"Cowardice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rush in!" whispered Juon to Szilard. But the latter could not help thinking at that moment that it was an act of cowardice to attack a man when he could not defend himself, even though that man was a robber, so he allowed him to scramble out onto ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... impatience at the supposed injury, and catching hold of his boar-spear; "I will go with my complaint to the great council; I have friends, I have followers—man to man will I appeal the Norman to the lists; let him come in his plate and his mail, and all that can render cowardice bold; I have sent such a javelin as this through a stronger fence than three of their war shields!—Haply they think me old; but they shall find, alone and childless as I am, the blood of Hereward is in the veins of Cedric.—Ah, Wilfred, Wilfred!" he exclaimed ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... their grandeur, it cost them two great wars, and three great battles, to subdue that little kingdom, of which the conquest would probably have been still more difficult, had it not been for the cowardice of its last king. The militias of all the civilized nations of the ancient world, of Greece, of Syria, and of Egypt, made but a feeble resistance to the standing armies of Rome. The militias of some barbarous nations defended themselves much better. ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... cherish the sentiment that it were base cowardice to lay hand upon the lunatic save in kindness; and yet restrain him from himself and the community from him. We may couple his restraints with the largest liberty compatible with his welfare and ours; we may not always ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... for an instant; if it means incessant toil quietly performed, vast sums collected and disbursed, time sacrificed, strength spent; if it means holding up a great iniquity to loathing by a powerful pen, and nailing moral cowardice where-ever it showed; if it be risking livelihood by introducing the cause of the slave into every literary work, and by mingling the school-culture of fifty future mothers, year by year, with hatred of the sin; if it means one's life in one's ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... the baron thought that he said this out of fear, or cowardice, he changed his tone, and hurried him up to his house to partake of some refreshment after his ride, while he gave orders to his ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... You must see that even cowardice couldn't excuse her selfishness in letting that girl take all ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the Egyptians would be equally flattered to hear that the son of a Cairene merchant had made the conquest of a Frankish Princess Royal. That he was an arrant poltroon mattered very little, as his cowardice only set of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... seems to me, you ought to now. He is a handsome fellow, dashing and reckless, the kind to make an impression. She was flattered by his attentions, and deceived into the thought that she really cared for him. Then she saw his true nature—his selfishness, brutality, cowardice, even—and revolted. I doubt if I had anything to do with this change—it was bound to come. You are a man, Major Hardy, and must know men—is Le Gaire the kind you would want ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... man had a bow or sword. But the fascination of the standing army upon Mr. Kipling is not courage, which scarcely interests him, but discipline, which is, when all is said and done, his primary theme. The modern army is not a miracle of courage; it has not enough opportunities, owing to the cowardice of everybody else. But it is really a miracle of organization, and that is the truly Kiplingite ideal. Kipling's subject is not that valour which properly belongs to war, but that interdependence and efficiency which belongs ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... the back of Whirlwind, who carried him off with such amazing speed that he was soon separated from his warriors. Deerfoot's lips curled when he heard this statement, for to him it was a proof of the cowardice of the chief. The party had no time to recover the bodies of their fallen comrades, who were left to be scalped and despoiled by the victors, the stray horses also passing into the ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... are talking nonsense. Between ourselves, your wife has absolute power over you only because of your own cowardice. Her authority is founded upon your own weakness; it is from you she takes the name of mistress. You give way to her haughty manners, and suffer yourself to be led by the nose like a fool. What! you call yourself a man, and cannot for once make your wife obey you, and have courage enough ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... coward!" murmured the detective scornfully, looking down at the giant frame that lay prostrate before him. Even in his wide experience he had known of no case of a man of such strength and such bestial cruelty, combined with such utter cowardice. ...
— The Case of The Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study • Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner
... writes: "Cowardice and fear of punishment often lead children into lying," and accordingly, to save her own from temptation, the rule was—"whoever was charged with a fault of which they were guilty, if they would ingenuously confess it and promise to amend should not ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... at hand, and since they exercise over them a certain kind of authority, greater than that which the curas in Espana possess, it will not be imprudent to observe (considering human weakness, and the cowardice of the Indians), that some will not go to confess to those said parish priests without great fear, the common enemy infusing them with fears lest the parish priests perhaps will punish them for the sins that they might confess. Let us add to this that there are no other confessors ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... the steep hill we dashed at full speed, our horses seeming clearly to understand what we were about. Already several more Mexicans had, through their cowardice, lost their lives. We were within two hundred yards of the scene of strife. "Now's the time!" shouted our leader. "Hurrah, hurrah! my lads! Give way, you red scoundrels!" we all shouted at the top of our voices. The Indians, hearing our ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... finer than anything visible, ponderable, or tangible,—that effluence from eye, voice, tone, manner, which, according to the character which is behind, communicates an impulse of faith and courage, or an impulse of cowardice and untruth; which may be transmitted onward, forward, on every side, like the widening circles in a disturbed lake,—circles which meet and cross each other without disturbance, and whose influence may ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... Sam, kind of hefting his sword out from between his knees, 'as your superior officer I could court-martial you for attempted cowardice and desertion. But I won't. And I'll tell you why I'm trying for promotion and the usual honors of war and conquest. A major gets more pay than a captain, ...
