"Cowardly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that the winds and storms make war to this day upon men, wrecking their canoes, tearing down their houses and fences and ruining all their handiwork. Not only does man hold out against these attacks, but, in revenge for the cowardly desertion of Tu by his weaker brethren, men, his people, prey upon the fish and upon the plants that give food whether wild ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... my life. Listen, Fan. That cowardly, sickly little boy you fought for in the street, that day in Winnebago, showed every sign of growing up a cowardly, sickly man. You're the real reason for his not doing so. Now, wait a minute. I was an impressionable little ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... that 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 ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... that the present generation of continental Europe, which has been for fifteen months a daily witness of Great Britain's barbarous and infamous conduct of the war—the unexampled massacres, the shameless political falsity and hypocrisy, the cowardly ill-treatment of prisoners and wounded!—cannot possibly make any move towards reconciliation.—PROF. E. ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... believe it," he said, turning very pale, "Bragelonne should be informed of it to-morrow; indeed he should, if I thought that poor La Valliere had forgotten the vows she had exchanged with Raoul. But no, it would be cowardly to betray any woman's secret; it would be criminal to disturb a ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... country was still worse than its material circumstances. Scarcely had the year opened, when a series of the most atrocious murders that ever disgraced a country were perpetrated. A gentleman, steward to a person of large landed property in the county Tipperary, was shot near his own dwelling by cowardly assassins, who fired upon him from behind a hedge. Two brothers, in the same county, disputed about land; the younger clove the skull of the elder with the spade which he held in working. A poor emaciated man, in the same blood-stained county, while in a state of starvation ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... He must not be killed by us!" His voice and manner produced an effect on the mob. They paused, listened, fell back, and sullenly obeyed him, although there were still some murmurs of disappointed rage. At length one man, probably thinking he spoke for the crowd, cried out: "This is cowardly on your part, Lincoln!" Lincoln only gazed with contempt on the men who would have murdered one unarmed Indian but who quailed before his single hand. "If any man thinks I am a coward," said he, "let him test it." "Lincoln," was the ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... association, through which to urge our claims. The column was put into the hands of Mrs. Campbell, the wife of E. L. Campbell, of the law firm of Patterson & Campbell of Denver, for editorship. This lady, from whose editorials quotations will be given, was too timid (she herself begs us to say cowardly) to use her name in print, and so translated it into its German equivalent of Schlachtfeld, thus nullifying whatever of weight her own name would have carried in the way of personal and social endorsement of an unpopular cause. Her sister, Mrs. T. M. Patterson, an early and earnest member ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... show a defenceless woman such an outrage, in your own house? I have seen the time when Bernard Wilkins would have scorned so cowardly an act ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... the arts have all of them lost their former virtues. The neurotic temper of the times is known to all. The nation, as was shown in 1745, when a handful of Highlanders penetrated without opposition to the heart of the kingdom, has grown slack and cowardly. Gambling penetrates every nook and cranny of the upper class; the officers of the army devote themselves to fashion; the navy's main desire is for prize money. Even the domestic affections are at a low ebb; and the grand tour brings back a new species of Italianate ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... as we stood there under the star-light drawn up over the whole field, like a spectral host. Was there a rebel ambuscade over yonder in the woods, watching for us to take up our unsuspecting march toward Carlisle in order to swoop down upon us unawares? A cowardly suggestion, but still one which occurred very naturally to raw troops thrust in this way into what, for aught they knew to the contrary, was the very front of danger. This was the first feeling; but soon we grew ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... forces are both useless and perilous, and he who founds the security of his dominion on the former will never be established firmly: seeing that they are disunited, ambitious, and undisciplined, without loyalty, truculent to their friends, cowardly among foes; they have no fear of God, no faith with men; you are only safe with them before they are attacked; in peace they plunder you; in war you are the prey of your enemies. The cause of this is that they have no other love nor other reason to keep the field, beyond ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... now I am so weary of life that the bullet or steel that should rid me of it would be more welcome than any other earthly thing. When it is too late, I have begun to realise the full depth of my villainy, and to see what a contemptibly cowardly creature I have been in permitting myself to seek such an ignoble method of revenge as piracy. But, as I said, it is now too ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... axed wether men shuld forgeue .vij. tymes/ thynkinge [that] .viij. tymes had bene to moch. And at [the] last soper Peter wold have died with christe/ but yet within fewe howres after/ he denied hym/ both cowardly & shamefully. And after [the] same maner/ though he had so longe herd that noman might auenge him selfe/ but rather turne [the] other cheke to/ then to smyte agayne/ yet when Christ was in takinge/ peter axed whether ...
— The prophete Ionas with an introduccion • William Tyndale
... it was, should he not be justified in going to any extremity for revenge? Revenge—yes, that was all he had to live for now; and the very thought seemed to put new vigour into his system, infuse fresh blood in his veins. So is it with all baser spirits; and perhaps in the indulgence of this cowardly craving they obtain a more speedy relief than nobler natures from the first agony of suffering; but their cure is not and never can be permanent; and to them must remain unknown that strange wild strain of some unearthly music which ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... very weak. He had meant to have acted in a high-minded, honest, manly manner; but circumstances had been so untoward with him, that on looking at his own conduct, it seemed to him to have been mean, and almost false and cowardly. As the order for the exclusion of this hated man from his house had been given, he should at any rate have stuck to the order. At the moment of his vacillation he had simply intended to make things easy for his wife; but she had taken advantage of his vacillation, ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... well be warm," thought I, "while I prove to my complete satisfaction that it is more cowardly to live than to die. There is no ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... But I will tell you what may seem to you a strange and wonderful thing! There is no mean animal, no loathsome object, no horrible deformity of nature so utterly repulsive to a true man as a faithless wife! The cowardly murderer who lies in wait for his victim behind some dark door, and stabs him in the back as he passes by unarmed—he, I say, is more to be pardoned than the woman who takes a husband's name, honor, position, and reputation ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... Mustardseed, I know your patience well: That same cowardly giant-like ox-beef hath devoured many a gentleman of your house: I promise you your kindred hath made my eyes water ere now. I desire you of more acquaintance, good ...
— A Midsummer Night's Dream • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... cried the captain. "When I begged you to let me challenge that scoundrel, Carrington, and fight him—in spite of our cowardly modern fashion, which has exploded duelling—you implored me not to hazard my life. I was your only friend, you told me, and if my life were sacrificed you would be helpless and friendless. I gave way in order to satisfy you, though I should have liked to send a ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... assume that inland the river is fed by pure streams, that there are fruits and herbs and game. Shall we lie out here and die of thirst and starvation with a land of plenty possibly only a few hundred yards away? We have the means for navigating a subterranean river. Are we too cowardly to utilize ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... prisoner had set her heart would have turned out more unfortunate for the prisoner than the present proceedings. Counsel had not words strong enough to stigmatise the character of a man who, having induced a girl to imperil her liberty for his own vile ends, was cowardly enough to abandon her in the hour of her deepest distress. Counsel drew attention to the trusting nature of the prisoner, who had not only pledged her employer's plate at his base instigation, but had likewise been foolish enough to confide the pawn-ticket ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... village, greeted us as we passed through the gate with a chorus of barks, sending the word down the line. To his credit be it said, Jack paid little attention to them, tittupping along, head up, tail up, only when they came too close turning on them with a flash of white teeth that sent the cowardly brutes flying and brought cries of delight from the village folk who crowded nearer to inspect the strange dog, so small, ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... A liar! a mean, cowardly schemer, but her husband for all that! She owed him love, honor and obedience; if he commanded, she must obey; if he called she must fain go ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... madmen, whom we threatened with the Emperor's anger; and we succeeded in driving them out of the house, and soon after took our departure, overwhelmed with thanks. In the evening I spoke to the Emperor of what I had done; and he approved highly, saying, "It cannot be helped. There are always some cowardly fellows in the army; and they are the ones who do the mischief. A brave and good soldier would ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... one who calls any State courageous or cowardly, will be thinking of the part which fights and goes out to war on the ...
— The Republic • Plato
... member of the Council of Five Hundred, he headed the Jacobin faction against the moderate party, of which Pichegru was a chief; and he had the cowardly vengeance of base rivalry to pride himself upon having procured the transportation of that patriotic general to Cayenne. In 1799, he again assumed the command of the army of Alsace and of Switzerland; but he crossed ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... damned, crushed, broken and in agonizing pain, and with the aasvogels tearing at my face. Pinned to the earth as by some great weight, my hands were fortunately still free; and my revolver still in its holster; and a few shots sent the lewd, cowardly birds flapping away. The blood was streaming from my face, and again and again I fainted with sheer agony; moreover the fierce midday sun beat down intolerably full in my eyes, for I lay on my back and could move nothing but my arms. But gradually the sun passed, a ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... a poor, cowardly body, but so far as his science went he was NO impostor," said MacAndrew, "and I'm prepared to give that proposition a very practical demonstration, Mr. Wilkinson, so soon as we've got the place a little more to ourselves. For I've no faith in all this publicity ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... power of the terrible goddess Davee, are not afraid to incur her displeasure by informing of their fellows, they reply, that Davee has done her worst in abandoning them. She can inflict no severer punishment, and therefore gives herself no further concern about her degenerate children. This cowardly doctrine is, however, of advantage to the Government that seeks to put an end to the sect, and has thrown a light upon their practices, which could never have been ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... next, or any other tribe; and this often leads to furious battles or cold-blooded murders; for they are by no means particular whether it be man, woman, or child who is the victim; and it is generally the poor women who suffer on these occasions; the men being too cowardly, unless under the influence of very strong passion, to attack those of equal strength with themselves. The women do all the work, such as building huts, carrying water, digging up roots, and procuring ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... The present expedition was during Lent, and as well as I can now remember, in the year 1524, our little army consisting of 27 cavalry, 23 musqueteers, 72 foot soldiers armed with sword and target, and one field-piece under the direction of a cowardly fellow of a gunner, who pretended to have served in Italy. Besides these, we had 50 Mexican warriors, and the cacique of Cachula with some of his principal people, who were all terribly afraid. On approaching Chiapa, an advanced guard of four of our most active ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... 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 laurel ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... after the ship was attacked by pirates, and a sea-fight commenced; in the course of which Hamlet, desirous to show his valour, with sword in hand singly boarded the enemy's vessel; while his own ship, in a cowardly manner, bore away, and leaving him to his fate, the two courtiers made the best of their way to England, charged with those letters the sense of which Hamlet had altered to their own ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... freckled jackanapes is Harlequin; not your spangled Harlequin into which modern degeneracy has debased that first-born of Momus, but the genuine original zany of the Commedia, ragged and patched, an impudent, cowardly, blackguardly clown." ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... professor must, if he saw them, have enjoyed mightily the various letters and articles which have endeavored in solemn earnest to show that Milton was not justly entitled to the rank of a scientific expositor, and that it was a cowardly thing in the lecturer to attack Moses over Milton's shoulders. Whenever Professor Huxley enters on the defence of his science, as distinguished from the exposition of it, there are traces in his language ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... was a skilful swordsman. His fingers had a firm grasp of the hilt and could make the whistling blade flash, hover, and descend where he pleased, while his adversary encountered him with a wavering cowardly spit. How had it come about? The seconds will say, and the evening papers repeat, and to-morrow all Paris will take up the cue, that Paul Astier slipped as he made his thrust and ran on his opponent's ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... demon. I was wrong to attempt to deceive you; but I feared a stubbornness that exists in your character. I feared early instilled prejudice: I wanted to have you safe before hazarding confidences. This was cowardly: I should have appealed to your nobleness and magnanimity at first, as I do now—opened to you plainly my life of agony—described to you my hunger and thirst after a higher and worthier existence—shown to you, not my ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... of courage would have fought. His own ship was fairly well manned, and was of a commanding size, quite able to overpower the light vessels of the pirates; and such a crew as there was was eager to fight. But Cleomenes was as cowardly as he was incompetent. He ordered the mast of his ship to be hoisted, the sails to be set, and the cable cut, and made off with all speed. The rest of his fleet could do nothing but follow his example. The pirates gave chase, ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... is based upon the idea that one becomes like that which he eats. If one eats the heart of a mountain-lion or bear he becomes daring and courageous. But to eat the heart of the timid deer is to make oneself timorous and cowardly. ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... dripping off 'em," added Ned, with a twinkle in his eye. "I mean, Mr. Strong, that we're trying to be better men in our rough way and the union is what's making us better and some of us would die for it. But we'd sooner see it die than see it do what's cowardly." ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... resort to the imaginary refuge of suicide, only to find on awakening into astral life that he had changed his condition for the worse instead of for the better, as the suicide always does, since his cowardly action cuts him off from the happiness and peace ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... against the monks' neglect of books. "Now slothful Thersites," he cries, "handles the arms of Achilles and the choice trappings of war-horses are spread upon lazy asses, winking owls lord it in the eagle's nest, and the cowardly kite sits upon the perch ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... so shameful, seen from a distance of sixty leagues, from St. Germain or the Louvre, appeared miraculous, awful, terrifying. The Court admired and trembled. Richelieu to please them did a cowardly thing. He ordered money to be paid to the ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... faithful Martia. Punctually every evening the ever-comforting sense of the north filled him as he jumped into bed; and he whispered his prayers audibly to this helpful spirit, or whatever it might be, that had given him a sign and saved him from a cowardly death, and filled his life and thoughts as even no ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... "Ye poor, miserable, cowardly French,—sinner ye," said the Elder, struggling for an epithet not unbecoming his cloth. "Did you think you was goin' to get me out o' yer way's easy's that, 's I dare say ye have better folks ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... these words, pale with the apprehensions of a cowardly spirit, rose and strode toward the palace, from which, in a few moments, he was seen on his way ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... probable result for himself, told the whole story of the crime, from the time Hopkins had first broached it to him until they were arrested in San Francisco. And during the entire narration of the cold-blooded, brutal, and cowardly deed, old Dan Hopkins sat with his eyes on the witness, as steady and unflinching in color and nerve and muscle as if he had been listening to a lecture or ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... Not by the thief who, encountering you as a man, stakes life against life, but by that most cowardly villain, who, in the moment when reason sleeps, and passion is roused, draws his snares around you, and ...
— Speed the Plough - A Comedy, In Five Acts; As Performed At The Theatre Royal, Covent Garden • Thomas Morton
... strong degree; and I do 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 ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... but it does not follow that the indulgence increases either his courage or his fierceness. The fact is it ruins his moral nature. He does not get many Englishmen to eat; and it would seem as if the flesh of women and children and poor cowardly natives, he devours, took its revenge upon him by undermining and destroying his natural courage. The fact is, he is well-known for a sneak. I sometimes can't help thinking the ruffian knows he is a rebel against the ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... man!" said the people. "If the lady says falsely, can't you face her and tell her so? Never hold it down so cowardly!" ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... a pallid and cowardly countenance that the light revealed, and I was not surprised to recognise the man I had dubbed 'Smug' upon the day of my arrival at the World's Fair. He was ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... over the other Moro chieftains, since their wars are of little importance except when waged by the sea-routes. These Lutaos of the coast hold in a sort of vassalage the Subanos, or river-dwellers, who are slothful, ignorant savages, treacherous and cowardly. Combes next praises "the noble and brave nation of the Dapitans," a small tribe who migrated from Bohol to Mindanao; he relates their history as a people, and why they changed their abode, and how they have always been the loyal friends and followers ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... had reentered mercantile life, from which I make this extract: "As to your account of the flogging scene, I think you have given a fair history of it, and, if anything, been too lenient towards Captain Thompson for his brutal, cowardly treatment of those men. As I was in the hold at the time the affray commenced, I will give you a short history of it as near as I can recollect. We were breaking out goods in the fore hold, and, in order to get at them, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... this to comfort me, and you are thinking differently. What does this mean? What desperate game is this man playing? I swear that if harm has come to that poor boy, though I die for it, I'll shoot this rajah like a dog—like the cowardly ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... Ye dhirty, cowardly bastes!" and he rushed furiously at the Dogs, intent to do them ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... blow a warning. The uniform retreated in cowardly haste, the tasselled hat lowered, ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... so cowardly. In their eyes a lord may dance like a bear—as some lords not very far from me are—if he likes, and they'll take it for grace. And you shall begin with Molly Gibson, your friend the doctor's daughter. She's a good, simple, intelligent little girl, ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... on my hand with a grasp that hurt me. He set his mother right, it is only just to say, without one cowardly moment of hesitation. ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... her now, or after dinner?" I asked, while I drew out my latch-key; and then when she met me at the head of the staircase, with her shining eyes, I grew cowardly again, and said, "Not now—not now. To-night I ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... Manche, "ce qui sera une autre paire de manches." (In case you don't understand this joke, Remenyi must explain it to you.) So be of good courage and among good things! However things may be, never make capitulation with what is idle, cowardly, or false—however high your position may become-and preserve, under ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... is a new religion that is to sweep over the world and regenerate them. And to this end Lyon boldly advocated emancipation for the sake of the white man. If to-day, when patriotism is at a premium, men tremble before the acknowledged necessity of this measure, and are either too cowardly or too indolent to meet the demands of the times, it required no little boldness in 1860 to advance a theory so decided, even in a Kansas newspaper. But Lyon knew the inefficiency of half-way measures, and the moral degradation they inevitably ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... any means advise you to be reckless about getting cut and scratched, yet it is better and safer to run some risk of cuts and scratches in healthy play when young, and learn how to keep them clean, than to grow up pale and flabby-muscled and cowardly. ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... seen that fellow before. That was Pete Deveaux. He used to be an Air Mail pilot on the same run as my brother John, but was discharged for drunkenness. Since that he has blamed John, and has written him several threatening letters, but is too cowardly to ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... not the least important member of the party, but proved a constant source of amusement to all. In the novel domains they now traversed the small dog's excitable nature led him to investigate everything that seemed suspicious, but he was so cowardly, in spite of this, that once when Patsy let him down to chase a gopher or prairie dog—they were not sure which—the animal turned at bay and sent Mumbles retreating with his stubby tail between his legs. His comradeship for ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... his life; and there can be little or no doubt that he owed his success to the care he bestowed on his army. The Great Wall of Tsin Hwangti had been one barrier in the path of these enemies, but, held by a weak and cowardly garrison, it had proved inadequate for its purpose. Taitsong supplied another and a better defense in a consistent and energetic policy, and in the provision of a formidable and ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... constitutes a gentleman, and there are no distinctions in what is gentlemanly, {316} as there are in what is genteel. The characteristics of a gentleman are high feeling—a determination never to take a cowardly advantage of another—a liberal education—absence of narrow views—generosity and courage, propriety of behaviour. Now a person may be genteel according to one or another of the three standards described ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... angels who visited him. They told him that God is ever willing to pardon the sinner who sincerely repents and freely confesses his sin. It is with God always as it is with men at the season of the Gloria. But the wretched Judas could not think of repentance and confession; his cowardly soul was not torn by sorrow for past sin, it was paralysed by fear of future punishment; or we may have been intended to understand that the road to perdition lies through madness. He spoke three sentences, and the last word of each ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... devised or more consistently developed. His serpentine beauty, his winning graciousness, his aesthetic refinement, his masculine energy of intellect, his insinuating affectionateness, with his selfish love of pleasure and his cowardly recoil from pain, his subdulous serenity and treacherous calm, as of a faithless summer sea, make up a being that at once fascinates and repels, that invites love, but turns our love into loathing almost before we have given it." [Footnote: Westminster Review, July, 1881.] ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... perpetually to be an unanimated one; because there is not Fortitude enough to remove those bad Men. I remember the Factions in Carthage which prevented her making herself the Mistress of the World. We may avoid Factions and yet rid our Army of idle cowardly or drunken officers. HOW was Victory snatchd out of our Hands at German Town! Was not this owing to the same Cause? And Why was only one General officer dischargd? Was it because there were just Grounds to suspect only one? Is there not Reason to fear that our Commander ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... he read, "I too will be bold, I will fight for the truth and its glory!" He went to the playground, and soon had told A very cowardly story! ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... accidental abstinence. This meeting took place very soon, and the curious hunchback saw the boatman waiting below the square, at the Canal St. Antoine, for the young priest, who was handsome, blonde, slender, and well-shaped, like the gallant and cowardly hero of love, so celebrated by Monsieur Ariosto. Then the mechanician went to find the old dyer, who always loved his wife and always believed himself the only man who had a ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... recalled my father's stories of the stern passions of anti-slavery days. In this hall Wendell Phillips in the pride and power of his early manhood, had risen to reply to the cowardly apologies of entrenched conservatism, and here now another voice was about to be raised in behalf of those whom the law oppressed. My brother had also read Progress and Poverty and both of us felt that we were taking ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... best of their Weapons. And as they observed no Order, they perplexed the Enemy so sorely, with lashing 'em in the Eyes; and the Women and Children seeing their Husbands so treated, being of fearful and cowardly Dispositions, and hearing the English cry out, Yield and Live! Yield, and be Pardon'd! they all ran in amongst their Husbands and Fathers, and hung about them, crying out, Yield! Yield, and leave Caesar to their Revenge; that by Degrees the Slaves ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... fight without weapons, to the death, the survivor to give the other burial where he fell. Fyles was neither fool nor coward. It would have been foolish to run the risk of leaving Fort and people masterless for an Indian's whim; it would have been cowardly to do nothing. So he whipped out a revolver, and bade his rival march before him to the Fort; which Konto very calmly did, begging the favour of a bit of tobacco ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... brutal inhumanity of these cowardly ruffians," he added, speaking of the guards; "they will not allow me to approach her! I had planned an open attack upon them some leagues from Paris; having secured, as I thought, the aid of four men, who for a considerable sum hired me their services. The traitors, however, left me to execute ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... spoke to Cecil and one or two other commissioners, asking, as a favour, that the King would permit Cobham to die first. Before he was secured by the officers, he had found time for this last protest: 'Cobham is a false and cowardly accuser. He can face neither me nor death without acknowledging his falsehood.' He was then led ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... is exactly the reverse of what it is in the case of those who view the Indian at a distance and with no precise knowledge of any of his characteristics. In the estimation of such persons the Indian's vices greatly outweigh his virtues; his language is a gibberish, his methods of war cowardly, his ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... and the respectable and severe virtues, such as disinterestedness and self-control which subject our movements to the requirements of the dignity of our nature, been better understood or interpreted. Adam Smith is the philosopher of sympathy.(46) His theory triumphs over the cowardly and shameful egotism which concentrates the moral life of the individual in himself, and separates it from the life of the human race of the outre stoicism which refuses the aid of sentiment to reason.(47) According to him, the law of private ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... have on hands, and were willing to be let off. And so the Governor patched up a peace, and sent his militia home again, with their curses diverted from the Lawrence Abolitionists to Gov. Shannon. Cowardly, weak-minded and infirm in purpose as this unhappy man was, he was not wholly a fool; and we may justly believe that he had in his heart a foreboding of that awful day of reckoning that would surely ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... important duty, he continued, of posterity towards itself lies in passing righteous judgement on the forbears who stand up before it. They should be allowed the benefit of a doubt, and peccadilloes should be ignored; but when no doubt exists that a man was engrainedly mean and cowardly, his reputation must remain in the Purgatory of Time for a term varying from, say, a hundred to two thousand years. After a hundred years it may generally come down, though it will still be under a cloud. After two thousand years it may be mentioned in any society without holding up of hands in ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... 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 ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... you can not do it. You are a brave man, Evan; I know, because I have seen you tried. You mustn't turn cowardly now." ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... own: the first are almost always unpunished, while the second are repressed by the courts. An institution which permits evil, creates it in a great measure: in saying that men are things, it necessarily engenders more crimes, more acts of violence, more cowardly deeds, than the imagination of romancers will ever invent. When a class has neither the right to complain, nor to defend itself, nor to testify in law; when it cannot make its voice heard in any manner, we may be excused for not taking in earnest the idyls chanted ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... regulars and provincials, were indignant with our cowardly and incompetent general, Abercrombie, or Mrs. Nabby Crombie, as the soldiers nicknamed him. We knew that the battle had been badly conducted. We wished to have the cannon brought to the front to batter down the breastworks, and were willing and eager to fight again. But Abercrombie began to ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... unusual sort of talk. Jack had never heard Edith break out in this direction before, and he wondered if many women were beginning to think of men in this way, as cowardly about their public duties. Not many in his set, he was sure. If Edith had urged him to go into Neighborhood Guild work, he could have understood that. Women and ethical cranks were interested in that. And women were getting queerer every day, beginning, as Mavick ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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 with registering ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... is! I didn't think you'd be the one to draw back," said Lindsay reproachfully. "We've both pledged ourselves to do everything in our power to help Monica. It would be mean and cowardly to give in just because we felt afraid. If you don't care to come with me, I shall have to go alone. I'm only waiting for a ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... all damn'd cowardly fear! Now did I think I had drunk Nature up to Resolution: I have heard of those that could have dar'd in their Drink; But I find, drunk or sober, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... behind Lord Ranelagh's cowardly attack on the debutante? There was a simple explanation, and not one that redounded to his credit in any way. It was that, during her "Bohemian" period, he had endeavoured to fill the empty niche left in her affections by the departure of that light-o'-love, ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... their children. Some of them were first stirred to action by Wedekind's powerful drama "The Awakening of Spring," which, with Teutonic grimness, thrusts over the footlights the lesson that death and degradation may be the fate of a group of gifted school-children, because of the cowardly reticence of their parents. ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... women is that there is an increasing tendency among them, especially among those who live in cities full of pleasures and excitements, to compromise with evil, to go as near the danger line as possible, so long as they do not cross it. And this cowardly, dallying virtue is almost no virtue at all. There was a time when women prayed sincerely: "Lead us not into temptation"; now it seems as if they pray to be led into temptation, with just this reservation: that they may come ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... was a fantastic, vacillating, abstracted, cowardly tyrant, issuing edicts in regard to the proper tarring of barrels, and rendering absurd decrees; declaring himself to be of the opinion of those who were right; falling asleep on the bench, and on awakening announcing that he gave judgment in favor of ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... not know why you should speak thus, Teule, for surely these white men are not cowardly murderers, still I take your words as an omen, and though the feast must be held, for see already the nobles gather, I will ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... had leisure to prepare themselves, thinking a long time in advance of that supreme moment. But they affronted death, came to it almost negligently, found strength even to say banal or taunting things to those around them. He recalled above all a boy of eighteen years old who had cowardly murdered an old woman and two children in a back-country farm, and had walked to his death without a tremor, talking reassuringly to the priest and the police official, who walked almost sick with horror on either side of ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... from Oddo's declaring that he was sometimes frightened, he was a brave boy. A cowardly boy would not have said it; a cowardly boy would not have offered to go at all; a cowardly boy would, if he had been sent, have wished that the house-door might be left open, that he might see the cheerful yellow light from within; whereas Oddo begged his mistress to shut the door, ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... buggy through your negligence and infernal laziness! The ponies ran away, and were stopped by a stranger who wasn't afraid of risking his bones, while you were limping around somewhere like a slouching, cowardly coyote." ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... certain, there was no safety except in flight, ignominious, cowardly flight... After all, how could Buddy have known? He was a good boy, and he had shown his love, his loyalty, in a thousand ways. Gray hated him at this moment, but, more bitterly even, he hated himself. It was fate.... He fell to cursing aloud, ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... hesitated, why his mind had been torn by doubt. At the back of his mind he had always known he was going. Had he not written saying he was going, and wasn't that enough? And he thought for a moment of what her opinion of him would be if he stayed in Garranard. In a cowardly moment he hoped that something would happen to save him from the ultimate decision, and now doubt ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... the hind leg before you could say 'Jack Robinson.' Leaving the dead cat for 'Toby' and 'Nettle' to worry, the whole pack now fiercely attack the luckless Pariah dog. A dozen of his village mates dance madly outside the ring, but are too wise or too cowardly to come to closer quarters. The kangaroo hound has now fairly torn the rope from the keeper's hand, and with one mighty bound is in the middle of the fight, scattering the village dogs right and left. The whole village is now in commotion, the ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... coincide with Colonel Newcome in his opinion that you have been guilty of falsehood and treachery, and that the charge of cowardice which you dare to make against a gentleman of his tried honour and courage, is another wilful and cowardly ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "Where much is attempted, something is done." Firmness, both in sufferance and exertion, is a character I would wish to be thought to possess: and have always despised the whining yelp of complaint, and the cowardly, feeble resolve. ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... but (pointing), you look at it, how gently it lies. Unless you'd like yourself to appear troublesome and cowardly— ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... that can be admitted to sight, the expressions of fear and ferocity are the most foul and detestable, and so there is in them I know not what sympathetic attractiveness for minds cowardly and base, as the vulgar of most nations, and forasmuch as they are easily rendered by men who can render nothing else, they are often trusted in by the herd of painters incapable and profane, as in that monstrous abortion of the first room of the Louvre, called the Deluge, whose ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... alone, they have had enough. 'Tis cowardly to fight a dozen to one. Listen, the row is on in the Quatre Voies again. We shall ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... number of other fights, and that finally a delegation of prominent citizens was obliged to wait upon Cortright and ask him if he wouldn't take that thing away somewhere and bury it. Jim pointed out to them that it was his hat, and that he would regard it as a cowardly concession if he submitted to their dictation in the matter of his headgear. He added that he purposed to continue to wear his top-hat on every occasion when he happened to feel that the wearing of a top-hat was a joy and a solace ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... laying England waste. In the last-mentioned reign, they seized EDMUND, King of East England, and bound him to a tree. Then, they proposed to him that he should change his religion; but he, being a good Christian, steadily refused. Upon that, they beat him, made cowardly jests upon him, all defenceless as he was, shot arrows at him, and, finally, struck off his head. It is impossible to say whose head they might have struck off next, but for the death of KING ETHELRED from a wound he had received in fighting ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... and small, hesitating as she did. Could she walk home? She looked at the black houses, and listened to the terrifying sinister roar that continued faintly to fill the air. Could she go by tram? If she did—whatever she did—the man might wait for her all night, and Keith would know how cowardly she had been. It might even come to the ears of Lord Templecombe, and disgrace Keith before him. To go or to stay was equally to bring acute distress upon herself, the breathless shame of being thought disgraced for ever. Already it seemed to her that the shadows were ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... brain was in a tumult. He tried to think, to find some solution to the problem. Jean was gone! Where had she gone? What had happened to her? His thoughts suddenly darted to Lupin, the cowardly villain. Then he recalled what he had heard a few nights before on the river as that mysterious canoe sped by in the darkness. "Seth's looking after the plans," were the final words which had reached his ears. Had those plans anything ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... the young chief had proved himself to be an excellent warrior, a fearless hunter, and an upright, courageous man among men. His tribe loved him, his enemies respected him, and the base and mean and cowardly feared him. ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... knowledge in his art, armed with courage in the full consciousness of his power, when in the year 1830 the great voice of the people arose in the West. Hundreds of youths had waited for the moment; but Chopin was the first on the summit of the wall, behind which lay a cowardly renaissance, a dwarfish Philistinism, asleep. Blows were dealt right and left, and the Philistines awoke angrily, crying out, 'Look at the impudent one!' while others behind the besieger cried, 'The one ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... was an indignity that demanded atonement—that justified punishment equally severe with that which should have followed a successful prosecution of his purpose. Women are by nature weak. They are not to be tempted. He who, knowing their weakness, attempts their overthrow by that medium, is equally cowardly and criminal. I could not doubt that he had made this attempt; but now it seemed necessary that I should suspend my indignation, in obedience with what appeared to be a paramount duty. A selfish reasoning now ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... "The cowardly cusses!" said Jerry, as we paused to take breath from our labors. "They wanted to smoke us out, did they? Well, I reckon, by the looks round, thet maybe they'll have ter huff it putty lively themselves, ef they git away from it. I've heerd of the biters gittin' ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... says the Pooka, 'will ye get up or will I kick the shtuffin' out av yer cowardly carkidge,' says he, turnin' round an' flourishin' his heels in ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... resigned the French Presidency there were those who regarded the act as weak, cowardly, undutiful and otherwise censurable. It seems to me the act, not of a feeble man, but of a strong one—not that of a coward, but that of a gentleman. Indeed, I hardly know where to look in history for an act more entirely gratifying ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... initials "X.X."; but it had plainly been floated for the first time into the business at a period of great depression some six years ago. The name of a distinguished royal personage had been mentioned by rumor in connection with this sum. "The cowardly desperado"—such, I remember, was the editorial expression—was supposed to have escaped with a large part of this mysterious fund ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... sir, that the federal government should observe, as far as in their power, the public engagements contracted by both nations; and that, by this generous and prudent conduct, they will give at least to the world, the example of a true neutrality, which does not consist in the cowardly abandonment of their friends in the moment when danger menaces them, but in adhering strictly, if they can do no better, to the obligations they have contracted with them. It is by such proceedings that they will render themselves ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... MR. RICHARDS: "Cowardly? You've no idea how much courage it took." Miss Galbraith puts her handkerchief to her face, and sobs. "Oh, don't cry! Bless my heart,—I'm sorry I did it! But you know how dearly I love you, Lucy, though I do think you've been cruelly unjust. I told you I ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... healing on their wings, all good and lovely things are beneath me, above me, and everywhere around me, and all from God, while my incapability of enjoying, or, at best, languor in receiving them, is directly or indirectly from myself, from past procrastination, and cowardly impatience of pain." It was always upon some not less solid foundation that Coleridge built ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... sir," she began with dignity but in some confusion, "that I sincerely regret the accident which has confined you here, and that I desire and will pray for your speedy recovery. You cannot suspect the house of Stramen of conniving at such a cowardly assault; they are too powerful in the field to resort to such a pitiful stratagem. Our effort shall now be to secure ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... old gentleman had lived in his memory as objects of the deepest spite, the one for interfering, the other for having been the innocent cause; and he no sooner saw her in the post-office, than he promised himself revenge, such revenge as only the meanest and most cowardly spirit could have taken pleasure in. His best way of distressing Ellen, he found, was through her horse; he had almost satisfied himself; but very naturally his feeling of spite had grown stronger and blunter with indulgence, and he meant to wind up with such a treatment of her pony, ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell |
