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More "Coward" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... brother; and then, oh, the little sister was almost more than he could bear, and the mother had to whisper, 'Remember your promise to your father, to your dead father.' The mother laid her head on the block, but he could not strike. 'Be not the first coward of our name, strike; remember your promise to us all,' and ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... call me a coward, but I'll never let you count me a mean, miserly rascal," and the cheque with Drumsheugh's painful writing fell in fifty ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... sleep with the repressed hatreds of the submerged waiting their appointed season? And while new worlds flew flaming from the wheel of creation, and old ones died in an eye's twinkling, did not the race dream on contemptuous of the changes which lurked in the restless heavens? Yes, the meanest coward in existence had his innate courage and there was a note of bravery in life on ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... repeated incessant litanies, having no ears for his torrent of invective, having no eyes for his writhings and threats, he had no longer the courage to perpetrate this dark deed. After the first fury of his rage had passed, he could not bring himself to it, and quitted the room like a coward and a man taken in crime, stung to the quick by those prayers continuously said for the monk. The night was passed in ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... know anything from a liar? From what you tell me I know nothing. I have to gather what I can from your character. I see that you are a coward. It is that man that came to you, and who is your master, that has forced you to this. Between me and him you tremble, and are a thing to be pitied. As for knowing what you would be at, from anything ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... no doubt we were ambushed at several points in that defile, but our perfect preparation intimidated our foes. The Indian is cruel as the grave, but he is an arrant coward. He will not risk being the first man shot, though his band ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... town with Mary, taking long horseback rides with her, and going to see her whenever he pleases, I don't know how I keep from killing him. He isn't fit to be in the same town with her. I know the man, went to school with him. He's a cad and a coward and a big fat fool. He has some money— that is, his father has—and a smearing of education, but he's coarse and common and not to be trusted. Van Orm was a gentleman at least, ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... imagination!" replied La Corriveau; "your sickly conscience frightens you! You will need to cast off both to rid Beaumanoir of the presence of your rival! The aqua tofana in the hands of a coward is a gift as fatal to its possessor as to ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... before he has entirely lost his independence, his ideas and feelings have undergone a transformation, and the transformation is so profound as to change the miser into a spendthrift, the sceptic into a believer, the honest man into a criminal, and the coward into a hero. The renunciation of all its privileges which the nobility voted in a moment of enthusiasm during the celebrated night of August 4, 1789, would certainly never have been consented to by any of ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... serious part in anything so foolish as trivial matters of that kind. I now learned for the first time what the prevalent opinion was about these much-maligned occurrences in Germany, and I was in a position to defend my poor friend Rockel, who had been branded as a coward, and to put not only his conduct but also my own in a different light to that in which it had been regarded hitherto even by Hermann Franck, who afterwards expressed his sincere regret that ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... rose to his feet. He wiped the blood from his face, and then seemed undecided what to do. He struck no blow, but spoke in tones loud enough for the watchers to hear him plainly. "I might have expected this," he said. "It was a coward's blow, the kind of blow such as you always strike. But, remember, I always pay my debts—always, even to the uttermost farthing." Then he walked away ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... comfort came to him in swearing to himself that he would stand by that boy through thick and thin, and cheer him, and help him, and bear his burdens, for the good deed done that night. Then he resolved to write home next day and tell his mother all, and what a coward her son had been. And then peace came to him as he resolved, lastly, to bear his testimony next morning. The morning would be harder than the night to begin with, but he felt that he could not afford to let one chance slip. Several times he faltered, for the devil showed him, first, all ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... interruptingly answered: "Yea, forsooth,[34] I may be called a coward and a man of no worth, if now I yield to thee in everything, whatever thou mayest say. Enjoin these things to other men; for dictate not to me, for I think that I shall no longer obey thee. But another thing will I tell thee, and do thou ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... nakedness and hunger garbs himself in clean linen and develops the round of his belly. He is a bloodsucker and a vampire. He lays unholy hands on heaven and hell at cent. per cent., and his very existence is a sacrilege and a blasphemy. And yet here am I, wilting before him, an arrant coward, with no respect for him and less for myself. Why should this shame be? Let me rouse in my strength and smite him, and, by so doing, wipe clean ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... denounce himself and bear the penalty. How could he exist with the knowledge that he was under the ban of the gods? His life would be a curse rather than a gift under such circumstances. Physically, Chebron was not a coward, but he had not the toughness of mental fibre which enables some men to bear almost unmoved misfortunes which would crush others to the ground. As to the comforting assurances of Amuba and Jethro, they failed to give him the slightest consolation. He loved Amuba ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... dignity of truth. What is not false, amid the scurrility of this man's statements, it is not in my nature to brand as false, although oozing from the filthy lips of which a lie is the only natural language. The errors and frailties which I deplore, it cannot at least be asserted that I have been the coward to deny. Never, even, have I made attempt at extenuating a weakness which is (or, by the blessing of God, was) a calamity, although those who did not know me intimately had little reason to regard it otherwise than a crime. For, indeed, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... to her first marriage. He was the London representative of a big Pennsylvania manufacturing concern. He was ambitious, unscrupulous and clever beyond conception. He still is all of these and more, for he is now a coward. ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... the new name they're calling us and it's not complimentary. 'Canwanka' means coward. First we were women, then worms and now cowards, because we won't give up the aid of our fortifications and allow ourselves to be overpowered by the Sioux numbers. Do you hear anything among the cottonwoods on the ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... seemed to stand still. A chill passed along his spine and through his hair; he felt the blood forsake his cheeks. He could not have cried out—not to save his life; but being a man of courage he would not, to save his life, have done so if he had been able. Some trepidation his coward body might feel, but his spirit was of sterner stuff. Slowly the shining eyes rose with a steady motion that seemed an approach, and slowly rose Brading's right hand, holding the pistol. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... teacupful o' water down the nape o' my breeches when I'd got ha'f-way up the hill an' cudn' set the barrow down to fight 'un—the coward! Boo-hoo!" and tears ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... such a coward. I must have been terrible yesterday. I—I almost struck you. And you were certainly brave when the whip hung over you. Why, you did not even attempt to raise a ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... Coryston is in the chair or not—I regard him as merely Glenwilliam's cat's-paw—but if you let this meeting at Martover pass, you will have weakened your position in this constituency, you will have disheartened your supporters, you will have played the coward—and you will have left your mother disgracefully in the lurch—though that latter point I can see doesn't move you ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... studied the manuscripts hidden away in the old monasteries of Armenia and Syria, believes that the Saviour of the world ever condescended to 'pun' on the word Petrus, and say, 'On this Rock (or stone) I will build my Church,' when He already knew that He had to deal with a coward ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... they will not have yet caught you lying often enough to suspect that you are not the unworldly and scrupulously truthful person which you represent yourself to be; nor yet will they know how great a coward you are, nor how soon you will run away, if they fight you with persistency and judgement. You keep the dice and throw them both for your children and yourself. Load them then, for you can easily manage to stop your children from examining them. Tell them how ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... was ruinous to the vanquished. They were exterminated, and Riulph, their leader, was captured, and blinded by William's orders. It is supposed he died under the operation. William's cruelty is attributed to his earlier cowardice, and it is an old saw that no one is so cruel as a victorious coward; but cruelty was not so uncommon a thing in the year 933 that there should be any necessity for attributing the Norman's savageness to the reaction from fear. He probably had called his cowardice caution. His success settled the character of Normandy, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... have thought you'd be such a coward? It's all over now, and we can't go away all of a sudden like this, even if we wanted to, and I don't. I want to stop and see what will happen next, and ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... coward? You think so? But I was no coward when I dared to show myself around here, where I had had to suffer as I did.—But can you tell what makes one suffer most while in there?— It is that the others are not in ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... Committee which had been formed for the celebration of Liszt's Artist-Jubilee in November 1873 at Budapest, had in their name invited Liszt to take part in this.] Nevertheless I could not suit myself to the role of a coward; I will therefore endeavor to surmount my fear and to make myself worthy to share with my brave compatriots in the joy they ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... Uncas, in the music of the Delawares; "the tumbling river washes their bones; their men are squaws: their women owls. Go! call together the Huron dogs, that they may look upon a warrior, My nostrils are offended; they scent the blood of a coward." ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... blow of a sledge-hammer could not have been more crushing in its effect on the Colonel than were the words of the leader; he was completely silenced. Greatly to his credit, however, he stood his ground. He was no coward, for he had faced death and been wounded more than once in his younger days on the field of battle, and had he possessed a weapon at the moment, he would have snuffed out the leader's life as deliberately as he would have blown out the light ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... well with whom he had to deal; he knew if he met Aphiz, as he proposed, there would be a chance for his life, but if he failed him, he feared the unerring aim of his rifle. He was no coward—both of them had faced the enemy together, but he lacked the moral courage that is far more sustaining than mere dogged bravery, or contempt for immediate danger. Thus influence, at ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... the oath to find the Tower! That was ten years ago. The frank, manly young knight stepped forth, and declared proudly that he dared do all that might become a man. But he had some awful experience in the course of the quest that changed him from the soul of honor to a whimpering coward. His own companions spat upon ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... in Hans, "don't tell me that things are so and that we are really alive in what your honoured father used to call this gourd full of tears. Don't tell me, Baas, that I made a coward of myself and swallowed that beastliness—if you knew what it was made of you would understand, Baas—for nothing but a bad headache. Don't tell me that Dogeetah came when my eyes were not open to see him, and worst of all, that Imbozwi and his children were tied to those poles when I was not able ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... to his feet, a shattered man no more. His abject mien fell from him like a garment. "Did I not say it was a lie?" he muttered, fiercely. "Greta, I am ashamed," he said; "your courage disgraces me. See what a pitiful coward you have taken for your husband. You have witnessed a strange weakness. But it has been for the last time. Thank God, I am now the man ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... always said that Michael Pendean was a 'shirker' and a coward. He also assured me that he had done with his niece and should never forgive her for marrying her husband. But that was before Bob went to Princetown, six days ago. From there he wrote quite a different story. He had met them by chance and he found that Mr. Pendean had not shirked but done good work ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... but I will not willingly break it. My heart is no longer in the enterprise. I shall be ashamed to look my neighbours in the face. I shall fear their glances and despise myself. When the pinch comes, I may turn coward and do nothing. The whisper of conscience is more terrible than the roar of a lion. What will it avail you to look for help to such a ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... miseries, thought, I, is now made up; nor is it in the power of anything on earth to give me another pang. Yet another awaited me. My eldest son, George, to whom I had written, went to Thornhill Castle to punish our betrayer; he was attacked by the coward's servants, injured one of them, and was brought into the very prison where I ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... Imperial government, and every body employed by it; calling the Emperor a Turkish despot, a sultan, &c., and Jose Bonifacio a tyrannic vizier. Lord Cochrane, of course, does not escape; and to all old calumnies against him, they now add that he is a coward, for which agreeable compliments they are likely to pay dearly I should think. The Supplement to the Idade d'Ouro of the 25th of April gives lists of the two squadrons, drawn up for the purpose ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... topped by the boulder-cairn. He smiled. What an easy solution of the problem! He had been too intent upon gratifying her last desire to entertain for a moment the thought of suicide. He had always held self-destruction as the last resource of the coward and the criminal, and besides there was ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Samuel made no reply to this. Somehow it seemed the most unworthy thing that his friend had said yet. It meant that Dr. Vince was a coward! ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... would be safer than acting with you in the Fatal Conspiracy. But away, play your own part, and look after the horses like a groom as you are. A play-actor—a stage-player!" he repeated to himself; "that would have deserved a stab, but that Craigengelt's a coward. And yet I should like the profession well enough. Stay, let me see; ay, I would come ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... you," he said heartily. "But there are certain matters which you will have to be told. Brocky Lane has been shot down by one of Jim Galloway's crowd. It was a coward's job done by a man who would run a hundred miles rather than meet Brocky in the open. And now the thing which we don't want known is that Lane even so much as set foot on Mt. Temple. We don't want it known that he was anywhere but on Las ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... Bob Buckley had kept his secret, since these men, for two years his side comrades in countless border raids and dangers, thus spake of him, not knowing that he was the most arrant physical coward in all that Rio Bravo country! Neither his friends nor his enemies had suspected him of aught else than the finest courage. It was purely a physical cowardice, and only by an extreme, grim effort of will had he forced ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... life, a stanch friend, a fond husband, a devoted father, as useful a member of society as you might find in a day's journey, and obnoxious only to political opponents, who fear him more than he dislikes them, is called a 'liar,' a 'coward,' and a 'heartless ruffian.' He is nothing of the kind; he is proudly conscious of this fact; his accusers do not even believe it; the world—that portion of it in which he moves—is satisfied that he is a remarkable instance of truth, of ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... do what you like," answered the Prince, who was no coward and had recovered from his astonishment. "You have bewitched the Princess Pansy, and I mean to hide you where no one will be able to ...