— Options • O. Henry
... suggestions utterly unworthy the consideration either of men of sense or of government. With such deplorable illusions does ignorance repel the suggestions of knowledge; theory, of experience; selfishness, of philanthropy; cowardice, of resolution. Thus nothing whatever is done to remedy or avert the existing evils: the districts not endangered unite as one man to resist any attempt to form a general system for the alleviation of misery or diminution of crime in those that are, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... and abnormally keen. She saw him there, bowed under his burden, gloomy and wroth and sick with himself because the man in him despised the coward. Men of his stamp were seldom or never cowards. Their lives did not breed cowardice or baseness. Joan knew the burning in her breast—that thing which inflamed and swept through her like a wind of fire—was hate. Yet her heart held a grain of pity for him. She measured his forbearance, ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... once. We have only seven or eight thousand men here now, and if five thousand English soldiers had landed, we must have raised the siege at once. I can tell you that, though he is on the other side, I was almost as angry at Kirk's cowardice as you must have been. I shall be glad when this awful business is over. I knew it was bad enough before, but after what you have told me about the women and children, I shall never think of anything else, and I will gladly help you in any way I can. There can't be any treason ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... they used sonorous phrases and challenged Sweden to a fight with bare knuckles, but when time for action came—where were they then? She had no idea how he and others were boiling with indignation over this display of loathsome cowardice. And what was the mighty adversary like? Sweden! That invincible world power full of doddering senility! He must compare Sweden to an octogenarian who sat, dead drunk and feeble, and boasted of his warlike temper: "I'll never yield—never!" And when ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... to Caesar, and went out with a face calm and contemptuous. Now, when they had wished to strike him, he had shown his teeth; he had made them understand who he was, and, knowing Nero's cowardice, he was confident that that ruler of the world would never dare to ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... exactly. It is hard to convince commerce and cowardice that at certain times war is the highest of all duties. Neither of them understand patriotism; and yet every trembling pacifist in time of war is ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... and that he should give himself no trouble about it. His lordship was reduced to the extremity either of going in a leaky ship, or absolutely refusing; which he knew his enemies would impute to cowardice, and as he abhorred the imputation, he resolved, in opposition to the advice of his friends, to hazard all; but at the same time advised several volunteers of quality, not to accompany him in the expedition, as ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... victories will repair all. I must set off." Such were the motives which induced the Emperor to leave his army. It is not without indignation that I have heard his precipitate departure attributed to personal cowardice. He was a stranger to such feelings, and was never more happy than on the field of battle. I can readily conceive that he was much alarmed on hearing of Mallet's enterprise. The remarks which he made to Rapp were those which he knew would ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... It was cowardice, I knew, and sooner or later I should have to pay for it. But when he went on to talk about baby, and appealed to his mother to say if she wouldn't look after Girlie when I was gone, and Christian Ann (in such a different tone) ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... coward?" demanded Lady Macbeth, who seems to have thought that morality and cowardice were ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... delicate living there of the Bohemian, Who still to worth has been a willing stranger. The halter of Jerusalem shall see A unit for his virtue, for his vices No less a mark than million. He, who guards The isle of fire by old Anchises honour'd Shall find his avarice there and cowardice; And better to denote his littleness, The writing must be letters maim'd, that speak Much in a narrow space. All there shall know His uncle and his brother's filthy doings, Who so renown'd a nation and two crowns Have bastardized. And ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... said with some severity. A sort of mental cowardice kept me back and hindered me effectually from profiting by her advice. Just then, I felt it was out of my power to meet Sir Alexander. I had not courage to enter his presence in ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... escape the passions that preyed on him, tormenting him. Sorrow, anguish, death; these were at his heels; and, worse than all, he thought his dying wife was following him, pleading for his return. Why had he forsaken her? Was it not cowardice—the cowardice and selfishness of his grief? Once or twice a fascination took hold of him, and, despite the terror that awed him, he threw a glance over his shoulder to see if after all he were pursued by the shadow he so much feared to meet. Then the wind began to utter strange ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... want of moral—moral—what shall I say?—posture, or from some other equally profound cause, were twice as instructive and twenty times more amusing than the usual respectable thief of commerce you fellows ask to sit at your table without any real necessity—from habit, from cowardice, from good-nature, from a hundred sneaking ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... were looking for the trail six of the men from whom we had separated in the morning rode up. They were as much bewildered as I. In fact, I could not account for the actions of the command except that there was rank, craven cowardice somewhere, and the language I used was freely punctuated with adjectives not fit for print. After a long search we discovered where they had left the trail. They had followed a shell rock ridge for a quarter of a mile, probably, ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... of Jean Jacques was absolutely broken down. He says little of the blows with which his offences were punished by his master, but he says enough to enable us to discern that they were terrible to him. This cowardice, if we choose to give the name to an overmastering physical horror, at length brought his apprentice days to an end. He was now in his sixteenth year. He was dragged by his comrades into sports for which he had little inclination, though he ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... the addition of a demand for Cuba and an indorsement of the Dred Scott decision and of any future decisions of the Supreme Court on slavery in the Territories. But the Southerners would not yield a hair's breadth. Yancey, their orator, upbraided Douglas and his followers with cowardice because they did not dare to tell the North that slavery was right. In that strange way the question of right and wrong was forced again upon the man who strove to ignore it. Senator Pugh, of Ohio, spokesman for Douglas, answered the fire-eaters. "Gentlemen of the South," he ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... which helped him not a little in making, what he called, poetry of his own; for, of course, our little hero was a poet. All the common usages of life, all the ways of the world, and all the customs of society, seemed to be quite unknown to him; add to these good qualities, a magnificent conceit, a cowardice inconceivable, and a face so irresistibly comic, that every one who first beheld it was compelled to burst out a-laughing, and you will have some notion of this strange little gentleman. He was very proud of his voice, and ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Sergeant John Stokes, 2nd Battalion Downshire Regiment, is charged with Misbehaving before the enemy in such a manner as to show cowardice, in that he at , on October 3rd, 1914, when on patrol, and when under the enemy's ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... my dear brother; be of good courage, whatever happens." "Fear nothing, my dear sister; I am perfectly so." But she replied, "Brother, brother, let us be humble. Let us remember that humility without fortitude is cowardice, but that fortitude without humility is presumption." "When she arrived at the convent in Paris, she found us for the most part very sad," writes her niece, Mother Angelica de St. Jean, "and some were in tears. She, looking at us with an open and confident countenance, said, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... themselves corroborate such representations. All these pleas, and scores of others, are bruited in every corner of the free States; and who that hath eyes to see, has not sickened at the blindness that saw not, at the palsy of heart that felt not, or at the cowardice and sycophancy that dared not expose such shallow fallacies. We are not to be turned from our purpose by such vapid babblings. In their appropriate places, we propose to consider these objections and various others, and to show their emptiness ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... she might never have learned the truth! He would have played the game to the last round, he would have been kind at least, and she might have lived on in her fool's paradise. Then a wave of contempt swept over her for her own cowardice ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... precipitately that they did not stop to alarm the brigade which they had been stationed to protect, but rapidly galloped down the road, and, crossing the bridge over the Assunpink, made good their escape toward Bordentown. Grave suspicions of cowardice attached thereafter to their commanding officer. Had Ewing performed his part in the plan, the bridge would have been held, and they would have been captured with the rest. Stark's men, followed ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... God!" he said. "My punishment is greater than I can bear. For that one deed of wrong, of cowardice, must I ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... merely took up arms to defend certain rights and privileges of their own. For the dwarfish brother of Ferdinand they always exhibited supreme contempt, which his character, a compound of imbecility, cowardice, and cruelty, well merited. If they made use of his name, it was merely as a cri de guerre. Much the same may be said with respect to his Spanish partisans, at least those who appeared in the field for him. These, however, were of a widely different character from ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... what shall we think of it? Shall we be able to understand why we were afraid to speak to this man or that woman about salvation? Shall we be able to understand how we were ashamed to do what we knew was a Christian duty before one whom we knew to be a mocker at religion? Our cowardice shall seem small to us then. Let us now measure our actions by the standard of that scene, let us now look upon the things of time in the light of eternity, and we shall see them better as they are, and live ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... spread that an army was cut off, and a body of Germans on full march to invade Gaul; so that, under the terror of this news, there were those whose cowardice would have emboldened them to demolish the bridge upon the Rhine, had not Agrippina forbidden the infamous attempt. This high-minded woman took upon herself all the duties of a general, and distributed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... who is sent to settle them by the rough medicine of the sword. Henry Pollock has chosen his side and taken his risk: I have chosen mine and taken my risk, too. If it be his lot when the time comes he will die as a brave man should, for there is no cowardice in Pollock, and when my time comes, may heaven give me the same grace. But I fear, Lady Jean, it is a struggle unto life or death." Claverhouse's face grew stern and sad, and he repeated, "Unto ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... right. I did not move. Was it cowardice? No, rather weakness, a total inability to move any portion of my body, combined with discretion; for why should I struggle? Behind that man, there were ten others who would come to his assistance. Should I risk my life to save a ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... Think'st thou that I, who in a former day Did walk across the Sea of Marmora (Not mentioning, for shortness, other seas),— That I, who skimmed the broad Borysthenes, Without so much as wetting of my toes, Am frightened at a set of men like THOSE? I have a mind to leave you to your fate: Such cowardice as this my ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it he is not yet man. Without it thought can never ripen into truth. Whilst the world hangs before the eye as a cloud of beauty, we cannot even see its beauty. Inaction is cowardice, but there can be no scholar without the heroic mind. The preamble[42] of thought, the transition through which it passes from the unconscious to the conscious, is action. Only so much do I know, as I have lived. Instantly we ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... need think it cowardice for a number of confederates to pause before they attack a single city. The Athenians have allies as numerous as our own, and allies that pay tribute, and war is a matter not so much of arms as of money, which makes arms of use. And this is more than ever true in ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... I should not have expected of Frank. That he should get into a foolish scrape from thoughtlessness, or high spirits, or devilry, or that sort of thing, I could imagine; but I am astonished that he should have committed an act of folly due to cowardice." ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... battle array under their various standards, their joy was changed to rage and consternation. Against the embattled front their wild riders rode, threatening the steady troops with brandished lances and taunting them with cowardice. But Alfonso held his mail-clad battalions firm, and the light-armed Moorish horsemen hesitated to attack. Word was brought to Mohammed that the Christians would not fight, and in hasty gratulation he sent off letters to cities in the rear to that effect. He little dreamed ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... him. The vast sums he so unjustly acquired did not long remain in his possession, but were dispersed in ministering to his follies and depravity. Timorous he was by nature, as we have said, but cruel and unrelenting in proportion to his cowardice; and where an injury could be securely inflicted, or a prostrate foe struck with impunity, he never hesitated for a moment. Sir Giles himself was scarcely so malignant ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... made things to be and to act, the way he wishes free beings to exist and to act. He has ordained the gradual discovery of truth. And despite the struggles of selfish tyranny, and the complacence of luxurious ease, and the terror of ignorant cowardice, truth will be more and more brought to universal acceptance. Some men have fancied their bodies composed of butter or of glass; but when compelled to move out into the sunlight or the crowd they did not melt nor break.31 ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... tax our policy, and call it cowardice; Count wisdom as no member of the war; Forestall prescience, and esteem no act But that of hand; the still and mental parts— That do contrive how many hands shall strike, When fitness calls them on, and know, by measure Of their observant toil, the enemies' weight— Why, ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... improved visibly, for a most depressing fear had been removed. Though Harcourt might not return her love, he had not proved himself unworthy of it, by actual cowardice, or even by unmanly regard for personal ease. It also appeared that more than general philanthropy must have spurred him on, or he could not have acted as if ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... their cowardice. They were not lacking in rascality, but they wanted nerve to carry into effect the desperate design of taking possession of the schooner. Another consultation was held, and it was concluded that the SAFEST proceeding would be to massacre the officers before they could have ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... thing that he would be terrified for would be that he should miss the purpose of his being here and lose his hold of God thereby. There is nothing else worth being afraid of, but that is worth being afraid of. It is not slavish dread, nor is it cowardice, but the well-grounded emotion of men that know themselves too well to be confident and know the world too well ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... most crushing, damnable chain of all, the symbol of cowardice, of greed and vanity, the enemy of truth and knowledge, the hot-bed on which we breed the miserable half-men who cumber this earth, a ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... government—possibly even desiring it—a people may be unwilling or unable to fulfill its conditions. They may be incapable of fulfilling such of them as are necessary to keep the government even in nominal existence. Thus a people may prefer a free government; but if, from indolence, or carelessness, or cowardice, or want of public spirit, they are unequal to the exertions necessary for preserving it; if they will not fight for it when it is directly attacked; if they can be deluded by the artifices used to cheat them out of it; if, by momentary discouragement, ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... siege was protracted, and they heard of the difficulties that pressed their army, they grew enraged against Cleon. But he turned all the blame upon Nicias, charging it on his softness and cowardice, that the besieged were not yet taken. "Were I general," said he, "they should not hold out so long." The Athenians not unnaturally asked the question, "Why then, as it is, do not you go with a squadron against them?" And Nicias ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... are cowards. You wish me to withdraw my words. Be it so. You are not cowards; you are idiots. You all combined against one man. That was not cowardice. All right. Then it was stupidity. He spoke to you, and you did not understand him. Here, the old are hard of hearing, the young devoid of intelligence. I am one of your own order to quite sufficient extent to tell you the truth. This new-comer ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... his; for he was one who had come into the possession of the full truth not so much from hatred of error as from love of truth. Brownson's soul was intensely faithful to its personal convictions, faithful unto heroism—for that is the temper of men who seek the whole truth free from cowardice, or narrowness, or bias. He has admitted that the effect of his intercourse with the bishop was not fortunate. He confesses that he forced him to adopt a line of public controversy foreign to his genius, and one which had not brought him into the Church, and ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... customer, were he to waylay us by night in a wood. In comparison, Jack Thurtell looked harmless. No—that bold, bright-eyed murderer, with Horns on his head like those on Michael Angelo's statue of Moses, would never have had the cruel cowardice to cut the weasand, and smash out the brains of such a miserable wretch as Weare! True, he is fond of blood—and where's the harm in that? It is his nature. But if there be any truth in the science of Physiognomy—and ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... child, who had spoken big words to Rankeillor and to Stewart, and held myself bound upon my vanity to make good that boastfulness. Nay, and he hit me with the other end of the stick; for he accused me of a kind of artful cowardice, going about at the expense of a little risk to purchase greater safety. No doubt, until I had declared and cleared myself, I might any day encounter Mungo Campbell or the sheriff's officer, and be recognised, and dragged into the Appin murder by the heels; and, no doubt, in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... many armies in Moesia, Dacia, Germany, and Pannonia, lost through the temerity or cowardice of their generals; so many men of military character with numerous cohorts defeated and taken prisoners; whilst a dubious contest was maintained, not for the boundaries of the Empire and the banks of the bordering ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... make-up cowardice had been omitted, laughed sneeringly at her and did not stand back. His two hands out before him, his face crimson, he ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... ingratitude and villany like mine were qualified to awaken in his bosom. I dreaded not his violence. The death that he might be prompted to inflict was no object of aversion. It was poverty and disgrace, the detection of my crimes, the looks and voice of malediction and upbraiding, from which my cowardice shrunk. ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... white-washed Yankee—that is to say, not a real American, but a Blue-nose, i.e., a Nova Scotiaman—was never very popular, because of his traditional bullying and swaggering when all was going well, and his cowardice in times of danger. Once a vessel was coming from 'Frisco, and when off Cape Horn she ran into an ice-berg which towered high above the sailors' heads. There was great commotion and imminent peril. A Blue-nose was chief mate, and ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... unheard-of thing. "But," she said, aloud, "I'd do it again. I'd do anything to protect her. But I hope I was polite?" Then she thought how courageous Mrs. Cyrus was. "She's as brave as a lion!" said Mary North. Yet, had Miss North been able to stand at the Captain's door, she would have witnessed cowardice.... ...
— An Encore • Margaret Deland
... steal'? I am not Pepys. I do not live much to God and honour; but I will not wilfully turn my back on both. I am, like all the rest of us, falling ever lower from the bright ideas I began with, falling into greed, into idleness, into middle-aged and slippered fireside cowardice; but is it you, my bold blade, that I hear crying this sordid and rank twaddle in my ear? Preaching the dankest Grundyism and upholding the rank customs of our trade - you, who are so cruel hard upon the customs of the ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mere advice from a more advanced race. That is the case with the Central Asian Khanates and with the protected States of India. If the work has to be done, and if we are the best fitted for the work, then I think that it would be a cowardice and a crime to ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... placed everything in the most unfavourable light, and was ready to tell every tale and magnify trivial rumours into acts of treason. He was despondent when conciliation prevailed in England. The officers of the army and navy despised him for his cowardice and duplicity, and did not conceal their contempt." (History of the United States, Vol. VI., Chap. xli., ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... was able to smile grimly and call it a coincidence, wondering meanwhile, if one of the consequences of my hideously disarranged life was to be a lapse into chittering cowardice; an endless starting aside ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... can a recognized moral wrong safely be compromised? And although this chapter of history can give us no definite answer suited to the ever-varying aspects of political life, yet it would seem to warn any nation from allowing, through carelessness and moral cowardice, any social evil to grow. No persons would have seen the Civil War with more surprise and horror than the Revolutionists of 1776; yet from the small and apparently dying institution of their day arose the walled and castled Slave-Power. From this we may conclude that it behooves nations ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... of the good old days of Europe, before the cowardice of the French aristocracy (in the shameful Revolution, which served them right) brought ruin on our order.... You call a doctor an honourable man—a swindling quack, who does not believe in the nostrums which he prescribes, and takes your guinea for whispering ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... over sea, and swarmed upon the land, wasting it with fire and sword. When Uther heard thereof, he fell into a greater rage than his weakness could bear, and commanded all his nobles to come before him, that he might upbraid them for their cowardice. And when he had sharply and hotly rebuked them, he swore that he himself, nigh unto death although he lay, would lead them forth against the enemy. Then causing a horse-litter to be made, in which he might be carried—for he was too faint ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... world in arms. It was this national ideal that was incarnate in Napoleon, as every great idea that moves the world is sooner or later incarnated. What was it that we saw in Washington on his knees at Valley Forge, or blazing with wrath at the cowardice on Monmouth? in Lincoln entering Richmond with bowed head and infinite sorrow and yearning in his heart? An embodiment of a great national idea ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... saw in any other dog the sudden transition from discretion, not to say abject cowardice, to blazing and permanent valor. From his earliest years he showed a general meanness of blood, inherited from many generations of starved, bekicked, and down-trodden forefathers and mothers, resulting in ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... and sorrow unendurable. When one has seen one's soul stripped naked and laid bare, with all its black abysses and unnatural sins; the brutishness that is in each man's heart known and understood—the cowardice, the treachery, the villainy, the lust. When one knows oneself in others, and sinks into a mist of despair, hopeless and heart-wrung, then come the temptations, as the prophets call them, the miserable ambitions dressed as angels of light, the religions ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... if they may approve? Their intuitions have already decided the question for them. Why do the masses always accord in their estimation of the just and unjust? why do they always agree about glory and shame, vice and virtue, courage and cowardice? why do they always find Beauty in the success of suffering virtue, the triumph of oppressed innocence, the rescue of the wronged and helpless? The answer throws its light over the whole world of art: Because God's justice, even when it condemns themselves, is one of the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... said Aleck, rather gruffly, as he thought that his companion was about the strangest compound of bravery and cowardice he had ever met. "But didn't you ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... truth to the world. But I ask you this: When you know that her husband is dead and she becomes your wife, tell her the truth about that, will you? How the scoundrel tried to kill me—from behind. I'd like to be cleared of cowardice some time. You can afford to do it. She loves you. You will have everything, I nothing—nothing ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... know what it was to fear a human being, but he feared ghosts at night. And they were spirits of darkness that raged in that house, he felt sure. So he remained in bed with anger in his heart at his own cowardice, and still not able to conquer it. He would go next day in broad daylight, even if he had to leave his box behind with everything it contained, his dear keepsakes and precious belongings. He would leave Starydwor ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... purely intellectual quality necessary for the treatment of the subject, but lacks the insight that comes from imagination and sympathy. The declarations of those whose motto was "Canada first," could fairly be criticized as vague, but this vagueness was the result, not of cowardice or insincerity, but of the inherent difficulty of putting the spirit of the movement into words. A youth whose heart is stirred by all the aspirations of coming manhood, "yearning for the large excitement that the coming years would yield," might have the same hesitation in writing down ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... astonishing differences between the "lines." A palmist had revealed something quite amazing to the flapper, but she refused to tell what it was, with a significance that left Bean in a tumultuous and pleasurable whirl of cowardice. Their hands flew apart rather self-consciously. Bean felt himself a scoundrel—"leading on" a young thing like that who was engaged to another. It was flirting of the most reprehensible sort. But there ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... interfere with its social progress. Duelling, as part and parcel of the national manners, has ceased in England. No doubt random shots will yet from time to time be heard, and weakness in its despair will occasionally seek refuge in cowardice, which it mistakes for valor; but the mind of the majority is made up. Duelling henceforth must be the exception, not the rule. Public opinion will harmonize with the law, and honor it. It will protect the injured, and hand over the offenders to the legitimate ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... a male shero," I told him; "you learn that in the third grade. Just the same as a cowardice is a ...
— Roy Blakeley • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... he felt jealous that the honours of that battle should have been won by Sawkins. Sawkins' men taunted him with "backwardness" in that engagement, and "stickled not to defame, or brand him with the note of cowardice." To this he answered that he would be very glad to leave that association, and that he would take one of the prizes, a ship of fifty tons, and a periagua, to carry his men up the Santa Maria River. Those who stayed, he added, might heal his wounded. That night ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... of the happy parents. In a side-road which led to the railway station he saw a cab; entering the cab with every appearance of furtive haste were the dark-visaged couple who had been so plausibly eager for the "pretty idea." The sharpened instinct of cowardice lit up the situation to him in one swift flash. The blood roared and surged to his head as though thousands of floodgates had been opened in his veins and arteries, and his brain was the common sluice ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... constituted, Edward Maria Wingfield was elected president—a man who always proved an inveterate enemy to Smith, and who speedily attracted the hatred even of his accomplices by his rapacity, his cowardice, and his selfish extravagance. Smith demanded a trial, but the council feared to trust their wretched charge to an impartial jury, and pretended, in mercy to him, to keep him under suspension. But their own incompetence soon brought his talents into demand. He accompanied Newport upon an ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... recently told me of the strange suicide of a woman tortured by terror and remorse. Her nature was fine and she was exquisitely cultivated. Being suspected of complicity in a crime of which she had been the silent witness, in despair at her own irreparable cowardice, she was haunted by a perpetual nightmare in which her husband appeared to her dead and decomposing and pointing her out with his finger to the inquisitive magistrates. She was the victim of her own morbid imagination. In this condition an insignificant and casual circumstane ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France
... Protestants were plundering the sessions-house at the Old Bailey. There were not, I believe, a hundred; but they did their work at leisure, in full security, without sentinels without trepidation, as men lawfully employed in full day. Such is the cowardice of a commercial place. On Wednesday they broke open the Fleet, and the King's Bench, and the Marshalsea, and Woodstreet Compter, and Clerkenwell Bridewell, and released all the prisoners. At night they set fire to the Fleet, and to the ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... arrive, would have pleasantly accosted some one of the few Spanish seamen he saw; but recalling something that Don Benito had said touching their ill conduct, he refrained; as a shipmaster indisposed to countenance cowardice or ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... opposition to each of the extremes, and each of these to the other extreme, though in some cases the virtue may be more antagonistic to one extreme than to the other, as courage to cowardice more than to rashness. In individual cases, it is difficult to avoid being deflected towards one or other of ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... me hence, and know not When I shall return: But, ere I go, That power I have, by my dead father's will, Over my sister, I bequeath to you: [To GONS. She, and her fortunes, both be firmly yours; And this when I revoke, let cowardice Blast all my youth, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... children of Jacob fairly blaze with gold and gay colors. On their working days they line the principal streets, eyeing the passers-by with a cool, easy indifference, but never losing a chance of business. In Algeria this race is generally thought to present a picture of arrogance, knavery and rank cowardice not equaled on the face of the globe. An English traveler saw an Arab, after maddening himself with opium and absinthe, run a-mok among the shopkeepers who lined the principal street of Algiers. Selecting the Hebrews, he drove before him a throng of twenty, dressed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... elephant without difficulty by tying his hind legs. It was a great loss, as he was so tame that he might have been domesticated and driven to Newera Ellia without the slightest trouble. All this was occasioned by the cowardice of these villainous Cingalese, and upon my lecturing one fellow on his conduct he began to laugh. This was too much for any person's patience, and I began to look for a stick, which the fellow perceiving he immediately started off through the forest like a deer. He could run ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... bonnet and shawl and carried her son's letter to Ursula, whom she found alone, as it was about midday. In spite of her assurance Zelie was discomfited by the cold look which the young girl gave her. But she took herself to task for her cowardice and assumed an ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... youngest prince, "was, because thou didst not associate with us, who are of the same rank with thyself. Every man has properties which he inherits from his father, his grandfather, or his mother. From his father, generosity, or avarice; from his grandfather, valour or cowardice; from his mother, bashfulness or impudence." "Thou hast spoken justly," replied the sultan; "but why came ye to ask judgment of me, since ye are so much better able to decide difficult questions than myself? Return home, and agree among yourselves." The princes did so; and obeyed the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... from right to left about half past 9 o'clock. Several of the natives, unaccustomed, probably, to the regularity of European movements, came to the troops in the centre, and reproached them in coarse and offensive language with cowardice, for not opening their fire, which circumstance being communicated to the commanding officer he ordered them instantly to advance. They accordingly moved forward about 400 yards, when a heavy well directed fire took ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... was really a disgrace; and if one thousand of our men had come in town, the whole thirty-five hundred would have been at their mercy. Even the naval officers denounce it as a most arrant piece of cowardice; for instead of marching their troops out to meet ours, they all rushed into the Garrison, where, if attacked, their only retreat would have been into the river. The gunboats were ordered into the middle of the stream, in front of ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... mother. It is not done. And yet, as Mark Antony said, "They were all honourable men," and there seemed an austerity of virtue in them which no temptation would betray—the virtue of men who have a code admitting of certain easy vices, but not of treachery, or cowardice, or corruption. ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... from the Rajput communities of Oudh or any other part of the country can hope to conceal from his family circle or village community any act of cowardice, or anything else which is considered disgraceful to a soldier, or to escape the odium which it merits in that ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... incessant irritability, were apparent in the expression of his face. He was horribly scared, that was evident, but his self-conceit was wounded, and it might be surmised that his mortified vanity might on occasion lead him to any effrontery, in spite of his cowardice. He was evidently uneasy at every movement of his clumsy person. We all know that when such gentlemen are brought by some marvellous chance into society, they find their worst ordeal in their own hands, and the impossibility of disposing them becomingly, of which they are conscious ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... found herself in just the plight that had tortured Jim when he knew that Peter Cheever was disloyal to Charity and longed to tell her, but felt the duty too odious. So Charity pondered her own obligation. She was tempted to write Jim an anonymous letter, but had not the cowardice. She was tempted to write to him frankly, but had not the courage. She did at last ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... though the crouching attitude and the significant twitches of his expressive tail indicated very clearly to one who knew him that he was far from calm inside; that he was merely biding his time. His tranquil manner misled the vulgar foe; that they mistook it for cowardice was obvious. Nearer, and still nearer, they drew, surrounded him, and seemed about to fall upon him in a body, when he suddenly wheeled, and like a flash of light dashed right and left almost simultaneously, ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... on him at a time when he probably hadn't the steely resistance Frenchmen been showing on the West Front. Or, being in a strange country, mebbe he didn't know when politeness to Genevieve May Popper would become mere cowardice. Anyway, he could talk English well enough; and Genevieve May brought him to town ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... cause. From the black looks of the young men I half suspected, if the Sioux chief would accept me in lieu of material gifts, I might be presented as a peace-offering. This would certainly not forward my quest, and prudence, or cowardice—two things easily confused when one is in peril—counseled discretion, and discretion seemed ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... death terrible: in the long list of victims whose bloody end, at stake or scaffold, the historian of England in the sixteenth century has to relate, two only showed signs of cowardice, and one of those was a soldier and a nobleman, who, {p.041} in a moment of extreme peril, four years before, had kissed swords with his comrades, and had sworn to conquer the insurgents at ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... the Dane smitten him in the face, but to this cowardice Ingvar the king had not yet fallen. He drew back a few paces, and took his long dagger from his belt, and at that I thought that he was going to slay the king, and I closed my eyes, praying. But he ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... a good deal, and said: "It is a wholesome lesson. We have no scruple in cuffing Jem Deady or Bill Shanahan; but we don't like to tackle the big-wigs. And they despise us for our cowardice. Isn't that it? Well, my dear fellow, you are a [Greek: tetragonos aner], as old Aristotle would say,—an idea, by the way, stolen by Dante in his 'sta come torre ferma.' In plainer language, you're a brick! Poor little Bittra! how ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... us. He was lighter of heart than I had ever seen him, more at ease and entertaining, and as far removed from crime as courage is from cowardice. ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... gambling ruffians on the Continent, (of which a good description is given in the novel of The most unfortunate Man in the World,) or by old buccaneering soldiers of Napoleon, at war with all the world, and in the desperation of cowardice, demanding to fight in a saw-pit or across a table,—this sort of duels is as little recognised by the indulgence of English law, as, in the other extreme, the mock duels of German Burschen are recognised by the gallantry of English society. Duels of the latter sort would be deemed ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... 4th of September, boon after the dispersion of the Spanish armada, died the earl of Leicester, the queen's great but unworthy favorite. Her affection for him continued to the last. He had discovered no conduct in any of his military enterprises, and was suspected of cowardice; yet she intrusted him with the command of her armies during the danger of the Spanish invasion; a partiality which might have proved fatal to her, had the duke of Parma been able to land his troops in England. She had even ordered ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... Looking back on those days, out of the smoke of the battle, one sees him a man so wretchedly weak and incapable that it is hardly possible to be angry with him. It does not appear to have been conviction, nor cowardice, nor choice in any sense, which caused his desertion, but simply his miserable incapacity to stand alone, or to resist the influence of any stronger character on either side. He go to parley with the enemy! He might as well have ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... time, he was not willing to face the issue squarely and openly announce a change of policy or restore religious freedom. That would have meant the overthrow of Pobiedonostzev and the Czar's emancipation from his sinister influence, and for that Nicholas II lacked the necessary courage and stamina. Cowardice and weakness of the will characterized his reign from the ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... instant her indignation at the incredible cowardice of the man crushed every other feeling. Then a thrill of horror came over her. Looking again at the last page she saw ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... rather not say them,' she murmured first. It struck her then that this declining altogether was the same cowardice in another dress, and was delivering her poor Edward over to Satan just as unceremoniously as before. 'Yes; I will say my prayers, and you shall ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... interfere with the girl's chances by hanging about her to the obvious exclusion of other men, but it was worse to seem to justify his weakness by dressing up the future in delusive ambiguities. He saw himself sinking from depth to depth of sentimental cowardice in his reluctance to renounce his hold on her; and it filled him with self-disgust to think that the highest feeling of which he supposed himself capable was blent with such ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... not to his liking. We came to the conclusion that he had upon his conscience the memory of some unhappy victim of his terrible skill. Moreover, it never entered into the head of any of us to suspect him of anything like cowardice. There are persons whose mere look is sufficient to repel such a suspicion. But an unexpected incident ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... gets in love with pain, to abridge it seems like cowardice. What mattered it whether I suffered a little more or less, since suffering was so early become my destiny? This girl, with her bright beauty and soft words, superseded me every where; yet she did not seem to prize the homage for which I famished, but stood there, smiling up in his face, ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... pp. 72, 73): "Our Lord did not imagine here a form of malice without example, but adduced one which may have been familiar enough to His hearers, one so easy of execution, involving so little risk, and yet effecting so great and lasting a mischief, that it is not strange, where cowardice and malice meet, that this should have been often the shape in which they displayed themselves. We meet traces of it in many quarters. In Roman law the possibility of this form of injury is contemplated; and a modern writer, illustrating ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... use his rights of victory; that he was not ignorant of the perils by which he was menaced, but that it was not in the power of any man to make him a traitor and a perjurer." No one could have made a nobler return than this for the desertion and cowardice of Sodrez. ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... "there is no cowardice in it at all. You ought to do it, or else bury the whole thing, and I don't suppose you can ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... or of the others rose against him again. For the Gauls, who are unreasonably insatiate in all respects alike, know no limits in either their courage or their fear, but fall from the one into unthinkable cowardice and from the other ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... the trooper; "these militia seldom fail of making a bloody field, either by their cowardice or their ignorance, and the real soldier is made to suffer ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... from fields ye have won, Your toils are not closed in the deeds ye have done; Touch the souls of each laggard and profligate son, The greed and the sloth, and the cowardice shame; Till we rise to complete the great work ye've begun, And with ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... reasonable time had been allowed Colonel Anstruther to give his reply, the 94th could not then say, as they do say and will say, that they were treacherously surprised. 'Two minutes' looks, under the circumstances, very much like an idle pretence of fair dealing to cover an intentional act of cowardice which subsequent conduct could hardly palliate. The Boers say that they had not more men than were marching with the 94th on that occasion; that statement is worth very little, considering the evidence of our officers, and, ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... Nan, very gravely. And then the tears came into Dulce's eyes. Was Phillis actually going to tell them? She would have run away, only she was ashamed of such cowardice. ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... vehement defiance to the government, and to the lord-lieutenant of Ireland especially. He had invoked a prosecution, and in one furious article in the United Irishman had told the viceregal government that if it did not pack a jury and prosecute him, it was restrained only by cowardice. What the motives of Mr. Mitchell were in thus wishing to be made a victim it is impossible to affirm. Many believed that he wrote in the confidence that no Irish jury, however packed, would find him guilty; others supposed that he calculated ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... said, with an intensity of manner that was by no means common to him; "I want to say a few words to you, and I will say them. There was an occasion, ten years ago, on which I ought to have spoken out, and didn't. I have never ceased to regret my cowardice. Yes, by Jove! I hate myself for it; and there are times when I feel as if my share in that wretched business was ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... of the nation, sir, where I reside, many who vote at elections claim their privilege by no other title than that of boiling a pot; a title which he who has it not, may easily obtain, when it will either gratify his laziness or his cowardice, and which, though not occasionally obtained, seems not sufficient to set any man out of the reach of a just ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... fastened to the Cross, and there left, and that as a spectacle. Now, what is it moves our very hearts and sickens us so much as cruelty shown to poor brutes? I suppose this first, that they have done no harm; next, that they have no power whatever of resistance; it is the cowardice and tyranny of which they are the victims which make their sufferings so especially touching. For instance, if they were dangerous animals, take the case of wild beasts at large, able not only to defend themselves, but even to attack ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge
... Court cowardly almost beyond the example of Courts, a police that had trained every Neapolitan to look upon his neighbour as a traitor, an administration that had turned one of the hardiest races in Europe into soldiers of notorious and disgraceful cowardice—such were the allies whom Nelson, ill-fitted for politics by his sailor-like inexperience and facile vanity, heroic in his tenderness and fidelity, in an evil hour encouraged to believe themselves invincible because they possessed his own support. On the 14th of November, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... situation, age, and so forth; and perhaps it does not signify much which it is, if the faults are fairly gone, and if there be no danger of their returning: all our former misunderstandings arose on Cecilia's part from cowardice of character; on mine from—no matter what—no matter which ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... be fought and races to be won, but no longer against 'each other.' And strength and swiftness to win them; but no longer any strong and swift. There is weakness and cowardice, but no longer any cowards or weaklings. The good and the bad and the worst and the best—it is all mixed up. But the good comes to the top; the bad goes to the bottom—it is precipitated, as papa used to say. It is not an agreeable sediment, with its once useful cruelty at the lowest bottom ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... much, and, as it was now dark, at sunrise the next morning they would give them battle. The whole night was spent by both parties in loud and tumultuous boasting, berating each other in the roundest terms which their savage vocabulary could furnish, insultingly charging each other with cowardice and weakness, and declaring that they would prove the truth of their assertions to their utter ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... part to initiate and to make a kiss an easy thing. Yet she found, sitting there, writing the last notes, with Franklin beside her, that it was not an easy thing to contemplate. The thought of her own cowardice spurred her on. When Franklin rose at last, gave her his hand, said that he'd come back that evening, Helen rose too, resolved. 'Good-bye,' she said. 'Don't forget the tickets ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... mankind, but that few would dare to point out from afar the dangers with which it threatens them. To those perils therefore I have turned my chief attention, and believing that I had discovered them clearly, I have not had the cowardice to leave them untold. ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... God of Heaven, Are cheerful as the rising sun in May. What do we gather hence but firmer faith That every gift of noble origin Is breath'd upon by Hope's perpetual breath; That Virtue and the faculties within Are vital; and that riches are akin To fear, to change, to cowardice, and death? ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... say whether I was or not; but I am inclined to acquit myself of the charge of cowardice. My sensations were peculiar and rather unpleasant, I freely admit; but looking back upon them now in the light of long years of experience, I am disposed to attribute them entirely to nervous excitement. Hitherto my nostrils had never sniffed ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... news is, that we have lost Ticonderoga, whether by neglect or necessity, cowardice or good conduct, will appear hereafter. Congress have ordered General Gates to that department, and have directed Generals Schuyler and St Clair to appear at head quarters, that an inquiry may be made into their ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... men than one; the other should prove that they were alone, and should argue thus: 'How could a weak man like me have assaulted a strong man like him?' The complainant will not like to confess his own cowardice, and will therefore invent some other lie which his adversary will thus gain an opportunity of refuting. And there are other devices of the same kind which have a place in the system. Am I not ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... moonlight. And these little shallops must have borne away as cargo my fretting and my fears, for presently I fell into a philosophic mood, and the future looked brighter. One thing was sure—I could not run away. That would be cowardice, as well as an affront to hospitality. And did the worthy man snoring in a near-by room once know that I thought of leaving because his idol was coming, he would doubtless hasten my departure by turning loose upon me the pack of fox-hounds I had heard clamoring for ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... says Gibbs, "I found Lieutenant Dodge, an old acquaintance, and a number of other persons with whom I had sailed. When the Governor gave me the commission he told me they wanted no cowards in their navy, to which I replied that I thought he would have no apprehension of my cowardice or skill when he became acquainted with me. He thanked me, and said he hoped he should not be deceived; upon which we drank to his health and to the success of the Republic. He then presented me with a sword, and told me to ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... suffered under it could rise at once to freedom and self-government. We see this fact everywhere proved by races, nations, sexes, long held in bondage, and, when at last set free, displaying for years, perhaps for generations, the vices of cowardice, deceit, and cruelty engendered by slavery. Chains leave ugly scars on the flesh, but deeper scars by far on the soul. Even where the exercise of oppression has stopped short of actual serfdom,—where a race has been merely excluded from some natural rights, and burdened with some unrighteous restrictions,—the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... the steamer, tramping for cargo. He was not wanting in pluck as a usual thing, this unsuccessful solicitor, but before a woman like this, with such a record behind her, a man may well be scared and yet not be accused of cowardice. ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... replaced by seaworthy and serviceable craft. Yet out of the thirty-three sail of the line, he lost eighteen to an enemy that numbered only twenty-seven sail; and that fact alone absolves him from the charge of cowardice in declining to face Cornwallis and Calder in July with ships that were cumbered with sick and badly ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... race, but skill and foresight he needed greatly, and dearly would he have paid for his rashness. A young and fiery bull had chanced to cross his path, and disregarding the entreaties of his followers, he taunted them with cowardice, and goaded the furious animal to the encounter; too late he discovered that he had neither skill nor strength for the combat he had provoked, and had it not been for the strenuous exertions of a stranger youth, who diverted aside the fury of the beast, ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... and in 1453, of all the "large and ample empery" of France, won at the cost of a hundred years of bloodshed and cruel devastation, a little strip of land at Calais and Guines alone remained to the English crown. Charles, who with despicable cowardice had suffered the heroic Maid to be done to death by the English without a thought of intervention, was moved to call for a tardy reparation of the atrocious injustice at Rouen; and a quarter of a century after the Te Deum sung in Notre Dame at Paris ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... King's command Sent Marmion to the Scottish land: I lingered here, and rescue planned For Clara and for me: This caitiff monk, for gold, did swear, He would to Whitby's shrine repair, And, by his drugs, my rival fair A saint in heaven should be. But ill the dastard kept his oath, Whose cowardice has undone us both. ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... now in the breast of Reuben Bourne an incommunicable thought—something which he was to conceal most heedfully from her whom he most loved and trusted. He regretted, deeply and bitterly, the moral cowardice that had restrained his words when he was about to disclose the truth to Dorcas; but pride, the fear of losing her affection, the dread of universal scorn, forbade him to rectify this falsehood. He felt that for leaving Roger Malvin he deserved no censure. His presence, the gratuitous sacrifice ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Lottie is sixteen! I sent for you, Pixie, to tell you how bitterly grieved Mrs Vane and I are to think of all you have suffered through our daughter's cowardice. I wish it were in our power to do something for you in return, but I hope at least that Lottie has expressed her regret before ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey |
