"Coward" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... a coward. After his adventure in Balak, he feared neither man nor devil, and he insolently returned the black fellow's gaze. They stood about a buffet and drank coffee. The young woman—her outlines were girlish—did not touch anything; she turned her face in Pobloff's direction, so he fancied, ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... 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
... coward you must think me!" she said, with a ghostly little laugh. "Even now I would n't dare go last. As it is, I can see ahead and know ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... 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
... no coward. He remained firmly in front of Estelle, though he did not understand Thomas's English. The little girl clung ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... 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 |
