"Pusillanimous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... any theory that may be offered, without a fair and candid examination, will leave our minds in uncertainty and doubt as to the validity of our own position. A blind faith is only one remove from a pusillanimous skepticism. We can not render our own position secure except by comprehending, assaulting, and capturing the position of our foe. It is, therefore, due to ourselves and to the cause of truth, that we shall examine the evidence upon which each ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... upwards at another. There was no sense of support afforded by the touch of comrades, and the being an item of a serried mass, as in the case of the majority of the battles of the Soudan, fought in square formation. Then there might be unsteady or pusillanimous soldiers, whose faults were hidden by their firmer comrades, from whose presence and example they gained confidence; but at Kirbekan every soldier fought on his own account, as it were, and failure in courage or dash in any individual would have been at once perceptible. But there ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... at Majuba Hill was followed by the complete surrender of the Gladstonian Government, an act which was either the most pusillanimous or the most magnanimous in recent history. It is hard for the big man to draw away from the small before blows are struck, but when the big man has been knocked down three times it is harder still. An overwhelming British force was in the field, and the General declared that he held the enemy ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... divided in their opinions. Men of fortitude applauded its wisdom, but the pusillanimous murmured that it ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... responsibility which I decline not, and having encouraged and blessed the departure of several of those youthful volunteers, I would be ashamed of myself if now, restrained by the fears arising from a pusillanimous prudence, I did not offer them the homage of my admiration together with that of my prayers. Your sympathies are already with my words. If they gave offence to any hearers, I would, indeed, be afflicted. But, by the grace of God, the country which we inhabit is ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... replied Tom Bullover brusquely, he, like most of the hands, being pretty sick by now of the captain's drunken ways, and pusillanimous behaviour in leaving the deck when the vessel and all on board were in such deadly peril; "and if you don't believe me, why, you can look over the side and judge where the ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... submitted that the continuance of an armed possession actually jeopards the property you desire to protect. It is impossible but that such a possession, if continued long enough, must lead to collision. No people, not completely abject and pusillanimous, could submit, indefinitely, to the armed occupation of a fortress in the midst of the harbor of its principal city, and commanding the ingress and egress of every ship that enters the port, the daily ferry-boats ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... I can't send a very satisfactory answer to your health inquiries, as far as regards myself. The mean, pusillanimous fever which took under-hold of me two months ago is still THERE, as impregnably fixed as a cockle-burr in a sheep's tail. I have tried idleness, but (naturally) it won't WORK. I do no labor except ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... this man left me drained of all courage. Surely, on no other occasion should I have been thus pusillanimous. My state I regarded as a hopeless one. I was wholly at the mercy of this being. Whichever way I turned my eyes, I saw no avenue by which I might escape. The resources of my personal strength, my ingenuity, and my eloquence, I estimated at nothing. The dignity of virtue and the force of truth ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... my restless endeavor, The youngest, fairest soul of the twain, The most ethereal, most divine, Will escape from my hands forever and ever. But the other is already mine! Let him live to corrupt his race, Breathing among them, with every breath, Weakness, selfishness, and the base And pusillanimous fear of death. I know his nature, and I know That of all who in my ministry Wander the great earth to and fro, And on my errands come and go, The safest and ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... those that occasioned his death were in no long time brought themselves to punishment; how also the war in Gall ended; and how Galba was made emperor [16] and returned out of Spain to Rome; and how he was accused by the soldiers as a pusillanimous person, and slain by treachery in the middle of the market-place at Rome, and Otho was made emperor; with his expedition against the commanders of Vitellius, and his destruction thereupon; and besides what troubles there were under Vitellius, and the ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... himself a passage. But this brave prince, whose courage nothing was ever able to suppress, turning toward them with a smiling countenance and air so intrepid as might have inspired courage into the most pusillanimous heart: ''Tis heaven,' said he, 'which dictates what I ought to do upon this occasion; remember then that my retreat out of this city, without having secured one also to my party, shall be the retreat of my soul ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... declare that Canada's trade is declining; there are some who maintain that the rich glow of health which at present mantles o'er Canada's virgin cheek will soon be replaced by the pallid hues of the corpse. To such pusillanimous propagandists of a preposterous pessimism, I answer, Mr. Speaker with all confidence, never! never!" As a rhetorical effort this is striking, though there seems a lack of lucidity ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... of no purpose to debate here which of these two mental attitudes, with all their consequences, is either morally the better or in practice the more successful. The French and Latin tradition seems to the German pusillanimous, and connected with that decadence which he perceives in every expression of civilization from Athens to Paris. The modern German conception seems to the French theatrical, divorced from reality, and hence fundamentally weak. Either critic may be right or either wrong. ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... defending with our blood the streets of our capital; detaining the enemy at least for a day, my army will arrive, and we shall be strong enough to give battle. I must go to Paris; when I am not there, they do nothing but blunder! My brother Joseph is a pusillanimous and easily-disheartened man, and Minister Clarke is a blockhead. Marmont and Mortier are traitors deserving death, for they violated my express instructions. I asked them to hold out only two days, and the traitors ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... 'planted' with Englishmen and Lowland Scots. In the midst of all these changes the great Queen, grown old and very lonely, died in 1603; and with her ended the glorious Tudor dynasty of England. James, pusillanimous and pedantic son of Darnley and Mary Queen of Scots, ascended the throne as the first of the sinister Stuarts, and, truckling to vindictive Spain, threw Raleigh into prison ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... pusillanimous John is well known to have exposed his own rights, and the liberties of his people, to all the evils of protracted civil wars, and foreign invasion. At the period of his decease, the capital and the southern counties were in the hands of Louis, ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... condition is endless, but morning ever follows night, death cannot be endless. Be unconcerned; thy being shall as little be lost as the grain of dust at thy foot! Because in death thou dost not know that thou art, therefore fearest thou that thou shalt be no more? O pusillanimous! the great events of nature are too vast for thy weak heart. A whole eternity thou hast not been conscious that thou art, and yet thou hast become conscious of it. Every night thou losest thy consciousness, yet art thou conscious ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... who was to succeed him upon the throne, was then in Poland. Catharine was glad to have the pusillanimous Charles out of the way. He was sufficiently depraved to commit any crime, without being sufficiently resolute to brave its penalty. Henry III. had, in early life, displayed great vigor of character. At the age of fifteen he had been placed in ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... those old fogies who could not appreciate manliness in a boy. He demanded abject servility and pusillanimous crouching on the part of an offender. When he frowned, the boy ought to wither with fear rather than with the consciousness of guilt. McDougal had thrown himself into a becoming attitude, in his estimation; had groaned, trembled, and cringed. He was willing to forgive ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... the Kine speaks, lamenting still that no adequate lord has been assigned her. Zarathustra is a feeble and pusillanimous man, not one of royal state who is able to bring his purpose to effect. The Ameshospends join in the cry for the true lord ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... I was hurt and unhappy and I doubted you. I suppose if I'd cared less I should have been more confident. I cared so much that I couldn't risk another failure. For you'd made me feel that I'd miserably failed. So I shut my eyes and set my teeth and turned my back. There's the whole pusillanimous truth of it!" ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... first sight seems very extraordinary, viz, that surprize is apt to change into fear, and every thing that is unexpected affrights us. The most obvious conclusion from this is, that human nature is in general pusillanimous; since upon the sudden appearance of any object. we immediately conclude it to be an evil, and without waiting till we can examine its nature, whether it be good or bad, are at first affected with fear. This I say is the most obvious conclusion; ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... that is, our mother-tongue, which naturally and accidentally I love and have loved." Again, having laid down the premiss that "the magnanimous man always praises himself in his heart; and so the pusillanimous man always deems himself less than he is," he concludes, "Wherefore many on account of this vileness of mind, depreciate their native tongue, and applaud that of others; and all such as these are the abominable wicked men of Italy, who hold this precious mother-tongue in vile contempt, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... to the best of his power, as his liege subject, promote it, by assisting him with troops, arms, horses, and money." Llywelyn the Great refused to dispute the suzerainty of England. This may appear pusillanimous to the enthusiastic patriot, but subsequent events proved the old statesman's wisdom and clearsightedness. His successors were less cautious, were carried away by the patriotism round them and the syren voices of the bards. And to Llywelyn ap Gruffydd the prospect was ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... thought most advisable, therefore, to strike directly across the mountain, since the route, though rugged and difficult, would be most secure. This counsel was indignantly derided by M'Lellan as pusillanimous. Hot-headed and impatient at all times, he had been rendered irascible by the fatigues of the journey, and the condition of his feet, which were chafed and sore. He could not endure the idea of encountering the difficulties of ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... traitor, or drummed out of the army as a dastardly coward. Without mentioning the numerous military faults committed by General von Mack during this campaign, it is impossible to deny that, with respect to his own troops, he conducted himself in the most pusillanimous manner. It has often been repeated that martial valour does not always combine with it that courage and that necessary presence of mind which knows how to direct or repress multitudes, how to command obedience and obtain popularity; but when a man is entrusted with ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Sheer, abject, pusillanimous, dastardly cowardice. Thats why. Face the filthy truth. ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... off. Even the sprightly and penetrating, have, thro' this neglect, sunk down to the Rank of the dull and stupid. Some Men have given very promising Specimens in their early Days, that they could think well themselves; but, whether from a pusillanimous Modesty, or a lazy Temper at first, I know not; they have by Degrees contracted such an Habit of Filching and Plagiary, as to lose their Capacity at length for one Original Thought. Some Writers indeed, as well as Practitioners in other ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... with Jocasta in [2385]Euripides, reckons up five miseries of a banished man, the least of which alone were enough to deject some pusillanimous creatures. Oftentimes a too great feeling of our own infirmities or imperfections of body or mind, will shrivel us up; as if we be ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... infamous Emperor Heliogabalus was a great religious reformer, who was in advance of his times; a third to present Lucrezia Borgia to the world as a much-maligned and very virtuous woman; and a fourth to tell us that the "ever pusillanimous" Barere, as he is called by M. Louis Madelin, was "persistently vilified and deliberately misunderstood." Biographical research has, moreover, destroyed many picturesque legends, with some of which posterity cannot part without a pang of regret. We are reluctant to believe ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... Britain, have I congratulated thy Happiness, where Virtue is rewarded, Vice discountenanc'd and punish'd; where the Man of Merit is provided for, and not oblig'd to pay a Levee to the kept Mistress of a Statesman; and where the Ignorant, Pusillanimous, and Vicious, however distinguish'd by Birth and Fortune, are held in Contempt, and never admitted to ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... responsibility. They have often declared that it was impossible to do so satisfactorily. And yet no one will ever know more than we about what is going on now. Some secrets may be revealed to coming generations, but plenty of our circumstances will be obscure to them. And it certainly seems pusillanimous, if not hazardous, to depute to those yet unborn the task of comprehending the conditions under which we must live and strive. I have long believed that the only unmistakable contribution that the historical student can make to the progress of intelligence ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... the population of Russia, infuriated by the long unaccustomed presence of a hostile army within their sacred frontier, and worked up by all the circumstances of the invasion to the highest pitch of patriotic enthusiasm. Unable to appreciate the value of what must have appeared to them a timid and pusillanimous policy, they overwhelmed Barclay de Tolly with violent accusations of cowardice, and even of treachery; rendered the more plausible to the mind of the ignorant, by the circumstance of their object ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... the cubicle and Edwin had a dreadful moment introducing her to Darius and explaining their purpose. Why had he not prepared the ground in advance? His pusillanimous cowardice again! However, the directing finger of God sent a customer into the shop, and Edwin escaped with his Hilda through ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... advice is, that Lord Boston and Admiral Tombstone be immediately despatch'd to Boston, with two or three regiments (tho' one would be more than sufficient) and a few ships to shut up their ports, disannul their charter, stop their trade, and the pusillanimous beggars, those scoundrel rascals, whose predominant passion is fear, would immediately give up, on the first landing of the regulars, and fly before 'em like a hare before the hounds; that this would be the case, I pawn my honour to your Lordships, ...
— The Fall of British Tyranny - American Liberty Triumphant • John Leacock
... have been made towards communism,—as has been the case with others. We have been laborious, contented, and prosperous; and if we have been reabsorbed by the mother country, in accordance with what I cannot but call the pusillanimous conduct of certain of our elder Britannulists, it has not been from any failure on the part of the island, but from the opposition with which the ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... Italy, almost anywhere, in the presence of the beautiful, of the desecrated or the neglected. We feel at such moments as if the eye of Mr. Ruskin were upon us; we grow nervous and lose our confidence. This makes me inevitably, in talking of Venice, seek a pusillanimous safety in the trivial and the obvious. I am on firm ground in rejoicing in the little garden directly opposite our windows—it is another proof that they really show us everything- -and in feeling that the gardens of Venice would deserve a page to themselves. They are ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... no cause in him. I will scourge and then acquit him.' But the cry, 'Crucify him! Crucify him!' burst from the crowd, and the sounds echoed like an infernal tempest; the High Priests and the Pharisees vociferated and hurried backwards and forwards as if insane. Pilate at last yielded; his weak pusillanimous character could not withstand such violent demonstrations; he delivered up Barabbas to the people, and condemned ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... of Briconnet's pusillanimous defection, as marked by the publication of these pastoral letters, is involved in some obscurity; for assuredly the date affixed to the transcripts that have come down to us conflicts too seriously with the well-known facts of history to be accepted ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... least once over the banisters, even though I took no aim and scurried back into my bedroom immediately after. That would have satisfied her, she subsequently admitted to me; but to drop a pair of Indian clubs on the floor in order to make a clatter could be regarded as little less than pusillanimous, philosophy ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... He had no pusillanimous notion of the unworthiness of revenge. He believed retaliation, when complete and inflicted without cost or injury to the giver, to be a most logical and fitting thing. But he knew that revenge is a two-edged weapon, and that it must be wielded ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... finding something much worse than a working woman. It is said that "three generations make a gentleman"; and if that be true there is some hope of Halliwell's great-grandsons—granting, of course, that the pusillanimous prig is not too epicene to provide himself with posterity. Day by day it becomes more evident that the purse-proud snobocracy of New York's old rat- catchers and sprat peddlers is fast getting a foothold in the West, that the social gulf between the House of Have and that of Have-Not, ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... have sent them there. (Wherefore it is evident, this Scheme facilitated the Army's becoming Masters of Boccachica, and put an End to the Dispute sooner than was expected, or could possibly have happened, had any Nation but pusillanimous Spaniards had the Defence of it; for had the Place been defended equal to its Strength and excellent Disposition, both of the Ships and Batteries, it would have been a difficult Task for the Fleet ...
— An Account of the expedition to Carthagena, with explanatory notes and observations • Sir Charles Knowles
... to laugh and the seriousness thereby dissipated into an affair not serious at all. Yes, that was the point of it and the reason it epitomised him. There was none of life's dilemmas—little dilemmas that irritate ordinary people or in which ordinary people display themselves pusillanimous; or tragic dilemmas that find ordinary people wanting and leave them in vacillation and despair—there was none of any sort that Harry, receiving with his comic, "Mice and Mumps! Mice and Mumps, old girl!" did not receive with the assurance ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... sufferings endure, that he deceived her just expectations, and was a vain pretender to the superhuman:—for it was only a superhuman Jew and democrat whom she could have thought of espousing. The pusillanimous are under a necessity to be self-consoled when they are not self-justified: it is their instinctive manner of putting themselves in the right to themselves. The love she bore him, because it was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... slaveholding States, and be admitted as such into the Southern confederacy. I had supposed that crime had achieved its climax when the Southern rebellion was inaugurated; but something more base, more vile, more cowardly, debasing, and pusillanimous, it seems, is now contemplated. It is that New England shall be expelled, and that the rest of the Free States shall come under the dominion of the Southern confederacy. But the leaders of this scheme seem to have forgotten the fact, that New England, to a vast extent, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... people talking of an expedition some of them had made into the territory of a distant tribe, when they had cut down some cocoa-nut and palm-trees, and committed other mischief; but they spoke of their enemies as a weak and pusillanimous race, who were unable or unwilling to retaliate, and I thought no more of the matter. When sent into the woods to gather bark or gums, or the heads of the cabbage-palm, or to catch fish on the river or neighbouring lake, I used to be interested by the vast number ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... "For King and Country"? They'd laugh at you, and follow a—leader: one of their own. Ruling by fear, ruthlessly without thought of human weakness, without tinge of mercy? They'd hate you, and you would have to drive them like the Prussians do. Ruling by pusillanimous kindness, by currying favour, by seeking to be a popularity Jack? They'd despise ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... you pusillanimous, knock-kneed shrimp? I'm going to mash your jaw so you'll never wag it again! And right now, ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... A pusillanimous peace, always possible at any period At length the twig was becoming the tree Being the true religion, proved by so many testimonies Certainly it was worth an eighty years' war Chief seafaring nations of ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... wars. Dissensions were not to be prevented; and those martial spirits which were so fierce and formidable abroad could not be habituated to any considerable moderation at home. Those who expect in a free state to see the people undaunted in war and pusillanimous in peace, are certainly desirous of impossibilities; and it may be advanced as a general rule that whenever a perfect calm is visible, in a state that calls itself a republic, the spirit ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... endeavored to move the compassion of his captor by tears. The uncle, however, so far had pity for his vanquished nephew as to appoint him to the governorship of the city of Kolomna. This seemed perfectly to satisfy the pusillanimous young man, and, after partaking of a splendid feast with his uncle, he departed, rejoicing, from the capital where he had been enthroned, to the provincial ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... events might point out the way. His projects for history, for law, for philosophy, for letters, occupy quite as much of his thoughts as his pardon and his debts; and they, we have seen, occupied a good deal. If he was pusillanimous in the moment of the storm, his spirit, his force, his varied interests, returned the moment the storm was past. His self-reliance, which was boundless, revived. He never allowed himself to think, however men of his own time might judge him, that the future world would ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... the little operation of "sticking up" without a word, but with revived interest in life. He noted the pusillanimous pallor of the driver and his friend, and felt personally indebted to the desperado who had put a stop to their unpleasant conversation. The inside passenger made a yet more obsequious surrender. Not that the trio were set any better example by their noble ally, who began by smiling at ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... one cannot understand the inactivity of the French: it would seem that the authorities had lost their heads. We cannot otherwise explain the lack of foresight of the officers absent from their posts, the pusillanimous orders of the governor to M. de Vaudreuil, his imprudence in sending too weak a troop through the dangerous places, the lack of initiative on the part of M. de Saint-Jean, finally, the absolute lack of energy and audacity, the complete absence of ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... man who was both mediocre and pusillanimous, without education, without ideas, without knowledge, without force of character, and who might be expected not to succeed in the slipperiest city in the world, came by his principles of conduct, by his sense of justice, by the goodness of a heart that was truly Christian, and through his love for ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... did not condescend to do so, he somewhat ignominiously took off his mourning in a hurry. All these, and numerous similar petty instances of timorousness, may appear to us at a remote distance trifling and pusillanimous, as do also many of the model personal characteristics and goody-goody private actions of the sage; but if we make due allowance for the difficulty of translating strange notions into a strange tongue, and for the natural absence of sympathy in trying to enter into foreign ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... and of decrees limiting their prerogatives. And, moreover, the council was the first authority invoked by the heretic himself. Adrian might have been willing to risk such a synod, but before he had time to call one, his place was taken by the vacillating and pusillanimous Clement. Perpetually toying with the idea he yet allowed the pressure of his courtiers and the difficulties of the political situation—for France was opposed to the council as an imperial scheme—indefinitely to ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... ships at Surat. Christopher de Noronha, who commanded the Portuguese ships, immediately paid the sum demanded by the English admiral, together with 20,000 crowns more to divide among his men. But Noronha, on his arrival at Goa, was immediately put under an arrest by the viceroy, for this pusillanimous behaviour, and was sent home prisoner to Lisbon, to answer ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... least I was fain to add, a woman whose laughter would be merciless. Certainly, I had no temper for adventures; and a visit to Madame Romanoff on so sentimental an errand seemed to me, the more I pondered it, to partake of this quality to be rich in distasteful possibilities. Must I write myself pusillanimous, if I confess that I never made it, that I committed my old friend's violin into the hands of the woman who had been his pupil by the vulgar ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... better might present itself, she resolved to accept the terms of the straw manufacturer, and entered upon her duties. For a week or two the sum earned by the unfortunate lady was faithfully paid her, but on the third week the pusillanimous nature of the Jew cropped out. She had bargained to manufacture straw hats at eighty cents a dozen, or six and two-third cents each. At this rate, she managed to earn two dollars and fifty cents per week. Upon applying ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... have to bear the hard judgment of a man whose opinion I value so highly; but, in the teeth of your terribly strong arguments, I think that there is something to be said on my side of the question. This seat in Parliament has come in my way by chance, and I think it would be pusillanimous in me to reject it, feeling, as I do, that a seat in Parliament confers very great honour. I am, too, very fond of politics, and regard legislation as the finest profession going. Had I any one dependent on me, I probably might ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... stubborn resistance, and this is one reason why shyness is often so conspicuous, seeming deliberately to court an avoidable confusion. Over and over again it forces the recalcitrant body back into the arena, preferring repeated humiliation to a pusillanimous surrender. People often wonder at the recklessness with which the shy expose themselves to disaster, forgetting that in this insistence of a soul under discomfiture, there is evidence of a moral strength which is its own reward. What discipline is harder than that which conscientious diffidence ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... warming up to his theme. "Why, when the Russians actually fired on our flag—the Union Jack of England, sir, that had never previously been insulted with impunity—they actually blamed me for returning the fire, and recalled me for it! I tell you what it is, Vernon, they were all a pack of pusillanimous time-servers, frightened at their own shadows; and, between you and me and the bedpost, that chap, Jimmy Graham, our precious late First Lord of the Admiralty, knew as much about a ship as a Tom cat does of logarithms, ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... indicating superior elevation of character. In civil courage, in perseverance, in presence of mind, those barbarous warriors, who were foremost in the battle or the breach, were far his inferiors. Even the dangers which he avoided with a caution almost pusillanimous never confused his perceptions, never paralysed his inventive faculties, never wrung out one secret from his smooth tongue, and his inscrutable brow. Though a dangerous enemy, and a still more dangerous accomplice, he could be a just and beneficent ruler. With ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Williams at the head of forty or fifty men then commenced the attack, and kept up a brisk fire. But the militia no sooner beheld the enemy advance impetuously, than they threw down their arms without firing and fled instantly. This was followed by others, acting in the same pusillanimous style, and at least two-thirds of the army never ...
— A sketch of the life and services of Otho Holland Williams • Osmond Tiffany
... soldiers abandoned their own, and the public defence; and their pusillanimous indolence may be considered as the immediate cause of the downfall of the empire." Gibbon's "Decline and Fall," ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... hospitality. The reply was gracious and acquiescent; so that I presented myself in the great entrance-hall of the Mansion House, at half past six o'clock, in a state of most enjoyable freedom from the pusillanimous apprehensions that often tormented me at such times. The Mansion House was built in Queen Anne's days, in the very heart of old London, and is a palace worthy of its inhabitant, were he really as great a man as his traditionary ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... warlike tone of the first message, this sounded like a retreat. It outraged the feelings of the war party. It was, to their minds, an anticlimax, a pusillanimous surrender. None was angrier than John Randolph of Virginia, hitherto the leader of the forces of the Administration in the House. He did not hesitate to express his disgust with "this double set ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... soul neither aridity nor lukewarmness. He referred all things to God, and his discourse always concluded by some Christian reflections, which he skilfully drew from the topic of the conversation. His virtue was neither minute nor pusillanimous: religion had, in his discourse as well as in his conduct, that solemn gravity which can alone make it worthy of the Supreme Being. Ever composed, he feared neither contradictions nor adversities: he dreaded nothing but praises. He never allowed himself a ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... must be done. Even, on her behalf, if she were true to him, something must be done. Was it not pusillanimous in him to make no attempt to see his love and to tell her that he at any rate was true to her? These people, who were now his enemies, the lawyers and the Lovels, with the Countess at the head of them, had used him like a dog, had repudiated him without remorse, ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... have not shrunk from my duty in the worst times, and I will not trifle with it in those which look more prosperous. Much must be done to save the British Government from an infamous and daring combination, which might have been yielded to by a more pusillanimous minister; but could only be met by one confident in his character and conduct. Do not think this the language of vanity; the times have been, and still are much too serious for such a boyish passion: I feel that the dearest interests of both kingdoms ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... dealing with contemporary life a novelist is goaded into too many pusillanimous concessions to plausibility. He no longer moves with the gait of omnipotence. It was very different in the palmy days when Dumas was free to play at ducks and drakes with history, and Victor Hugo to reconstruct the whole system of English government, and Scott to compel the sun to set in ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... pusillanimous Highland chiefs and other misters! how long will you tamely submit to such offhanded treatment? Will the day never come when, with whirling sporrans and flashing pibrochs you will rise against the alien oppressor, and demand Home Rule, together with the total ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... perpetual presence, these as yet unknown impressions of his infinity, his power, and his love, should give a higher character to this eremitical enthusiasm, and attract men of loftier and more vigorous minds within its sphere. It was not merely the pusillanimous dread of encountering the trials of life which urged the humbler spirits to seek a safe retirement; or the natural love of peace, and the weariness and satiety of life, which commended this seclusion to those who were too gentle to mingle in, ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... the greater part a discreet silence. To exult in their triumph would be undignified; to hasten forward officiously with offers of pacification or submission, and barter away the substantial fruits of their victory, would not only make them appear pusillanimous in the eyes of their own party, but bring down upon them the increased contempt of their assailants. There remained therefore nothing but silence and the feeble hope that this first fury of the ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... the rajah of Cochin: These were Maraguta, Muta Caymal, his brother and cousins. The zamorin was exceedingly mortified by the discomfiture of his people, and severely reprimanded his chiefs for their pusillanimous conduct, in allowing themselves to be defeated by such a handful of men. The two Italian deserters, while they acknowledged the valour of the Portuguese in the late action, represented that it would be impossible for them to continue to bear up long against such vast odds ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... thereof. An argument fit for great and mighty princes to have in their hand; to the end that neither by over-measuring their forces, they leese themselves in vain enterprises; nor on the other side, by undervaluing them, they descend to fearful and pusillanimous counsels. ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... the Genius that Lived under the Great Ovens, and, with his finger pointed at the cat, said in a frightful voice, husky with wood-ashes: "Miserable and pusillanimous beast! By telling a falsehood to cover a wrong you have only made bad matters worse. For betraying man's kindness to cover your shame, a curse shall be upon you and all your kind until the end of the world. Whenever men stroke you in kindness, remembrance of your guilt shall make you hump up your ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... announcing the fact to the world. During the remainder of that day, and during the sessions of the 3rd and 4th, the phraseology, allegations, and principles of this paper were subjected to severe scrutiny. Its author relates: 'The pusillanimous idea that we had friends in England worth keeping terms with still haunted the minds of many. For this reason, those passages which conveyed censure on the people of England were struck out, lest they should give them ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... watered and exceedingly fertile, producing abundance of fruit, with sugar and long pepper, great quantities of cotton, which the inhabitants manufacture with much skill, and has great abundance of cattle and poultry. The natives are heathens of a pusillanimous character, yet false and treacherous; for it ally the case that ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... thus it is evident that by its very nature it is opposed to magnanimity, from which it differs as great and little differ in connection with the same subject. For just as the magnanimous man tends to great things out of greatness of soul, so the pusillanimous man shrinks from great things out of littleness of soul. Secondly, it may be considered in reference to its cause, which on the part of the intellect is ignorance of one's own qualification, and on the part of the appetite is the fear of failure in what one falsely ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... for only proposing a committee of inquiry. 'It has been represented to me,' he said, 'by the colonies and by persons in this country who are interested in them, that the course which I am proposing is not consistent with the necessities of the case; that there is something pusillanimous in the motion which I am going to make; that in point of fact the interests connected with sugar and coffee planting are in extremis; and that while the question of their redress is being discussed in a committee above-stairs, these great interests will perish. They say to me that a committee ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... pleasure in handling the weapons of strife; may it be longer to the time when they shall be needed in this abode of peace. These are instruments of death, resembling those used in my youth, by cavaliers that rode in the levies of the first Charles, and of his pusillanimous father. There were worldly pride and great vanity, with much and damning ungodliness, in the wars that I have seen, my children; and yet the carnal man found pleasure in the stirrings of those graceless days! Come hither, younker; thou ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... occasions her remonstrances were disregarded, and courses were pursued to which she strongly objected. The surrender after Majuba was in her opinion a pusillanimous abandonment of the English flag, and it was with extreme reluctance that she acquiesced in it. Still more vehement were her feelings about the long abandonment of General Gordon in the Soudan. She had been indefatigable in urging on the Ministry of Gladstone ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... personal virtues were insufficient to justify a departure from the order of succession; and the eyes and wishes of the faithful were turned towards the line of Hashem, and the kindred of the apostle of God. Of these the Fatimites were either rash or pusillanimous; but the descendants of Abbas cherished, with courage and discretion, the hopes of their rising fortunes. From an obscure residence in Syria, they secretly despatched their agents and missionaries, who preached in the Eastern provinces their hereditary indefeasible ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... South Carolina under Colonel Montgomery. This braggart asserted, in the House of Commons, "amidst the loudest cheering, that he knew the Americans very well, and was certain they would not fight; 'that they were not soldiers and never could be made so, being naturally pusillanimous and incapable of discipline; that a very slight force would be more than sufficient for their complete reduction'; and he fortified his statement by repeating their peculiar expressions, and ridiculing their religious enthusiasm, manners and ways of living, greatly to the entertainment ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... for its own, as Demeter, in the days of her desolation, took the child Demophoon to nurture him as her own on the food of gods, and to plunge him through the flames of a fire that would give him immortal life. As the pusillanimous and sordid fears of the mortal mother lost to the child for evermore the possession of Olympian joys and of perpetual youth, so did the craven and earthly cares of bodily needs hold the artist back from the radiance of the life of the soul, and drag him from the ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... Nelson might have effected, had it been possible for him to have headed, at land, the loyal Lazzaroni of Naples, is incapable of being ascertained; but no skill or valour could alone have long preserved a nation so corrupt and pusillanimous from the destruction which, by their meanness, the generality of the upper and middling classes were inviting. There wanted, only, what their subtle invaders well knew was never far distant, some plausible artifice suddenly to prevail over the simplicity ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... decade ago they had proved their mettle not only sword in hand, but in the face of the many privations, sorrows and humiliations consequent on the failure of their cause and the defeat, and martyrdom of their king. There was, therefore, nothing mean or pusillanimous in their attitude when having exhausted their vocabulary of oaths and still seeing before them the muzzles of four-and-twenty musketoons pointed straight at them, they one after another dropped their sword points and turned to read in ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... replied the boys began to collect again from their ignominious flight, and it was observable that they were all laughing at one another in an accusatory manner, each feeling full of contempt for the pusillanimous behaviour of the others, while the looks of Morris might have given the whole party ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... tribes, of ancient date. The Kilgris have been driven from all this part of Asben by the Kailouees. The houses we passed in ruins are said to have been once occupied by the Kilgris. If so, they evidently were in former times powerful and opulent, and have since become relaxed and pusillanimous. At any rate, they have been expelled by the fiercer and more ferocious Kailouees. The Oulimad also come here to plunder occasionally. At Gurarek we saw a phenomenon which, after so much desert, gladdened indeed our eyes. This was a fine sheet of water, of great extent, covered with ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... theism of its prerogative of originality, Hume further takes away from it its fame as in every respect the best religion. It is disadvantageously distinguished from polytheism by the fact that it is more intolerant, makes its followers pusillanimous, and, by its incomprehensible dogmas, puts their faith to severer tests; while it is on a level with polytheism in that most of its adherents exalt belief in foolish mysteries, fanaticism, and the observance of useless customs above the ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... this new species of confederation has been the cause which has brought all Unions to Civil War, to subjection, or to a stagnant apathy, and the peoples which formed these leagues have been either too dull to discern, or too pusillanimous to apply this great remedy. The American Confederation perished by ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... as to this question, What I mean? You must know poor Fraser, a punctual but most pusillanimous mortal, has been talking louder and louder lately of a "second edition" here; whereupon, as labor-wages are not higher here than with you, and printing-work, if well bargained for, ought to be ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... auspicious days, the strain and stress of her life proved more powerful on Mary Shelley than the inspiration of literature. The loss of her little girl Clara, at Venice, on the 24th of September 1818, was cruel enough. However, she tried hard not to show the 'pusillanimous disposition' which, Godwin assured his daughter, characterizes the persons 'that sink long under a calamity of this nature'. [Footnote: 27 October 1818] But the death of her boy, William, at Rome, on the 4th of June 1819, reduced ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... to hinder this Samson from governing? There is in him what far transcends all apprenticeships; in the man himself there exists a model of governing, something to govern by! There exists in him a heart-abhorrence of whatever is incoherent, pusillanimous, unveracious,—that is to say, chaotic, ungoverned; of the Devil, not of God. A man of this kind cannot help governing! He has the living ideal of a governor in him; and the incessant necessity ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... which those names usually produce, will the reader please note that it is not my business now to defend either the general principles of Cobden and Bright or the political spirit which they are supposed to represent. Let them be as sordid, mean, unworthy, pusillanimous as you like—and as the best of us then said they were ("a mean, vain, mischievous clique" even so good a man as Tom Hughes could call them). We called them cowards—because practically alone they faced a country which had become ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... well as the prudence, of the sovereign was deeply wounded by the intrusion of foreign armies, that claimed a right of traversing his dominions, and passing under the walls of his capital: his subjects were insulted and plundered by the rude strangers of the West: and the hatred of the pusillanimous Greeks was sharpened by secret envy of the bold and pious enterprises of the Franks. But these profane causes of national enmity were fortified and inflamed by the venom of religious zeal. Instead of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... the duty of Maurice to protect her when she was insulted? Who, then, if not he, should defend her from the insolent gallantry of this libertine? She would have blushed, she who was energy personified, to love a weak and pusillanimous man. ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... counsel for Captain Lennox (who, in pusillanimous fashion, had loved and sailed away, rather than stop and help the woman he had compromised) cut short his learned friend's tearful eloquence by admitting that he was prepared to accept a verdict, with L1000 damages. As the judge agreed, the case was ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... infliction of all manner of wrong because they were a generation of slaves, suddenly made freemen. They permitted themselves to be shot because they had been educated to bare their backs at the command of the white oligarch. But that sort of pusillanimous cowardice cannot be expected to last always. Men in a state of freedom instinctively question the right of others to impose unequal burdens upon them, or to deny to them equal and exact protection of the laws. When ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... soft mother of a slothful and pusillanimous people, is a neighbor island, anciently subjected by the arms of Oceana; since almost depopulated for shaking the yoke, and at length replanted with a new race. But, through what virtues of the soil or vice of the air soever it be, they come still to degenerate. Wherefore ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... politicians, already speak out that the slaveocratic privileges are only to be curtailed, and slavery preserved as a domestic institution. Not a bit of it. The current and the development of events will run over the heads of the pusillanimous and contemptible conservatives. Slavery must perish, even if the whole North, Lincoln and Seward at its head, ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... princely daughter, O king Alcinous, demand from me that I should no longer keep you in ignorance of what or who I am; for to reserve any secret from you, who have with such openness of friendship embraced my love, would argue either a pusillanimous or an ungrateful mind in me. Know, then, that I am that Ulysses, of whom I perceive ye have heard something; who heretofore have filled the world with the renown of my policies. I am he by whose counsels, if Fame is to be believed at all, more than by the united ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... lead to the perpetration of wrongs that would soon become unendurable, even if we were first to become a broken spirited people? And, considering the arrogance and recklessness of many foreigners in China, and the pusillanimous character of the natives, what can be expected but contempt and aggression on one side, and mistrust and finesse on the other? What but a chronic discontent, wholly incompatible with healthful commerce and peaceful intercourse, can be expected from such a state of things? Consider ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... advanced the day of execution. For had they not killed, and what is quite as bad in the Moro code of ethics, stolen? No punishment following this outrage, the Moros would have looked on the Americans as white-livered, cowardly, pusillanimous, and that first crime would doubtless have been succeeded by raids on the town, and massacres, and feuds, which only a ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... effect of his meditations at this juncture: "Plainly," he said, "I must give up my playthings, in the meanwhile, since I am not in a position to secure myself against idle jeers. At the same time, I am sure that playthings are the very pick of life; all people give them up out of the same pusillanimous respect for those who are a little older; and if they do not return to them as soon as they can, it is only because they grow stupid and forget. I shall be wiser; I shall conform for a little to the ways of their ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... seemingly irresistible force of the argument presented to me. An ingenuous disposition would appear to require that, the moment the truth, or what seems to be the truth, is set before me, I should pay to it the allegiance to which truth is entitled. If I do otherwise, it would appear to argue a pusillanimous disposition, a mind not prompt and disengaged to receive the impression of evidence, a temper that loves something else better than the lustre which all men are bound to recognise, and that has a reserve in favour of ancient prejudice, and of an opinion no longer ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... his heart's content. She will never dare prosecute him, and, if she does, some Humanitarian Society will be sure to see that he is not legally punished. He thus finds safe scope for the indulgence of his crank, and when there is nothing left of his own wife, he turns his unattractive and pusillanimous attentions ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... deeply and degradingly in the opinion of its own subjects, as well as of other nations: but, thirdly, the imbecile conduct of the chief Prussian officers, in the campaign of Jena, was as little likely to have been foreseen or expected, as the pusillanimous, if not treacherous, baseness of those who, after the army was defeated, abandoned so easily a chain of the ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... they may be in doubt, he cannot make one. A president, where I was, boasted that he had amassed together two hundred and odd commonplaces in one of his judgments; in telling which, he deprived himself of the glory he had got by it: in my opinion, a pusillanimous and absurd vanity for such a subject and such a person. I do the contrary; and amongst so many borrowed things, am glad if I can steal one, disguising and altering it for some new service; at the hazard of having it said that 'tis for ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... and is going to babble again, if he has another try at it. Unless—and this is where I want you to follow me very closely, Jeeves—unless steps are taken at once through the proper channels. Only active measures, promptly applied, can provide this poor, pusillanimous poop with the proper pep. And that is why, Jeeves, I intend tomorrow to secure a bottle of gin and lace his luncheon orange juice with ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... than this fresh judicial excursion into the field of "manners and morals," and partisan malice was naturally alert to interpret it as something even more offensive. The report soon came from Baltimore that Chase had deliberately assailed the Administration as "weak, pusillanimous, relaxed," and governed by the sole desire of continuing "in unfairly acquired power." But even before this intelligence arrived, Jefferson had decided that the opportunity afforded by Chase's outburst was too good a one to be neglected. Writing on the 13th of May to ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... uncomplaining patience with which she had awaited his pleasure upon this particular; a patience which, as she asserted, she could still have exercised had he not been about to cross the frontier, but which, under existing circumstances, she now considered as weak and pusillanimous in the mother ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... "Pusillanimous companion, I am the blossom of the city and the luminary of the people; my presence gives life to the plains, and my harmony cultivates the desert. If, when in vulgar prose I express the unpremeditated idea, every ear is filled with delight, and the fleeting soul, through ecstacy, flutters ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... could not convince his pusillanimous father that he did not owe an apology to the Archbishop for being kicked. But he was so deeply offended that he never returned to Salzburg. So much for those who cherish the pathetic belief that the days of patrons were of benefit to the artist ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... Orange forces Louis (who behaves in a manner justifying the rebels) to accompany him with a great army to Rome, defeats the Germans, takes his faineant emperor's part in a single combat with Guy, and is again victorious. Nor, though he has to treat his pusillanimous sovereign in an exceedingly cavalier fashion, does he fail to have Louis crowned again as Emperor of Rome. A fresh rebellion breaking out in France, he again subdues it; and strengthens the tottering house of Charles Martel by giving his own sister ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... manacles, deserves them well. The state that strives for liberty, though foiled And forced to abandon what she bravely sought, Deserves at least applause for her attempt, And pity for her loss. But that's a cause Not often unsuccessful; power usurped Is weakness when opposed; conscious of wrong, 'Tis pusillanimous and prone to flight. But slaves that once conceive the glowing thought Of freedom, in that hope itself possess All that the contest calls for; spirit, strength, The scorn of danger, and united hearts, The surest presage of the good ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... that sharp, inspired vision of the history of the sex (it was, as she had said herself, exactly like Joan of Arc's absolutely supernatural apprehension of the state of France) if she wasn't going to carry it out, if she was going to behave as the ordinary pusillanimous, conventional young lady? It was all very well for her to have said that first day that she would renounce: did she look, at such a moment as this, like a young woman who had renounced? Suppose this ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James |
