"Timorous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... no drawing back now. Whichever of them was forced by circumstances to be the protagonist in the enterprise, the thing must be done. Their intention to become husband and wife, at first halting and timorous, had accumulated momentum with the lapse of hours, till it now bore down ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... laissez-faire for the purposes of trade. France envisages the complete ruin of German industry and commerce, and believes that Foch is the man to do it. At this the Italians smile quietly and counsel the timorous Germans not to despair. Rome chooses to hold to the thesis that a prosperous Italy depends on a prosperous Germany, and no outsider is qualified to dispute such a point of view. Somehow Italy manages to suggest a similar thought to England. A prosperous England depends on a prosperous ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... I believe as a Delphian oracle, and am resolved to burn in that faith." "He," says Lodovico, in "May-Day,"—he "that holds religious and sacred thought of a woman, he that holds so reverend a respect to her that he will not touch her but with a kist hand and a timorous heart, he that adores her like his goddess, let him be sure she will shun him like her slave.... Whereas nature made" women "but half fools, we make 'em all fool: and this is our palpable flattery of them, where ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... disciples, discusses socialism with men like Mr. Tawney, church government with men like Bishop Temple, writes his books and sermons, and on a cold day, seated on a cushion with his feet in the fender and his hands stretched over a timorous fire, revolves the many problems which beset his peace ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... shame confound thee for thy treachery, Inconstant dotard, timorous old ass, That shakes with cowardice, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... the milk is forced by the mother through simple channels upon the breast, from which it is licked by the young. The Anteater develops her eggs in a pouch. They illustrate a very early stage in the development of a mammal from a reptile; and one is almost tempted to see in their timorous burrowing habits a reminiscence of the impotence of the early mammals after their premature appearance in ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... the younger lady, addressing him in her turn, but with a timorous accent, "the same whom I saw when I was called to wait upon the King ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... read, the president, a timorous man, who perceived the agency of Robespierre in the advice of Petion, had quietly removed from his head the repudiated bonnet rouge, and the members of the society, one after another, followed his example. Robespierre alone, who ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... in London, when the summons came unto me. I was timorous of Committees, being ever by some of them calumniated, upbraided, scorned, and derided. However I must and did appear; and let me never forget that great affection and care yourself (Oh most excellent and learned Esquire Ashmole) shewed unto me at that time. First, ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... idol, was not the strongest of characters. She was very sweet and amiable, intensely true and affectionate to those to whom she gave her heart, but she was somewhat timorous ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... of his narrative which is ever filling one with surprize from Emperors and Generals, like Tiberius and Germanicus, weeping like Homer's heroes, and Queens and captive women, like Boadicea and the wife of Armin, exhibiting none of the frailties of their sex, being above the timorous passions, and not shedding a tear even when they are made prisoners, but conducting themselves with all the insolence of conquerors. Roman knights and senators, of the stamp of Lucanus, Senecio and Quinctianus ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... doing; knowledge comes by eyes always open, and working hands; and there is no knowledge that is not power. And if the life be true and noble, we have quite another sort of seniors than the frowzy, timorous, peevish dotards who are falsely old,—namely, the men who fear no city, but by whom cities stand; who appearing in any street, the people empty their houses to gaze at and obey them: as at "My Cid, with the fleecy beard," in Toledo; or Bruce, as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... is setting common law at defiance, at another he is twisting the law to the purposes of corruption, and taking refuge behind the forms which he is expressly charged with heroically setting at defiance. Had Lord Mansfield been less timorous, Junius might have been less daring. At the close of one of his letters the reckless assailant writes "Beware how you indulge the first emotions of your resentment. This paper is delivered to the world, and cannot be recalled. The prosecution of an innocent printer cannot alter facts nor refute ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... tops Of hoary-antlered sycamores; The timorous killdee starts and stops Among the drift-wood on ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... long shall timorous fancy see The painted chief and pointed spear; And reason's self shall bow the knee To shadows ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... that Hugh's professional life had brought him was a friendship with his father; their relations had been increasingly tense all through the undergraduate days; if Hugh had not been of a superficially timorous temperament, disliking intensely the atmosphere of displeasure, disapproval, or misunderstanding, among those with whom he lived, there would probably have been sharp collisions. His father did not realise that the boy ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to force them to a conformity to the pagan worship of the times. Germanicus, who had been brought to Smyrna with eleven or twelve other Christians, signalized himself above the rest, and animated the most timorous to suffer. The proconsul in the amphitheatre called upon him with tenderness, entreating him to have some regard for his youth, and to value at least his life: but he, with a holy impatience, provoked the beasts to devour him, to leave ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... needs, but Hardenbergh. More timorous then wise, as I supposed, (For love so hardned me feare was my slave) Did ominate such likelie ill to me If I went forward, that with much enforcement Of what might chance he drave me to retreat. ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... Austrian succession were expected to arise; besides, the Elector of Bavaria, the Elector of Cologne, and the Elector Palatine were evidently hostile; the ministers themselves, while the Queen was herself without experience or knowledge of business, were timorous, desponding, irresolute, or worn out with age. To these ministers, says Mr. Robinson, in his despatches to the English court, "the Turks seemed already in Hungary, the Hungarians themselves in arms, the Saxons in Bohemia, the Bavarians at ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... on that 'orse," said the woman. She clasped her hands imploringly together. "Remember, Ben," she continued, speaking in a timorous voice, and her color coming and going, "remember that Greased Lightning is a very wicious sort of 'orse, and this is only a little child. Has you ever been on a ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... Visit was not meant to him, But by a Cause more pressing I am brought, Such as my Passion, not My Friendship taught; A Passion which my Sighs have only shewn, And now beg leave my bashful Tongue may own. The knowledge, Madam, will not much surprise, Which you have gain'd already from mine Eyes; My timorous Heart that way my Tongue would spare, And tells you of the Flames you've kindled there: 'Tis long I've suffered under this Constraint, Have always suffer'd, but ne'er made Complaint; And now against my will I must reveal What Love and ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... course of a day or two the matter of the fireplace was adjusted and the lease signed. Norah Pennington was the tenant's name, and her references all the most timorous landlord could ask. ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... at the very moment when his literary position seemed most secure in the eyes of his wife and his friends, the author had lost all confidence in his own powers. He shut himself up in his study every night, and was supposed by an admiring and almost timorous household to be producing masterpieces, when in reality he was conducting a series of barren skirmishes between the critical and the creative elements of his nature. He would write a chapter or two in a fine fury of composition, and then would read ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... had also unfolded themselves. The Dominican, Father Bevis, awoke in Clarice a certain amount of liking, not unmixed with rather timorous respect. But he was a grave, silent, undemonstrative man, who gave no encouragement to anything like personal affection, though he was not harsh nor unkind. The Franciscan, Father Miles, was of a type common in his day. ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... brooder on the hills of heaven, When for my sin thou drav'st me forth, Hadst thou forgot what this was worth, Thine own hand had made? The tears of men, The death of threescore years and ten, The trembling of the timorous race— Had these things so bedimmed the place Thine own hand made, thou couldst not know To what a heaven the earth might grow If fear beneath the earth were laid, If hope failed not, ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... timorous to check her, and Flora's ceased in the delight of hearing that last wail confess the thought of Hilary. Constance strove with tender energy for place and voice: "Nan, dearie, Nan! But listen to Flora, Nan. See, Nan, ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... who had heard the drums and the cries of the heralds, had no doubt that the ring was the cause of this uproar. Now, she loved the Prince, and, as true love is timorous and has no vanity, she was in perpetual fear that some other lady would be found to have a finger as small as hers. Great, then, was her joy when the messengers came and knocked at her door. Since she knew that they were seeking the owner of the right finger on which to set her ring, some impulse ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... powers of literature are coy and haughty, they must be long courted, and at last are not always gained; but criticism is a goddess easy of access and forward of advance, she will meet the slow and encourage the timorous. The want of meaning she supplies with words, and the want of spirit she recompenses ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... story of his mishaps and his prowess was on every lip; his timely appearance in Regengetz Circus was regarded in the light of divine intervention, although no one questioned the perfectly human pluck that brought it about. Noble ladies smiled upon him in the park, to which they now repaired with timorous hearts; counts and barons slapped him on the back and doughty guardsmen actually saluted him with ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... because he had been unable to make him acquire even that exterior bearing which confers the necessary dignity upon him who exercises great power, to say nothing of the firmness, precision, and force of will required in governing men. Credulous, timorous, impressionable, and at the same time obstinate, gluttonous, and sensual, this erudite, overgrown boy had become in the imperial palace a kind of plaything for everybody, especially for his slaves, who, knowing his defects and his weaknesses, did ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... such an hour" (hour of midnight or thereby); which of course Gortz, duly invisible to mankind, does. Friedrich explains: An errand to Munchen; perfectly secret, for the moment, and requiring great delicacy and address; perhaps not without risk, a timorous man might say: will your Brother go for me, think you? Gortz thinks he will. "Here is his Instruction, if so," adds the King, handing him an Autograph of the necessary outline of procedure,—not signed, nor with any credential, or even ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... and the girls outside grew timorous. They knew the drink game, and all were certain that something terrible was going to happen. They protested that they did not wish to be there when it happened, and some one suggested going to a big Italian rancho four miles away, where they could get up a dance. Immediately they paired ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... short time carriages began to roll by in all directions, bearing the more timorous to the villages and plantations outside of the city: the open public squares or plazas filled rapidly with the excited population, especially when telegram after telegram began to arrive from La Guayra, Puerto Cabello, Valencia, La Vittoria and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... was nothing to be so mightily timorous about, for, according to my calculation, two smaller or whiter feet didn't leave their prints in the sand that day, though I do make that assertion with my own lips, that ought to ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... from each indurated heart. Some sterner virtues o'er the mountain's breast May sit, like falcons, cow'ring on the nest; But all the gentler morals, such as play 235 Thro' life's more cultured walks, and charm the way, These, far dispersed, on timorous pinions fly, To sport and flutter ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... Whenever they can charge anything upon the elements or upon accident, he and they combine in denying all bravery and all wisdom to their enemies. The conduct of Kutusow on more than one occasion in the retreat seems to have been singularly cautious, or rather timorous. For it is impossible to give credit to the immense superiority claimed by Segur, Beauchamp, etc., for the French troops over the Russians. Surely they were the same Russians who had fought so bravely against superior force, and how should the twentieth part of the ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... Drag their treasures from the shelves. Jack the Giant-killer's gone, Mother Goose and Oberon, Bluebeard and King Solomon. Robin, and Red Riding Hood Take together to the wood, And Sir Galahad lies hid In a cave with Captain Kidd. None of all the magic hosts, None remain but a few ghosts Of timorous heart, to linger ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... she replied; "what 'ud I be afeard of? my father laughs at sich things; although," she added, musing, "I think he's sometimes timorous for all that. But I know he's often out at all hours, and he says he doesn't care ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... have most of their great father's, the owl, they are wise, and generally become priests; if the wolf predominates, they are bloody-minded; if the bear, they are dirty and sluggish, great eaters, and love to lick their fingers; if the deer, they are exceedingly timorous and feeble; if the fox, cruel and sly; the eagle, bold, daring, and courageous, and the adder, treacherous. Thus men have, all their different natures and properties from the brutes, and oftentimes are ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... these are superadded, they become indeed, the most ruthless and infuriated enemy—"thirsting for blood," and causing it literally to flow, alike from the hearts of helpless infancy and hoary age—from the timorous breast of weak woman, and the undaunted bosom of the stout warrior. Leagued with Great Britain, the Indians were enabled more fully and effectually, to glut their vengeance on our citizens, and gratify their ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... desert I love to ride, With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side, O'er the brown karroo, where the bleating cry Of the springbok's fawn sounds plaintively; And the timorous quagga's shrill whistling neigh Is heard by the fountain at twilight gray; Where the zebra wantonly tosses his mane. With wild hoof scouring the desolate plain; And the fleet-footed ostrich over the waste Speeds ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... returned Bertuccio, joining his hands, and shaking his head in a manner that would have excited the count's laughter, had not thoughts of a superior interest occupied him, and rendered him attentive to the least revelation of this timorous conscience. "Alas, ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... a man who were to cross from Dover to Calais, run about very busy and solicitous, and trouble himself many weeks before in making provisions for the voyage, would you commend him for a cautious and discreet person, or laugh at him for a timorous and impertinent coxcomb? A man who is excessive in his pains and diligence, and who consumes the greatest part of his time in furnishing the remainder with all conveniences and even superfluities, is to angels and wise men no less ridiculous; he does as little consider the shortness of his ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... called fibres are found in the blood of some animals, but not of all. There are none, for instance, in the blood of deer and of roes, and for this reason the blood of such animals as these never coagulates.... Too great an excess of water makes animals timorous.... Such animals, on the other hand, as have thick and abundant fibres in their blood are of a more choleric temperament, and liable to bursts of passion.... Bulls and boars are choleric, for their blood is exceedingly rich in fibres, and the bull's, at any ...
— Fathers of Biology • Charles McRae
... boy of five. From the moment when he caught the gleam of brass he knew that he had made the find of his life. But his nurse was a timorous, foolish thing. "You did ought to of left it ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... herself or should she share it with little brother? There was a certain risk in arousing brother. He was apt to awaken clamant, vociferous. Still, she resolved to try it. For one thing, it seemed so selfish to see Santa Claus alone, and for another the adventure would be a little less timorous ...
— A Little Book for Christmas • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... foot. When we would meet a bevy of these creatures on the road in the dusk of evening, their white, fluttering garments would give them the appearance of winged celestials. The Turkish women are generally timorous of men, and especially so of foreigners. Those of the rural districts, however, are not so shy as their city cousins. We frequently met them at work in groups about the villages or in the open fields, and would sometimes ask for a drink of water. If they ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... say, upon his lap, and stroking her brindled sides with great tenderness, he bade Dealtry remark how singularly quiet the animal was in its manners. Nay, he was not contented until Peter himself had patted her with a timorous hand, and had reluctantly submitted the said hand to the honour of being licked by the cat in return. Jacobina, who, to do her justice, was always meek enough in the presence, and at the will, of her master, was, fortunately this day, on her very ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... now at once, people throughout the world would call her the Countess Lovel, and would own her daughter to be the Lady Anna,—till she also should become a countess? Of the young man she had heard nothing but good, and it was impossible that she should have fear in that direction, even had she been timorous by nature. But she was bold and eager, hopeful in spite of all that she had suffered, full of ambition, and not prone to feminine scruples. She had been fighting all her life in order that she and her daughter might be acknowledged to be among the aristocrats of ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... present moment, face to face with their anxious expectation and timorous desires, they felt the imperative necessity of closing their eyes, and of dreaming of a future full of amorous felicity and peaceful enjoyment. The more they trembled one before the other, the better they foresaw the horror of the ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... It is further described to be of the size of a beeve, and to be likewise a fierce creature, contrary to what is observed of the goat or deer kind, which, unless they are irritated and highly provoked, are all of them of a shy and timorous nature. The only quadruped that we are acquainted with to which these marks will apply is the buffalo, well known in Egypt and in various parts of Western Asia. It may be so far reckoned of the goat kind, as the horns are not smooth and even as in the beeve, but rough and wrinkled ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... Had Brutus been a timorous Conscience-harry'd, weak-headed Wretch, had he been under the Horror of the Guilt, and terrify'd with the Dangers that were before him at that time, we might suggest that he was over-run with the Vapours, that the Terrors which were upon his Mind disorder'd ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... for you,' returned Mr. Beverly, gaily. If you were a timorous old maid, now, who would really like all her money in her stocking in gold pieces, only she's ashamed to say so! But a young fellow like you with no responsibility, no wife, and butcher's ...
— Mother • Owen Wister
... Mary Magdalene with Mary Mother, so near together in one thing, so far apart in another—alike in this, that both were singing. And in that choir—celestial and infernal—sang the jealous woman with grey cheeks and haggard eyes, and the timorous woman, and she of the fearless face, and the woman who could scale the stars for the creature she worshipped, and the woman who could lie down in the mud and let the world see her there, and the woman who had sold her soul for food, and a thin woman, such a thin, almost transparent, ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... directly across the bookshop. But these letters of his were addressed to his friends the Imperialists before the War, and one may guess the rest. Such an exposure moves one to sorrow over a writer whose omniscience used to make the timorous believe that arrogance, if lively enough, had some ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... cottages, where furtive forms lurked in door-ways and behind curtains. And Paul had only one word of advice to give, upon which he harped continually: "Be thou very courageous—be thou very courageous." Nothing new, for so it was written in the oldest book of all. The starosta was a timorous man, needing such strong support as his master gave him from ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... me a thought timorous, having the bit laddie Benjie fast asleep in my arms; and as I saw that Tammie's horse was a wee fidgety; and glad, I dare say, poor thing, to find itself so near home. We heard the water, far down below, roaring and hushing over the rocks, and thro' among the Duke's woods—big, thick, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... leap from the cupboard on the second, the silent watching of those five pairs of eyes on the third, and the lackey with the knife in his breast hopping with both feet horribly across the floor,—the horror of these recollections swept in upon him and changed him from a man into a timorous child. He lay and shuddered until in every creak of the branches he heard the whisper of an enemy, in every flutter of leaves across the lawn a stealthy footstep, and behind every tree-stem he caught the ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... the downy dowagers nestle on the bough While the timorous voices soften low with dread, And we, walking underneath, little reckon their Mysteries are ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... at the weapon in the king's hand. He measured the distance between himself and the king. He well knew the reputed cowardice of Leopold. Could he make the leap and strike up the king's hand before the timorous monarch found even the courage of the cornered rat to fire at him? Then his eyes sought the face of the king, searching for the signs of nervous terror that would make his conquest an easy one; but what he saw in the eyes that ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Address'd the monarch with a smile: "My liege, most humbly I make bold, Though truth may not be always told, That this same phantom which you hear, That so alarms your royal ear, Is not a rival of your throne: The voice and fears are all your own." Imaginary terrors scare A timorous soul with real fear; Nay, even the wise and brave are cow'd By apprehensions from the crowd: A frog a lion may disharm, And yet how causeless ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... upon negligence alone, but doubting to bring themselves into melancholy, in respect they shall find it broken. But wounds cannot be cured without searching. He that cannot look into his own estate at all, had need both choose well those whom he employeth, and change them often; for new are more timorous and less subtle. He that can look into his estate but seldom, it behooveth him to turn all to certainties. A man had need, if he be plentiful in some kind of expense, to be as saving again in some other. As if he be plentiful in diet, to be saving in apparel; if he be plentiful in the hall, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... certainty," he said. "When word reaches their Lordships in England, they will not fail to make complaint to the Spanish Council,—and they have no just cause for refusing to set us free. But I trust we shall not have to wait for that. If we had a Governor of spirit, instead of a timorous old man like Sayle, he would have already sent the frigate down here to demand us of the Spaniards. There are not lacking men to carry out the enterprise: Captain Brayne could scarce be restrained from swooping down ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... took up his bundle and obeyed the summons, advancing with an awkward almost stumbling step, suggestive of actual weakness as well as the extremity of shyness. Reaching the two men, he touched his cap humbly, and stood with timorous eyes upraised to ...
— "Seth" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... have offended against the laws of God and nature, if he was the faithful viceroy of an empire wrested in blood from the people to whom God and nature had given it. He may and must have preserved that unjust dominion over timorous and abject nations by a terrifying overbearing, insulting superiority, If he was the faithful administrator of your government, which, leaving no root in consent or affection no foundation in similarity of interests—no support from any one principle which cements ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... hearing what he said. Dorn contemplated her confusedly. He frowned at the thought of having bored her, and an impulse to step abruptly from her side and leave became a part of his anger. He hesitated in his walking and her fingers, timorous and unconscious of themselves, reached for his arm. He wondered with a deeper confusion what she was dreaming about. Her hand as it lay on his forearm gave him a sense of companionship which his words ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... wrote it, had broken off utterly from the Presbyterians, and regarded the domination of that party in the Westminster Assembly with complete disgust. "If it come to inquisitioning again, and licensing," he says, "and that we are so timorous of ourselves, and so suspicious of all men, as to fear each book, and the shaking of every leaf, before we know what the contents are,—if some, who but of late were little better than silenced from preaching, shall come now to silence us from reading, except what they please,—it ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... if thou are not over timorous even for a love-sick youth," she sighed. "And must thou go when my heart inclineth to hours spent with thee? And yet at night the stars come out so 'tis said, and can be seen from the roof of ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... to hear him say so, and a horrible idea that he had contracted a secret marriage with that foreign woman crossed her mind. Was this the difficulty that she did not understand? She grew timorous, afraid that he was going to tell her something—set before her some moral problem which she could not possibly solve. What if he were trying to entrap her, to lure her into taking sides with him over something no King or Government ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... rapacity. The state of society is a state of war between the sovereign and all the rest of its members. In every country alike the morality of the people is wholly neglected, and the one care of the government is to render them timorous and wretched. The common man desires no more than bread; he wins it by the sweat of his brow; joyfully would he eat it, if the injustice of the government did not make it bitter in his mouth. By the insanity of governments, those who are swimming in plenty, without being any the happier for it, yet ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... great. He explains the manner in which he has aided needy soldiers and other persons in want, and reassigned encomiendas of persons deceased. As for the natives, Sande says that they are not simple, foolish, or timorous; "they can be dealt with only by the arquebuse, or by gifts of gold or silver." He has maintained good discipline among the soldiers, and reformed them from the vicious habits which had been prevalent among them. He asks that ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson
... forward with such upbraidings that we shall be utterly confounded. For, if we are obliged to bear testimony to God, according to the measure of the knowledge which He has given us, to what is it owing, I would ask, that we are so cold and timorous in entering into battle, seeing that God has so fully manifested Himself at this time that He may be said to have opened to us and displayed before us the great treasures of His secrets? May it not be said that we do ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... him, did not attempt to disturb his solitude. However, after two hours, appearing to have formed a resolution, he came to find Cyrus Harding. His eyes were red with the tears he had shed, but he wept no longer. His countenance expressed deep humility. He appeared anxious, timorous, ashamed, and his eyes were constantly fixed ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... drum is silent, all but the tap that regulates each simultaneous footfall. The soldiers yield the path to the dusty hearse and unpretending train, and the children quit their ranks and cluster on the sidewalks with timorous and instinctive curiosity. The mourners enter the churchyard at the base of the steeple and pause by an open grave among the burial-stones; the lightning glimmers on them as they lower down the coffin, and the thunder rattles heavily while they throw the earth upon its ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... snake-charmer, heard that there was a large one in Beharilal's garden, he thought he might do good business by capturing it for the Jadoo-walla Saheb, and at the same time demanding a reward from the timorous Bunia for ridding him of such a dangerous neighbour. With this intent he repaired to the garden with all the apparatus of his art, his flat snake baskets, his mongoose and his crooked pipe. Having reconnoitred ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... essential difference that if nothing could be too big to stagger Vogelstein, nothing likewise could be too small to deter him. I knew his shop, or rather his palace, and had observed the relish with which he could shame a timorous art student into giving three prices for a print. It afforded him no more pleasure, one could surmise, to impose a false Rembrandt at six figures upon a wavering iron-master, or, indeed to unload an historic but rather worthless collection upon Morrison himself. ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... are much more profoundly involved than we, he [the father] caused me to be wakened by the sound of some musical instrument, and was never unprovided of a musician for that purpose.... The good man, being extremely timorous of any way failing in a thing he had so wholly set his heart upon, suffered himself at last to be overruled by the common opinions:... he sent me, at six years of age, to the College of Guienne, at that time the best and most flourishing ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... received without question, as a reporter for the "Clarion." At first Sadie Breen, anaemic, hopeless-eyed, timorous, was reluctant to speak. But ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... room-door, came the last outburst of her invectives, high-pitched in their voluble utterance, against him, against them both, against everybody, including Mr. Raddle in the kitchen—"a base, faint-hearted, timorous wretch, that's afraid to come upstairs and face the ruffinly creaturs—that's afraid to come—that's afraid!" Ending with her screaming descent of the stairs in the midst of a loud double-knock, upon the arrival just then of the Pickwickians, when, ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... do you shun me, Chloe, like the fawn, That, fearful of the breezes and the wood, Has sought her timorous mother since the dawn And on the pathless mountain ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... as they are, but rather because of the waste which their existence as a class necessitates. All this we have to teach people, when we have taught ourselves; and I admit that the work is long and burdensome; as I began by saying, people have been made so timorous of change by the terror of starvation that even the unluckiest of them are stolid and hard to move. Hard as the work is, however, its reward is not doubtful. The mere fact that a body of men, however small, are banded together as Socialist missionaries ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... leave her rival in the lurch in that way, but I suppose in order to get one man she has to take both. It is a little hard on Miss Calthea"; and with an amused glance towards the couple on the bluff she moved towards the gardens. Her mind was in a half-timorous and undetermined state, in which she would have been glad to wander about by herself and to meet nobody, or, if it so should happen, glad to meet somebody; and wistfully, but yet timidly, she wondered which it would be. All at once she heard a step behind her. In spite ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... wondering and timorous, but all about her the men sprang up and shouted, and tossed up bill and sword, and the echo of their cries came back from the bowmen on the left, and Christopher's sword came rattling out of the scabbard and went gleaming up aloft. Then words came into ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... timorous souls, who in this terrible moment of our history, reproach themselves for having loved and served the cause of the weak. They see only one point in space, they believe that the people whom they have loved ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... easily be urged, if a minister be thus left at liberty to delate sinners from the pulpit, and to publish at will the crimes of a parishioner, he may often blast the innocent, and distress the timorous. He may be suspicious, and condemn without evidence; he may be rash, and judge without examination; he may be severe, and treat slight offences with too much harshness; he may be malignant and partial, and gratify ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... which I had never looked at it before. A God that is true, that can be absolutely trusted! Where will you find one in any heathen Pantheon? Conceive now a thoughtful, honest man passing from the timorous worship of such gods to the rest and comfort and courage which come from knowing and trusting Him who is true, and you will begin to realize what that ...
— American Missionary, Volume 44, No. 6, June, 1890 • Various
... but Ann's own shadow that her fear gave a voice and a touch to. Say naught to frighten Ann, father; she is the most timorous maid ...
— Giles Corey, Yeoman - A Play • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... figure of his unknown guest rolled over, picked itself up, and stood revealed, a woman, not a child, as he had at first thought. And then a feeling of sick, shrinking fear came over Sherston, for there fell on his ears the once horribly familiar accents—plaintive, wheedling, falsely timorous—of his dead ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... The two reasons they knew were, firstly, that Almanza had proved to be too timorous as regarded the taking of life, and secondly that his death would give them a greater share ...
— John Frewen, South Sea Whaler - 1904 • Louis Becke
... who believes in heroic measures, has been quietly trying to persuade the "Dictator"—that is, the would-be "Dictator"—to allow him to burn up the wrecked houses wholesale without the tedious bother of pulling them down and handling the debris. The timorous committees would not countenance such an idea. Nothing but piecemeal tearing down of the wrecked houses tossed together by the mighty force of the water and destruction by never-dying bonfires would satisfy them. Yet all of them must come down. Most of the buildings ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... lead in laboriously protecting themselves against enemies of whom there is no sign in any quarter. Within the last half-century only have the nations of the world begun to compete with each other in this timorous and costly rivalry. In the warlike days of old, armaments in time of peace consisted in little more than solid walls for defence, a supply of weapons stored away here and there, sometimes in a room attached to the parish church, and occasional martial exercises with the sword or the ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... Indian partisans of Detroit were with him; that I wanted an excuse to put them to death or otherwise treat them as I thought proper; that the cries of the widows and the fatherless on the frontiers, which they had occasioned, now required their blood from my hand; and that I did not choose to be so timorous as to disobey the absolute commands of their authority, which I looked upon to be next to divine; that I would rather lose fifty men than not to empower myself to execute this piece of business with propriety; that, if he chose to risk the massacre of his garrison for their sakes, it was ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... commission to him and to Clarence to levy troops; Hastings, see to this forthwith. Ye say Sir Robert Welles leads the Lincolnshire varlets; I know the nature of his father, the Lord Welles,—a fearful and timorous one; I will send for him, and the father's head shall answer for the son's faith. Pardon me, dear cousin, that I leave you to attend these matters. Prithee visit our queen, meanwhile, she ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... natural, for by remaining they might seem to be identifying themselves with a cause that was either lost or lawless. With the tribunes vanished the last trace of legality. The priests closed the temple to keep its precincts from the mob. The more timorous of the crowd fled in wild disorder, spreading wilder rumours. Tiberius was deposing the remaining tribunes from office; he was appointing himself to a further tribunate without the ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... the young woman, "that is not the way. They are docile enough, but frightened. Encourage 'em, and let 'em look at it. Give 'em time. More haste less speed, with timorous cattle." ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... himself go, the fear, shall I say, of failure, of the fantastic or ridiculous attitudes a man necessarily assumes in falling from a height, will keep him forever from the loftier way. It is not that his temperament is naturally timorous and cold; if he is afraid of anything, he is afraid of his own rashness, his own heat. There are about him delicacies and repugnances, a certain carefully cultivated restraint, and a half-critical, half-imaginative caution which, we submit, is incompatible with ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... timorous trout I wait To take, and he devours my bait. How poor a thing, sometimes I find, Will captivate a greedy mind; And when none bite, I praise the wise, Whom vain allurements ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... play. Two continents of cloud met and exchanged salvos overhead; while all round the horizon we could see sunshine and clear air upon the hills. What with the guns and the thunder, the herds were all frightened in the Golden Valley. We could see them tossing their heads, and running to and fro in timorous indecision; and when they had made up their minds, and the donkey followed the horse, and the cow was after the donkey, we could hear their hooves thundering abroad over the meadows. It had a martial sound, like cavalry charges. And altogether, as far as the ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and meanwhile the work of negotiation went prosperously on. The minds of the Indians had been already prepared. In La Salle they saw their champion against the Iroquois, the standing terror of all this region. They gathered around his stronghold like the timorous peasantry of the middle ages around the rock-built castle of their feudal lord. From the wooden ramparts of St. Louis,—for so he named his fort,— high and inaccessible as an eagle's nest, a strange scene lay before his eye. The broad flat ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... sorrow and tears of sinners. Consequently, men see the Divinity only on the side most conformable to their present interests. A God always angry would discourage his worshippers, or throw them into despair. Men must have a God, who is both irritable, and placable. If his anger frightens some timorous souls, his clemency encourages the resolutely wicked, who depend upon recurring, sooner or later, to the means of accommodation. If the judgments of God terrify some faint-hearted pious persons, who ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... Arthur! take a better spirit; Be not so timorous to rehearse your wrongs: I say, your husband haunts bad company, Swaggerers, cheaters, wanton courtesans; There he defiles his body, stains his soul, Consumes his wealth, undoes himself and you In danger ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... little pricks of daily life. Sometimes I recognize with foreboding the kindly but stupid hand of one who tells with many words news that is no news. I have met a bishop with a jocose hand, a humourist with a hand of leaden gravity, a man of pretentious valour with a timorous hand, and a quiet, apologetic man with a fist of iron. When I was a little girl I was taken to see[A] a woman who was blind and paralysed. I shall never forget how she held out her small, trembling hand and pressed ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... disappointed; the opposition to his schemes has, indeed, exhibited, if anything, too much of the style of "bated breath" to befit the dignity of independent legislators; and the only result of this timorous dissent has been to inflame him with the notion that the public men who offered it were conscious that the people were on his side, and concealed anxiety for their own popularity under a feigned indisposition to quarrel ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... similar subjects. He had been appointed also by Lord Clannaboy to the parish of Killinchy; and, "because it was needful that he should be ordained to the ministry, and the Bishop of Down, in whose diocese Killinchy was, being a corrupt and timorous man, and would require some engagement, therefore my Lord Clannaboy sent some with me, and wrote to Mr. Andrew Knox, Bishop of Raphoe, who told me he knew my errand, and that I came to him because I had scruples against episcopacy ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... must be spent upon their gestation and education, in their period of growth, duration of life, and in fact in all those profounder habits which constitute what is called the 'nature' of any individual existence."[119] This is handsome, and leaves the more timorous reader in full possession ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... work, and it would be unpardonable in a short discourse. It is sufficient to observe that they were all more or less shackled by the barbarous philosophy of the schools, and that they were impeded in their progress by a timorous deference for the inferior and technical parts of the Roman law, without raising their views to the comprehensive principles which will for ever inspire mankind with veneration for that grand monument of human wisdom. It was only indeed in the sixteenth century ...
— A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations • James Mackintosh
... governors came forward. The people are timorous, said they; we must threaten them; they will submit only to force. Soldiers, chastise this ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... compos'd and high exploit: But all was false and hollow; though his Tongue Dropt Manna, and could make the worse appear The better reason, to perplex and dash Maturest Counsels: for his thoughts were low; To vice industrious, but to Nobler deeds Timorous and slothful: yet he pleas'd the eare, And with perswasive accent thus began. I should be much for open Warr, O Peers, As not behind in hate; if what was urg'd 120 Main reason to perswade immediate Warr, Did not disswade me most, and seem to cast Ominous conjecture on the whole success: ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... caution of the one proposed—several undoubted and very great improvements in details, and, above all, a formal recognition of the principle of agricultural protection, still further allayed the fears of the most timorous. To us it appears, that the simple principle of a scale of duties, adapted to admit foreign corn when we want it, and exclude it when we can grow sufficient ourselves, is abundantly vindicated, and will not be disturbed for many years to come, if even then. Has this principle been surrendered ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... quite roughly rebuffed. From the very first day, throw a child back on its own resources—even a little cruelly sometimes. But don't neglect it, don't have a negative attitude to it. Play with it, tease it and roll it over as a dog her puppy, mock it when it is too timorous, laugh at it, scold it when it really bothers you—for a child must learn not to bother another person—and when it makes you genuinely angry, spank it soundly. But always remember that it is a single little soul by itself; and that the responsibility ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... ten years. She was so timorous that she would grow pale whenever she spoke to any one, and she thought of nothing but the blows with which she was threatened; and she became thinner, more yellow and ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... was the innkeeper—evidently a timorous fellow; the hunchback was his 'man'—malevolent probably, the doer of the other's dark behests; whilst the woman was presumably his wife, the cook and housekeeper ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... look on, lean over And love (they pretend) —Cower beneath them, the flat sea-pine crouches, The wild fruit-trees bend; E'en the myrtle leaves curl, shrink and shut, All is silent and grave: 'Tis a sensual and timorous beauty. How ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... her were not benevolent. He knew her to be mendacious, timorous, and a malicious friend. He had proof that she was given to falling in love with actors of the lowest type, or, at all events, that she made shift with them. He was not certain that she did not deceive him, not that he had discovered anything suspect in the life which she ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... that angling is an art: is it not an art to deceive a trout with an artificial fly? a trout that is more sharp-sighted than any hawk you have named, and more watchful and timorous than your high-mettled merlin is bold; and yet I doubt not to catch a brace or two to-morrow for a friend's breakfast. Doubt not, therefore, sir, but that angling is an art, and an art worth your learning. The question is rather, whether you be capable ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... he certainly would not have qualified them to fill such places with honor; and history proves that he did both qualify and employ them. Deborah was both a prophetess and a judge, and at one time was the chief ruler in Israel, even leading on the hosts of the living God; for timorous Barak would not go without her. Huldah, wife of Shallum, a prophetess who flourished in the reign of Josiah, was consulted by him on matters of vital importance to his kingdom, although both Jeremiah and Zephaniah were then ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... day, you see, had a certain timorous respect for the technique of the stage. It never occurred to us to make light of those literary conventions which it was not our business to understand. We were behind you fellows in every way. But Pharazyn was a sort of forerunner: he said that any intelligent ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... drain From Lilith's famished heart its wildest pain. Wherefore, my Eblis, it were wise to seek Surcease of grief. That Lilith, is so weak Who wedded thee; and that she sinned, knew not. Yet, if we part, mayhap may follow naught Of other ills." "Sweet love," he laughed, "o'er-late Thou art so timorous. At Eden's gate Not so, what time the angel barred her way My Lilith stood. Shelter within my arms. Oh, say, Was not our young love sweet? Hath it grown cold? With me thou sharest endless life; nor old, Nor shrivelled, shalt thou be. And not one trace ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... fear of being seen by any stranger, that the sound of a voice with which they were not acquainted at the outside of the paling, or the trampling of feet, would set them all a running behind the bushes to hide themselves, like so many timorous partridges in a mew, hurrying behind sheaves of corn for shelter; they even found a convenience in their size, which, though it rendered them unwilling to be seen, enabled them so easily to ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... sheltering hour he nightly came, And found her trusty window open wide, And knew the signal of the timorous flame, That long the restless curtain would not hide Her form that stood beside; As scarce she dared to be delighted, Listening to that sweet tale, that is no shame To faithful lovers, that their hearts ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... because of the many damages they have inflicted, and the experience that the latter have of their courage and valor. I have kept this conference secret, and ordered it kept so, in order that the Chinese might not hear of it, as they are a very suspicious and timorous race. I have made much of these Japanese, and am treating them with especial hospitality. I am writing to the king of Firando in your Majesty's name, in generous terms, thanking him for his offer. The devotion and Christian zeal of this race is remarkable, and puts ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... The timorous, odorous violet must be sprouting on the damp ground yonder under the alders! And he went looking along the stream for those little purple flowers that bring dreams of love with their fragrance! He would make a bouquet to offer ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... This maxim is not made for a middle sort of beings, who, because they cannot be angels, ought to thwart their ambition, and not endeavor to become infernal spirits. It is too well exemplified in the present time, where the faults and errors of humanity, checked by the imperfect, timorous virtues, have been overpowered by those who have stopped at no crime. It is a dreadful part of the example, that infernal malevolence has had pious apologists, who read their lectures on frailties in favor of crimes,—who abandon the weak, and court the friendship ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... course, you are expected to pay, whether you use it or not. Some of these fellows have a truly ruffianly aspect, and waylay you in secluded lanes and narrow pathways; and carrying a broom-stump, which looks marvellously like a bludgeon, no doubt often levy upon the apprehensions of a timorous pedestrian a contribution which his charity would not be so blind as to bestow. The whole of this tribe constitute a monster-nuisance, which ought to be abated by ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various
... for some unknown reason, moved silently closer—and there was a strange timorousness in her movement—a timorous desire. Piotr complied with her wish, and sat down at her side. She looked at him tenderly, lovingly. Her glances touched ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... is a god and has wings and flies, and so do many other gods. First of all, Victory flies with golden wings, Eros is undoubtedly winged too, and Iris is compared by Homer to a timorous dove.[239] If men in their blindness do not recognize you as gods and continue to worship the dwellers in Olympus, then a cloud of sparrows greedy for corn must descend upon their fields and eat up all their seeds; we shall see then if Demeter will ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... bread was always to be had in plenty, and as cheap as usual, as I said above; and provisions were never wanting in the markets, even to such a degree that I often wondered at it, and reproached myself with being so timorous and cautious in stirring abroad, when the country people came freely and boldly to market, as if there had been no manner of infection in the city, or danger of ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... surpassing excellence of our guest as an artistical performer, one is really at a loss to say in what line of character he has excelled the most. The Titanic grandeur of Lear, the human debasement of Werner, the frank vivacity of Henry V, the gloomy and timorous guilt of King John, or that—his last—personation of Macbeth, in which it seemed to me that he conveyed a more correct notion of what Shakespeare designed than I can recollect to have read in the most profound of the German critics; ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... carry the daily milk, the ice-man to leave the daily ice. But either of these would be afraid of exposing their vehicles to the heating orb of day,—the milkman afraid of turning the milk, the ice-man timorous of melting his ice,—and they probably avoid those directions where they shall meet the sun's rays. The student, who might inform us, has been burning the midnight oil. The student is not in the mood ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... daylight; and we were hopeful for aid from Montreal; but Marguerite Fontaine, being timorous as all Parisian women are, begged her husband to try and escape. The poor husband was almost distracted as she insisted, and he told her he would set her out in the canoe with her two sons, who could paddle ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... husbands have, it is true; nor is it necessary for husbands in general. But Constance was not an ordinary woman; she loved deeply, but she loved according to her nature—as a woman proud and exacting must love. For Godolphin, her haughty step waxed timorous and vigilant; she always sprang forward the first to meet him on his return from his solitary ramblings, and he smiled upon her with his wonted gentleness but not so gratefully, thought Constance, as he ought. In truth, he had been too much accustomed ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was ever sprightly and vigorous it was when the cardinal was with him, for he depended so much on everything he did, he that was at the utmost dilemma when he was absent, always timorous, ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... arrived on board, we still found, from their cautious and timorous behaviour, that they were under some unaccountable apprehensions; and an uncommon degree of satisfaction was visible in their countenances, on the German's finding a person amongst us with whom he ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... flight of steps which led to an upper storey as an appointed amelioration to the hours which she was expected to spend in the garden, for it was an easy scramble from the stairs to the top of the wall, whence she could survey the world. To be sure the wall was narrow as well as high, but a timorous gait shows off a pretty figure, and slight nervousness adds a pathetic expression to a pretty face; to both of which advantages Dot was not, it is to be believed, altogether indifferent when khaki coats dwelt the other side ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 14, 1917 • Various
... easily managed to get lost in the nearby groves. In the kitchen, too, she made her authority felt like a regular house-mistress, but the minute that she heard her husband's voice she shrank into a respectful and timorous silence. Upon sitting down at table, the China would look at him with devoted submission, her great, round eyes fixed on him, like an owl's. Desnoyers felt that in this mute admiration was mingled great astonishment at the energy with which ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... accounted handsome in a crude, back-country way and fancied himself the devil of a fellow with the ladies. "Wa'al," he drawled, "I reckon ef a gal kin undertake hit, I hain't none more timorous then what she air." And to that frankly spoken sentiment he added an inward after-word. "Folks 'lows thet she hain't got no time o' day fer men—but when we ends up this hyar trip, I'll know more erbout thet fer myself." He turned ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... report carries with it some of the needful corrections, at least for a careful reader. For instance, Major Brooks's general summary is, that "the black is more timorous than the white, but is in a corresponding degree more docile and obedient, hence more completely under the control of his commander, and much more influenced by his example." But when we read on the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... of rest, that pause of preparation, as though night hesitated to awaken her countless myrmidons. With the lisping of invisible leaves the Great Master's music-book unfolded. That low, orchestral "F"—the dominant note of all nature's melodies—sounded in timorous unison—an experimental murmuring. Repeated in higher octaves, it swelled to shrill confidence, then a hundred, then myriad invisibles chanted to their beloved night or gossiped of ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... of the Wgmundings; fate has swept all my kindred off into Eternity; I must follow them." That was his latest word; his soul went out of his breast into the lot of the just. Reflections and discourses proper to the occasion are spoken by Wiglaf, such as chiding of the timorous who stood aloof, and ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... kept out of his hands. For when I was come to my friend's house, there was whispering that that day I should be taken, for there was a warrant out to take me; which when my friend heard, he being somewhat timorous, questioned whether we had best have our meeting or not; and whether it might not be better for me to depart, lest they should take me and have me before the justice, and after that send me to prison (for he knew better than I what spirit they were of, living by them): ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... all gave me exquisite pleasure, as a child might find delight in some strange toy from which it could call weird shapes at will. On it moved with a noiseless, gliding motion; now inside the door, now coming, coming, coming—nearly to me. Now it let fall a timorous blade of light along the floor. It reached Broussard's body. Its foot struck him. It stooped, threw the light full upon him. Open fell the concealing mantle, showing the barren stones, the corpse, the ghastly upturned face of the ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... such multitudes, that we cannot exaggerate in saying that at a single glance we saw three thousand of them before us. Of all the animals we had seen the antelope seems to possess the most wonderful fleetness: shy and timorous they generally repose only on the ridges, which command a view of all the approaches of an enemy: the acuteness of their sight distinguishes the most distant danger, the delicate sensibility of their smell defeats the precautions of ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... endless whirlwinds tost, His strength exhausted, and his viands lost, When land invites him to receive at last A full reward for every danger past: Can he then wish his labours to renew, And fly the port just opening to his view? Not less the folly of the timorous mind, Which dreads that peace, it ever longs to find; Which worn with age, and tost in endless strife On this rough ocean, this tempestuous life, Still covets pain, and shakes with abject fear, When sickness points to death, and shews the haven near. The love of life, it yet must ...
— Poems on Serious and Sacred Subjects - Printed only as Private Tokens of Regard, for the Particular - Friends of the Author • William Hayley
... reluctant to admit a man who was regarded as dangerous, or at any rate extraordinary, and, in consequence, not quite "respectable," to their midst. However, his fame as a musician and Braun's good offices gained him access to four or five of the less timorous or more curious families, who were perhaps artistically snobbish enough to desire to gain particularity. They were none the less careful to keep an eye on him, and to maintain a respectable distance between ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... many naval men who thought the venture dangerous in the extreme, and sought to dissuade Flinders from undertaking it. But his was no timorous nature—"a small craft, 'tis true," he ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... their governess looked timorous, and as if they knew not where to cast their eyes for shamefacedness; but not so Mistress Clorinda, who moved forward with a stately, swimming gait, her fine head in the air. As she stepped into the porch a young ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... never felt like that; and as she evaded his questions the something within her demanding life and expression grew stronger and more rebellious, more contemptuous of the fear-precepts congenial to a nature timorous and less vitalized. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... what a new feeling it is for me to have someone who is to like my verses or I shall not ever like them after! So far differently was I circumstanced of old, that I used rather to go about for a subject of offence to people; writing ugly things in order to warn the ungenial and timorous off my grounds at once. I shall never do so again at least! As it is, I will bring all I dare, in as great quantities as I can—if not next time, after then—certainly. I must make an end, print ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... and tenants who had long lain mouldering in their humble graves—their way thither cheered and smoothed by Mrs. Aubrey's Christian charity and benevolence! 'Twas a touching sight to see her two beautiful grandchildren, in whose company she delighted, brought, with a timorous and half-reluctant air, into her presence. How strange must have seemed to them the cheerfulness of the motionless figure always lying in the bed; a cheerfulness which, though gentle as gentle could be, yet sufficed not to assure the little things, ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... named Philip. He was a preacher; was said to have been born with a caul on his head, and so claimed the gift of second-sight. Timid adherents were brought to his house for ghostly counsel. "Why do you look so timorous?" he said to William Garner, and then quoted Scripture, "Let not your heart be troubled." That a blind man should know how he looked, was beyond the philosophy of the visitor; and this piece of rather ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... way in which he, young as he was, could possibly help her, was to withdraw her from the dangerous scene and make her his wife; and on that step he had been for some days resolving. The emotion she had shown, the timorous joy, the sweet confidence in his love and honor, had given a rapturous feeling of happiness to him quite new. He had intended benevolently and kindly; he had met with all the blessings ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... the jingling jungles to jangle in, With a moony maze of mellado mull, And a protoplasm for next of kin. O, sweet is the note of the shagreen shard And mellow the mew of the mastodon, When the soboliferous Somminard Is scenting the shadows at set of sun. And it's O for the timorous tamarind In the murky meadows of Mariboo, For the suave sirocco of Sazerkind, And the ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... with "those timorous souls who believe that science, in explaining everything, — as they singularly fancy, — will destroy the possibility of poetry, of the novel, in short of all works of the imagination: the idea seeming to be that the imagination always requires ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... privilege myself, damsel," said Guarine; "but for these fellows, they are not so timorous as you suppose them, being even too ready to avouch their roguery when it hath less excuse—Besides, I promised them impunity.—Have you any thing ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... one quick timorous transient star; The waves outside where breakers are Huzza like a mad multitude. "Where the sun ups it, mist-imbued," I cry, "there reigns the star for me!" The wind outshrieks from points and peaks: "Here, westward, where ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... an hour later a watchman espied the open window. He whistled a policeman to his aid and together, after a period of timorous deliberation, they entered and with many discreet pauses tiptoed over the building. They found David in the corridor, where he had given up crawling, weakly trying to stanch ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... is Argyle now, his kinsmen to rally? Where, where is the chieftain with timorous soul? On Linnhe's grey waters he crouched in his galley, And saw as a traitor the battle blast roll:— Ungrasped was the hilt of his broadsword, still sleeping, Unheard was his voice in the moment of need; Secure from the rage of fierce foemen, death-sweeping, He sought not by valour, his clansmen ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... timorous Madame Delphine many trifles became, one after another, an impediment to the making of this proposal, and many weeks elapsed before further delay was positively without excuse. But at length, one day in May, 1822, in a small private office behind ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... by your indifferent, affected air! You shall know that I do not fear you—you and all the ghosts that you can conjure up. You think that you frighten me; you wish that I should pay you dearly for your secret. But you shall know that I am not at all of a timorous nature, and that I shall pay no money for the solution of a riddle which I may perhaps be able to solve without your help. I warn you, sir, you secret-vender, be well on your guard! You have your spies, but I have my police, and they inform me about every thing out of the usual course. ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... my friends with my small offerings cannot but feel comfortable and encouraging to a poor timorous creature like me; but the awful consideration of ranking among the servants who speak in the Lord's name humbles me to the dust. Surely those who are designed to minister before the Lord in his holy temple ought to bear the inscription of holiness upon them. The means by which this ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... Tedham ventured, with a sort of timorous slyness, "that perhaps you might approach it casually, without ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... Alexandrovna felt that the young man was really too eccentric and pinched her hand too much, in her anxiety over her Rodya she looked on his presence as providential, and was unwilling to notice all his peculiarities. But though Avdotya Romanovna shared her anxiety, and was not of timorous disposition, she could not see the glowing light in his eyes without wonder and almost alarm. It was only the unbounded confidence inspired by Nastasya's account of her brother's queer friend, which prevented her from trying to ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... beginning of the Revolution the Marquise de Combray had numbered herself among the unchangeable royalists. Her husband, a timorous and quiet man, who employed in reading the hours that he did not consecrate to sleep, had long since abandoned to her the direction of the household and the management of his fortune. Widowhood had but strengthened the authority of the Marquise, who reigned over a little world ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... all projects: each breath or rumor made the people start with anxiety: their enemies, they thought, were in their very bosom, and had gotten possession of their sovereign's confidence. While in this timorous, jealous disposition, the cry of a plot all on a sudden struck their ears: they were wakened from their slumber, and like men affrightened and in the dark, took every figure for a spectre. The ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... and Beelzebub spoke. Moloch was in favor of open war, since nothing could be worse than Hell, and continued assault against the Most High would, in annoying him, be a sweet revenge. Belial, who though timorous and slothful, was a persuasive orator, denounced Moloch's plan. Since the ruler of Heaven was all-powerful, and they immortal, no one knew to what greater misery he could push them; perhaps he would bury them in boiling pitch to eternity, or inflict ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... Pearson asked with timorous joy, "but is that the American for saying you'll be good enough ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... whether it would have been the more unworthy thing to pass such a bill or to pass none at all; but the last, being the most timorous course, had been adopted for ten successive years, as it has also been resorted to in the ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell |
