"Cowardly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said Jack firmly, "I can't agree to that. Both of you came into this thing to oblige and to help me, and it would be a cowardly trick on my part to put the risky work on ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... vendetta. In the one, the appeal to arms has always been tempered by a punctilious chivalry, which recoiled from the slightest unfairness in the attendant circumstances; in the other, the enemy is, if possible, taken unawares, shot down by a cowardly miscreant lurking behind a tree or a rock, or suddenly stabbed without an opportunity of putting himself on his defence. The practice of ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... mince matters in saying what he thought of the Lundy instructions, which he again declared angrily he intended to disobey. When he had finished his narrative and his protestations against what he considered a cowardly policy—a policy that would deprive Ulster of succour as sorely needed as Derry needed the Mountjoy to break the boom—Carson put a few questions to him in regard to the feasibility of his plans. Crawford explained the advantage it would ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... raised from a seedlin', I vow. So says I, 'Mr. Bradley, I guess you had better let me be; you know I can't fight no more than a cow; I never was brought up to wranglin', and I don't like it.' 'Haul off the cowardly rascal,' they all bawled out, 'haul him off, and lay it into him!' So he lays right hold of me by the collar, and gives me a pull, and I lets on as if I'd lost my balance and falls right down. Then I jumps up on eend, and says I 'Go ahead Clay,' and the old horse he ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... the fierce, questioning face, and in those anxious moments I could not help feeling the danger of my position; but I had to speak. To refuse, now that he was driven to bay, might mean an order for immediate execution, and, cowardly or no, I could not speak. I suppose that I ought to have been brave, and exclaimed boldly, "Kill me, if you like; I will not fight against my countrymen." But I was very young; I had been badly wounded, and was just recovering and beginning to feel how ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... laid down as an unfailing and universal axiom, that "all pride is abject and mean." It is always an ignorant, lazy, or cowardly acquiescence in a false appearance of excellence, and proceeds not from consciousness of our attainments, but ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... hour afterward, and because she had been disabled by the shot of the American fleet. The gallies were largely manned by Canadians, and James, anxious to put the blame on these rather than the British, says that they acted in the most cowardly way, whereas in reality they caused the Americans more trouble than Downie's smaller sailing vessels did. His account of the armament of these vessels differs widely from the official reports. He gives the Linnet ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... to her feet, and quivering with scorn and indignation, cried: "Ah! then the deed is even more infamous—even more cowardly!" But alarmed by the threatening gleam in M. de Coralth's eyes, she went ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... then again to golf, and see at once that, with the miserable and cowardly exception of laying the stymie, there is no stroke in this game that fulfils the proper conditions which should govern athletic contests involving the use of spherical objects with or without instruments ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 15, 1920 • Various
... flourishing about a revolver and threatening to fire, I hold it utter idiocy. I have never tried it, however, so I speak from prejudice which arises from the feeling that there is something cowardly in it. Always have your revolver ready loaded in good order, and have your hand on it when things are getting warm, and in addition have an exceedingly good bowie knife, not a hinge knife, because with a hinge knife you have got to get it open—hard work in a country where all things go ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... and cowardly and imbecile brutality of those bundles of iron, launched in full flight against the lace-work, so delicate, that had risen confidently in the air for centuries, and which so many battles, invasions, scourges have never dared ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... poltroons?" said the philosopher; "what—to show which of you looks palest when a rat squeaks?—but take a candlestick and begone, you cowardly villains! the devils you are so much afraid of must be but paltry kites, if they hawk at such bats as ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... forms of expression in those days, which argued cowardly feelings. One would like to see a searching investigation into the state of society in Anne's days—its extreme artificiality, its sheepish reserve upon all the impassioned grandeurs, its shameless outrages upon all the decencies ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... their Natures, Tempers, Qualities, Actions, and way of Living, was made up of innumerable Contradictions: That they were the Wisest Fools, and the Foolishest Wise Men in the World; the Weakest Strongest, Richest Poorest, most Generous Covetous, Bold Cowardly, False Faithful, Sober Dissolute, Surly Civil, Slothful Diligent, Peaceable Quarrelling, Loyal Seditious ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... paling with mingled anguish and rapture in the arms of him whom she adored, "what you are doing is cowardly and base!" ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... remarked with emphasis of gesture as well as of speech—the inclined head and body, the right hand lightly placed upon the listener's knee, the abrupt change in the inflection of the voice, all so characteristic of him—-"this idle and often cowardly as well as ignorant harping! Why should we not change like everything else? In fiction, in poetry, in so much of both, French as well as English, and, I am told, in American art and literature, the shadow of death—call it what you will, despair, negation, indifference—is ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... eye and an earnestness in his voice, which awed the cowardly overseer; but at the same time they increased his hatred. He resolved to be revenged, and reported to Hull that the slave was rebellious. Hull permitted George Waters to be tied to a tree by four stout negroes, whose barbarous natures delighted in such work, and the overseer laid a whip a dozen ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... August, presently. "I'm responsible for this cowardly attack on you. I brought you out here. This is the second one. Beware of the third! I see—but tell me, do you remember that I said you must meet Snap as ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... what he said. Too cowardly to meet Pawnee Brown face to face, he wanted to make sure that the great scout should ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill
... out in a voice that rang through the room and fastened every eye upon him—"what his cowardly weakness will bring him? The misery it will entail; the sleepless nights, the fear, the remorse that will follow? The outrage on Bowdoin's home, on his children? Has he thought of the humiliation of the man ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the coachmen. The elderly individual looked for a moment at these last, and then said: 'To such fellows as you I have nothing to say;' then turning to the coachmen, 'and as for you,' he said, 'ye cowardly bullies, I have but one word, which is, that your reign upon the roads is nearly over, and that a time is coming when ye will be no longer wanted or employed in your present capacity, when ye will either have to drive dung-carts, assist as ostlers at village ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... heard it, or at least took any notice against us. I can give you no idea of the terror which the lady manifested when the boat stood out to sea, at the slightest squall of wind, or the least agitation of the waves; for besides being naturally cowardly, as all or most women are for the first time at sea, here was a poor soul who had been watching, and may be fasting, and worn out mind and body with the terror of perfecting her escape from the convent, where she had been immured all her life, and as helpless ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... Day, you schemed for the Day; Watch how the Day will go. Slayer of age and youth and prime (Defenseless slain for never a crime) Thou art steeped in blood as a hog in slime, False friend and cowardly foe. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... tree, defending himself as he best might, from a half dozen men in armor, each with his visor down. Ranier had no sword, for, not being a knight, it was forbidden him to bear such a weapon; but he bethought him of his ax, and hoped it might serve the men as it had the trees. So he wished these cowardly assailants killed, and when he uttered the prescribed words, the ax fell upon the villains, and so hacked and hewed them that they were at once destroyed. But it seemed to the knight thus rescued that it was ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... and Amelot, feeling all his efforts baffled, threw his sword from him, and weeping in pride and indignation, hastened back to tell the Lady Eveline of his bad success. "All," he said, "is lost—the cowardly villains have mutinied, and will not move; and the blame of their sloth and faintheartedness will be ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... immediately, as I have secured you a first lieutenant's commission in a cavalry company, which is to be mustered into my regiment. Your brothers have already accepted theirs, and are drilling their companies twice every week. Of course, we do not expect a war, for we have kept the cowardly Yankees under our thumbs so long that they will not dare to oppose us. However, we consider it best to ...
— Frank on a Gun-Boat • Harry Castlemon
... me his right eye, dear old father, which is the only one he has now; the other he lost from a cutlass wound in a boarding-party. There it hangs, and those are his epaulettes in the tin case. They used to lie under my pillow before I had a room of my own, and many a cowardly down-hearted fit have they helped me to pull through, Brown; and many a mean act have they helped to keep me from doing. There they are always; and the sight of them brings home the dear old man to me as nothing else does, hardly even his letters. I must be a great ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... him. The man's defense must be so abjectly hopeless, such a cowardly weak string of lies, that out of pity, as he might have ceased to beat a hound, Crane continued, speaking rapidly, holding the guilty man tight in the ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... fears lest she will not accept his love, whereas she, too, would have spoken out had she not feared to be rejected. In spite of this, the eyes of each reveal the hidden thought, if only they had heeded this evidence. They converse by glance of eye, but their tongues are so cowardly that they dare not speak in any wise of the love which possesses them. No wonder if she hesitates to begin, for a maid must be a simple and shrinking thing; but he—why does he wait and hold back who was ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... shop there was a little dark room for the shop-boy. There sat Petter Nord of to-day and came to an understanding with Petter Nord of yesterday. How pale and cowardly the churl looked. Now he heard what he really was. A thief and a miser. Did he know the seventh commandment? By rights he ought to have forty stripes. That was what ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... state. But the accounts of both, though they are very different writers, agree in their scorn of the leaders of the White Guelfs. They were upstarts, purse-proud, vain, and coarse-minded; and they dared to aspire to an ambition which they were too dull and too cowardly to pursue, when the game was in their hands. They wished to rule; but when they might, they were afraid. The commons were on their side, the moderate men, the party of law, the lovers of republican government, and for the most part the magistrates; but they shrank ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the Irish, sailed to North Wales, and beat Rolf, the Norman Earl, at Hereford. Oh, yes, I heard that, and," added the Kent man, laughing, "I was not sorry to hear that my old Earl Algar, since he is a good and true Saxon, beat the cowardly Norman,—more shame to the King for giving a Norman the ward of ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... should not. To kill a man of twenty-five years of age is a much greater crime than to steal jewellery even by force, and a society which bands together in order to wield the sword of Justice is much more cowardly when it kills than the man who robs and kills quite alone, at his own risk and peril. Oh, what tears I wept for that man, whom I did not know at all—who was a rascal or perhaps a hero! He was perhaps a man of weak intellect who had turned thief, but he was only twenty-five years of age, and ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... terror!—his doom for life, without the means of death, would be solitary confinement. "Stay! with this knife in my hand—means of death—yes, it shall be so." And he hurriedly drew the knife across his throat; no use, nothing done; his cowardly skin shrank away from cutting—he dared not cut again; a little bloody ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... up to the hovering great ships. The blueskins, said the reports were spiritless and cowardly. They permitted themselves to be robbed. They kept out of the way. It had been observed that the population was streaming out of the city, fleeing because they feared the ships' landing-parties. The blueskins had abjectly produced all they'd promised of precious metals, ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... cannot but 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 estimation, to the ...
— George Walker At Suez • Anthony Trollope
... your own impulses. They come from within you, they are a part of your nature—your self—and that is where your true duty lies. It is better that you should be true to yourself, even at the expense of others, than that you should be afraid and cowardly. ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... arrest is made, no jury is found that will convict. The result is that outlaws have everything their own way, while the peaceable people have no assurance that at any moment they will not be murdered by cowardly assassins."[20] ...
— The Disfranchisement of the Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 6 • John L. Love
... a weak, pusillanimous wretch you must be, having known me so long, and tried my temper so well, to hope to find me such a fool, after all,—that kind of fool, I mean! My deepest shame, in this unutterably shameful hour, is that I chose such a cowardly ass to besot myself with.—There, the subject sickens me, and I am going. Dare to follow me, and the geese of Hendrik shall have you. I go scot-free, fearing nothing, having nothing to lose; but I hold you, my ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... second, even with the selfish: that appetites are starved, fears are conquered, pains supported; that almost the dullest shrinks from the reproof of a glance, although it were a child's; and all but the most cowardly stand amid the risks of war; and the more noble, having strongly conceived an act as due to their ideal, affront and embrace death. Strange enough if, with their singular origin and perverted practice, they think they are to be ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The cowardly assault aroused the indignation of Merritt, who was a manly boy at all times. He remonstrated with the assailants, and when they continued to pelt the old man, he proceeded to attack them. Whether he could have won out alone and unaided will always ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... very soon after my adventure with Miss Crutty, and that cowardly ruffian, Captain Waters (he sailed the day after his insult to me, or I should most certainly have blown his brains out; NOW he is living in England, and is my relation; but, of course, I cut the fellow)—very soon after these painful events another happened, ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Osborne's lawyer so beheld her. She rose up trembling and flushing very much after reading the letter, and she tore the paper into a hundred fragments, which she trod on. "I take money to part from my child! Who dares insult me proposing such a thing? Tell Mr. Osborne it is a cowardly letter, sir—a cowardly letter—I will not answer it! I wish you good-morning," and she bowed the lawyer out of the room like ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... never experienced when prisoners of the Indians? No—the savages never starve their prisoners, nor deprive them the use of water. Dispirited, and every way disheartened, our poor fellows had, generally speaking, the aspect of a cowardly, low spirited race of men, and much inferior to the British. We here saw how wretched circumstances, in a short time, debases a brave and high spirited man. When people from the shore visited our ship, and saw our miserable soldiers, we do not wonder that they despised them. We sometimes ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... attributed to them, and more in accordance with His character. By placing in the mouth of the dying martyr these words: My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? they have done him an injustice, presenting him in his last moments despairing and cowardly, traits so foreign to his life, to his teachings, to the resignation shown by him during his trial, and to the fortitude displayed by him in his last journey to Calvary; more than all, so unbecoming, not to say absurd, being in glaring contradiction ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... Doctor, "William has been told what is right and wrong; he has read the Scriptures. He has infringed one of the chief commandments in a most cruel and cowardly manner. I must not be indulgent towards a crime which, if his victim dies, the legal authority of his country will pronounce to be manslaughter. I will endeavour, however, first to ascertain how far he is sensible of his fault by showing ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... the road, the old man came into view. The two friends arose and advanced to meet him. On he came still singing. No doubt he mistook them for some of his own people. When he was very close to them they each stepped to either side of him and before he could make an outcry they pierced his cowardly old heart with two arrows. He had hardly touched the ground when they both struck him with their bows, winning first and second honors by striking an enemy after he has fallen. Chaske having won first honors, asked his friend to perform the scalping deed, which he did. ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin
... with its details as long as I could, and left the charge of that part of my inheritance to Westlock. As this was cowardly, I found an excuse for it in the quantity of work the money-matters of the deceased afforded me. At last there was no help for it; I had to undertake the responsibility. And if before I had had a pretty good guess at the elasticity of whatever it was that served my uncle instead of a conscience, ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... and promising salvation. Charles the Fat, the Lord's anointed, now appears with a multitude of a hundred tongues and encamps on Montmartre, but while the Parisians are preparing to second him in crushing their foes, they learn that the cowardly emperor has bought them off with a bribe and permission to winter in Burgundy. The Parisians, however, refused to give them passage and by an unparalleled feat of engineering they transported their ships overland for two miles and set sail again above the city. Next year, as Gozlin's ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... time we sat in silence, watching the succession of blue waves through which the Island Princess cut her swift and almost silent passage. A man must have been a cowardly bully to annoy harmless old Bill. Yet even then, young though I was, I realized that sometimes there is no more dangerous man than a coward and a bully, "He's great friends with the second mate," Bill remarked at last. "And the second mate has got no use at all for Mr. Thomas ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... the thought of facing him across a table during an interminable dinner and sitting with him alone for the long hours of a summer evening drove her to a state bordering on panic. She pushed the thick hair off her forhead with a little gasp. It was cowardly—but she could not, would not. Despising herself she crossed the ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... I therefore decided that it would be better to keep out of Mrs. Carmichael Smith's way, and learned afterwards that she had a reputation for asserting the faith that was in her, and for expressing her disapproval of everybody who believed less. For my part, I confess to a cowardly dread of elderly religious Englishwomen. They have examined me many a time, and I have never come out of the ordeal with satisfaction, either ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... Nothing could be more cowardly than the effort to compel the observance of the Sabbath by law. We of America have outgrown the childishness of the last century; we laugh at the superstitions of our fathers. We have made up our minds to be as happy as we can be, knowing that the way to be happy is to make others ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... is need for careful distinction. There is a great difference between the impractical man who has energy, courage, and persistence, and the impractical man who is lazy and cowardly. No matter what a man's natural talent may be, it takes hard work to be successful in such callings as art, music, the pulpit, the stage, the platform, and the pen. Inspiration may seem to have a great deal to do with success. But even in the writing of a poem ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... divest themselves of this votive badge, the promise of valor, till they have slain an enemy. Over blood and spoils they unveil the countenance, and proclaim that they have at length paid the debt of existence, and have proved themselves worthy of their country and parents. The cowardly and effeminate continue in their squalid disguise. The bravest among them wear also an iron ring [171] (a mark of ignominy in that nation) as a kind of chain, till they have released themselves by the slaughter of a foe. Many of the ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... outlive any one contemporary, but unnatural to survive them as a mass,—a sort of risky thing, fraught with the various vague embarrassments and undefined perils threatening one who is out of his proper place. And yet one does n't want to die, though convinced he ought to, and that's the cowardly misery of it." ...
— The Old Folks' Party - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... convinced, had left my system in a very shattered state. Often since did I torture myself for hours by mounting up on a table before the glass, and with a string tied around a loosened tooth, give it a little cowardly pull at intervals—lacking sufficient courage to rid myself of my trouble at once. I have sometimes sat in this interesting position for a whole morning; and should probably have continued it through the afternoon had not Fred, or Henry, perceiving my employment, ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... other than what they were; they did their devilish work openly, with the strong hand. Wall Street is a den of banditti who rob, not by open force, but by secret fraud. The tool of the seventeenth century freebooter was the flashing sword; that of his nineteenth century successor the cowardly and sneaking lie. The first pillaged a few ships, towns and castles; the latter plunders hundreds of thousands every year of the world, and then has the sublime audacity to come into court and plead that his business is both legitimate and ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the fearless head of the hunchback, while the frail, cowardly body shivered and trembled inch by inch ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... water hole, and before he could stop the cowardly guide found himself over the brink and struggling in the muddy water. His cries for help were piercing, but as Mr. Bell and the boys were busy, and as they knew that the Mexican was in no actual peril, they left him there ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... emphasis into his words when he dared Helms to make a hostile motion. He was a true Alabamian and could be neither scared nor driven. He soon sold out, however, and went to a more congenial camp for he said these people were cowardly enough to waylay and kill ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... find this to be necessary Leviatt must do the murder. But I think it would be better to have him employ some other person to do it for him; that would give him just the character that would fit him best. I want to make him seem too cowardly—no, not cowardly, because I don't think he is a coward: but too cunning—to take chances ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... Major Browne remarked as the door closed behind him. "I don't quite know what to make of him, but I don't think he could have committed that murder. It was a cowardly business, and although I believe he might have a hand in any desperate affair, as indeed this story he has just told us shows, I would lay my life he would not do ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... increasing virulence of the long controversy over slavery was brought home to the people by a cowardly assault committed by one Albert Rust upon Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York "Tribune," and one of the leaders of ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... ruler, but received his kingdom from his parents, the earth and sky, and he prophesies that progress will continue in the overthrow of Jove by a yet brighter and better order. Enceladus is, however, furious at what he considers a cowardly acceptance of their fate, and urges ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... go with you directly, if it were right," said she, at last. "But would it be? I think it would be rather cowardly. I feel what you say; but don't you think it would be braver to stay, and endure much depression and anxiety of mind, for the sake of the good those always can do who see evils clearly. I am speaking all this time as if neither you ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... that made at Camp Moultrie. Replying to Charley Amathla's assertion that the last treaty had been forced upon them, he said: "You say that the white people forced you into the treaty of Payne's Landing. If you were so cowardly as to be forced by anybody to do what you ought not to do, you are unfit to be chiefs, and your people ought to hurl you from your stations." He explained to them the white people's Government; that the Indians living among white people might be charged with all kinds of offenses under the law, ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... I am something of a nurse. This is simply a bad contusion—no worse, I believe. He was struck down from behind, a cowardly blow in the dark, as he started to go up on deck. I had been waiting for him. When he didn't come I suspected something was wrong. I came down, found him lying there, ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... crossing it like a saddle, is the great enemy of the eider, pillaging its nest and devouring its young at every opportunity, and had probably driven the ducks from this place. It is a pirate of pirates, a Semmes in the air, cowardly toward equals, relentless toward the weak and unweaponed; and the chief care of the mother duck is to protect her little brood from these greedy confederates. One of the coolest, yet wariest rascals in the world, it can scarcely be surprised, but lingers about, just beyond gun-shot range, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... reathon to thuthpect that we know the cowardly thkunk who committed thith act of vandalithm, and if he ith ever theen prowling about thith ethtablithment again, by day or by night, nothing will give uth more thatithfaction than to thoot hith hide full ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... of Courage should never put any thing to the Risk but his Life. These are the Tools of a Man of Honour. Cards and Dice are only fit for cowardly Cheats, ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay
... woman has married with far less excuse that Christian did— married for money or position, or in a cowardly yielding to family persuasion, some one who she knew did not love her, or whom she did not love, with the only sort of love which makes marriage sacred. What agonies such women must have endured, if they had any spark of feminine feeling left alive, they themselves ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... dooming her to such a fate dissolved all engagements, as death itself would have done." Phineus made no reply, but hurled his javelin at Perseus, but it missed its mark and fell harmless. Perseus would have thrown his in turn, but the cowardly assailant ran and took shelter behind the altar. But his act was a signal for an onset by his band upon the guests of Cepheus. They defended themselves and a general conflict ensued, the old king retreating ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... them, Their grim power growing, until the greatest part Of the cowardly band they conquered in battle 295 On the field of victory. Vanquished and sword-hewn, They lay at the will of the wolves, for the watchful and greedy Fowls to feed upon. Then fled the survivors From the shields of their foemen. Sharp ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... can't discuss such questions with you, Mrs. Alving; you are by no means in the right frame of mind for that. But for you to dare to say that it is cowardly of you—! ...
— Ghosts - A Domestic Tragedy in Three Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... "Dod rot your cowardly hide of you!" said Sneak, staring at him contemptuously; "now don't you know he knowed it ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... nun is she; One weak chirp is her only note. Braggart and prince of braggarts is he, Pouring boasts from his little throat: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink; Never was I afraid of man; Catch me, cowardly knaves, if you ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... more of curiosity than alarm. Unless brought to bay, or hungry, or wantonly irritated, these great cats were cowardly enough. It would hardly attack the two of us. Nearer and nearer it came, showing no signs of anger and none of fear, and paying no attention to the withered branch with which Diccon tried to scare it off. When it was ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... same way," agreed Walter, "but it would be cowardly to go now and leave the Seminoles to ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... it. You may argue that for seven years I've been doing a big work and there's no reason, in spite of what's happened, that I should now abandon it all. But there is. And in your strong old heart you'll know the thing I say is true—if cowardly. During seven years, or part of them, I've known a happiness that's compensated for every terror I've endured. Nancy's been my guardian angel, and the boy, that was to be born, was the beacon light of my life. My ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... as the reply was given, that 'Massa wouldn't return till the night of the ensuing day.' Here was an admission! I alone in this wild, outlandish place, attended only by my maid, a semi-German, semi-Irish girl, exceedingly timid, and a couple of negro servants, if possible more cowardly: I felt my heart sink, as after uttering some half-intelligible words, the sable visitor departed. While drinking tea in solitude, musing on the old familiar faces of my former home, never was the croaking of the frog so loud, the curlo's note so shrill, the evening air so gentle. I heard the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... the senses, or literary form and finish, or argumentative ingenuity, in comparison with "the best and master thing" for us, as he called it, the concern, how to live. Some people were afraid of them, he said, or they disliked and undervalued them. Such people were wrong; they were unthankful or cowardly. But the things might also be over-prized, and treated as final when they are not. They bear to life the relation which inns bear to home. "As if a man, journeying home, and finding a nice inn on the road, and ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... cozy chat when every one had gone to bed; but, to my confusion, he merely looked at me and turned on his heel. Allan never wasted words on these occasions; if people would not do their duty he washed his hands of them. I could not bear him to be disappointed in me, or think me cowardly and selfish, so I went sorrowfully up to Miss Ruth's room, and found Uncle Geoffrey coming in ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... deed are capable of doing any low, sneaking, cowardly villainy that could be invented in perdition. They are the very bastards of ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... for the present, aunt?" interrupted Bertha, retreating toward the door in a rather cowardly fashion. "I leave M. de Bois to—M. de Bois ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... "Base, odious, cowardly, and so contrary to the generous spirit of the nation," replied Corentin, "that it will ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... no mistaking the cowardly insinuation, but Berrington said nothing. Richford could not possibly have seen the signal, and yet he implied an assignation if his words meant anything at all. It was a cruel disappointment, but the girl's face said nothing of her emotions. She passed quietly along till she came to the little ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... rage for his words were true about his aim, though I did not feel cowardly, for I was working hard to do my duty and keep ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... night, murky and heavy with dense rain-laden clouds, and so black as to render it impossible to see one's hand before one. Search after a while is found to be impossible and the cowardly would-be assassin so far is safe from arrest. Dispirited and indignant, they return to the room they left, to ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... a cowardly brute, fat, wheezy, out of training, sheltering behind this dear one branch ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... just as Dr Leichhardt was about to start on a reconnoissance, the Blackfellows came down to where the horses were grazing, and speared one of them in the shoulder. This was the first act of hostility. The Australian aborigines are very cowardly, and the aggressors hastily retreated into the bush on the appearance of two or three white men. After this, in February, some friendly and respectable barbarians were met with, and there was an interchange of courtesy and presents. Generally the natives were ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... inspection. Alexius, in order to escape such an ordeal, resorted to the abject expedient of disabling his right hand by a pistol-shot. In no other way could the tsarevich have offended his father so deeply. He had behaved like a cowardly recruit who mutilates himself to escape military service. After this, Peter seemed for a time to take no further interest in Alexius. He left him entirely to himself. He employed him no more. He no longer pressed him ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... fevered imagination into the likeness of wilful crime. But against such doubts arrayed itself the ineffaceable memory of that wild joy which had filled his soul, when he had felt his enemy in his power! Had the man survived, Balder might still have doubted; being dead, doubts were but cowardly sophistry. ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... capacity never reaching higher than to draw or carry burdens. Yet I am of opinion, this defect arises chiefly from a perverse, restive disposition; for they are cunning, malicious, treacherous, and revengeful. They are strong and hardy, but of a cowardly spirit, and, by consequence, insolent, abject, and cruel. It is observed, that the red haired of both sexes are more libidinous and mischievous than the rest, whom yet they much exceed in ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... exclaimed; "God has pointed out to me the means, and if I fail to do my duty, their blood will be upon my head. My self-respect and peace of mind will be forever lost, and I shall consider myself the most cowardly of wretches." It took me some time, however, to summon up resolution enough. Then I went downstairs ...
— The Dean's Watch - 1897 • Erckmann-Chatrian
... kindred and relation that then was between them and him (Neh 6:17-19). And as it was then, so we do expect it will be now; some will be even at the beginning of this work, in Babylon, at that time also some will be cowardly and fearful, yea, and even men hired to hinder the work (Neh 6:10-12). Wherefore I say, those of the church that at that day builded the city, they were men of a particular and peculiar spirit, which also ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... given his Master pain and trouble through his impulsive ways. But the culmination of it all came on the night of the betrayal, when, in the hall of the high priest's palace, Peter denied being a disciple of Jesus, denied even knowing him. While for the third time the base and cowardly words were on his lips, Jesus turned and looked upon his faithless disciple with a look of grieved love, and then Peter remembered the forewarning the Master had given him. His heart was broken with penitence, ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... Fitzner, and you, you stout Boekel, that the giving away our guns would be a mere trifle to any of us; the only thing is, that any one of you to whom this vile thought could occur would be a low, mean, cowardly scoundrel, who would make me sick whenever I saw him." To which proposition Fitzner and Boekel eagerly acceded, and Boekel declared that, for his part, he could stand such a fellow just as little as the forester himself; so that danger was averted. But the unemployed ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... anticipated a storm so terrible as that, but had intended to swamp his boat in the breakers and swim ashore, leaving Mellen, who could not swim, as he supposed, to his fate. But now everything else was forgotten in a cowardly thirst for life. No man could exist for a moment in that awful riot of waters. He watched Mellen as he kept the boat steadily in the current, with the keen anxiety of a man to whom death is the ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... jealousy of freedom had, even from the earliest ages of Rome, given way to the hopes of conquest, and a just sense of military discipline. The dictator, or consul, had a right to command the service of the Roman youth; and to punish an obstinate or cowardly disobedience by the most severe and ignominious penalties, by striking the offender out of the list of citizens, by confiscating his property, and by selling his person into slavery. [7] The most sacred rights of freedom, confirmed by ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... op. cit., pp. 373 et seq. This last opinion by no means stands alone. Thus it is asserted by the Committee of Fourteen in their Report on The Social Evil in New York City (1910, p. xxxiv) that "some laws exist to-day because an unintelligent, cowardly public puts unenforceable statutes on the book, being content ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... there were plenty of antelopes to be found, if one went to look for them, and the cowardly slinking coyote was often to be seen as one rode across the prairie; and often in walking I found tortoises with bright red eyes. These were small, about six inches long. In the creeks were plenty of mud turtles, which are fond of scrambling ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... prepared to start us again towards the Lumpiya. Then we three semi-corpses collected what little strength remained in us, and suddenly made an attack on them with stones; whereupon, incredible as it may seem, our cowardly guard turned tail and bolted! We went on in the direction of Taklakot, followed at a distance by these ruffians, who were entreating us to make no further resistance and to go with them where they wanted us to go. If we did not, ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... [Then Folly titter'd.] Mankind, who are accustomed to have their attention awaken'd to acts of daring Vice, or pre-eminent Virtue, may think the mean, base, cowardly, hypocritical Character not sufficiently interesting to claim their particular notice;—and that the exposing to the general knowledge of the World, those miserable, sneaking qualities which have not courage ...
— The First of April - Or, The Triumphs of Folly: A Poem Dedicated to a Celebrated - Duchess. By the author of The Diaboliad. • William Combe
... the same sort of a Quaker as General Green," said Morton. "They were peaceable men, as long as peace and quiet were not inconsistent with self-defence. To be peaceable when a foe is wasting your fields and slaughtering your brethren, is cowardly and against nature." ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... not for a moment maintain that he enjoyed everybody in his daily life. But he enjoyed everybody in his books: and everybody has enjoyed everybody in those books even till to-day. His books are full of baffled villains stalking out or cowardly bullies kicked downstairs. But the villains and the cowards are such delightful people that the reader always hopes the villain will put his head through a side window and make a last remark; or that the bully will ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... government of the United States has, through a mistaken policy been constantly engaged in sending to the western borders all the eastern Indian tribes that were disposed to sell their land, and also the various tribes who, having rebelled against their cowardly despotism, had been overpowered and conquered during the struggle. This gross want of ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... should lay down his arms, his determination is weakened. It is therefore a vital necessity, quite apart from the humanitarian aspect, that the wounds of the civilians of belligerent countries should be cared for. If the civilians are allowed to become disheartened and cowardly, the heroic ideal of their fighting-men is jeopardised. This fact has been recognised by the Red Cross Societies of all countries in the present war; a large part of their energies has been devoted to social and relief work of a civil nature. Even in their ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson |
