"Dastardly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were in accord. The future contained for Gabrielle Heyburn—asleep and all unconscious of the dastardly conspiracy—only that which must ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... against all other parties. And then when the unthinking masses, drunk with flattery and hatred, committed acts of lynching, the Bolshevist leaders expressed sham regrets! Thus it was after the death of Doukhonine, who was cut to pieces by the sailors; and thus it was after the dastardly assassination of the Cadets, Shingariev and Kokochkine, after the shootings en masse and the drowning ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... the close of the year 1782 the frontiers suffered heavily. A terrible and deserved retribution fell on the borderers for their crime in failing to punish the dastardly deed of Williamson and his associates. The Indians were roused to savage anger by the murder of the Moravians, and were greatly encouraged by their easy defeat of Crawford's troops. They harassed the settlements all along the Upper Ohio, the Alleghany and ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... false!" said Elspat, fiercely; "you and such like dastardly spirits are quelled by your own faint hearts, not by the strength of the enemy; you are like the fearful waterfowl, to whom the least cloud in the sky seems the shadow ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... "The dastardly behaviour of these Bolsheviks renders negotiation impossible. I cannot blame Germany for being incensed at such proceedings, but the instructions from Berlin are hardly likely to be carried out. We do not want to drag in Livonia ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... idyllic country life. Well, one day the Count's coat, his hat, his pocket-book (which was known to have been full of bank-notes, but which was now empty) were found on the parapet of a bridge near his chateau. It was given out—it was believed that a dastardly crime had been committed. And then, by a mere accident, it was brought to my notice—for there was nothing in the Count's dossier which could have led me to suspect such a thing—that a charming governess who had been in the employment of his Countess for some ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... the keenness of the hunt for the perpetrator of the so-called dastardly outrage rose four hundred ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... you both to carry on your private dealings with dastardly clerks. Back to your room, and leave this heap of bloody flesh and rags for ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... dastardly dog? Where is that villain of a cook?" I heard him roar on the stairs. "Bring me that scoundrel that I may slit his ears!" At this moment he burst through the doors, a terrific spectacle of fury, his eyes burning like fires, his face inflamed, his drawn sword in his hand. The company ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... to say to you is that what you did down there has never been seen in any other war. Never in any country in the world has such a dastardly act been committed as the shooting of one who goes to meet ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "I suppose this dastardly impertinence has been perpetrated by some boy out of a spirit of revenge. I am perfectly amazed at the audacity and meanness of the attempt, and it may be very difficult to discover the author of it. But, depend upon it, discover him ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... all that had transpired among the former during the night. Being consequently deceived by the false appearance which every thing within the reach of their observation had been made to wear, and feeling thus relieved of their last night's guilty fears of a popular outbreak, these cruel and dastardly minions of royalty now counted on their triumph as complete, and, soon giving way to noisy exultation, they began openly to boast of the sanguinary measure by which their supposed victory had been achieved. And, about nine o'clock in the forenoon, the judges and officers of court, ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... Rome then have been taken, if those men who were at our gates had not wanted courage for the attempt!—Rome taken while I was consul—Of honours I had sufficient,—of life enough—more than enough.—I should have died in my third consulate. But who are they that our dastardly enemies thus despise? The consuls, or you Romans? If we are in the fault, depose us, or punish us yet more severely. If you are to blame, may neither God nor man punish your faults! only may you repent. No, Romans, the confidence of our enemies is not owing to their courage, or to the belief ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... to any withdrawal, your Honor," he said. "My client's vast interests are still liable to be assailed by any claimant. I wish your Honor to insist that the case be heard. A claim has been made here of a most dastardly nature, and I submit that your Honor will not allow the claimants to withdraw without some investigation. I will ask your Honor to put ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... the dastardly outrage at the Indian Spring Academy on Thursday last—which, through unfortunate misrepresentation of the facts, led to a premature calling out of several of our most public-spirited citizens, and culminated in a most regrettable encounter between Mr. McKinstry and the ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... forward, the Committee had convicted and hanged two other men, Hetherington and Brace. In both instances the charge was murder of the most dastardly kind. The trials were conducted with due regard to the forms of law and justice, and the men were executed in an orderly fashion. These executions would not be remarkable in any way, were it not for the fact that they rounded out the complete tale of executions ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... all powerful, and time incapable of being transgressed! Was my son Duhshasana, O Suta, slain, while flying away from the field, humbled (to the dust), of cheerless soul, and destitute of all manliness? O son, O Sanjaya, I hope he did no dastardly act on that occasion? Did not that hero meet with his death like the other Kshatriyas that have fallen? The foolish Duryodhana did not accept Yudhishthira's constant advice, wholesome as medicine, against ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... successfully cheating people. Sometimes they will show great kindness, even bravery amounting to heroism, and proportionate affection; at another time, without any cause, they will desert and be treacherous to their sworn friends in the most dastardly manner. Whatever the freak of the moment is, that they adopt in the most thoughtless manner, even though they may have calculated on advantages beforehand in the opposite direction. In fact, no one can rely upon them even for a moment. Dog wit, or any silly remarks, ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... we know beyond a reasonable doubt that we have been injured by Spain and that Spain refuses to make amends for the loss. Even if the Maine was blown up by a mine, that does not by any means prove that the Spanish Government was guilty of the dastardly act. If Spain does what is right toward redeeming the loss, we will have no just cause for a declaration of war, and our Government will without doubt use every honorable ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 10, March 10, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... even—and in the hurly-burly and excitement there are no witnesses. The sergeant is ever on the lookout for such mutinies, and his revolver often sends to the dust the head revolutionary before the dastardly plot can be carried out. In war-time all executions are ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... be far safer to replace the plank through which Wyckoff had put the auger hole in his dastardly attempt to turn ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... am his wife—or rather his widow. I lied to her because I didn't intend that she should have the gratification of seeing her play win. She sought to distress and disconcert me, and to raise in your mind a doubt of my motives and my story. It may be legitimate in diplomacy, but it's dastardly and inhuman. 'Rumour also had it that he was none too happy in his marriage, and that his Mrs. Clephane was something of the same sort—she was of the type to make men's hearts flutter.' You see, I recall her exact words. And what was ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... and Stripes on Sumter's walls a mass meeting of citizens, irrespective of party, was called to meet at the hall of the house of representatives for the purpose of expressing the indignation of the community at the dastardly attempt of the Cotton States to disrupt the government. Long before the time for the commencement of the meeting the hall was packed and it was found necessary to adjourn to the front steps of ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore
... spoke to each other occasionally, none now referred to the dastardly conduct of the enemy in setting ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock
... to investigate this dastardly outrage," said Bunyip, "we must become detectives, and find a clue. We must find somebody who has seen a singed possum. Once traced to their lair, mother-wit will suggest some ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... childhood, and there was never a closer tie between brother and sister. I married his most intimate friend. My husband betrayed him; it was the breach of a trust in which they were jointly liable. It was not merely a theft, it was a gross, dastardly thing, without a single mitigating circumstance. My ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... whispered hoarsely, "some one has perpetrated here upon the sacred sheen of your floor a dastardly outrage! I merely want you to note, before you start running the guilty one to earth, that I am making my entrance entirely in accordance with your oft-reiterated ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... then decided that a supreme effort must be made, and began to arm and mobilize. The art faction got hold of Sir EDWARD GREY—nobbled him, as you say. It was upon learning of this treacherous preparation and its dastardly motive, that our sublime KAISER took the action he did. I say it with conviction, there would have been no war but for England's mad desire to possess again the LEONARDO ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 28, 1914 • Various
... changes, are the sole consequence of his own exclusive, unprejudiced will, as well as unlimited authority; that both his greatness and his littleness, his successes and his crimes, originate entirely with himself; that the fortunate hero who marched triumphant over the Alps, and the dastardly murderer that disgraced human nature at Jaffa, because the same person, owed victory to himself alone, and by himself alone commanded massacre; that the same genius, unbiased and unsupported, crushed factions, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... seats, and the purchaser of the cheap seat has come there to have his money's worth. Directly the curtain goes up he is ready to collaborate. It is perfectly safe for the Villain to come on at once and reveal his dastardly plans; the audience is alert for ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... more; his ambition might reach without hindrance the utmost limits of his desires, and yet he could not rejoice; he could not escape from a deep horror of himself, and he struck his broad forehead with his clenched fists. He was face to face with his first dastardly murder. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... "They'll never know, and the public will never know. The man who did the dastardly thing will see to that. And his company, headed by Huntley, ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... my fault, Roxalanne," said I, "and if I am to pay the price they are exacting, it will be none too high. I embarked upon a dastardly business; which brought me to Languedoc under false colours. I wish, indeed, that I had told you when first the impulse to tell you came upon ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... gates, Rome could have been taken during my consulate. I have had sufficient honours, enough and more than enough of life: I ought to have died in my third consulate. Whom, I pray, did these most dastardly enemies despise? Us, consuls, or you, Quirites? If the fault lies in us, take away the command from those who are unworthy of it; and, if that is not enough, further inflict punishment on us. If the fault is yours, ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... physical repulsion I felt when he carried me in his arms. In such men the animal instinct is stronger at times than the trained will. Whether you give him a measure of your sympathy or not, at any rate do not believe that his short-lived liaison with Althea was a matter of deliberate and dastardly seduction. Nor must you think that I am setting down anything in disparagement of a child whom I once loved. Long ago I touched lightly on the anomaly of Althea's character—her mid-Victorian sentimentality and softness, combined ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... of the boys is universally for the Union, against all traitors, whether those who openly meet them in the field, or the more dastardly coward that remains at home and backbites, and aids the enemy by words of comfort, and spreading dissensions in ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... earth might open and hide him from the exulting gaze of his assailants. His blood boiled with shame and indignation, and more than ever before he realized that "the way of the transgressor is hard." His first impulse was to rush upon his dastardly foes, and crush them beneath the weight of his ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... sure," continued Anne Mie, in the midst of her tears. "And oh! that awful Merlin said some dastardly things. But she persisted in her story, that she had—another lover. Oh, Paul, I am sure it is not true. I hated her because—because—you loved her so, and I mistrusted her, but I cannot believe that she was quite as base ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... scoundrel!" said Nigel—"Do you come hither to vent your noisy oaths and your bottled-up valour on me? You seem to know me, and I am half ashamed to say I have at length been able to recollect you—remember the garden behind the ordinary,—you dastardly ruffian, and the speed with which fifty men saw you run from a drawn sword.—Get you gone, sir, and do not put me to the vile labour of cudgelling such a ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... at once; "secured, sayest thou? In our bitter grief we had well-nigh forgotten justice. Bring forth the dastardly craven; we would demand the reason of this cowardly blow ere we condemn him to the death of torture which his crime demands. Let him confront his victim. Why do you pause, my ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... Point fell through. There was nothing to do but to thrash Vorlange, and the day before I left home I gave him a licking that I'll wager he'll remember to the day of his death. As it was, he tried to shoot me, but I collared the pistol, and for that dastardly attack knocked two of his ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill
... so dastardly as incendiarism. We are open enemies; and I can protect myself from any violence that I apprehend. And I will assuredly protect all others who come to me for work. They know my determination by this time, as well and as fully as ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... had commenced the hostilities by a sudden and cowardly act of treason. There were private wrongs to envenom the contest, but it was the mercantile quarrel on which the Colonel chose to set his declaration of war. Barnes's first dastardly blow had occasioned it, and his uncle was determined to carry it through. This I have said was also George Warrington's judgment, who, in the ensuing struggle between Sir Barnes and his uncle, acted as a very warm and ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "Dastardly ruffians!" exclaimed the latter. "I knew they would be gone. Even an old woman and a dog are enough. Oh, that my brave Carlos had been here! He would have taught that proud Gachupino we were not so helpless! Ha! ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... able to boast in the future that he had saved my lord's life, but evidently he did mean to have his revenge not only on herself—Klara—but also on Eros Bela for the humiliation which they had put upon Elsa. It was a cruel and a dastardly trick of revenge, and in her heart Klara had vague hopes already of getting even with Andor one day. But that would come by and by—at some future time—when all this terrible tragedy would have ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... "Oh! this dastardly wretch is profiting by his knowledge of secrets which a long intimacy has enabled him to discover. Do not believe him, I entreat ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the trapping of the unknown man who was to mount the throne of Caesar over the murdered body of his Emperor. Before dealing with the whole band of traitors he wished to know who it was that meant to reap the greatest benefit by the dastardly conspiracy. There was one man alive in Rome at the present moment who thought to become the successor of Caligula; that one man would be bold enough to woo and win Dea ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Curtius, on the part of the Sabines, had rushed down at the head of his army from the citadel, and driven the Romans in disorder over the whole ground now occupied by the forum. He was already not far from the gate of the Palatium, crying out, "We have defeated these perfidious strangers, these dastardly enemies. They now feel that it is one thing to ravish virgins, another far different to fight with men." On him, thus vaunting, Romulus makes an attack with a band of the most courageous youths. It happened that Mettus ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... he caught the idea of it in an instant. Since the supper of the night before he had been pestered by many misgivings, and troubled by some remorse. Capt'n Davy was bent on going away. Overwhelmed by a sense of what he took to be his dastardly conduct he was in that worst position of the man who can forgive neither himself nor the person he has injured. So much had Lovibond done for him by the fine scheme that had brought matters to such a pass. But having gone so far, Lovibond had ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... subjugate the American democracy, she now has recourse to her diplomacy, her intrigues, and her gold. Twenty millions of money expended in this way in the last twenty years, has had its effect, and to her emissaries, and hireling presses and scribblers, we are indebted for a dastardly generation of traitors, who would barter the liberties of their country for the applause of faction, ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... GLADYS: Dastardly wretch!!!!! With your pawn tickets to try and cop out a poor sewing girl. (Up at door.) There is the ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... more ashamed than amused. The discovery that Max was human had somehow altered everything, and made her own conduct appear dastardly. She had acted maliciously albeit, in self-defence; but now that it seemed that her point might pierce his armour, she wanted to withdraw it. She shrank unspeakably from seeing him vanquished. It would have ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... "'Twas dastardly to take him so," said Molyneux. "Whatever his deservings, I'm nigh of a mind to offer him a rescue in the ...
— Monsieur Beaucaire • Booth Tarkington
... given up their youth, their manhood, the dearest things to their heart, respect to their father and loyalty to their sovereign, rather than countenance the injustice of Charlemagne to their kinsman, have at last obtained to be pardoned; to be pardoned, they, heroes, by this, dastardly tyrant, and to quietly sink, broken-hearted into nothingness. The eldest, Renaud, returning from his exile and the Holy Land, finds that his wife Clarisse has pined for him and died; and then, putting away his armour from him, and dressing in a pilgrim's frock ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... sacrifice. Others have done so in sadder seriousness. Doubtless, Curtius rode at his last leap without a speck on his burnished mail: purple, and gold, and gems flamed all round Sardanapalus when he fired the holocaust in Nineveh: even that miserable, dastardly Nero was solicitous about the marble fragments that were to line his felon's grave. So it befell that, on this particular evening, Cecil went through a very careful toilet, though it was as simple as usual; for the ultra-gorgeous style she utterly eschewed. ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... his anger, after hearing Jose's tale, he felt half inclined to rush upon Miranda, sword in hand, and settle the matter at once. But, while returning to the camp-ground, calmer reflections arose, restraining him from the dastardly act, and deciding him to carry out the other alternative, already conceived, but kept back as ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... direction and order. The many kingdoms, the infinite number of people, and the wealth of those realms, is incredible. The Japanese are an energetic race, skilled in the use of our weapons. All the other nations lack that spirit, and are cowardly, dastardly, and abject. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... that it was you who committed an unprovoked assault upon me—who planned to have me waylaid in that dastardly fashion?" ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... two dastardly prisoners the impudence to mock me thus, and propose that I should wed such a loathsome creature as that? They shall die for it! Away with that hussy and her nurse, and the fellow who brought them here; cast them into ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... my breath. This declaration by one of the greatest professors of toxicology in Europe staggered me. A dastardly attempt had been made upon me by one of the most notorious ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... dastardly hint and the sort of thing I had long come to look upon as inseparable from my position. Of all peoples the Latinamericans have long been known as the most notoriously ungrateful for the work we did in developing their countries. Why, in some backward parts, the ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... of a nice Tea-Cup, sweatened with Sugar, biting a Bit of nice thin Bread and Butter between Whiles. This mocks the strong Appetite, relaxes the Stomach, satiates it with trifling light Nick-Nacks which have little in them to support hard Labour. In this manner the Bold and Brave become dastardly, the Strong become weak, the Women become barren, or if they breed their Blood is made so poor that they have not Strength to suckle, and if they do the Child dies of the Gripes; In short, it gives an effeminate, weakly Turn to the People ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... "Dastardly! Dastardly!" growled the showman. "I shall send for a detective to meet us in Memphis tomorrow. This thing ...
— The Circus Boys On the Mississippi • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... "domestic institutions"; and to shoot in Kansas and to burn and ravage in Kansas. They were met by the anti-slavery legions along the wide frontier, and brother slew brother for years, one series of more or less ignoble and dastardly outrages following another in big or little, murders and arson in big or little, until the whole country at last was drawn into this matter of the domestic institutions of "bleeding Kansas." The animosities formed in those days were ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... present ease, and to secure his low pleasures, at any price—ready to give up the honour of his country, and submit to the conqueror—that he had been secretly intriguing with the enemy, had been suspected, and this suspicion was confirmed by his dastardly capitulation when the means of defence were in his power and the spirit of his ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... difficulties which arose barely from ourselves, and wanted resolution to deny our senses, to subdue our passions, to renounce dangerous occasions, or to enter upon a penitential life. Blinded by self-love, have we not sheltered our dastardly pusillanimity under the cloak of pretended ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... next day did he tell his wife what had actually happened. She believed him at once, and thoroughly cursed the dastardly rich man who had cheated Ivan. He was sobered now, and remembering the advice a workman had given him, with whom he had many a drink the day before, decided to go to a lawyer and tell him of the wrong the owner of the photograph shop ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... bone, and finally lodged in his neck: he fell, and for some time was supposed to be dead, but revived, and afterwards recovered from this severe wound. The most prompt and diligent enquiry as to the author of this cruel and dastardly act, failed to lead to his detection. No doubt was entertained that this attempt at assassination was made by a white man, stimulated perhaps by no better excuse than the memory of some actual or ideal wrong, inflicted ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... I exclaimed hotly. "Nothing shall convince me that any woman could be so base as to take such dastardly advantage of a man ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... tossing in the mind of our French buccaneer. The more he thought of the attractions of the fair widow and of the wealth and position which had been offered him, the more he hated all thoughts of his piratical crew, and of the dastardly and cruel character of the work in which they were engaged. If he could have trusted the officers and citizens of the town, there is not much doubt that he would have married the widow, but those officers and citizens were Spaniards, and he was a Frenchman. ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... have therefore the honor to request that you will return him, that I may inflict the punishment which his dastardly offense merits. I cannot be responsible for the good conduct of my soldiers, if they are to find protection from punishment by ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... right to sound this warning, as I know whereof I speak, as I have traveled this Romish road of despair for thirty years, and I know her cunning and dastardly deception so well that her history and her teachings are to me like the primer is to the school boy ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... satisfactory. The methods employed for enforcing discipline have been unnecessarily severe and have given dissatisfaction. As recently as the year 1903 the children of this inoffensive and harmless people were forcibly taken from their homes and put into the schools. The time selected for doing the dastardly deed was during the night in midwinter when the weather was cold and the ground covered with snow. Under the orders of the superintendent the reservation police made the raid without warning or warrant of any kind. While the people slept, the police entered their houses, dragged the little children ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... and the L'Orient, of 120 guns, blown up. The action was continued all night with the enemy's rear by the Alexander and Majestic; and this evening the whole, except three, have fallen into our hands, and a frigate, which they dastardly set fire ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... not have answered for my conduct. Of course I took his part, but you fell ill, and did not know that. When he came and told me that he had been mistaken I abused him like a thief. I have abused him ever since whenever I have had a chance. It was a vile, dastardly, foolish, ridiculous—" ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... Fearing these reports might reach home, and affect his family, Washington wrote to his mother, and his brother, John Augustine, apprising them of his safety. "The Virginia troops," says he, in a letter to his mother, "showed a good deal of bravery, and were nearly all killed. ... The dastardly behavior of those they called regulars exposed all others, that were ordered to do their duty, to almost certain death; and, at last, in despite of all the efforts of the officers to the contrary, they ran, as sheep pursued by dogs, and it ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... it is "wanton cruelty" to keep a weak or sickly child alive; and the medical man, under a reformed system of medical ethics, is to have leave and licence to put an end to its life in a painless manner. To what enormities and dastardly agreements this might lead need hardly be suggested; and I am quite confident that the members of the honourable profession of physic, to which I am proud to belong, have no desire whatever for such a reform of the law or of their ethics. Then we are ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... see," he whispered. "But first tell me, signore, that you will forgive me for the part I have played in this dastardly affair. I, like yourself, fell innocently into the ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... seems awfully mean." Tom's face got fiery red again. "And yet, as you all know, why, it can't be helped. Jenkins—well there, a fellow would want to be excused from speaking to him. And yet"—down fell Tom's head shamefacedly—"I let him show me how he was going to play a dastardly trick on Joe, the very day of the tennis tournament. ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... overflowing his banks. He ought to be dammed—or leveed, I should more properly say. Such is the history—not as it is usually told, but as it is when stripped of the nauseous sentimentality that would enshrine for our loving worship a dastardly seducer like Pierre Abelard. I have not a word to say against the misused, faithful girl, and would not withhold from her grave a single one of those simple tributes which blighted youths and maidens offer to her memory, but I am sorry enough that I have not ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... with machine guns," Father Adam went on. "You know nothing of the men with whom you are dealing, either the owners of the mill, or the men who have found an ample livelihood under their organisation. How can you know them? You are dastardly agents of an alien company, sent and paid to wreck a wholly Canadian enterprise. This is your first object. Your second is even more sinister, for you are the agents of that mad Leninism which has destroyed a whole race of workers in a vast country ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... said he, "and I am that victim. For thirty years I studied to make Brigham Young's will my law. See now what I have come to this day. I have been sacrificed in a cowardly, dastardly manner. I do not fear death. I cannot go to a worse place than I am ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... the Irish Republic. But the Green Irish will not listen to that. Protestants in Ulster had to listen in their own chief city to Sinn Fein rejoicings over German victories. The rebellion of 1916, when Sinn Fein opened the back door that England's enemies might enter and destroy her—this dastardly treason was made bloody by cowardly violence. The unarmed and the unsuspecting were shot down and stabbed in cold blood. Later, soldiers who came home from the front, wounded soldiers too, were persecuted and assaulted. The men of Ulster don't wish ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... the case that fell to me early in May, for instance. A box billed from New York to Peru had been broken open on Balboa dock and—one bottle of cognac stolen. Unfortunately the matter was turned over to me so long after the perpetration of the dastardly crime that the possible culprits among the dock hands had wholly recovered from the probable consumption of the evidence. But I succeeded in gathering material for a splendid typewritten report of all I had not been able to unearth, to file away ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... the enemy's army that, although more than three times his own force, it was marching away in all haste, having abandoned the siege of Valencia, which city he could now enter with his troops. The success was a wonderful one; but it is sad to think that it was gained by such a treacherous and dastardly maneuver, which might have cost a gallant officer—who was, moreover, a countryman and distant connection of the earl—his honor ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... eyes, did he!" said the colonel wrathfully. "What a dastardly thing to do! I am glad that Werner is no longer a pupil at the school. If he were I should feel it my duty to hand him over to the authorities. You say he did not come back ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... their prayers. Again, as on his way home that morning from hearing Mass, the spirit was dominant, his whole nature and outlook purified and exalted by the Divine Indwelling. To fail any human creature calling on him for help would be contemptible, and even dastardly, in one blessed as he himself was. Thus his relation to Poppy St. John fell into line. He could afford to love and serve her well, since he loved and purposed, in all things, to ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... Stubbs, and the printer of his pamphlet to be led to the scaffold and have their right hands driven off by the wrist with a butcher's knife and mallet, and how in God's name she commits many other unspeakable acts of devilishness, the most dastardly of which was her refusal to provide food for the thousands of brave men who saved her and her kingdom. What a contrast between this woman and the great Queen Victoria, whose long career is free from a single act of cruelty, and whose whole life teems with good deeds, ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... settled the question. John Saltram, the friend whom he had loved, was the traitor. John Saltram had stolen his promised wife, had come between him and his fair happy future, and had kept the secret of his guilt in a dastardly spirit that made the act fifty times blacker than ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... have no g't trouble in driving them to the d—-." At Braddock's defeat, though the regiment he had commanded "behaved like men and died like soldiers," he could hardly find words to express his contempt for the conduct of the British "cowardly regulars," writing of their "dastardly behavior" when they "broke and ran as sheep before hounds," and raging over being "most scandalously" and "shamefully beaten." When the British first landed on New York Island, and two New England brigades ran away from "a small party ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... the moonlight shot over the flying edge of the rear-cloud; and I saw Sedgett with a stick in his hand; but the gentleman had no stick. I'll give Mr. Edward Blancove credit for not meaning to be active in a dastardly assault. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... at this picture of patient, grateful, and high-minded resignation, Morton could not help bestowing an execration upon the poor-spirited rascal who had taken such a dastardly ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... surrender. He therefore, we are told, sent to the Colonel "his priest, a discreet Negro, to remonstrate."[213] The Colonel put the priest to death, and apparently suffered no worse punishment for this dastardly act than to have the cattle he had gone away with discovered and brought ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... Well, I give their names for the safety of the people: I denounce the libertycide Brissot, the Girondist factionists, the rascally commission of the Twenty-One in the National Assembly; I denounce them for having sold France to Brunswick, and for having taken in advance the reward for their dastardly act." On the 2nd of September he repeats his denunciation, and consequently on that day warrants are issued by the committee of supervision against thirty deputies and against Brissot and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... too careful of cheese. If a man feels that he is going to commit the dastardly act of eating limburg cheese, he has time to go out to a glue factory, or a slaughter house, or the house of correction, or some other ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... Torn made no reply, his thoughts were in wild confusion, and it was with difficulty that he hid the fierce anxiety of his heart or his rage against the perpetrators of this dastardly act which tore ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... no eye-witnesses into court. Whatever we have is circumstantial. It is incumbent upon us to show cause. To show cause it is necessary to go into the character of the accused. This we intend to do. We intend to show his adulterous and lustful nature, which has culminated in a dastardly deed and jeopardized his neck. We intend to show that the truth is not in him; that he is a liar beyond price; that no word he may speak upon the stand need be accepted by a jury of his peers. We intend to show all ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... what is to be done. For we possess this point of superiority over others, that we execute a bold promptitude in what we undertake, and yet a cautious prudence in taking forethought; whereas with others it is ignorance alone that makes them daring, while reflection makes them dastardly. ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... caused upon leaving the deck, by observing a sailor with a lighted match in his hand, and our captain busied in appointing an extraordinary watch for the night, as a precaution against the pirates who swarm in these seas." These wretches, as dastardly as they were cruel, the instant they boarded a vessel, put every individual of the crew to death. They lurked about the isle of Fouri, to the north of Patmos, in great numbers, taking possession of bays ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... yet ridiculously simple move had utterly routed him at the very outset of the deadly game that he was playing. He had sat there determined to have either Tremayne's life or the truth, publicly avowed, of Tremayne's dastardly betrayal. He could not have told you which he preferred. But one or the other he was fiercely determined to have, and now the springs of the snare in which he had so cunningly taken Tremayne had been forced apart by utterly ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... found themselves bound and gagged, and tied to trees, while some dastardly ruffians hewed down the best timber in the wood? The shouts behind grew nearer. Their pursuer was evidently gaining upon them. Through the pouring rain they struggled on, splashing anyhow through ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... Czerny—a madman, as I always say—had shot down a servant before this gentle girl, what would he do to me and the others, sworn enemies of his, who could hang him in any city where they might find him; who could, with one word, give his dastardly secret to the world; who could, with a cry, destroy this treasure-house, rock-built though it might be? What hope of mercy had we from such a man? And I was sitting there, it might be, within twenty paces of the room in which he slept; Miss Ruth's ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... jewels, her hair in a careless knot at the base of her head. There were times when she was impeccably groomed, others when she looked as if an infuriated maid had left her helpless. She was, as Ruyler well knew, a kind and generous woman (in certain of her moods), with whom the dastardly cradle fates had experimented, hoping for high drama when the whip of life snapped once too often. Perhaps she had found her revenge as well as her consolation ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... and suspicion. He refused to deal violently with Sigurd, however, because of their oath of good fellowship, and so she turned to Hoegni for aid. He, too, did not wish to violate his oath, but he induced Guttorm, by means of much persuasion and one of Grimhild's potions, to undertake the dastardly deed. ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... deliberately shook the herald by the collar, and hurled him from his hold; snapped his sword in twain, and flinging it from him, folded his arms on his breast, and calmly uttering, "Pardon me, noble lady, mine honor were impugned had I suffered that dastardly villain to pass hence unpunished—let Edward act as he lists, it matters little now," waited with impenetrable resolve the ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... be useful to you, command me. If you insert this letter, you will, of course, pay for it, upon my order to that effect. I say this, lest an unprincipled wife and children should apply to you for money. They are in a state of starvation, and will scruple at no dastardly stratagem to procure money. I spent every shilling of Mrs. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari. Vol. 1, July 31, 1841 • Various
... ungratefully treated, because men's mouths—even those of his own MINNE-SINGERS [The German minstrels were so termed.]—are filled with the praises of King Richard, whom he fears and hates, and in whose harm he would rejoice, like those unbred, dastardly curs, who, if the foremost of the pack is hurt by the gripe of the wolf, are much more likely to assail the sufferer from behind than to come to his assistance. But wherefore tell I this to thee, save to show that I am in sincerity in desiring that this league be broken up, and the country ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... R. Lounsbury, The Text of Shakespeare, 275. "But the attack upon Mrs. Haywood exceeded all bounds of decency. To the credit of the English race nothing so dastardly and vulgar can be found elsewhere in English literature. If the influence of 'The Dunciad' was so all-powerful as to ruin the prospects of any one it satirized, it ought certainly to have crushed her beyond hope of any revival. As a matter of fact Mrs. ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... on her part would, she believed, free her from the past; but she was in error. Upon hearing that his dastardly attempt at murder had failed, the Counsellor was for the time utterly overwhelmed with terror, but the news that he had gained from M. de Puymandour calmed his mind in a great measure. He was not, however, completely reassured until he heard for certain that the ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... take care of himself without the protection of the police is both.... It is reckoned as cowardly to betray an offender to justice, even though the offence be against one's self, as it would be not to avenge an injury by violence. It is regarded as dastardly and contemptible in a wounded man to betray the name of his assailant, because if he recovers he must naturally expect to take vengeance himself. A rhymed Sicilian proverb sums up this principle, the supposed speaker being one who has been stabbed. ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... will descend to any warfare however dastardly and mean when forced by law to a standstill. There is something in the sad business that degrades every one in it. This time it is liquor sellers in Brome County that are indicted. Mr. W. W. Smith, President of the Brome County ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... front. Where were their heads, and their hearts, and their arms? How looks this craven despondency, before the stern virtues of the ages we call dark? When a man is so voluntarily imbecile as to regret he is not rich, if that is what he wants, before he has struck a blow for wealth; or so dastardly as to renounce the prospect of love, because, sitting sighing, in velvet dressing-gown and slippers, he does not see his way clear to ten thousand a year: when young women coiffed a merveille, of unexceptionable "style," who, with ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... in running away with the lady, intended to dispense altogether with ceremony, and make of Julie anything but his wife; but Georges, her father, and one Morisseau, a notary, discovered him in his dastardly act, and pursued him to the very feet of the Regent, who compelled the pair to marry and ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... after all, even true that he had but to call and she would come? In truth it well might be that she had learned to despise him; to feel how dastardly he had been to take her love, given in blind simplicity, bestowed like the song of the bird upon the listening fields —to take the plenteous fulness of her life, and give nothing in return save the empty hand, the hopeless hour, the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... only utter it freely in the lecture-room, the club, and the "North American Review." Contempt at least arouses pride and energy. To be sure, in the face of history, the contemptuous tone in regard to women seems to me untrue, unfair, and dastardly; but, like any other extreme injustice, it leads to reaction. It helps to awaken women from that shallow dream of self-complacency into which flattery lulls them. There is something tonic in the manly arrogance of Fitzjames Stephen, who derides ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... put an end to the war at once. But the truth is, that the Carlist generals did not wish the war to cease, for as long as the country was involved in bloodshed and anarchy, they could plunder and exercise that lawless authority so dear to men of fierce and brutal passions. Cabrera, moreover, was a dastardly wretch, whose limited mind was incapable of harbouring a single conception approaching to grandeur; whose heroic deeds were confined to cutting down defenceless men, and to forcing and disembowelling unhappy women; ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... greatly cast down at what he called the "disgraceful and dastardly" conduct of some of his troops that day. He knew that an attack on Harlem Heights must come, and come soon. But what would be the result? Would his men run away, or would they fight? "Experience, to my extreme ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... boy, go, thou art not mellowed to thy prime, and thy comrades are far away. The shears of the Fatal deities hover over the thread not of my life but of thine.' I was struck, Gongylus, by this address, for it was neither desperate nor dastardly, as I had anticipated; nevertheless, it beseemed not a Spartan to fly from a Helot, and I drew the sword which my mother had girded on. The Helot watched my movements, and seized a rude and knotted club that lay on the ground ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton |
