"Cowardly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... passion and our rage, we should have gone forth with our arms, and our horses, and our men, and at once have rescued our General. But we—since we have seen the audacity, the insolence, and the pride of Antony—we have become only more cowardly than before." Then he gives his opinion about the amnesty: "Let any of those who are now with Antony, but shall leave him before the ides of March and pass to the armies of the Consuls, or of Decimus, or of young Caesar, be held to be free from reproach. If one should quit their ranks through ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... ordered. "You're a pair of cowardly brutes. Can't be decent to a couple of helpless women in your power. Can't play fair in a fight with a man half the size of one of you. Get up, I say, and throw a dipperful of water in Trefoyle's face. He's not dead by a long shot, though he ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... vain and boastful; the Poitevins traitors and always adventurers. The Burgundians they considered vulgar and stupid. The Bretons were reputed to be fickle and changeable, and were often reproached for the death of Arthur. The Lombards were called avaricious, vicious and cowardly; the Romans, seditious, turbulent and slanderous; the Sicilians, tyrannical and cruel; the inhabitants of Brabant, men of blood, incendiaries, brigands and ravishers; the Flemish, fickle, prodigal, gluttonous, yielding ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... injustice came from you—no one would have doubted you if you had not first accused yourself! I had my doubts always, but I did not know enough to understand. You told a lie; nothing can palliate or do away with that! No motives can make a lie anything but a lie, and a lie is always a cowardly thing, whether we try to shield ourselves ...
— Brave and True - Short stories for children by G. M. Fenn and Others • George Manville Fenn
... any psychological reality—have been contrived to destroy the causal sense in man, they are an attack on the concepts of cause and effect!—And not an attack with the fists, with the knife, with honesty in hate and love! But springing from the most cowardly, most deceitful, and most ignoble instincts! A priest's attack! A parasite's attack! A vampirism of pale, subterranean blood-suckers! When the natural consequences of a deed are no longer "natural," but are supposed to be brought about by the conceptual spectres ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... of land absolutely unexplored, and the numerous tribes of Indians inhabiting certain of the tropical regions are under scarcely more than the semblance of control. Yet it cannot be said that they are ferocious or dangerous. Some of them, indeed, are cowardly, and will not even venture far from their villages for fear of wild beasts, whilst others form the most active and fearless guides, varying characteristics which show the wide range of peoples embodied in the country, as set forth in a previous chapter. Whilst Mexico cannot ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... more cowardly than I am," he said with a half laugh, as he galloped on, with Black Boy going easily, and with a long swinging stride that carried him well over the plain, but whether into safety or danger he ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... bullies he was cowardly, and the unexpected resistance and the pain of the blow quite overcame his fortitude, and he ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... Alexander, declared against a father "who brought servitude to freemen," and retired to the Pskovians. It needed a soul of iron temper to resist the universal disapprobation, and counsel the Novgorodians to the commission of the cowardly though necessary act. Alexander arrested his son, and punished the boyars who had led him into the revolt with death or mutilation. The vetche had decided to refuse the tribute, and send back the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... it to pass, since you were so mighty a number, that you fainted, and durst not fight your foes?' 'Our general,' said they, 'was the first man that did run for it.' 'Pray,' quoth their landlord, 'who was that, your cowardly general?' 'He was once the Lord Mayor of Mansoul,' said they: 'but pray call him not a cowardly general; for whether any from the east to the west has done more service for our prince Diabolus, than has my Lord Incredulity, ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... soul of the man whose conscience troubles him with an instinctive apprehension. There is then no safety, his nerves tell him, except in bringing the affair, whatever it is, to an early issue—in having it out with her. Colville subdued the cowardly impulse of his own heart, which would have deceived him with the suggestion that Mrs. Bowen might be occupied with Effie, and it would be better to ask for Miss Graham. He asked for Mrs. Bowen, and she ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... accustomed us to; a man who by bribery or intrigue induces his fellow-professionals to support him. He was one of those who rule by personal dominance. His courage has already been remarked; and he knew how much fearlessness can achieve in a profession where most men are peculiarly cowardly. It was he who forced the issue between the President and Congress and obtained at a stroke a sort of captaincy in the struggle by moving in the House of Representatives that the consideration of Reconstruction ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... Gringo!" he cried. "He insults my courage! This from one who is a mere Gringo—the most cowardly race of people on the earth. Oh, I shall exact revenge for this insolence. And you, Nicolas, had the impudence to come here with ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock
... suspiciously. The fugitive had discovered that the couple in the back of the car were not Mexicans, and Hotchkiss was suspicious of all Americans. Indeed, he was living a very uneasy existence. Being naturally of a cowardly nature, even the distance he had put between himself and Polktown did not seem to his mind great enough to insure safety. The fact that, although they had been four hours on the road from La Guarda to San Cristoval, they were ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... the Persians were now about to invade Greece, the Athenians deliberated as to who should be their leader. It is said that most men refused the post of General through fear, but that Epikydes, the son of Euphemides, a clever mob-orator, but cowardly and accessible to bribes, desired to be appointed, and seemed very likely to be elected. Themistokles, fearing that the state would be utterly ruined if its affairs fell into such hands, bribed him into forgetting his ambitious ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... round with his hoe uplifted, threatening to cut down any one who again attempted to strike him. Huckstep cursed my awkwardness, and told Harry to put down his hoe and came to him. He refused to do so and swore he would kill the first man who tried to lay hands on him. The cowardly tyrant shrank away from his enraged bondman, and for two weeks Harry was ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... of his daily life by the side of his unaffected piety, as it is described in the first chapter, we have a picture of the best man who could then be conceived; not a hard ascetic, living in haughty or cowardly isolation, but a warm figure of flesh and blood, a man full of all human loveliness, and to whom, that no room might be left for any possible Calvinistic falsehood, God Himself bears the emphatic testimony, that 'there was none like him upon the earth, a perfect and upright man, who feared ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... erroneously. Travelers crossing the plains were always on the defensive, and ever ready to commence war on any Indian who came within the radius of their firearms. When I was a boy I read in my reader: "Lo, the cowardly Indian." The picture above this sentence was that of an Indian in war paint, holding his bow and arrow, ready to shoot a white man in ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... of her," said the Doctor, "in the open air, and among the throng of people; not for fright, like yon cowardly dog Anster, but because I would give no occasion for a fray, having no leisure to look to stabs, slashes, and broken bones. Men call the old hag a prophetess—I do scarce believe she could foretell when a brood of chickens will chip the shell—Men ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... no more oranges on these terms, was tempted to return, without accomplishing the other adventure; but Price having represented to her the disgrace of such cowardly behaviour, more particularly after having before manifested so much resolution, she consented to go and pay the astrologer a short visit, so as they might be enabled to regain the palace before ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... time, the Border Slave States, and especially Virginia, were playing a part at once cowardly and selfish. They assumed the right to stand neutral between the government and rebellion, to contract a kind of morganatic marriage with Treason, by which they could enjoy the pleasant sin without the ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... by the Hungarians to negotiate peace with the court, but it failed, Windischgraetz being so elated with his success that nothing short of unconditional submission on the part of the country would satisfy him. To accept such terms would have been both cowardly and suicidal, and the nation, therefore, driven to the sad alternative of war, determined rather to perish gloriously than pusillanimously to submit to be enslaved by the court. They followed the lead of Kossuth, who was now at the head of the Government, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... be made a victim; a victim must be had, and I am the victim. I studied to make Brigham Young's will my pleasure for thirty years. See now what I have come to this day! I have been sacrificed in a cowardly, dastardly manner. I cannot help it; it is my last word; it is so. I do not fear death; I shall never go to a worse place than I am now in. I ask the Lord my God, if my labours are done, to receive ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... Say" is a cowardly liar! He couldn't look an honest man straight in the eye, any more than he could face a cannon ball. He would turn as pale as a snow-wreath, and melt into nothing just about ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... dry season, well fenced in with walls built of loose stones. But no one would make a bid for it, for there were few English about, and most of the farmers were trekking, so at last he parted with it to a cowardly fellow, a Boer by birth, but, as I believe, a spy of the British Government, who gave him fifty pounds and an old waggon in exchange for the place and everything upon it except the stock which we took ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... heard—what have I endured? Listen to me, you cowardly libeller. It is true that I was at Dollington, and at Charteris, on the night you name. Also true that I went to London. Your hideous slander is garnished with two or three bits of truth, but only the more villainous for that. All that you have ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... to be fair. Tell me, is that your attitude? It is un-English, and it is cowardly. ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... of himself, Nellie?" her father said. "Do you suppose that a man on deck would be any the safer were he to stoop down with his head below the rail, or to screw himself up on the leeward side of a mast? No, no, lass; each man has to take his share of danger, and the most cowardly runs just as great a risk as the ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... striking a soldier near Khan Yunas. When identified by witnesses merely uttering two or three words, they were removed, cruelly pushed about in their chains and beaten on the head by the soldiers, who enjoyed the cowardly fun which they would not dare to perpetrate had the fine tall fellows had ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... accomplishment of it. Quite correct. Isn't it 'A life for a life'? It is written so in the Bible. Just that, no more. They must take mine. But—they must do it unexpectedly, suddenly. Just as I meant to do to him. Otherwise it won't be fair. Tell me, holy Father, is it cowardly to be so terrified? I am so terrified—of what is before me. There's nothing about this terror of death in the Scriptures. Those who settled my fate to-day looked like men. Then they ought to know that they are executing me a thousand times, not once. ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... mechanical man,—the ordinary animal. Such a creature has cunning, and is either cowardly or ferocious; seldom in these qualities he preserves a medium. He is not by any means easy to dupe. Nature defends her mental brutes by the thickness of their hide. Win his mistress if possible; she is the best person to manage ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... staying; but there was Berea! To go meant a violent end of their pleasant romance. To think of flight saddened him, and yet his better judgment was clearly on the side of going. "Much as I like her, much as I admire her, I cannot marry her. The simplest way is to frankly tell her so and go. It seems cowardly, but in the end she ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... cowardly leave The faithful assembly To fight for a grave? Regardless of breathing The patriot's law, His country forsaking And basely withdraw From liberty's quarrel, Forgetting his vow, And tarnish the ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... of him I spoke," replied Francesco, "but of my cousin, that cowardly tyrant, Gian Maria Sforza. Tell me, Messer Valdicampo—what has become ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... dangerous thing. I believe that, in the case of the higher animals at least, the differences in individual temperament are quite likely to be more numerous than the specific likenesses. Just as individual men are bright or dull, nervous or phlegmatic, cowardly or brave, so individual animals vary in like respect. Our own hunters will recall from their personal experiences how the big bear may have sat down and bawled harmlessly for mercy, while the little unconsidered fellow did his best until finished off: how one buck dropped instantly to a wound ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... now at my end Lament nor sorrow at: but please your thoughts In feeding them with those my former fortunes Wherein I liv'd, the greatest prince o' the world, The noblest; and do now not basely die, Not cowardly put off my helmet to My countryman, a Roman by a Roman Valiantly vanquish'd. Now my spirit is ...
— Antony and Cleopatra • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... then I knew that they were carrying her out, out of the house where she had lived, out of the house wherein she had died, carrying her forth for burial,—forth to the grave her only son had made for her; and I, little, shivering, cowardly soul, hid my face in my hands, and let my tears fall,—not because I knew this proud lady dead,—not because a fibre from my warm heart was being drawn out to be knitted into that fathom-deep grave, for it never would be one of my graves,—but ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... Instances were given in which these freebooters had killed every chicken upon a farm. As they hunt only at night, they are hard to capture. Their notes and natures are said to be in keeping with their deeds of darkness; for their cry is wild, harsh, and unearthly, while in temper they are cowardly, savage, and untamable, showing no affection even for each other. A female has been known to kill ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... of activitie whatsoeuer, and if he and thou proue me not a man, send mee away comfortlesse: if thou refuse this, as a niggard of thy cates, I will haue amongst you with my sword, for rather wil I die valiantly, then perish with so cowardly an extreame (Collier's Poetical Decameron, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... he should have actually met the girl whose picture she had been cowardly enough to send in place of her own, but what followed literally chilled the blood in her veins. He was coming! Coming to Stillton! Coming to find her! Was actually on the way at that moment to claim her acquaintance,—perhaps ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... morning? What did it matter, a few years sooner or later? He must lay down the burden at last. Why not then? A pang of self-reproach followed the thought. Could he so lightly throw aside the love that had bent over his cradle. The sacred name of mother rose involuntarily to his lips. Was it not cowardly to yield up without a struggle the life which he should guard for her sake? Was it not his duty to the living and the dead to face the difficulties of his position, and overcome them if ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... like spaniels, to lick the hand that beats us; but children's children at the farthest, will have outgrown such pitiful meanness, and will dare to do all that others have dared and done for the sake of freedom and independence. Then all this cowardly cant about the unhealthy climate, the voracious beasts, and venomous reptiles of Africa, will be at a discount, instead of passing current as now for ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... for a dangerous surprise, but not for this horror; and the life left her on the spot, for the poor weed was as soft and cowardly as any other product of the swamp. He rang for restoratives and sent for her maid. In ten minutes, somewhat restored, she faced the ordeal, if only to learn what ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... indeed, made his a Trojan, but it was to derive the Romans and his own Augustus from him; but all the three poets are manifestly partial to their heroes in favour of their country. For Dares Phrygius reports of Hector that he was slain cowardly; AEneas, according to the best account, slew not Mezentius, but was slain by him; and the chronicles of Italy tell us little of that Rinaldo d'Este who conquers Jerusalem in Tasso. He might be a champion of the Church, but we know not that he was so much as present at ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... received two Double-headed-Shot in the Bread-room, which were soon plugg'd up, and one Shot under the Larboard Chesstree, but so low in the Water, that could not get at it, and the Ship prov'd leaky. I had a Pack of sad cowardly, ignorant Dogs as ever came into a Ship. As to my common Sailors, who were not above Twelve Seamen, with the Officers, they stood by me. It was all owing to my Misfortune on the Mouse, that I was so poorly Mann'd. ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... not whether we should gain much by that, unless we could manage to surprise an Indian village, and capture some of their chief men to hold as hostages till they agreed to give up their captives. These Indians are very different to the cowardly tribes we have been wont to meet with on the Spanish Main, as experience should already have taught you," observed the captain: "still, with discipline and determination we shall be able, I doubt not, to tackle them. I like your proposal, however, and as soon as we can get a crew together, ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... of renewed hope. A little later the young secretary came up again to see me. To supplement my messages through Mr. Drake, I requested this young man to tell the General that I could see they were taking a cowardly advantage of me because I was a woman, and that they would never have detained a man under similar circumstances. In fact, I was on every occasion so importunate that I am quite sure the General's Staff only prayed for the moment that I should depart. That ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... paid to anonymous letters. The writers of such stamp themselves as cowardly, and cowards do not hesitate to say or write what is not true when it suits their purpose. All statements made in such letters should be regarded as false, and the writers as actuated by some bad ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... definite enemies. He had punched the heads of those in Pennsylvania, and would not object to shooting them here; but this impersonal, surrounding hostility of the unknown was new and bitter: the cruel, assassinating, cowardly Southwest, where prospered those jail-birds whom the vigilantes had driven from California. He thought of the nameless human carcass that lay near, buried that day, and of the jokes about its mutilations. Cumnor was not an innocent boy, either in principles or in practice, but this laughter ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... singularly involving a young girl, was indeed an adventure to provoke thought. It provoked more, for Dale grew conscious of an unfamiliar smoldering heat along his veins. He who had little to do with the strife of men, and nothing to do with anger, felt his blood grow hot at the cowardly trap laid for an ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... that country, glorify the deeds and character of all who took a part in the Revolutionary war, on the Republican side; but the Loyalists who could not feel justified in fighting against their Sovereign and country, are uniformly painted in the blackest colours, as if they were cowardly and base wretches who had no redeeming qualities. All that is hateful and mean is suggested by the word 'Tory' or 'Royalist' in the annals of the United States. They have never had fair play; because they were ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... than wicked, worse than absurd, it is cowardly, but what do you expect, doesn't everybody ...
— Marie Bashkirtseff (From Childhood to Girlhood) • Marie Bashkirtseff
... transparent honesty that won me. You were all I'd dreamed of in a woman—all that I hadn't found in that other woman. But I was afraid. So I left Montricheux—went away at once. I didn't want to care for you. I'd been too badly hit before. Cowardly, you'll say, perhaps—you were never a coward, were you, Ann? Well, it may have been. Anyhow, I did go away and I tried to forget all about you. It wasn't easy, God knows, and then, by a trick of fate, I found you again, at my cottage—living there, sister of the man with whom I'd just made ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... swaggering, roysters,[29] that are ignorant of the nature of the fear of God, count it a poor, sneaking, pitiful, cowardly spirit in men to fear and tremble before the Lord; but whoso looks back to jails and gibbets, to the sword and burning stake, shall see, that there, in them, has been the most mighty and invincible spirit that has ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Pietro d'Oviedo brought, Don Diego replied that as he knew his lord and master was a prisoner, it would be disgraceful in him to obey an order that had probably been wrested from him by violence, and that the bearer deserved to die for undertaking such a cowardly office. He therefore bade his soldiers seize d'Oviedo and fling him down from the top of the walls: this sentence was ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... forgiven the scorn with which Ravenswood had torn the mask of courage and honesty from his countenance; and to exasperate Bucklaw's resentment against him was the safest mode of revenge which occurred to his cowardly, yet cunning ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... something or other and crying, Hold! I did wake of a sudden and not knowing who he was, nor thinking of the coachman between sleeping and waking I did take up the heart to take him by the shoulder, thinking verily he had been a thief. But when I waked I found my cowardly heart to discover a fear within me and that I should never have done it if ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Living rage no doubt supported him; no doubt also, the sense of the last cast, of the ships burned, of all doors closed but one, which is so strong a tonic to the merely weak, and so deadly a depressant to the merely cowardly. ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... rumpus, came running up to see the fun, and they laughed and danced over poor Little Moccasin's distress. Often afterward they called him "coffee-cooler"; which meant that he was cowardly and faint-hearted, and that he preferred staying in camp around the fire, drinking coffee, to taking part in the manly sports of hunting and ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... head, with its scanty, carefully brushed hair, back against the support of the worn armchair, and shut his eyes to keep them back. He would try not to be cowardly. Then, with the closing of the soul-windows, mental and physical fatigue brought their own gentle healing, and in the cold, little study, bare, even, of many books, with the fire smoldering cheerlessly ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... make a remark on the personal bearing of these Arabs. Whether they be Arabs or Turks, or Copts, it is always the same. They are a mean, false, cowardly race, I believe. They will bear blows, and respect the man who gives them. Fear goes further with them than love, and between man and man they understand nothing of forbearance. He who does not exact from them all that he can exact is simply a fool in their ...
— George Walker At Suez • Anthony Trollope
... to indignation at last, "it is cruel of you to treat me so, simply because I wouldn't commit murder. Yes—murder. I say it would have been murder! I'm no coward; and it is cowardly to shoot down a man ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... what I feel. It is a selfish pleasure, but it is one of the last I shall have." And she paused, with her great misty eyes fixed upon him. "I know how I have deceived and injured you; I know how cruel and cowardly I have been. I see it as vividly as you do—I feel it to the ends of my fingers." And she unclasped her hands, which were locked together in her lap, lifted them, and dropped them at her side. "Anything that you may have said of me in your ...
— The American • Henry James
... were on other things,—on the rescuing yawl speeding toward the spar buoy, on the stout hands and knowing ones who were pulling for all they were worth to that anchor of safety;—on two of his own men who, seeing Baxter's cowardly desertion, had sprung like cats at the bowsprit of the sloop in one of her dives, and were then on the stern ready to pay out a line to the yawl when she reached the goal. No,—he'd hold on "till ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... to keep him well and strong, they gave him food and water, both of which he at first thought of refusing, and thus bringing his sufferings to an end as quickly as possible. On second thought, however, he decided that this course would be cowardly, and unworthy of his white blood. So he ate heartily all that was offered to him, determined to keep up his strength, and to make a desperate effort to escape should the slightest ...
— The Flamingo Feather • Kirk Munroe
... a beast about three feet long, with a short stubbed tail, and might easily be mistaken for a large wild-cat. Its fur, which is short and very thick, and of a beautiful silver gray, is much used for muffs, tippets, and fur trimming. The lynx is a cowardly beast, and seldom attacks anything larger than hares, squirrels, and birds. It will sometimes rob a sheep-fold, as the gentle and pretty lambs have no means of defense against ...
— Harper's Young People, January 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... his lord, grieving sorely at his death, the other ten thanes who had shown themselves to be faithless and cowardly approached with shame to his side. Then Wiglaf turned to them, ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... him. His soldiers spying his undaunted spirit A Talbot! a Talbot! cried out amain, And rush'd into the bowels of the battle. Here had the conquest fully been seal'd up, If Sir John Fastolfe had not play'd the coward. He, being in the vaward, plac'd behind With purpose to relieve and follow them, Cowardly fled, not having struck one stroke. Hence grew the general wreck and massacre; Enclosed were they with their enemies: A base Walloon, to win the Dauphin's grace, Thrust Talbot with a spear into the back; Whom all France with their chief assembled strength Durst not presume ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... command of Sir John Malcolm. No alternative was left him but to die or give up. The terms offered by Malcolm were so liberal as to excite astonishment in Europe. While the great Napoleon was condemned to spend his remaining days on a mere pittance at St. Helena, this most cowardly of Indian princes was allowed to live in luxury near Cawnpore, on a yearly grant of L80,000. His friend Trimbukji Dainglia, however, when captured, was condemned to close confinement in the fortress ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... latest news! What I specially come to tell you was, that if you ever lay hands on that child agin, I'll shoot you deader 'n any door-mat you ever wiped your great cowardly ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... he set this trap almost daily, and daily took a great number of birds whose necks he wrung and had them cooked for him with rice by his silly mother; that it was a sin in any case to take little birds by such cowardly means, but that since amongst these birds there were larks and thrushes and plump blackbirds and other sweet musicians of the air, whose innocent lives were spent in singing the praises of God, his sin became a ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... was almost more than I could bear; I turned away, waiting for the tremendous concussion; I heard awful curses from the men, the cowardly shouting of "Roaring John," the blasphemies of "Dick the Ranter." I knew that Black alone was calm; and at the last I fixed my eyes upon him when the head of the torpedo's foam was not thirty yards away from us. In that supreme moment the power of the man rose to a great height. He ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... almost garrulous in telling over the old story of that never-to-be-forgotten day, when he and Joshua stood alone and tried to put some heart into the cowardly mob before them. There is no mock modesty about the man. He says that, amidst many temptations to be untrue, he gave his report with sincerity and veracity, 'speaking as it was in mine heart,' and then he quotes twice, with a permissible satisfaction, the eulogium that had come upon ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... or you have wondered, why no letter has come from me. What you wrote at your return, had in it such a strain of cowardly caution as gave me no pleasure. I could not well do what you wished; I had no need to vex you with a refusal. I have seen Mr. ——[596], and as to him have set all right, without any inconvenience, so far ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... order that they may afterwards boast of the same, and for the accomplishment of which they are obliged to abuse and look ferocious at the blacks, cock their pistols, and flourish their whips, in a manner which is only worthy of being styled contemptible and cowardly. We need not say that our friends Harold and Disco had no such propensities. They had kindly consideration for the feelings of their "niggers," coupled with great firmness; became very sociable with them, and thus got hearty, willing work out ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... disturbance of his ordinary suave and well-bred equanimity that the Italian received the information that he need apprehend no obstacle to his suit from the insular prejudices or the worldly views of the lady's family. Not that he was mean and cowardly enough to recoil from the near and unclouded prospect of that felicity which he had left off his glasses to behold with unblinking, naked eyes,—no, there his mind was made up; but he had met in life with much that inclines a man towards ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... get your money, perhaps some grudge against your father, which he was afraid to show while your father was free, for your father was always his master. But Old Jimmie has brought you up exactly contrary to the orders he received. If revenge was Old Jimmie's motive, his cunning, cowardly brain could not have conceived a more diabolical revenge, one that would hurt your father more. Till a few years ago, when word was sent to your father that Old Jimmie was dead, Jimmie regularly wrote your father about the success of his ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... his brain like intoxication, and communicated itself to the poor girl who believed in him as if he were the living faith; and, in the madness of his passion, Michel, without being a coward, committed a cowardly action. ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... him!" interrupted her son in a low tense voice. "He's a white-livered, cowardly hypocrite, that's my name for ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... subsequent firing on Fort Sumter, yet no public notice was taken thereof; and when, months afterward, I came North, I found not one single sign of preparation. It was for this reason, somewhat, that the people of the South became convinced that those of the North were pusillanimous and cowardly, and the Southern leaders were thereby enabled to commit their people to the war, nominally in defense of their slave property. Up to the hour of the firing on Fort Sumter, in April, 1861, it does seem to me that our ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... knows it better than he himself. The idea of his coming here over that young lady's head was from the first abhorrent to me. When I saw him, and heard him, and found out what he was,—such a poor, cringing, cowardly wretch,—my feeling was of course exacerbated. It was terrible to me that the old squire, whom I had always respected, should have brought such a man among us. But that was the old squire's doing. He certainly did bring him, and as certainly intended to make him his heir. ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... to do no such thing. She will be sure to be finical, cowardly, or disagreeable in some way. And then such a host of all sorts of creatures as would reply to your advertisement. We shall do very well without ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... discarded girl, and, in his extremity, called upon him for advice and help. He could afford him none; and the seducer found himself in the world without an hour's happiness or quiet. What quails so readily as the heartiest soul of the sensualist? Who so cowardly as the man only courageous in his oppression of the weak? The spirit of Temple was laid prostrate. He walked, and eat, and slept, in base and dastard fear. Locks and bolts could not secure him from dismal apprehensions. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... would hear you. Who says anything of murdher? No, but just give him a bating that would go nigh taching him the taste of being murdhered,—and the same for Master Ussher; for I tell ye—may the tongue of the cowardly ruffian be blisthered for putting the name he did on your sisther!—but he was only repating what Ussher has said hisself, and that more nor ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... both found in work resource from despair, and both made the world richer not only by the fruits of self-conquest, but by the contagious power of heroic example. Such careers put to shame the self-centred, egotistic, morbid pessimism which has found so many voices in recent years that its cowardly outcries have almost drowned the great, sane, authoritative voices of ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... the worst thing he could have said. He realized it the moment he had spoken. This forced, cowardly surrender was worse than brazen defiance, and he saw her lip curl. An idler is apt to be like a sullen child, except that in a grown man the child's sulky spite becomes a dark malice, all-embracing. For the very reason that Vance knew he was receiving what he deserved, and that this was the ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... cigar-box. He picked it up; two uncut diamonds were on the floor beneath it. The rough, inert pebbles silently attested the obvious manner of death which simultaneously forced itself upon the three men—the cowardly blow of an assassin, a dying struggle, perhaps, for the contents of the ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
... Carry on! Things never were looming so black. But show that you haven't a cowardly streak, And though you're unlucky you never are weak. Carry on! Carry on! Brace up for another attack. It's looking like hell, but—you never can tell: Carry on, old ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... with the other mysteries of those distant times, that the mode of controlling the temper is now as undiscoverable as the manner of preparing the Tyrian dye and other forgotten arts? It is surely a disgrace to those cowardly Christians who, having in addition to all the natural powers of the heathen moralist the freely-offered grace of God to work with them and in them, should still walk so unworthy of the high vocation wherewith they are called, as ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... while the boy was wearing out his life in debauchery in the palace. Seneca dared say more to Nero, to venture more with him, than did any other man. For the young tiger was afraid of his old master long after he had tasted blood. Yet Seneca's system was a cowardly system. It was the best of Roman morality and Greek philosophy, and still it was mean. His daring was the bravest of the men of the old civilization. He is the type of their excellences, as is Nero the model of their power ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... on the way to Maluco. He was treacherously killed while sleeping one night, without apprehension or precaution, as one who did not dream of having enemies or traitors with him. The traitors were the Sangleys, whom he took with him to work his galley. Like the ineffably low, vile, and cowardly people that they are, they killed my father because he trusted them and set them loose for their own comfort. The news of this event reached me far from the place of its occurrence, while I was awaiting ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair
... conscious desire to preserve one's self-respect and the respect of one's fellow men; and therefore, the best way in which to train a man to be brave is to cultivate his self-respect and a desire to have the respect of his fellow men; and to foster the idea that he will lose both if he acts in a cowardly way. ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... enough people to create a disturbance, the meetings passed off quietly, but they were mobbed and broken up in every city from Buffalo to Albany. Democratic officials encouraged the mob spirit and where Republicans might have wished to oppose it, they were too cowardly to do so. The meetings were advertised for three days in Rochester, beginning January 12, and, as the newspapers occupied many columns with a discussion as to whether they would be broken up here as elsewhere, the opposition was thoroughly aroused ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... judgment for a man who expected to go on living to start out after one of the Tatums without he kept on till he had cleaned up the both of them, and maybe some of their cousins as well. I will not admit that I acted cowardly, but I will state that I used my ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... whether I had been in the pantry. That, if Joe knew it, and at any subsequent period of our joint domestic life remarked that his beer was flat or thick, the conviction that he suspected Tar in it, would bring a rush of blood to my face. In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong. I had had no intercourse with the world at that time, and I imitated none of its many inhabitants who act in this manner. Quite an untaught genius, I made the discovery of the line ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... ill will for what you said then in my hearing. It is what you have done in so cowardly a manner since I last saw you, and at a time when I was not present to ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... is a point of honour amongst all schoolboys never to 'split' on mates. The boy who tells is everywhere regarded as a sneak—at Waddy he speedily became a pariah—and Dick was a stickler for points of honour. To be caned was bad, but nothing to the gnawing shame of long weeks following upon a cowardly breach of faith. To all the questions Cann or Peterson could put with the object of eliciting the names of the participators in the big raid, Dick returned only a distressing ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... looking at the dead bird with a heavy frown on his dark face. He must have heard Beth's altercation with Murphy, but he made no remark until Mrs. Caldwell came out, when he said something in Italian, to which she responded, "The cowardly brute!" ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... us call it, I was a little ashamed or abashed at the remembrance of my wild flights, and had a laugh at the thought of myself floundering around in the marshes and fields a mile from home, when Harriet, no doubt, had breakfast waiting for me! What absurd, contradictory, inconsistent, cowardly creatures we ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... objects of contempt, preserve an exquisite and absolute harmony. In almost every particular sort of wickedness he has had rivals. His sensuality was immoderate; but this was a failing common to him with many great and amiable men. There have been many men as cowardly as he, some as cruel, a few as mean, a few as impudent. There may also have been as great liars, though we never met with them or read of them. But when we put everything together, sensuality, poltroonery, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the deadly hail of battle, which defies the tyranny of custom and the hatred of the world. One may have compassion for age, which is naturally timid and sees fears in the way, but youth which is cowardly is contemptible. ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... unworthy. SEM. O fearful heart! why comparest thou with Nimrod Or Alexander? of this world not lords only, But worthy to subdue heaven, as saying go'th; And thou reputest thyself more high Than them both, and despairest so cowardly To win a woman, of whom hath been so many Gotten and ungotten, never heard of any? It is recited in the Feast of Saint John: This is the woman of ancient malice; Of whom but of a woman was it sung on, That ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... I haven't helped a great deal, but I've shown I was willing to give my life, and perhaps I've got to; but I don't blame anybody, and if it was to do over again, I'd do it. I'm a little sorry I wasn't wounded in front; it looks cowardly to be hit in the back, but I obeyed orders, and it doesn't matter in ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... matter for that. I know you well enough. Would you read about gnomes and then be so cowardly that you would fear to associate ...
— The Magic Soap Bubble • David Cory
... choose a place of retreat for himself; or remain a prisoner to France and the allies."—"This is all I know."—"I perceive, that the allies want Napoleon to be delivered up to them bound hand and foot: never will the French be guilty of such a cowardly act. Since our interview, the public opinion in his favour has been expressed with fresh strength; and I protest to you, that he never possessed the love of the French to so high a degree. The electors convoked for the Champ de Mai, and the new representatives of France[3], are arriving ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon |
