me as a poor trembling coward, who could never be brought to endure the hardships of a sailor's life; for I felt myself trembling, and knew that I was but a coward then, well enough, without their telling me of it. And they did not say I was cowardly, because they perceived it in ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... of the young lady who has been the subject of conversation here,' said Nicholas. 'I denounce this person as a liar, and impeach him as a coward. If he has a friend here, he will save him the disgrace of the paltry attempt to conceal his name—and utterly useless one—for I will find it out, nor leave ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... staved off the truth, trusting that the next night would bring inspiration. Almost she hoped—being quite unwise in such matters—that his sufferings would be accepted as cancelling his offence. So she played the coward. The blow fell on the evening when Endymion announced, in casual tones, that the Court Martial was fixed for the ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... few minutes," said another little voice down inside him. "Don't be a coward. You ought to warn Dusky the Black Duck and his flock that a hunter with a terrible gun is waiting for them. Is it true that it is no business of yours what happens to those Ducks? Think again, Blacky; think again. It is the duty of ...
— Blacky the Crow • Thornton W. Burgess
... According to Mr. SMITH'S letter to the gay LOTHAIRIO, published in the Tribune, the cap fits him to a hair, whereupon he ungratefully shakes his fist at the donor of it across the Atlantic, and stigmatizes him as a coward. This may lead to a long-shot duel between the aggressor and the aggrieved. Mr. GOLDWIN SMITH, for instance, who, in addition to being a roving professor, seems to have become a raving professor, may go so far as to jerk the word "coward!" at the teeth of Mr. DISRAELI, through ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 13, June 25, 1870 • Various
... him! Behaved like a coward. Made it terrible for him at the very last. Oh, if he would only look at her again! The whole force of her despair went into that wish—and Leonard turned. A few yards farther down the platform he swung suddenly about, and finding her face among the crowd, he tilted his chin and ...
— Four Days - The Story of a War Marriage • Hetty Hemenway
... Confound the ignorant, and amaze, indeed, The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I, A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak, Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause, And can say nothing; no, not for a king Upon whose property and most dear life A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward? Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across? Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face? Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat As deep as to the lungs? who does me this, ha? 'Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be But I am pigeon-liver'd, and lack gall To make oppression bitter; ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... afterwards his evil hour." Hugh's evil hour had come. But was he a coward? Men not braver than he have earned the Victoria Cross, have given up their lives freely for others. Hugh had it in him to do as well as any man in hot blood, but not in cold. That was where Lord Newhaven had the advantage of him. He had been overmatched from the ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... is that the world isn't made that way—for you—for me. We're permitted to seize those other things because they're just baubles, we've both found out how worthless they are. And the worst of it is they've made me a coward, Hugh. It isn't that I couldn't do without them, I've come to depend on them in another way. It's because they give me a certain protection,—do you see? they've come to stand in the place of the real convictions we've ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... feeble step, or bending o'er The sweet-breathed roses which he loved so well, While through long years his burdening cross he bore, From those firm lips no coward ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... astonish uncle," she thought. "I'll dash up in grand style, and show him that I am not a coward, after all." ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... so very civil. "Besides, it is something for my advantage," added Parley. "I will not open the door, that is certain; but as he is to come alone, he can do me no harm through the bars of the windows. And he will think I am a coward, if I don't keep my word; no, I will let him see that I am not afraid of my own strength; I will show him I can go what length I please, and stop short when I please." Had Flatterwell heard this boastful speech, he would have been quite ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... that I intended to let you take possession of this steamer, and run her into a Confederate port, Corny? My name is Passford as well as yours, and I am not a traitor, and don't believe I am a coward. At a time which suited my convenience, I left the Vernon and came on board of ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... woman and her child. She wondered whether he would have done this if he had heard the answer that was upon her lips. Perhaps that was why she had not been given time to speak that answer, which might have made a coward of him. For nothing more had been heard of Robert Seymour; indeed, already the tragedy of the ship Zanzibar was forgotten. The dead had buried their dead, and since then worse disasters ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... while I pull desperately, but impotently, with fingers weak from fright. Boggley coming behind convulsed with laughter, merely remarks that I am a funk-stick—which, I take it, means the worst kind of coward. ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... live," I said to the genius, "if I were such a coward as to slay a lady who is not only unknown to me, but who is at this moment half dead herself. Do with me as you will—I am in your power—but I refuse ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... not believe you, should you swear your Heart out: some body has possess'd him that you are a damn'd Fool, and a most egregious Coward, a Fellow that to save your Life will ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... as much surprised as pleased at this change in the young man's character, and he the more regretted having to tell the whole of the narrative, which was sure to cause further pain to the lad. However, it had to be done, and Jim, who was no coward, took it all better than might have ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... he suddenly scurries wildly across the Maidan while I pull desperately, but impotently, with fingers weak from fright. Boggley coming behind convulsed with laughter, merely remarks that I am a funk-stick—which, I take it, means the worst kind of coward. ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... care and worry: Never mind the 'if' and 'but' (words for coward lips). Put them out with 'fear' and 'doubt,' in the pack with 'hurry,' While we stroll like vagabonds forth to ...
— Poems of Purpose • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... grotesque, that to act in that way would have been almost impossible, for only after I have faced his shot at the distance of twelve paces could my words have any significance for him, and if I had spoken before, he would have said, 'He is a coward, the sight of the pistols has frightened him, no use to listen to him.' Gentlemen," I cried suddenly, speaking straight from my heart, "look around you at the gifts of God, the clear sky, the pure air, the tender grass, the birds; nature is beautiful and sinless, and we, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Mealy, who looked supplication and surprise at his friends, and wondered if they were really going to desert him. The new boy waded around Mealy, and leaned over him, and said, shaking his fist in the freckled face, "You're a coward, and you don't dast take it up and ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... it was used by Homer to express the few, rapid, and significant words which conveyed some hasty order, counsel, or notice, suited to any sudden occasion or emergency: e. g. 'To him flying from the field the hero addressed these winged words—"Stop, coward, or I will transfix thee with my spear."' But by Horne Tooke, the phrase was adopted on the title-page of his Diversions of Purley, as a pleasant symbolic expression for all the non-significant ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... Adair County, and the most desperate one. He has an intense hatred of the Union men of the vicinity, and has advocated hanging every one of them. He is a fire-eater of the most pronounced stamp; but the rascal is a coward, I believe, though he has the reputation of being a brave man; yet he is nothing but a bully. You would think, to hear him talk, that he was going to ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... were marvelous. You slipped a bit here and hid it there; you cut off extra portions and gave false orders; you dashed off into darkness and hid in corners and ate and ate! It was nasty business. I hated it. I was too cowardly to steal much myself, and not coward enough ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... to tell you to-day, Mother," he answered slowly. After a moment's silence he looked up and said steadily, "I've failed with Miss Wingate—and I'm too much of a coward to tell her. I feel sure now that she'll never be able to use her voice any more than she can in the speaking tones and she—she will never sing again." As he spoke he buried his face in his hands and his arms shook the table ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... mother, as your loving and obedient son," said Eugene, kissing her hand—even the one which still clasped the wonder-working purse. "I have no right to despise this tiny necromancer, for, by its beneficent power, you have been rescued from dangers which I, a man, and not a coward, was impotent to avert. I submit, dear mother, to your dictates—no longer your champion, look upon ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... boy,' said the cowherd; 'he will never hurt you, and even if he wished I would not let him;' and as he spoke he held out his hand. At this William took courage. He was not really a coward, but he felt lonely and it seemed a long time since the wolf had gone away. Would he really ever come back? This old man looked kind, and there could be no harm in speaking to him. So he took the outstretched hand and scrambled ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... tell her?" he went on aloud to himself. "Or shall I fade out, and let her learn the worst after I'm gone? Yet would not that be a coward's action? And I'm no coward. I went through the war—that hell at Vimy, and I did my best for King and Country. Now, when love happens and all that life means to a man is just within my grasp, I have to retire to ignominy or death. ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... scream and appear frightened than he yelled most loudly, and, running to me, caught my clothes, clinched his fists, and appeared really alarmed for two minutes. It was not affectation. Do you think this trait ominous of a coward? You know my abhorrence and contempt of those animals. Really I have been uneasy ever since it happened. You see I follow your injunction to the letter. How do you like this essay? Have ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... "You are as sorry as any one can be who is not, so to speak, the hero, or rather the coward, of the tragedy. Yes, I know. I'm obliged to you, Elliot, but all of us have to face death, whether it is our own or the death of another dearer than ourselves, alone. A soul is a horribly lonely thing in ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... it. They love him, because he loved the very humblest condition of humanity, where every thing good was only the more commended to his manly mind by disadvantages of social position. They love him, because he saw with just anger, how much the judgments of "silly coward man" are determined by such accidents, to the neglect or contempt of native worth. They love him for his independence. What wonder! To be brought into contact with rank and wealth—a world inviting to ambition, and tempting to a thousand ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... soon as he saw me he bellowed: 'Imbecile et inchretien!'; then he called me a great lot of other things, including Shame of my country, Traitor to the sacred cause of Liberty, Contemptible coward and Vile sneaking spy. When he got all through I said 'I don't understand French.' You should have ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... had one fear in his life. He had to escape regeneration. To do that, he was willing to take any chance, coward though he was—even if it meant that he ...
— Divinity • William Morrison
... my ancient-bearer long, And borne up Leicester's bear in foreign lands; Yet now resign these colours to my hands, For I am full of grief and full of rage. John, look upon me: thus did Richard take The coward Austria's colours in his hand, And thus he cast them under Acon walls, And thus he trod them underneath his feet. Rich colours, how I wrong ye by this wrong! But I will right ye. Bear[er], take them again, And keep ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... his brother Paul was no coward, and, being thoroughly convinced of the danger, he quickened his walk. In twenty minutes they reached Mesar Burnu, and in five minutes more they were within the gates of the embassy. The huge Cossack who stood by the entrance ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... from his seat with a pale face, and a death-like sinking at his heart. "Yes, Lord Jesus," he uttered with dry lips, "I am at Thy command. Forgive my coward halting. If Thou wilt send me, I ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... timid than he was physically a coward, but he looked round with some anxiety as the boy uttered his ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... "What a coward you are!" said Irene. "It is the most awful fun to be out on the lake in a storm like this. Ah! do ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... cane—all these are very properly regulated for you by laws of fashion, which you could never dream of breaking. You may break every moral law there is—or rather, was—and still remain a man. You may be a bully, a cad, a coward and a fool, in the poor heart and brains of you; but so long as you wear the mock regimentals of contemporary manhood, and are above all things plain and undistinguished enough, your reputation for manhood will be secure. There is nothing so dangerous to a reputation ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... word in the extended vocabulary of barrack-room abuse that cannot pass without comment. You may call a man a thief and risk nothing. You may even call him a coward without finding more than a boot whiz past your ear, but you must not call a man a bastard unless you are prepared to prove ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... week at least on our own side of the frontier. Where were Osbourne's wits? Will it be believed, the column at Lone Bluff is again short of ammunition? This old man of the sea, whom all the world knows to be an ass and whom we can prove to be a coward, is apparently a peculator also. If we were to die to-morrow, the word Osbourne would be found engraven backside foremost on ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... observance. I am he that was false friend but never false lover— that married without kirk or blessing. I am the man that clasped a dead woman's hand whom I never owned as wife, and watched afar off the babe that I never dared to call mine own. I am the father of Winifred Oharteris, coward before man, castaway before God. Of my sin two know besides my Maker—the father that begot you, whose false friend I was in the days that were, and Walter Skirving, the father of the first Winifred whose eyes this hand closed under the Peacock tree ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... circumstances which surrounded him, was not without its appropriate interest. He was summoned in early youth, and without warning, to face a crisis of tremendous hazard, being at the same time himself a man of no very great constitutional courage; perhaps he was even a coward. And this we say without meaning to adopt as gospel truths all the party reproaches of Anthony. Certainly he was utterly unfurnished by nature with those endowments which seemed to be indispensable in a successor to ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... and the great niggard bestows no grain of sand, no ray of light, no breath of wind, without reclaiming it for his household, which is ruled by no design, no reason, no goodness, but by a tyrannical necessity, whose slave he himself is. The coward hides behind the cloud of incomprehensibility, and can be revealed only by himself—I would I could strip him of the veil! Thus I see the thing that you ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... No one thinks you a coward, but that's not the point. Ask Denisov whether it is not out of the question for a cadet to demand ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... my promise to Chick. I loved your father, and I was fond of Watson. It's a great secret and, if the professor is right, one which man has sought through the ages. I'd be a coward to forgo my duty. If I fail, I have ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... which does not merge away into something else, and that which is not partly something else: that which is not a reaction to, or an imitation of, something else. By a real hero, we mean one who is not partly a coward, or whose actions and motives do not merge away into cowardice. But, if in Continuity, all things do merge, by Realness, I mean the Universal, besides which there is ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... "You damned coward," cried the young man. "You'd never dare shoot a man until his back was turned. You don't dare shoot me even then," and he deliberately turned his back full upon the sailor and walked nonchalantly away as if to put him ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Directrice, and stained her, from breast to shoes. It was disgusting. They told him it was La Directrice, and that he must be careful. For an instant he stopped his raving, and regarded her fixedly with his remaining eye, then took aim afresh, and again covered her with his coward blood. ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte
... in beneath him. Such a heaven was his. Now, honest Teddy, think of such a wretch, And learn to shun his vices, one and all. Though richer than a Jew, he was more poor Than is the meanest beggar. At the cost Of other men a glutton. At his own, A starveling. A mere scrub. And such a coward, A cozener and liar—but a coward, And would have been a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various
... "He's a great coward, but there's one queer thing about him; when any boy challenges him to fight he goes white about the gills but he always fights . . ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... taking long horseback rides with her, and going to see her whenever he pleases, I don't know how I keep from killing him. He isn't fit to be in the same town with her. I know the man, went to school with him. He's a cad and a coward and a big fat fool. He has some money— that is, his father has—and a smearing of education, but he's coarse and common and not to be trusted. Van Orm was a gentleman at least, ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... be a man, a noble man, and put your personal gratification below justice, honour, and gratitude. This is the first real trial of your life, George, are you going to play the coward ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... what you're thinking about," he said, as they started on again. "You're sorry to go not entirely because you love the city, but because you feel as if you were turning coward in going at all. You'll get over ...
— Boy Scouts in Mexico; or On Guard with Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... many a weary hag he limpit, An' ay the tither shot he thumpit, Till coward death behind him jumpit, Wi' deadly feide; Now he proclaims, wi' tout o' ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... only you wasn't such a coward!—We might get a few loads o' wood in a hurry, an' we wouldn't have to work ourselves blue in the face neither.—No, nor we wouldn't have to go ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... Colonel; "what should I be worth if I did not? Why, these are the women that win Waterloo in the persons of their sons. That girl could never breed a coward nor a cheat." Then his incisive voice mellowed suddenly. "Poor young thing," said he, with manly emotion, "I saw her come out of that room pale as death to do another woman justice. She's no fool, ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... approaching Mr. Graylock, for he felt sure that the gentleman must have heard about the time when he and Ferd engaged in a rough and tumble fight on the baseball field, after the other had deliberately struck him, and called him a coward because he was so slow to take off his coat and engage in a combat that proved to be rather gory for Ferd—yes, he knew this must be the case, for his mother had looked serious for some little time, and he heard that the rich ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... wife a plague for life! A coward sure is he": Then Huggins turned his horse's head, And crossed ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... sought after by many a better man than myself,"—he said—"Even rich men, who do not need her millions, are likely to admire her—and why should I stand in her way?—I, who haven't a penny to call my own! I should be a coward if I kept her to her promise. For she does not know yet—she does not see what the possession of Helmsley's millions will mean to her. And by and bye when she does know she will change—she will be grateful to me ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... in the minde of a man of understanding (which I find altogether impossible) she sels us her ware at an overdeere rate: were she an enemie by mans wit to be avoided, I would advise men to borrow the weapons of cowardlinesse: but since it may not be, and that be you either a coward or a runaway, an honest or valiant man, she ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... the nobleman and since the nobleman had no other vocation he began to become extinct. A bullet fired from a mile away is no respecter of persons. It is just as likely to kill a knight as a peasant, and a brave man as a coward. You cannot fence with a cannon ball nor overawe it with a plumed hat. The only thing you can do is to hide and shoot back. Now you cannot hide if you send up a column of smoke by day and a pillar of fire ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... He chose the coward's part, of course, and did violence tomb fine conscience. With the cross in his hand he repeated after her the words of the formidable oath that she administered an oath which it must damn his immortal soul to break. ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... Hector shouted back, "to set on others to fight when you dare not fight yourself? Whoever you are, you are a coward!" ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... it," said Horace. "I don't think any one can fairly call me a coward, but I do draw the line at fighting an Efreet for the hand of a lady I've never seen. How do I know he'll ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... finish, Bee went up to him and made a profound obeisance, saying: "Pray do not leave us, sir. Will you not take a seat?" She looked like a drowning person clutching at him for support—the little coward! ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... your own way," he said. He was a coward at heart, and as he had not been in the plot against Anderson Rover he did not wish to get any deeper into ...
— The Rover Boys in New York • Arthur M. Winfield
... "Alexander was always a coward, and he proved it then. He thought that his hour had come, and that a just vengeance for all the lives that he had taken, was about ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... more than Juliette; what maddened her was the consciousness of her own passion amidst the quiet cheerfulness of this drawing-room; she was terrified lest she should burst out into some angry speech. Was she a coward, then? ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... frightened, that once I thought I would not go. I almost determined to write Augustus a note giving it up; but I thought that he would laugh at me for being such a coward, and I tried to picture to myself once more how fine it would be to be a real actress, and be always praised as I had been ...
— A Peep Behind the Scenes • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... can do all these things, chief," Tom said; "but I can do my best. And, anyhow, I think I can promise that if we should be attacked you shall see no signs of my being afraid, whatever I may feel. I am only a boy yet, but I hope I am not a coward." ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... a scoundrel some time ago," said the soldier slowly, as though weighing each word, "and now show yourself a coward when you malign a young ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... are no coward, Christy, and if you don't send a shot into the Vampire, it will not be ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... began, trembling with indignation, "don't you speak like that to me about Aunt Mab or Valentine, He's got a jolly sight more pluck than you have, you coward! If you want to begin calling names, I'll tell you yours—you're a liar and ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... doing to-night in anticipating the blow of your enemy is only an act of bravado. There is no real courage in that. When you thrust Dan Harwood into the convention to utter your sneer for you, it was the act of a coward. And that was contemptible cowardice. You picked him up, a clean young man of ideals, and tried to train him in your cowardly shadow ways. When the pricking of your conscience made you feel some responsibility for me, you manifested it like a ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... "There, Fan, read it," she said. "It is all about you, and you deserve a reward for burning your fingers. Coward and villain! why has he added this infamous lie to his other crimes? It has only made me hate and despise him more than ever. If he had had the courage to confess everything, and even to boast of it, I should not have ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... Glenvarloch; "I will cleanse them from a calumniator and a coward." He then pressed on Lord Dalgarno, and struck him with the flat ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... doing: the Eastern to be suffering. The perfect life would be a harmony between (selfless or non-attached) doing and suffering. Worship the terrible. Worship Death, for its own sake; despair for its own sake; pain for its own sake. Yet this is not the coward's or the suicide's or the weakling's morbid love of Death, but it is the cry of the philosopher who has sounded everything to its depths and knows intensely the vanity of the desire for happiness on the relative plane of limitations. ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... Professor Burgess was no coward, but he had little power of generalship. As the crowd huddled together under the swaying trees, ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... this mere page aroused the jealousy of Sir Andrew Aguecheek, a foolish, rejected lover of hers, who at that time was staying at her house with her merry old uncle Sir Toby. This same Sir Toby dearly loved a practical joke, and knowing Sir Andrew to be an arrant coward, he thought that if he could bring off a duel between him and Cesario, there would be rare sport indeed. So he induced Sir Andrew to send a challenge, which he himself took to Cesario. The poor page, in ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... Unjustly by himself in the sense in which a man is Unjust who only does Unjust acts without being entirely bad (for the two things are different, because the Unjust man is in a way bad, as the coward is, not as though he were chargeable with badness in the full extent of the term, and so he does not act Unjustly in this sense), because if it were so then it would be possible for the same thing to have been taken away from and added to the same person: but this is ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... you are a boy," he scolded himself; "but she is a heroine, and you are a coward. How could you let her ...
— Three Young Pioneers - A Story of the Early Settlement of Our Country • John Theodore Mueller
... track of the Algonquin. The captain of the University boat turned his head, and there was the lovely vision which had a moment before bewitched him. The owner of all that loveliness must, he thought, have flung the bouquet. It was a challenge: how could he be such a coward as ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... together until at last Grettir was thrown. Audun then set his knees on his stomach and dealt unmercifully with him. Atli and Bersi and a number of the others ran up and separated them. Grettir said they need not hold him like a mad dog, and added: "The thrall alone takes instant vengeance, the coward never." ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... anguish, born of love again; And so I know that Love and Pain are one, Yet not one single joy would I forego.— The very radiance of the tropic sun Makes the dark night but darker here below. Mine is no coward soul to count the cost; The coin of love with lavish hand I spend, And though the sunlight of my life is lost And I must walk in shadow to the end,— I gladly press the cross against my heart— And welcome Pain, that ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... wish to lose it again until I have lived out my natural term of years. My family is one of long life, and I feel that I have a right to fifty more years of existence, and this strong desire for the natural remainder of my life is that which gives these men their power over me. I was never a coward, but I cannot but fear those who may at any moment cause this form, these limbs, my physical state and life, to vanish like ...
— Amos Kilbright; His Adscititious Experiences • Frank R. Stockton
... to alter the mourning customs of our time. We may anxiously desire to do so, but the usual question will occur—"What will people say?" "What will the world say?" We involuntarily shrink back, and play the coward like our neighbours. Still, common sense, repeatedly expressed, will have its influence; and, in course of time, it cannot fail to modify the fashions of society The last act of Queen Adelaide, by which ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... place a Christian in one corner cell and a lion in the diagonally opposite corner and then leave them with all the inner doors open. The consequent effect was sometimes most laughable. On one occasion the man was given a sword. He was no coward, and was as anxious to find the lion as the lion undoubtedly was ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... there are no songs about them and no praises in the West, whatever there may be in the South. Why would there, and they running away and leaving the country the way they did? And what good did they ever do it? James the Second was a coward. Why didn't he go into the thick of the battle like the Prince of Orange? He stopped on a hill three miles away, and rode off to Dublin, bringing the best of his troops with him. There was a lady walking in the street at Dublin when he got there, and he told her the battle ...
— The Kiltartan History Book • Lady I. A. Gregory
... an exasperated, avaricious, and insolent set of men; if we were defeated, how many of our wealthiest and noblest citizens must fall. Yet when I argued thus and offered my advice I was taunted for being a coward." ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... "I have been a coward without your love, Rose. You cannot imagine how your scorn has weakened me, and the whole affair has been one round of ghastly mistakes. I am here to-night to tell you the truth. You have constantly denied me audience, and so to-night I resolved to see you or die ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton
... Nineveh? Who fled my sword, fear-cold, and pale with terror? Insult not Husak with so poor a suit! That coward's race— ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... am not so much of a coward but that I can stand being beaten and endure the stigma of a lost cause—an unjust cause, we shall have to admit sooner or later. But I seem to have been shilly-shallying, a sort of gold-lace soldier, and the only time ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... then the sergeant said, "If you don't know, you soon will do. The fact is, you have spoiled the coppers in the cook-house, you have burned the bottoms out of them." "They were all right when I left" I retorted, beginning to feel rather "queer." If I had never been one before I felt a coward then; but, come what might, I thought, they can only reduce me in rank. So with "firm step" I marched to the sergeant-major's quarters. To my surprise—and in a manner which at once put me at my ease—the sergeant-major ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... do get run down and killed, they will find out who I am," thought the poor boy. "It would be horrid to disappear and have folks say I was a coward, who had run away for fear father would be angry with me for losing his raft. As if my father would ever do anything to make me afraid of him! And mother! How badly she would feel if I should disappear without ever giving ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... great heroes, like the father of her that is now Queen. They were fine men that stood beside him, and one was my own man. I said to him, "This is the time a brave man is sure to be killed. If you come back to me, I'll always think you were a coward." He died along with a thousand of the best men in the kingdom fighting around the King. That was a great day. Four kingdoms at once we fought, and beat them to their knees. Glad enough they were to make peace with the child of ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... Mayor, and begged him to procure them a horse. He gave them an order for the only one in the town. Its proprietor was in bed, and when they knocked at his door his wife cried out from the window, "My husband is a coward and won't open." A voice from within was heard saying, "I go out at night for no one." So they laid hands on the horse and harnessed it to a gig. All night long they drove in what they supposed was the direction of the Prussian outposts, trumpeting occasionally like elephants ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... of young Kromlaix men looked at each other in consternation. Was the handsomest, the strongest, and the most daring lad in their village a coward? It was the dark year of 1813, when Napoleon was draining France of all its manhood. Even the only sons of poor widowed women, such as Rohan Gwenfern was, were no longer exempted from conscription. Having lost half a million men amid the snows ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... me! to what a subtle touch The brimming cup resigns its clutch Upon the wine. Dear God, is 't writ That hearts their overburden bear Of bitterness though thou permit The pranks of Chance, alurk in nooks, And striking coward blows from books, ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... sought a new patron in the person of the Earl of Mulgrave. For this nobleman Rochester had long entertained a bitter animosity, which had arisen from rivalry, and had been intensified from the fact that Rochester, refusing to fight him, had been branded as a coward. Not daring to attack the peer, Rochester resolved to avenge himself upon the poet. In order to effect his humiliation, the earl at once bestowed his favour on Elkanah Settle, a playwright and poet of mean abilities. He had originally been master of a puppet-show, ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... was how Otoo and I first came together. He was no fighter. He was all sweetness and gentleness, a love-creature though he stood nearly six feet tall and was muscled like a gladiator. He was no fighter, but he was also no coward. He had the heart of a lion, and in the years that followed I have seen him run risks that I would never dream of taking. What I mean is that, while he was no fighter, and while he always avoided precipitating a row, he never ran away from trouble ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... turned and glared at him as he had glared back along the road at the town of Winesburg. "Go on back to work," he screamed. "What good does it do me to talk to you?" A thought came to him and his voice dropped. "I'm a coward too, eh?" he muttered. "Do you know why I came clear out here afoot? I had to tell someone and you were the only one I could tell. I hunted out another queer one, you see. I ran away, that's what I did. I couldn't stand up to ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... drunk several glasses of beer. "In vino-veritas," is a true saying. Blackall when sober might pass for a very brave fellow: his true character came out when he was drunk, and he showed himself an arrant coward, as he had done on this occasion. The boys who remained with him looked very foolish, and some of them felt heartily ashamed of their leader. Some resolved to break from him altogether, but he had thrown ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... built his neighbor's cabin and hoed his neighbor's corn, who had been storekeeper and postmaster and flat-boatman. Who had followed a rough judge dealing a rough justice around a rough circuit; who had rolled a local bully in the dirt; rescued women from insult; tended the bedside of many a sick coward who feared the Judgment; told coarse stories on barrels by candlelight (but these are pure beside the vice of great cities); who addressed political mobs in the raw, swooping down from the stump and flinging embroilers east and west. This physician who was one day to tend the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... something in his demeanor that compelled the admiration of his captors. It proved that whatever the Pawnee might be, he was not a coward, and it recalled to the young Shawanoe, the days when he wandered through the forests and cane brakes of Kentucky, like a raging cat o' mountain in his hatred of the pale-faces. There were depths in the nature of the youth which were rarely sounded; ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... a woman touching her of whom she is jealous; neither with a coward in matters of war; nor with a merchant concerning exchange; nor with a buyer of selling; nor with an envious man of thankfulness; nor with an unmerciful man touching kindness; nor with the slothful for any work; nor with an hireling ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... letter," the woman said, "that he has disgraced himself, been a coward, run away from some danger which he ought to have faced; and that he can't stand the shame of it." "He says," the woman's voice faltered for the first time, and instead of looking the Colonel in the ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... upon the opposite wheel during his conversation with Pat, and leaning half through the window was scanning carefully the inside of the carriage. He had already one hand on the demijohn of peach-brandy upon which the owner's hopes so much depended. Potetsatem Desmit was no coward, and his gold-headed cane made the acquaintance of the Dutchman's poll before he had time to ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... we put the sin away from love to him, and not from any selfish or worldly motive. This state of active cooperation with the Lord is something very different from that into which one falls who is the subject of religious fear, and cannot exist in company with it. The religious coward can only overcome his fear by remembering that God is not a tyrant who demands impossibilities of his slaves, but a Father of infinite love, who would make his children eternally happy; and who, in order that they may become so, ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... am a coward, that is why I take it, for otherwise I also must dare a heavier. But what of Issachar? This meeting can scarcely be kept ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... the bully's face, And with the coward heart, Who never fail'd, to his disgrace, To act a coward's part, Did join Dunbogue, the greatest rogue, In all the shire of Fife, Who was the first the cause to leave, By ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... made no reply to this. Somehow it seemed the most unworthy thing that his friend had said yet. It meant that Dr. Vince was a coward! ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... "Coward!" cried the General, looking scornfully at his son, whom terror had robbed of strength to stand. "You have the courage to plan cold-blooded murder, but when the time comes to face your own death you show yourself a miserable poltroon. ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... the answer. The puzzle was too deep for them. Yet it was only this: to Monsieur, honour was more than a pretty word. If he could not find his cause honest, he would not draw his sword, though all the curs in the land called him coward. ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... just so," said she, at last, when he had done speaking; "I felt the same, but then you have not the soul to act as I did. I could do it, but you—you are a coward; no one dared cross my path, or if they did—ah, well, that's years ago, and I'm not ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... with a clear conscience as a Christian gentleman. This he also decided: a man's religion is something for him to be proud of and any one ashamed to acknowledge the faith of his fathers is a moral coward, and a moral coward is more contemptible than a physical coward. He also was convinced that a boy or man afraid or ashamed to acknowledge his religious belief could only be a ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... of a recent injury. To render his condition yet more deplorable, his thigh had just been broken, as he rode up, by a kick from the unmanageable horse of his brother-in-law, La Rochefoucauld. The prince was no coward. Turning to his little company of followers, he exclaimed: "My friends, true noblesse of France, here is the opportunity we have long wished for in vain! Our God is the God of Battles. He loves to ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... to the last and yet they could have done little harm had they spoken. You have the fate of the Earth in your hand, yet you hesitate. I am Lura's father and I know her better, it seems, than do you. If you abandon her countrymen, she will despise you for a coward. It is better that one or that many be lost than ...
— Giants on the Earth • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... knees sagging oddly beneath him. The Girl's sure instinct of danger, the piteousness of their case, were making a coward of him. He tore himself from her in a panic desire to go while he still had the manhood to play his part to the end; then suddenly broke down completely, and with his face buried ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... will see what it is to be a lord. A lord is one who has all and is all. A lord is one who exists above his own nature. A lord is one who has when young the rights of an old man; when old, the success in intrigue of a young one; if vicious, the homage of respectable people; if a coward, the command of brave men; if a do-nothing, the fruits of labour; if ignorant, the diploma of Cambridge or Oxford; if a fool, the admiration of poets; if ugly, the smiles of women; if a Thersites, the helm of Achilles; if a hare, the skin of a lion. Do not misunderstand my words. I do not say ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... city he then peopled with the very bravest and strongest of his race. And he made for those dwelling there a perpetual law that commanded that all such as showed themselves when come to maturity to be weak or malformed in body, or coward of heart, then should be put to death; to the end that their natural increase ever should be of the same stout stuff as themselves, and also that there might be no lack of victims for the sacrifices which are acceptable to their barbarous ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... the gallant Tancred three hundred knights, and two thousand foot-soldiers for the defence of Palestine. His sovereignty was soon attacked by a new enemy, the only one against whom Godfrey was a coward. Adhemar, bishop of Puy, who excelled both in council and action, had been swept away in the last plague at Antioch: the remaining ecclesiastics preserved only the pride and avarice of their character; and their ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... the world, gave great offence to all well-principled men. Johnson, hearing of their tendency, which nobody disputed, was roused with a just indignation, and pronounced this memorable sentence upon the noble authour and his editor. 'Sir, he was a scoundrel, and a coward: a scoundrel, for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward, because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotchman, to draw ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... pleasant for a man to be branded, in his own consciousness, a coward. Refusal to admit it by day does not change the hour of the night when life is at its lowest ebb, and, sleepless, man ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... idea, that he might be suspected of cowardice, Daniel trembled all over. What could he do to prove that he was not a coward? Should he challenge every one of these men, and fight one, two, ten duels? Would that prove that he had not shrunk from the unknown perils of a new country, from the dangers of an armed invasion, ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... afternoon's experience with Trip. The misery of sitting through the long church service, with the awful guilt upon her soul, and the thoughts of approaching retribution, almost made her physically ill. As yet there was very little fortitude in Elizabeth's soul. She was the only coward in the Gordon family, John was wont to say, and, though she dreamed of valorous deeds as the successor of Joan of Arc, in real life she had never yet been able to ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... drinking." He replied, "I pick my company." Then I said, "You are in better company just now than you ever were in your life, except the time, some years ago, when you were in my company and lost $5,000." He said, "You are a d——d rascal." I then called him a liar and a coward. He attempted to draw, when my partner caught his arm and gave him one in the face, which was not a very heavy one, for he did not appear to mind it. I had old "Betsy Jane" out and had him covered; then I said, "Lay away your old pop, and we will go down on deck and have it out. ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... to begin now,' I said. 'Monster, demon, whatever you are that have held me in thrall so long, I have broken my chains! I have been a coward long enough. You may kill me if you like. I rather hope you will; but first I mean to pay you back some of the humiliation with which you have loaded me. I intend to thrash you as long as I remain in ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... moment the fire begins to run. Confusion! Is it that the matches are wet? No. I am all in water, and the touch from my fingers prevents the match from striking. Now—ah, that is better. But hark! Could the sentry have seen that? No. I am trembling like that coward Malay. Courage, my friend. It is such a little thing to do. But I must hasten, before the powder spoils upon the damp ground, where everything drips with the heavy dew. Courage, my friend—courage! It is such a little thing, and for the glory of my beautiful France, and for my great revenge against ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... this right hand of mine; I grudge thee this quick-beating heart; They never gave me coward sign, Nor played ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... with shouts, and with torches March'd onwards our dusty battalions, And we girt the tall castle of Louis, A million of tatterdemalions! We storm'd the fair gardens where tower'd The walls of his heritage splendid. Ah, shame on him, craven and coward, That had not the heart ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... shall bear my part of it with honesty. I have no virtues—where should I have got them from, forsooth, in a life like mine? I mean I have no women's virtues; but I have one that is sometimes—not always—a man's. 'Tis that I am not a coward and a trickster, and keep my word when 'tis given. You fear that I shall lead my lord a bitter life of it. 'Twill not be so. He shall live smoothly, and not suffer from me. What he has paid for he shall honestly have. I will not cheat him as weaker women ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... presence of a coward, however passive, brings an element of treachery into a dangerous situation. Nostromo's nervous impatience passed into gloomy thoughtfulness. Decoud, in an undertone, as if speaking to himself, remarked that, after all, this bizarre event made no great ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... only a bad nightmare she's been through." His jaw clinched again so that the muscles stood out on his cheeks. "Do you know she won't say a word—not even to her mother—about who the villain is that betrayed her? I'd wring his coward neck off for him," he finished with a ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... four natural limitations is the aristocratic life to be achieved. They come in a certain order, and in that order the spirit of man is armed against them less and less efficiently. Of fear and my struggle against fear I have told already. I am fearful. I am a physical coward until I can bring shame and anger to my assistance, but in overcoming fear I have been helped by the whole body of human tradition. Every one, the basest creatures, every Hottentot, every stunted creature that ever breathed poison in a slum, knows that the instinctive ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... them after death, provided they enjoyed in this world a long and prosperous existence. Some of them felt and rebelled against the injustice of the idea, which assigned one and the same fate, without discrimination, to the coward and the hero killed on the battle-field, to the tyrant and the mild ruler of his people, to the wicked and the righteous. These therefore supposed that the gods would make distinctions, that they would separate such heroes from the common herd, welcome them in a fertile, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... man has a weakness somewhere, so the greatest hero is a coward somewhere. Peter was courageous enough to draw his sword to defend his Master, but he could not stand the ridicule and the finger of scorn of the maidens in the high priest's hall, and he actually denied even ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... who I am; and I know likewise that, if I was taken for a coward before leaving Venice, now that I have returned no one shall ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... She meets her old lover outside the arena, where he tries hard to touch her heart. He kneels at her feet, vowing never to forsake her and to be one of her own people, but Carmen, though wayward, is neither a coward nor a liar, and boldly declares that her affections are given to the bull-fighter, whose triumphs are borne to their ears on the shouts of the multitude. Almost beside himself with love and rage Jose seizes her hand and attempts to drag her away, but she escapes from ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... in a low voice, soft and unutterably sweet. Then a little sigh followed, and she added: "And that I will try to be to you, Brooke, until this danger is over. But you must bear with me, and not be angry if I turn out sometimes to be a coward." ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... was a time, indeed, when I had not retired thus early, Languidly thus, from pursuit of a purpose I once had adopted, But it is all over, all that! I have slunk from the perilous field in Whose wild struggle of forces the prizes of life are contested. It is over, all that! I am a coward, and know it. Courage in me could be ...
— Amours de Voyage • Arthur Hugh Clough
... mistradition, old enough To scare me into dreaming, 'what am I, Cranmer, against whole ages?' was it so, Or am I slandering my most inward friend, To veil the fault of my most outward foe— The soft and tremulous coward in the flesh? O higher, holier, earlier, purer church, I have found thee and not leave thee any more. It is but a communion, not a mass— No sacrifice, but a life-giving feast! (Writes.) So, so; this will I say—thus will I pray. ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... Dorothy Andrews to change her name to Mrs. Bob Yardsley; as if that were such an unlikely thing for her to do. Gad! I'm almost inclined to despise myself. (Surveys himself in the mirror at one end of the room. Then walking up to it and peering intently at his reflection, he continues.) Bah! you coward! Afraid of a woman—a sweet little woman like Dorothy. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Bob Yardsley. She won't hurt you. Brace up and propose like a man—like a real lover who'd go through fire ...
— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs
... I won't bear a grudge against a man who is coward enough to insult a woman. I would kick you out o' the camp, Darkeye, but as you might use your gun when you got into the bushes, I won't give you that chance. At the same time, we can't afford to lose the rest of our nap for you, so Arrowhead will keep you safe here and watch you, while ...
— Away in the Wilderness • R.M. Ballantyne
... in the end!... Ah, how often I've told my brother, 'She will kill him yet!' Frederic used to try to defend you. He always had a weakness for you. But in his innermost heart he foresaw what would happen.... And now the horrible thing has been done. A stab in the back! Coward! Coward!... And you would have me say nothing? Why, I didn't hesitate a moment! Nor did Frederic. We looked for proofs at once.... And I've denounced you of my own free will, perfectly well aware of what I was doing.... And it's ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... well in October as she is now I am going to stay and give my services to the "Red Cross." If I have to go home with her I will come back—I would be a coward and deserter if I did not do all I could for ...
— 'My Beloved Poilus' • Anonymous
... apotheosis of vulgarity in which Sardanapalus eclipsed himself, but never could he have died with the good breeding and philosophy of Cato, for neither good breeding nor philosophy was in him. Nero killed himself like a coward, yet that he did kill himself, in no matter what fashion, is one of the few things that can ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... Caius's wrath tended to the slaughter of all alike: and for Cherea, he came in, because he thought it a deed worthy of a free ingenuous man to kill Caius, and was ashamed of the reproaches he lay under from Caius, as though he were a coward; as also because he was himself in danger every day from his friendship with him, and the observance he paid him. These men proposed this attempt to all the rest that were concerned, who saw the injuries that were offered ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... I was both a coward and a boaster; but I have frequently remarked that the quality which we call cowardice in a child, is no more than implying a greater sense of danger, and consequently a superior intellect. We are all naturally ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... which above all others he had dreaded! Estermen was a coward and a fluent liar. The latter gift, however, availed him nothing. He felt as though the nerves of his tongue were being controlled by some other agency. Against his will he ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... had given her two children. Her humble or servile spirit, confronted with this wild, independent nature, made Salome adore her man, and she deceived herself into considering him a tremendous, energetic fellow, though he was in all truth a coward and a tramp. The bully had seen just how matters stood, and whenever it pleased him he would stamp into the house and demand the pay that Salome earned by sewing at the machine, at five centimos per two yards. Unresistingly ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... a plain no-account coward!" snapped Jimmy. "I'm not going to climb up there, but I'll tell you what I am going to do; I'm going to wait right down here until you come down, if it isn't until next year. Nobody can drop things on my head and ...
— The Adventures of Jimmy Skunk • Thornton W. Burgess
... My scheme of years to be disdained and dashed By this man's like, a wretched moral coward, Whom you must needs foist on me as one fit For full ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... cautious and made me promise that I should not print and publish anything of what he might say, and at last, being hard pressed by me, he confessed that indeed Goethe was perfectly right and Newton wrong, but that he had no business to tell the world so. He has died since, the old coward!" ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... moment when you said you had to go away and I could not wear it. For a few moments I thought I should scream and tell you everything. But I was both too proud and too much of a coward. Then I knew I should have to rob the safe, and somehow I hated that part more than anything else. I did it just ten minutes before Rex and Polly called for me to motor down here. It had seemed the most horrible thing in the world to be a gambler, ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... surgeon is doing well. He need not have sent for me; but your carving doctor is a great coward when it comes to ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... lying on your lap, Your hand aneath my cheek; Love stounds my bosom through and through, But yet I canna speak. My coward heart wi' happiness, Wi' bliss is brimin' fu'; But, oh! its fu'ness mars my tongue, I haena power ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... others he is called the Catamount. He is not so fond of the thick forests as he is of swamps, brush-grown hillsides, old pastures and places where there are great masses of briars. Rocky ledges where there are caves in which to hide and plenty of brush also suit him. He is a coward, but when cornered will fight, though he will run from a little Dog half his size and take to a tree. In the South he is quite common and there often steals Chickens and Turkeys, even young Pigs. ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... the town should go on counting him a hero and brand my boy as a coward, when it's Emmett who was the coward as ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... that you won't be there the day after to-morrow?" cried Potel, interrupting his friend. "Do you wish to be called a coward? and have it said you are running away from Bridau? No, no! The unmounted grenadiers of the Guard can not draw back before the dragoons of the Guard. Arrange your business in some other ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... here he is on the lone moor, on the winter's night, a reckless, cursing, thrice convicted man. His very virtues,—his impatient energy and undeniable courage,—his greatest stumbling-blocks, leading him into crimes which a lazy man or a coward would have shrunk from. Deserted apparently by God and man, he crouched there over the low fire, among his native rocks, and ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... I said she had excellent sense and great information, he simply replied, "Oui, et peut-etre un pen trop." Of Constantine[85] he spoke with indignation, and his whiskers vibrated as he described his detestable character—debauched, depraved, cruel, dishonest, and a coward. Constantine was abusing a Colonel in very gross tones, a short time ago, for misconduct and incompetency in battle. "Indeed!" said the officer; "you must have been misinformed; this cannot arise from your own observation, as I do ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... an observance of high principle in public life, which it might be difficult to illustrate from his recorded actions. But the warmer-blooded Andrew Jackson set him down as "heartless, selfish, and a physical coward," and Jackson could speak generously of an opponent whom he really knew. His intellect must have been powerful enough, but it was that of a man who delights in arguing, and delights in elaborate deductions from ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... endure my present torture. I must seek a desperate end to it, by explanation. Why do I delay? Coward that I am! What worse can happen than despair? And is not despair itself preferable to that worst of fiends, suspense? What do I mean by despair? Would I, being rejected, desert my duty, sink into self, and poorly linger ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... He also had a very nasty little club in the same pocket, whereas Mr. Bennett carried no weapon of offense—merely the tools of his trade, at which he was singularly expert. The friends had worked together before; though Neddy reviled Mike for a coward, and Mike averred with curses, that Neddy would bring them both to the gallows some day, yet they worked well together and had a respect for one another, each allowing for the other's idiosyncrasies. The true spirit of partnership! On it ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... upon him, "Liar, coward!" and his hands gripped his brother's throat with deadly force, as though the spoken word could be killed so; and as Christian struggled, lifted him clear off his feet and flung him crashing backward. So furious was he, that, as his brother lay motionless, he stirred him roughly with his ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... his last hour was come. He showed something of the defiant, almost maniacal courage of a coward who realizes he can ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... been half starved, Billy, and kicked about in the world. Perhaps if you'd been brought down as low you would have been as great a coward." ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... to call me a coward, but I'll never let you count me a mean, miserly rascal," and the cheque with Drumsheugh's painful writing fell in ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... he were given up to his vengeance; and actually ran away from the sea-coast in that belief. In France, Hobbes managed to take care of his throat pretty well for ten years; but at the end of that time, by way of paying court to Cromwell, he published his Leviathan. The old coward now began to "funk" horribly for the third time; he fancied the swords of the cavaliers were constantly at his throat, recollecting how they had served the Parliament ambassadors at the Hague and Madrid. "Turn," says he, in his ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... good," said Jack Swing, or the man who passed for him, wearing a long Punch-like nose. "We are come to help you; and where's the mean coward that won't come along with us in his own cause? There will be no living for poor folks if those new-fangled machines be allowed to go on, and them Parliament folk vote out all that makes for the people. Down with them, I say! Up with Reform, and down with all the fools and cowards ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... would have had such a consent from them, if it had been at the point of the sword. And then out comes the real truth; and he dares to tell me to my face that my patent must be suppressed for the present, for fear of disgusting that rascally coward and faineant (naming the rival chief of his own clan), who has no better title to be a chieftain than I to be Emperor of China, and who is pleased to shelter his dastardly reluctance to come out, agreeable to his promise twenty times pledged, under a pretended jealousy of the Prince's partiality ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... yesterday, when in a letter from Esterton he casually mentioned the matter, I did not know that Berry was in prison, else this letter would have been written sooner. I have been wanting to write it for so long, and yet have been too great a coward to ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... Perhaps they would rush out. If they stood by their orders, then the King's life hung on the swiftness with which we could force the outer door; and I thanked God that not Rupert Hentzau watched, but Detchard. For though Detchard was a cool man, relentless, and no coward, he had neither the dash nor the recklessness of Rupert. Moreover, he, if any one of them, really loved Black Michael, and it might be that he would leave Bersonin to guard the King, and rush across the bridge to take part in the ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... Bring back the villain's head, sir. Shoot the coward down, sir," Sedley roared. "I'd enlist myself, by—; but I'm a broken old man—ruined by that damned scoundrel—and by a parcel of swindling thieves in this country whom I made, sir, and who are rolling in their ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a thief still, and a coward, for I sneaked away in the night, fearing to meet Sophie's eyes, and afraid to tell the professor what I was and what I had done. I left all the burden of my sins to be borne by women and an infirm old man, and I am going, with a stolen ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... "The coward! Are all books lies? I thought he would fly to the front, and be brave and noble, and stand up for me against all the world, and defy my enemies, and wither these gossips with his scorn! Poor crawling thing, let him go. I do begin to despise ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... perhaps get off); the captain calls up his crew, tells them, "Gentlemen, you see how it is; I don't question but we may clear ourselves of this caper, if you will stand by me." One of the crew, as willing to fight as the rest, and as far from a coward as the captain, but endowed with a little more wit than his fellows, replies, "Noble captain, we are all willing to fight, and don't question but to beat him off; but here is the case: if we are taken, we shall be set on shore and then sent home, and lose perhaps our clothes and a little pay; but ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... against the tree, shutting his eyes, fighting with all his might. He was too big to cry. The woman would think him a coward as Mr. Bruce had. Then things happened as they actually do at times. The woman hurriedly came from the door, sat on the bench beside him, and said: "I went in there to watch you through the window, but I can't stand this a second longer. You poor child you, ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... have liked to stay for ever where he was, in Paris with Jules Reveillaud, in the Rue Servandoni. And because his conscience kept on telling him that he would be a coward and a blackguard if he stayed in Paris, ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... peasant, and covered with the mud of the swamp in which he had been hiding, was brought before Houston, I was there. Houston, suffering very keenly from his wound, was stretched upon the ground among his officers. The Mexican is no coward. He bowed with all his Spanish graces and complimented Houston on the bravery of his small army, declaring; 'that he had never before understood the American character.' 'I see now,' he said, laying both his hands upon his breast, 'that it is impossible to enslave them.' Houston ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... guilty as any. It were better to die alone, fighting the whole world single-handed, refusing to share the sin or to tolerate it or to live while it was, than with halting speech to protest and with supple conscience to compromise. He is a coward who lets a baby die or a woman sink to shame or a fellow-man be humbled, alone and unassisted and unrighted. She is false to the divinity of womanhood who does not feel the tigress in her when a little ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... his demeanor that compelled the admiration of his captors. It proved that whatever the Pawnee might be, he was not a coward, and it recalled to the young Shawanoe, the days when he wandered through the forests and cane brakes of Kentucky, like a raging cat o' mountain in his hatred of the pale-faces. There were depths in ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... are not a coward; else my heart had never gone out to you. But I think there is something dead within you that must come to life, and something alive within you that must die, before you grow into a warrior again. As for ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... trustee. Nothing more natural. He comes down, he goes to Jack, he relates what we have agreed upon, and he states our case better than we could. He has already spoken feelingly to you, he has already spoken feelingly to me, and he'll put the whole thing feelingly to Jack. That's it! I am not a coward, Rosa, but to tell you a secret, I am a little afraid ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... reached a point where he could not, without appearing a coward, refrain longer from taking a hand. He stepped ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... cruel fate of one most closely bound to me, of one who was a most illustrious man. But if I were otherwise minded, I would never deny what I was doing lest I should be regarded as shameless in doing wrong, a coward and ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... then, My scheme of years to be disdained and dashed By this man's like, a wretched moral coward, Whom you must needs foist on me as one fit For full command in ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... of the Vrishni heroes when they meet together, say of me who had hitherto been considered as brave and well-conducted, respectable and possessed of manly pride? They will even say This Pradyumna is a coward who cometh here, leaving the battle! Fie on him! They will never say, Well done! Ridicule, with exclamation of Fie, is to me or a person like me, O Suta, more than death! Therefore, do thou ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... hurrah! the west-wind Comes freshening down the bay, The rising sails are filling; Give way, my lads, give way! Leave the coward landsman clinging To the dull earth, like a weed; The stars of heaven shall guide us, The breath of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... His coward lips did from their colour fly. 'And that same eye whose bend doth awe the world, Did ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... left her husband, children, and home because of her passion for another man was a heroine, braving the hypocritical judgments of society to assert the claims of the individual soul. The woman who refused to abandon all for love's sake, was not only a coward but a criminal, guilty of the deadly sin of sacrificing her soul, committing it to a prison where it would languish and never blossom to its full perfection. The man who was bound to uncongenial drudgery ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... the brigand leader to remain in the background. Miko was no coward. But Coniston could impersonate Wilks, whereas Miko's giant stature at once would reveal his identity. Miko had been engaged in smashing the ports. He had looked up and seen me kill Coniston. He had come to assail me. And then he had read Grantline's message to me. It was his first knowledge ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... hours in the Strafe-Barrack I thought of these things: I thought of my father and mother... of the good times we had at home... of the sweet influences of a happy childhood, and the inestimable joy of belonging to a country that stands for fair play and fair dealing, where the coward and the bully are despised, and the honest and brave ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... canker of the mind, The discord that disorders sweet heart's tune, The abortive bastard of a coward mind, The lightfoot lackey that runs post by death, Bearing the letters which contain our end; The busy advocate that sells his breath Denouncing worst to him ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 486 - Vol. 17, No. 486., Saturday, April 23, 1831 • Various
... In every chapter Victor punished people for cruelty to animals. Victor's blood always boiled at such a sight—moreover, his strong arm always shot out, his eyes always flashed, and the great hulking coward always lay prone at his feet begging for mercy with clasped hands. So Tim gathered together his recollections of Victor's stock phrases, and advanced on the ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... mingled with the Greeks we fare, and no God helps us on, And many a battle there we join amid the eyeless night, And many a Danaan send adown to Orcus from the light: Some fled away unto the ships, some to the safe sea-shore, 399 Or smitten with the coward's dread climbed the great horse once more And there they lie all close within the well-known ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... panic in Berry, an after-clap of the disturbances in the capital. Madame Sand's position became more unpleasant than ever. She describes herself as "blasee d outrages—threatened perpetually by the coward hatreds and imbecile terrors of country places." But to all this she was well-nigh insensible in her despair over the public calamities oppressing her nation—the end of all long-struggling aspirations ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... a cad, young sir," vexed me more and more the longer that they sounded in my ears. My tipsiness was gone now, and, in considering my conduct during the dispute, the uncomfortable thought came over me that I had behaved like a coward. ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... I am not ill. I wish I could be—at least, I am almost coward enough to wish it. I only landed early this morning in the London Docks. I have come from California, Nannie. Aren't you ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... me, I know, but it never does any good to run away from things that must be faced sooner or later. We women have our battles to fight as well as the men who go to war, and the same truth applies to both—that only a coward will ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... indeed was La Boulaye's courage. An instant ago he had felt a very coward, and had quivered, appalled by the audacity of his own words. Now that she assailed him thus, and taxed him with that same audacity, the blood of anger rushed to his face—anger of the quality that has its ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... me, I would like to say just here, that while Kit Carson was the last man to offer an insult, yet, at the same time, if challenged, he would fight any man living rather than be called a coward, and in those days the character of men concerning whom this work is written quarreled but very little. If a man insulted another, ten chances to one he would be challenged to fight a duel; and in such a case he would either have to fight or be branded as a coward, and the ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... she could help it. It is well he has better friends than she has proved. But I cannot talk of this: indeed I cannot. It may be weak and foolish, but I cannot. You must do what you have to do in your own way.—No, I will not be such a coward, and so basely ungrateful. O, I understand your position, Robert. You will have to question me: I am sorry, but it is the only way. Ask what you absolutely need to know for your own guidance—I know you will ask no more—and I will ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... conflagration which was spreading towards them. In the meantime a new and fierce attack was heard upon the outer gate of the Correction-house, which, battered with sledge-hammers and crows, was soon forced. The keeper, as great a coward as a bully, with his more ferocious wife, had fled; their servants readily surrendered the keys. The liberated prisoners, celebrating their deliverance with the wildest yells of joy, mingled among the mob which ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... again and his voice trembled and was very soft. "His Grace of Buckingham will be my voucher, though it will misdemean him much as against one who has a tymbestere for mistress and is a coward, ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... all he thought of now was to finish her and then kill her helpless baby in its turn. He had no ears or eyes for any other thing, till out of the nearest sage there flashed a streak of grey, and in a trice the big-voiced coward was hurled back by a foe almost as heavy as himself—hurled back with a crippled shoulder. Dash, chop, and staunch old Saddleback sprang on him again. Tito struggled to her feet, and they closed ...
— Johnny Bear - And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted • E. T. Seton
... see that man? He is just out of prison. What was he in prison for? For beating his wife. Oh! what a villain, what a coward! How cruel he looks! Respectable people, and kind people, don't like to go near him, they are afraid of him. What a strong, brutal face he has! But the blessed Jesus isn't afraid. See, He is standing by this bad man, and He says, 'Give me ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... of roses and glide silken-sailed down the stream of life, how exquisitely painful soever it may be to say what you fear and feel may give pain, it is only a Sybarite who sets ease above righteousness, only a coward who misses victory ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... authority. To challenge his conduct was, in his estimation, tantamount to blasphemy; and, to dispute his prerogatives, a contempt of the Divine Majesty. Once, in a time of persecution, he retired from Carthage, and he was, in consequence, upbraided by some as a coward; but when a fellow-bishop, Papianus, ventured to ask an explanation of a course of proceeding which apparently betokened indecision, Cyprian treated the inquiry as an insult, and poured out upon ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... leeue you should tel me of a messe of poredge, He is an arant lowsie beggerly knaue: 35 And he is a coward beside. ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... vitals! Fash. Now, by all that's great and powerful, thou art the prince of coxcombs! Lord Fop. Sir, I am proud at being at the head of so prevailing a party. Fash. Will nothing provoke thee?—Draw, coward! Lord Fop. Look you, Tam, you know I have always taken you for a mighty dull fellow, and here is one of the foolishest plats broke out that I have seen a lang time. Your poverty makes life so burdensome to you, you would provoke me to a quarrel, ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... immediately try to save their own skins by denouncing the principal, and it was so in this instance. Mrs. Killenhall and Cave at once denounced Cortelyon as the mainspring, and the woman, who's a regular coward, got me aside and offered to turn King's evidence, and whispered that Cortelyon actually killed Ashton himself, unaided, as he let him out of his back door into ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... 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
... and he cared not who he was, than taking his breakfast. You would have said that he of all men would have been the coolest on the deck and would have given no heed to danger. Yet the moment the bullets whizzed he ran into the hold, and for all his land mettle he was a coward on the sea. When everyone laughed at him and he was becoming a thing of scorn, he asked to be tied to the mainmast, so that he might not be able to escape. So it comes into my mind," concluded Carlton, "to ask this question of you gallant gentlemen, ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... it was two of the whites who first entered, carrying torches and guns. Tarzan was not surprised to discover that neither of them was Rokoff. He would have wagered his soul that no power on earth could have tempted that great coward to face the unknown menace of ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... myself. I know him not, he has done me no harm, yet because it is war, arranged by princes and kings, we must become murderers. And why should I kill him? because others would misconstrue my act of mercy if I did it not, and brand me a coward, aye and worse, a traitor. Why should I make that mother childless? why must I rob that loving wife of her husband? Why I be the means of making those little children fatherless ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... cried. "Are you coward enough to revenge yourself upon a mere lad like myself? I will not ask you what your crew will think of you, but what will you think of yourself, in your calmer moments, when you come ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... don't know what you have been." He pointed to her own garments, which lay across a chair. "You don't know what she has been;" he indicated these that he held in his hand. "Very well. What could a mere liar, a coward, do to arrange an understanding between two women so mysterious? You sprang from the earth, from the sea, somewhere, I do not know how. You are the first woman for me. Is ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... a trifle flattering in the situation. Brave men before my time had been boycotted. I had read their stories, and sympathised with them, and hated (as I hate still) the miscreants who, in the name of "patriotism" had acted the sneak's and coward's part to ruin them. Now I was going to taste something of their hardships at the hands of my "patriotic" schoolfellows; and my spirit rose as I resolved to hold up my head ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... answered Leo, "but, of a truth—I am no coward—but I doubt me of that raging flame. How know I that it will not utterly destroy me, so that I lose myself and lose thee also? Nevertheless will I do it," ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... or no, and that would be the end of it. Girls like a man who compels them—they like to obey, at least when they are young. I don't believe any girl ever loved a coward yet. Do you ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... questioned if in his heart Sorenson was not almost disposed to fight the matter out. He was no coward; his original hatred for the engineer had by recent events been swelled to a diabolical desire to kill; and now even if he, Sorenson, succeeded in slipping away, his whereabouts would be known unless he destroyed the man. Safety ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... said the boy, hotly, but Chad sat silent—still. If he would only say something! Dan began to think that the stranger was a coward. So presently, to show what a great little man he was, he began to tease Snowball, who was up on the bank unhooking the fish, of which Chad had ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... how to take him," said their companion. "He is a monstrous coward, and all you got to do is jest to bring your guns down on him. I wouldn't shoot him—'nless he tried to run; but if he did that, when he got a little distance I'd pepper him about his legs. Make him give up his sword and pistol and don't let him ride; ...
— Two Little Confederates • Thomas Nelson Page
... speaking for the first time, "shall we go home and wait till next Sunday, and take a fair start, as Flossy says, it isn't pleasant to go in after the exercises have fairly opened?" As she said this, for the first time in her life Miss Ruth Erskine began to have a dim idea that possibly she might be a coward; this certainly sounded a ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... running. There's no good being vindictive. I could get to her now, if I liked—provided those brutes would let me. But it's impossible—I won't think of it. Afterward I should loathe myself for being a coward and going back to life without the others. I couldn't have helped them—but it would seem as if I might have, and didn't. Heavens! When is this going to end? I can't bear it long. The best thing I could do would ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... sure," replied Frank, with a meaning smile; for he thought within himself, "If she really thinks I am such a coward, never mind; she'll learn ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... of the syndical chamber of the miners of Anzin, thou art forewarned that, if thou dost not cease thy marchandage, as we have informed Lagneaux, thou wilt pass, in the sight of thy brethren coal-miners, for a traitor and a coward, as well as thy seven comrades, who are worth ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... means of mending it, take those means, and have done: when you are examining yourself, never call yourself merely a 'sinner,' that is very cheap abuse; and utterly useless. You may even get to like it, and be proud of it. But call yourself a liar, a coward, a sluggard, a glutton, or an evil-eyed jealous wretch, if you indeed find yourself to be in any wise any of these. Take steady means to check yourself in whatever fault you have ascertained, and justly accused yourself of. ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... uncertain. Now, that fine-looking cockerel of mine is the stupidest one of the lot, and the ugly, long-legged chap is the king of the yard, he's so smart; crows loud enough to wake the Seven Sleepers; but the handsome one croaks, and is no end of a coward. I get snubbed; but you wait till I grow up, and then see'; and Ted looked so like his own long-legged pet that everyone laughed at ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... sir; that is why I feared my weakness. I called you in order that the sight of you might keep alive my indignation and rekindle my wrath, for you have been a witness of my dishonor, sir. So, tell me that if I pardon I would be a coward, that I should merit my fate. Is ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... her revolver in her hand, directed point blank at my quivering, quaking heart. Though I am bashful, I am no coward, and I thought for full two minutes that I'd let her fire away, ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... Of France was reckoned No coward, his breath came short When they told him a dragon As big as a wagon Was waiting below in the court! A dragon so long, and so wide, and so fat, That he couldn't get in at the door to chat: The king couldn't leave him Outside and grieve him, He ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... before now you have acquitted some, although knowing they were in the wrong, believing that in the future they would be useful to you. But what hope is there that the state will be benefited by this fellow, whom you will know to be worthless as soon as he begins his defense, and understand to be a coward from the rest of his disposition. 44. If he were banished, he could not work you any evil, being a coward and poor and unable to effect anything, at variance with his kinsmen and hated by other men. So ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias
... was not destined that evening to please his great-grandmother, for he had no sooner got well into the spirit of his play in the gallery than he began to sing. "I'm a coward at songs," she would sometimes say; "and if it wasn't for the dear birds; I could wish there was no ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... a man called you a coward. Don't try my woman's friendship for you too far. You insult me by offering such ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... men do not understand their language. I only saw that Zerbino refused to listen to reason, and that he insisted that the three sous should be spent immediately. Capi got angry, and it was only when he showed his teeth that Zerbino, who was a bit of a coward, lapsed into silence. The word "silence" is also used advisedly. I mean by silence that ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... that Man the coward, when he gathers to confer With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands To some God of Abstract ...
— The Years Between • Rudyard Kipling
... befall mine enemies! Yet in one bride shall yearning conquer hate, Bidding her spare the bridegroom at her side, Blunting the keen edge of her set resolve. Thus of two scorns the former shall she choose, The name of coward, not of murderess. In Argos shall she bear, in after time, A royal offspring. Long it were to tell In clear succession all that thence shall be. Take this for sooth—in lineage from her A hero shall ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... began to beat again rather wildly, but she reasoned with herself; she was no coward, and indeed why had she any cause for alarm? No one could be more aloof than her companion seemed. She was already numb with cold too, and her common sense told her shelter of any sort would ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... Sweyn said. "Do you, Oderic, take twenty of the guard without, and at once conduct the ladies here to the boats and get them on board the galleys. Let all others hasten to the scene of attack. But I can hardly even now believe that this coward herd intend to attack us ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... she said to herself. "I won't give it up because I'm a coward. I shall not sleep a wink unless it's settled. Life is short; death may come at any unexpected moment. I should not like to have my Judge ask why I had not done my duty, when, perchance, I, even I, might have been a poor, weak instrument, ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... had lasted some months the fancy came to me that I could get nearer to her by going into it. I might even die, which would be best of all. I did not wish to kill myself because I felt that to be a coward's death, and in such a way I thought that I would only separate myself from her. But in the war, perhaps, I might meet death in such a way as to show him that I despised him both for myself and her. By suicide I would ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... thou?" she shrieked. "Joan! Whence come ye? Saw ye aught? What do they to him? who be the miscreants? Is my son there? Have they won him over—the coward neddirs [serpents] that they be! Speak I who be they?—and what will they do? Ah, Mary Mother, what will they do ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... what a coward I am, you would have done differently, and not have made me so wretched as I now am. Why did you not bid me bring the red water, without saying what it was, and what for? If you had put it to my lips—if you had not given me a moment to ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... humble beginnings; his iron perseverance under early probable checks; his blind, yet not all unsublime, dependence on fatality; his ruthless, yet not all undeserved, infliction of fire and sword upon the cowering coward race that filled the western world;—these, and all whatever else besides attended his train of triumphs, and all whatever besides has lasted among Moors, and Arabs, and Turks, and Asiatics, even to this our day—constitute to a thinking mind (and it seems not ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... comes of it; nothing ought to have come of it. He drops out of the story; he has no share in the joyful conflicts and sacrifices and successes of the Apostle. When he heard how Paul, by God's help, was flaming like a meteor from East to West, do you not think he wished that he had not been such a coward? When the Lord was opening doors, and he saw how the work was prospering in the hands of ancient companions, and Silas filled the place that he might have filled, if he had been faithful to God, do you not think the bitter thought occupied his mind, of how he had ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... your fine phrases you're really as great a coward as I am, for you wouldn't have made one of them if you hadn't been so sure ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... but man did you ever see maltreat a female of his species? The brutes are not such beasts as bad, cruel men are. Or if you ever saw such a monstrosity the animal that did it was some notorious coward, such as the deer, which I believe is now and then guilty in a trifling degree of this dirty sin, being a rank coward. But who ever saw a lion or a dog or any courageous animal let himself down to the level of a cowardly ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... asked him, why did you sit in their counting-houses and waste their time? Why did you crucify your body and bind my wings? Why were you deaf to me and desirous of gathering fruits where there are only stones? Why did you, like a coward, flee from your fate to their offices and ware-houses and iron safes and all their doleful business? For the sake of ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... HE BLENCH? Did he die like a craven, Begging those torturing fiends for his life? Was there a soldier who carried the Seven Flinched like a coward or fled from the strife? No, by the blood of our Custer, no quailing! There in the midst of the devils they close, Hemmed in by thousands, but ever assailing, Fighting like tigers, all bayed ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... it. For some seconds, we both waited on the wall in breathless silence, and then Alec, with a reckless disregard of what might be in store for him, gently let himself drop, and I, fearing more, if anything, than the present danger, to be for ever after branded as a coward if I held back, timidly followed suit. By a great stroke of luck we alighted in safety on a soft carpeting of moss. Not a word was spoken, but, falling on hands and knees, and guiding ourselves by means of a dark lantern Alec had bought second-hand from the village ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... a great light flooding her big eyes. "She beat you," she repeated, "and made you quit. She took your measure for the coward who could flog a wretched neche who couldn't defend ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... uncordial in his welcoming of Peter; without saying a word the young Quaker made Peter aware that he was a renegade, a coward who had "thrown down" the Goober defense. But Peter was patient and tactful; he did not try to defend himself, nor did he ask any questions about Donald and Donald's activities. He simply announced that he had been studying ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... tell what she said as she raved there. She wept and sobbed, flinging reproaches—at the dead! She scolded, as one reproves a child that has cut itself with a knife. She asked why he did this. And again she heaped grave calumny upon him, called him coward, wretch, threatened him with God, with God's wrath, and with eternal damnation;—then asked pardon of him, babbled out words of conciliation, called him back, called him dear, sweet, and good; related to him what a faithful, dear, loving wife ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... case. Those who read this journal, if it shall be perused by impartial eyes, shall judge of me truly; and if they consider me as a fool in encountering danger unnecessarily, they shall have no reason to believe me a coward or a turncoat, when I find myself engaged in it. I have been bred in sentiments of attachment to the family on the throne and in these sentiments I will live and die. I have, indeed, some idea that Mr. Herries has already ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... I know not, nor for what cause They shou'd thus thrust themselves into my danger, Can I imagine. But sure Heavens hand was in't! Nor why this coward Knave should deal so basely To eat me up with Slaves: but Heaven I thank thee, I hope thou hast reserv'd me to an end Fit for thy creature, and worthy of thine honour: Would all my other dangers here had suffered, ...
— Beggars Bush - From the Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... me!" sighed she. "I have nothing left to fear, and methinks I am ten times more a coward ...
— The Wives of The Dead - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... heart of gold, that even in such a thing as this you will not bar the path of the brother whom you love. Nay, Godwin, as I am a sinful man, and as I desire her above all things on earth, I will play no such coward's game, nor conquer one who will not lift his sword lest he should hurt me. Sooner would I bid you all farewell, and go to seek fortune or death in the wars ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... the naval cadets. Not one of them was a coward, yet, in their experience, the thought that they had put in barely more than a third of the ordered time under water made some ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies - The Prize Detail at Annapolis • Victor G. Durham
... to give satisfaction for the injury you have done me, in robbing me of my mistress, I will proclaim you a coward in the presence ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... the footmen, for they may save themselves, the wood is near hand. And when we horsemen be together, look every each of you kings let make such ordinance that none break upon pain of death. And who that seeth any man dress him to flee, lightly that he be slain, for it is better that we slay a coward, than through a coward all we to be slain. How say ye? said King Lot, answer me all ye kings. It is well said, quoth King Nentres; so said the King of the Hundred Knights; the same said the King Carados, and King Uriens; so did King Idres ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... been here as long as seven years. We are in the dungeons of a wicked lord named Sir Damas. He has a younger brother, and the two brothers are enemies, quarreling about their inheritance. Now the younger brother, Sir Ontzlake, is very strong, but Sir Damas is not strong, and moreover, he is a coward. So he tries to find a knight who will fight for him against ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... you are a coward who has avoided fights all his life. Now you are given these powers. ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... wretch! thou coward! Thou little valiant, great in villainy! Thou ever strong upon the stronger side! Thou fortune's champion, thou dost never fight But when her humorous ladyship is by To teach thee safety! Thou art perjured ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... caught him up and carried him bleeding and dying from the field. "Bear witness," he said, "that I have proved myself not a coward, and I am not afraid to die." Then, making a last effort, with his dying breath ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... is more insulting sometimes than a philosophic temper; but in China you must, as a first law unto yourself, protect yourself at all costs and against all comers, and it generally requires a good deal of noise. Here the bully is not the coward. In respect of prevarication, it seems to be absolutely universal; the poor copy the vice from the rich. It seems to be in the very nature of the people, and although it is hard to write, my experience convinces me that my statement is not ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... too, to fight for my country and for all the dear ones whom I love. If I were not profoundly convinced of this truth, I should not communicate my resolution to you; but my family is one that has a really German heart, and that would consider me as a coward and an unworthy son if I did not follow this impulse. I certainly feel the greatness of the sacrifice; it costs me something, believe me, to leave my beautiful studies and go to put myself under the orders of vulgar, uneducated people, but this only ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - KARL-LUDWIG SAND—1819 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... doing this on purpose," he thought. "She's been wondering about that trip to town to-morrow. Mother fancies I'm going after Brita, to fetch her home. She doesn't suspect that I'm too big a coward to do it." ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... to say anything saucy to the widow this time. He had lost his power over her, and there stood Bobby, who had come to look just like a young lion to him, coward and ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... of you have learnt to shave spears, so that it would be as well not to forget a plane, and also to carry a rasp, for the man who sharpens a spearhead will sharpen his spirit too. He will feel ashamed to whet the edge and be a coward. And we must take plenty of timber for chariots and waggons; there is bound to be many a breakdown on the road. [34] Also we shall need the most necessary tools for repairs, since smiths and carpenters are not to be found at every turn, but there are few who cannot patch up a makeshift ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... question with minds that are truly candid? Whoever shrinks from this is a liar to his own self, and as such, the worst and most dangerous of liars. He is as one who sits in an impregnable citadel and trembles in a time of peace—so great a coward as not even to feel safe when he is in his own keeping. How loose of soul if he knows that his own keeping is worthless, how aspen-hearted if he fears lest others should find him out and hurt him for communing ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... agreed to decline the fight, but Williams, his lieutenant, strenuously opposed it; and being not to be appeased by all that Gow could say to him, or any one else, flew out into a rage at Gow, upbraiding him with being a coward, and not fit to command a ship of force. The truth is, Gow's reasoning was good, and the thing was just, considering their own condition; but Williams was a fellow incapable of any solid thinking, had a kind ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... lay sleeping with her child in the adjoining room—a whole lifetime of happiness within reach of his hand, which he had spurned for that vile creature! Now she had admitted that she did not love him, that she loved another. And he, the coward, still longed for her. In heaven's name, what potion had she ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Marie sat, nonplused, staring at the Champion's defiant figure. Madeline's hands were clenched angrily. "I'd like to knock her down, the coward," she muttered to Betty, who was looking straight ahead and did not seem ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... have been a coward, frightened of the truth. The world was dearer to me than happiness, or I thought so, and I hesitated, afraid of its contempt. But amid my weakness was one thought, one impulse, which no amount of worldly prudence or consideration could stifle, ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... not agree with you,' said Merevale. 'I know Thomson well, and I think he is the last boy to do such a thing. He is neither a fool nor a coward, to put it shortly, and he would need to have a great deal of both in him ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... mounting a horse and pursuing his late adversary in order simply to embrace him from excess of happiness. "I owe it all to this stupid brute," he thought. "He has made plain in a morning what might have taken me years to find out—for I am a timid fool. No self-confidence whatever. Perfect coward. And the Chevalier! Delightful old man!" General D'Hubert longed to embrace ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... let him go with you, seeing he would grieve to death if you left him behind?" When I began to state that I could not promise he would not openly embrace my religion, they interrupted me, repeating that he was my child more than theirs, and could never come to any harm under my care. Coward as I was, I did not use the opportunity then given to set before them their own danger, and commend the pure faith that I knew their child held. I had occasionally talked in a general way, and once very ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... its sheath, and to avoid the blow that Amathel struck at him before he could guard himself, sprang backwards from the dais to the open space in the hall that had been left clear for the dancers. After him leapt Amathel calling him "Coward," and next instant the pillars echoed, not with Tua's music but with the stern ringing ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... to knock off, he preached, and Trent took the chair and made 'em all listen. Well, when we got a bit inland we had the natives to deal with, and if you ask me I believe that's one reason Cathcart hated the whole thing so. He's a beastly coward I think, and he told me once he'd never let off a revolver in his life. Well, they tried to surprise us one night, but Trent was up himself watching, and I tell you we did give 'em beans. Great, ugly-looking, black chaps they were. Aunt Ernie, I shall never forget how I felt ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... because he wants to get a super-man who, having more than two legs, will be a vastly superior person to a man. Chesterton loves men. He tells us why St. Peter was used to found the Church upon. It was because he 'was a shuffler, a coward, and a snob—in a word, a man.' Even the Thirty-Nine Articles and the Councils of Trent have failed to find a better reason for the founding of the Church. It is a defence of the fallibility of the Church, the practical nature ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... "And what a coward, what a sheep, would the Chevalier de Croustillac appear in the eyes of Blue Beard if he were so pusillanimous as to be ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... since. You niver know when it may be useful." As he spoke he continued to hold the black muzzle of his pistol in a dead line with the centre of the young man's forehead, and to follow the latter's movements with a hand which was as steady as a rock. Ezra was no coward, but he ceased his ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... can irretrievably disgrace Medwin, so that he may be shunned by everybody, I do not think the weak head of my Clara can withstand the storm; and she will gradually learn to despise him, too. So take no further notice of this matter; for a blow from a published coward carries no more disgrace with it than a bite from a dog, or a kick from an ass. You must help me out with my plans, too, in behalf of my charming heiress, and I'll be sure to remember you in my will. Let's ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... reproof in his question. "The fact of that Mexican's presence here in your house ought to prove to you the nature of the case. These vaqueros, these guerrillas, have found out you won't stand for any fighting on the part of your men. Don Carlos is a sneak, a coward, yet he's not afraid to hide in your own house. He has learned you won't let your cowboys hurt anybody. He's taking advantage of it. He'll rob, burn, and make off with you. He'll murder, too, if it falls his way. These Greasers ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... "O ye coward race! Ye abject Greeklings, Greeks no longer, haste Homeward with all the fleet, and let us leave This man at Troy to ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke
... fillets were brought forth; and the sacred knife glittered in the hand of the chief of the Druids. The bards had strung their harps, and began the song of death. The sounds were lofty and animating, they were fitted to inspire gallantry and enterprise into the trembling coward; they were fitted to breathe a soul into the clay-cold corse. The spirit of Arthur was roused; his eye gleamed with immortal fire. The aged oak, that strikes its root beneath the soil, so defies the blast, and so rears its head in the midst of the whirlwind. ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... to be a coward. It is weak to yield to fear and heroic to face danger without flinching. The old Indian who had been mortally wounded faced death with a grim smile on his lips and sang his own death song. The soldier of the {249} Roman legions laughed in the face of ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... head off, and drownd yer in that pail of water? Do you think I'm a-goin' to bear your confounded old harrogance, you old Wigsby! Chatter your old hivories at me, do you, you grinning old baboon! Come on, if you are a man, and can stand to a man. Ha! you coward, knives, knives!" ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... for a loup-garou, Father Gaspard: a loup-garou may have a harder time in this world than the other beasts, but he is no coward; he can ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... "There is need! There's need for you—to save your soul alive. You've been no coward so far—your overworked nerves played you a trick and you've had to recover. But you have recovered, you are fit to work again. If you don't do this thing you'll be ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... a head is necessary in order to obtain entrance to the pleasant regions of the land of departed spirits, is a doctrine taught by the chiefs in order to make men brave in battle, and do all in their power to avoid the punishment which awaits the coward. The Kayan Hades is believed to be under ground, and like the Hades of the ancient Greeks there is a guide to the entrance who corresponds to a certain extent to Charon. But their river Styx is not a stream, but a deep and wide ditch, through which flow ooze and slime swarming with worms and maggots; ...
— Folk-lore in Borneo - A Sketch • William Henry Furness
... chase more interesting. But I am annoyed with myself over the miscalculation. . . . I could have sworn he was a coward in grain. I marked all the stigmata. . . . And behold he can show fight!—at any rate in presence of the other sex. . . . Can something have happened to him, think you, since our talk at Versailles? Is it possible that I am ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... bitter fruits. It is making this house a bear-garden. We have an example in the present instance. Here, with permission of the chair and committee, and without a call to order from anybody, we see and hear one member (Mr. Johnson) say to another (Mr. Duncan) that he had been branded as a coward on this floor. The other says back that 'he is a liar!' And, sir, there the matter will stop. There will be no fight." Before proceeding to comment, Mr. Adams called for the reading of this statement, as reported in the National Intelligencer. On which Mr. Wise said ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... though he feared intrusion. The old restlessness coming over him, he paced up and down the narrow, cagelike room. Presently he approached a tiny mirror that hung upon the wall, and stood looking into it intently. "Fool!" he muttered. "Liar, and fool, and coward—you, you! You'll take care of Tom, will you? But ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... don't know, you soon will do. The fact is, you have spoiled the coppers in the cook-house, you have burned the bottoms out of them." "They were all right when I left" I retorted, beginning to feel rather "queer." If I had never been one before I felt a coward then; but, come what might, I thought, they can only reduce me in rank. So with "firm step" I marched to the sergeant-major's quarters. To my surprise—and in a manner which at once put me at my ease—the sergeant-major bade me a cheerful "Good evening." He told me that he had a job for me—he wanted ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... there among the trees, afraid and trembling. A small inner voice, that spoke to him very sharply after such occasions, told him contemptuously, that he had been more afraid than a girl; that he had been a coward; and as soon as he reached their small lamp-lit home, he ran away from silent Betty and the babbling baby, to his own bedroom, to cry in loneliness over this second self ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... Other people may laugh at this quality. For my part I esteem it worthy the loudest praise and most assiduous cultivation. When the balance hangs in doubt between the adventurousness of vanity and the frigidity of fear, ever incline to the latter side. I had rather your lordship should be a coward, than a coxcomb. If however you could attain to that reasonable and chastised opinion of yourself, which should steer a proper mean between these extremes, should make you feel your strength, when menaced by ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
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