— All the Way to Fairyland - Fairy Stories • Evelyn Sharp
... his auditors, turned and saw who was coming. Bannon noted with satisfaction the scared look of appeal which he turned, for a second, toward the men. It was good to know that Grady was something of a coward. ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... fellow-soldiers, the sound of the triumphant bells, was plunged all at once into the indolence, the intrigues, the busy nothingness of the Court, in which whispering favourites surrounded a foolish young prince, beguiling him into foolish amusements, alarming him with coward fears. Wise men and buffoons alike dragged him down into that paltry abyss, the one always counselling caution, the other inventing amusements. "Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die." Was it worth while to lose everything ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... memorable bonds of sympathy. He took the allegiance of his followers and the penalties of his masters in equal good part. He was not the boy to glory in his scrapes, but he was the boy to get into them, and once in, no fear of punishment could make a tell-tale, a cheat, or a coward of him. ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... was not raised one tone, but the tent vibrated with the passionate words. "Are you such a coward that you run away at the first hurt? When the ball struck you in the face at Lords, did you retire—hurt? No; you stuck it, and scored a century! Are you such a dullard that you cannot read beneath a woman's yes and no? Love! Do you know what love means? What ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... you disgrace me? Would you wish me to bear the name of a coward? Would you want my father to turn me out of the house? Would you want my own faction to put their feet upon me, an' drive me ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... of Argyle grew ghastly pale, And he turned his eyes away. The painted harlot by his side, She shook through every limb, For a roar like thunder swept the street, And hands were clenched at him; And a Saxon soldier cried aloud, "Back, coward, from thy place! For seven long years thou hast not dared To look ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... his seat with a pale face, and a death-like sinking at his heart. "Yes, Lord Jesus," he uttered with dry lips, "I am at Thy command. Forgive my coward halting. If Thou wilt send me, ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... that Comet came home, in disgrace—a gun-shy dog, a coward, expelled from college, not for some youthful prank, but because he was—yellow. And he knew he was disgraced. He saw it in the face of the big man, Devant, who looked at him in the yard where he had spent his happy puppyhood, then turned away. He knew it because ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... world, by his photograph, that he was no monstrous freak of reversion to the tiger, but a good looking young man with nothing abnormal about him except his appalling courage and resolution (that is why the terrified shriek Coward at him): one to whom murdering a happy young couple on their wedding morning would have been an unthinkably unnatural abomination under ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... myself have stood. Where there was discontent, I see contentment; where there was turbulence, I see peace, where there was disloyalty, I see loyalty." Then the fury of party anger burst upon him, and bowing to the storm, Robert Peel went forth while men hissed after him such words as "traitor," "coward," "recreant leader." Nor did he foresee that in losing an office he had gained ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... deal to do, you know. I don't know whether it can be Thursday week.' He was putting in the coward's ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... Ferdinando, "if it were my turn next! I must own, that though I should consider myself to be affronted if I were told that I were faint-hearted,—though I should know myself to be maligned if it were said of me that I have a coward's fear of death,—still I should feel far from comfortable if that age came upon me which this system has defined, and were I to live in a country in which it has prevailed. Though I trust that I may be able to meet death like a brave man when it may come, still I should ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... the Toy Soldier slipped out of his hand and fell into a scrap basket. He knew very well that he couldn't stay with a child who was a coward. ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... to the fork, I fled out the great horizontal limb. He followed me, and out I went, farther and farther. At last I was out amongst the small twigs and leaves. The Chatterer was ever a coward, and greater always than any anger he ever worked up was his caution. He was afraid to follow me out amongst the leaves and twigs. For that matter, his greater weight would have crashed him through the foliage before he could have ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... esteem it disgraceful in the highest degree to relinquish these sacred repositories. The man that would refuse to take the field in defence of these hereditary possessions, is regarded by them as a coward, and treated as an outcast from their nation. To the over-hill villages the French had an easy access by means of rivers that emptied themselves into the Ohio and Mississippi. Their middle settlements and towns in the ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... thing for a boy to have said to him, and before all these people too! To ask a chap to do a noble deed and in the same breath to tell him he is a coward! ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... looked upon each other. Long and long they looked, and the heart of each was elated. "I comprehend," Demetrios said. He clapped spurs to his horse and fled as a coward would have fled. This was one occasion in his life when he overcame his pride, and should in ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... is standing back from him, her small flower-like head uplifted, her eyes on fire. "Oh, coward!" cries she. "You do right to speak to me like this—to me, who have no one to ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... Field's room the night the adjutant was so mysteriously missing. The note itself was held forth by the inspector general and she was asked if she cared to have it opened and read aloud. Her answer was that Field was a coward, a dastard to betray a ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... of character, and in the expressions of our opinion respecting it, to realize the meaning of courage and manliness. That sententious Swedish Queen, one of whose foolish maxims I have quoted, has said that Cicero, though a coward, was capable of great actions, because she did not know what a coward was. To doubt—to tremble with anxiety—to vacillate hither and thither between this course and the other as to which may be the better—to complain within one's own breast that this or that thing has been an injustice—to ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... a coward, but you are innocent, eh? And it is that that I love you for. I love you more than my life, and you love your little girl, don't you? I am all yours. You are my only love. ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... very dastard, a coward, a block and a beast, that will not do as much, but they will sure, they will; for it is an ordinary thing for these inamoratos of our time to say and do more, to stab their arms, carouse in blood, [5448]or as that Thessalian Thero, that bit off his ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... his coffee down and yelled for more. It was obvious he'd spent the night without sleep. "So we're going to need men with guts. Gordon, you had training under Murdoch—who knew his business. And you aren't a coward, as most of these fat fools are. I've got ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... Act? That is the situation I have endeavored to portray. Macbeth, wretched criminal, suspects every one of his own dark purposes, or fears their hatred, because he feels himself hateful. He is not a coward, either physically or morally; his fears are all intellectual; he knows that Banquo is too noble to serve him, too powerful to be permitted to serve against him,—so he must out of the way. The murderers have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... confounded, the fiercer was his resentment when he came to himself. Such hatred never existed in a human bosom without marking its progress with violence and death. Mr. Tyrrel, however, felt no inclination to have recourse to personal defiance. He was the furthest in the world from a coward; but his genius sunk before the genius of Falkland. He left his vengeance to the disposal of circumstances. He was secure that his animosity would never be forgotten nor diminished by the interposition of any time or events. Vengeance ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... terrible lion, whom bloody rage hurries through the midst of slaughter. It is sweet and glorious to die for one's country; death even pursues the man that flies from him; nor does he spare the trembling knees of effeminate youth, nor the coward back. Virtue, unknowing of base repulse, shines with immaculate honors; nor does she assume nor lay aside the ensigns of her dignity, at the veering of the popular air. Virtue, throwing open heaven to those who deserve not to die, ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... distant danger for the sake of an adequate reward. But this courage was supported and fed solely by the self-persuasion of consummate genius, and his profound confidence both in his good fortune and the inexhaustibility of his resources. Physically he was a coward! immediate peril to be confronted by the person, not the mind, had ever appalled him like a child. He had never dared to back a spirited horse. He had been known to remain for days in an obscure ale-house in the country, to which a shower had accidentally driven him, because it had been ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was an absurd hope? The fact is, Victor, I have been a coward—a nervous, wretched coward from first to last. I shut my eyes to the truth. I feared you might fall in love with this girl, but I put the fear away from me. The time has come when the truth must be spoken, when my love for you can shield you ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... with fear. Not all kinds; for there are some things we ought to fear, such as dishonour and pauperism, the fear of which is compatible with dauntless courage, while the coward may not fear them. Fearlessness of what is in our control, and endurance of what is not, for the sake of true honour, constitute the courageous habit. Its excess is rashness or foolhardiness, the deficiency cowardice. Akin to it, but still spurious, ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... and most credited of which was that Davis had demanded from Nelson an apology for language used in the original altercation, and that Nelson's refusal was accompanied by a slap in the face, at the same moment denouncing Davis as a coward. However this may be, Nelson, after slapping Davis, moved toward the corridor, from which a stairway led to the second floor, and just as he was about to ascend, Davis fired with a pistol that he had obtained from some one near by after the blow had been struck. The ball entered Nelson's breast ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... if you think I can make you happy," one day when Margot Lorenzi had tearfully confessed her love for him, it would be doubly weak—worse than weak, Stephen thought—to throw her over now. It would look to the world as if he were a coward, and it would look to himself the same—which would be more painful in the end. So he could listen to no advice, and he wished to hear none. Fortunately he was not in love with any other woman. But then, if he had loved somebody else, he would not have made the ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... "a wondrous anxiety oppresses me. It seems to me I am in the presence of a sphinx, who is in the act of solving a great mystery! I am a coward, and would take refuge in flight, but curiosity binds me ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... slaves came into Bristol Harbour in the time of our fathers? I would have given L500 to have had you and the Anti-Slavery Society in Dara during the three days of doubt whether the slave-dealers would fight or not. A bad fort, a coward garrison, and not one who did not tremble—on the other side a strong, determined set of men accustomed to war, good shots, with two field-pieces. I would have liked to hear what you would all have said then. I do not say this in brag, for God knows ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... He jumped back, eyes widening, to face his oncoming opponent in an open space. He was no coward, that kid, and he knew how to handle a vibroblade. In his own unwise, suicidal way, he was perfectly capable of proving himself. He held out the point of that shimmering metal shaft, ready to parry any offensive thrust that Mike ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... somewhere to a cave, and slink there. And yet, 'tis a noble and heroic thing, the wind! who ever conquered it? In every fight it has the last and bitterest blow. Run tilting at it, and you but run through it. Ha! a coward wind that strikes stark naked men, but will not stand to receive a single blow. Even Ahab is a braver thing—a nobler thing than that. Would now the wind but had a body; but all the things that most ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... of his eyes broadened out to the circumference of his iris, and his limbs seemed to diminish as if endowed with the contractility peculiar to the mollusca and certain of the articulate; for Frycollin, the valet, was an egregious coward. ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... so; but I am too great a coward. Think of the shame that I should have to endure from my aunt, and all the world would taunt me with my folly and madness. I think it would kill what little good there is in me. For although I should be willing to suffer if I have done wrong, yet there would be no use in going where ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... it, Mr. Thorold," I said. "If anybody does wrong because he is afraid of the consequences of doing right, he is another sort of a coward—that is all." ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... juxtaposition in their conflict and contrast, struck the spark of comedy. Downright, as his name indicates, is "a plain squire"; Bobadill's humour is that of the braggart who is incidentally, and with delightfully comic effect, a coward; Brainworm's humour is the finding out of things to the end of fooling everybody: of course he is fooled in the end himself. But it was not Jonson's theories alone that made the success of "Every Man in His Humour." The play is admirably written and ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... silence that could be felt.... None offered an explanation that I could hear.... 'Why don't you answer?' thundered Gallipoli.... There was an unmistakable murmur.... 'Don't YOU try to slide out of this, you COWARD! I'll hold every one of you responsible for this! Where's my ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... I tell you!" A smile almost fiendish broke over the furrows of the rugged face. "You wouldn't dast shoot, unless perhaps it was a woman, you coward!" ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... (viz., the death of Drona)? Fight ye with faces turned towards every direction. Behold now the high-souled Karna, the son of Vikartana, that great bowman of mighty strength, careering in battle, using his celestial weapons! Through fear of that warrior in battle, that coward, viz., Dhananjaya, the son of Kunti, always turns back like a small deer at the sight of a lion! It is he who, by the ordinary methods of human battle, brought the mighty Bhimasena endued with the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... horrible eugenist, because he wants to get a super-man who, having more than two legs, will be a vastly superior person to a man. Chesterton loves men. He tells us why St. Peter was used to found the Church upon. It was because he 'was a shuffler, a coward, and a snob—in a word, a man.' Even the Thirty-Nine Articles and the Councils of Trent have failed to find a better reason for the founding of the Church. It is a defence of the fallibility of the Church, the practical nature of that Body, an organization ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... made a terrible bungle of his generalship, he was at least a brave man. Leaping into his chariot, and calling to the handful of faithful soldiers to follow him, he bade Menna lash his horses and charge the advancing Hittites. Menna was no coward, but when he saw the thin line of Egyptian troops, and looked at the dense mass of Hittite chariots, his heart almost failed him. He never thought of disobedience, but, as he stooped over his plunging horses, he panted to the King: "O mighty strength of Egypt in the ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Ancient Egypt • James Baikie
... Well.—Johnson comments, 'I cannot reconcile my heart to Bertram; a man noble without generosity, and young without truth; who married Helena as a coward, and leaves her as a profligate: when she is dead by his unkindness, sneaks home to a second marriage, is accused by a woman whom he has wronged, defends himself by falsehood, and is dismissed to happiness.' This is just. Bertram is atrocious. ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... Affront that nothing but Blood can expiate. The Reason perhaps may be, because no other Vice implies a want of Courage so much as the making of a Lie; and therefore telling a man he Lies, is touching him in the most sensible Part of Honour, and indirectly calling him a Coward. [I cannot omit under this Head what Herodotus tells us of the ancient Persians, That from the Age of five Years to twenty they instruct their Sons only in three things, to manage the Horse, to make use of the Bow, and to ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... purposes of spite, Pawns in the day, and butchers in the night; With that malignant envy which turns pale, And sickens, even if a friend prevail, Which merit and success pursues with hate, And damns the worth it cannot imitate; 130 With the cold caution of a coward's spleen, Which fears not guilt, but always seeks a screen, Which keeps this maxim ever in her view— What's basely done, should be done safely too; With that dull, rooted, callous impudence, Which, dead to shame and every nicer sense, Ne'er ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... said Jack softly, as he bent over the poor fellow and held his hand, "who could think you a coward for saving my life?" ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... it vanished when it was pointed out to her that it was really a sign of the Bride's infinite superiority.... So the three Houghtons accepted—one with amused pity, and the other with concern, and the third with admiration of such super-refinement,—the fact that Eleanor was a coward. Yet if she had not been a coward, something she did would not have been particularly brave, nor would it have wrung from Mary Houghton ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... a clout from the Boer — to plaster anew with dirt? An Irish liar's bandage, or an English coward's shirt? We may not speak of England; her Flag's to sell or share. What is the Flag of England? Winds ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... in his life. He had to escape regeneration. To do that, he was willing to take any chance, coward though he was—even if it meant that he ...
— Divinity • William Morrison
... Lucius Domitius, Roman Emperor; born 37; died 68; probably the most prominent type known of wickedness and cruelty, and, nevertheless, a coward. ...
— The Angel of Death • Johan Olof Wallin
... when alone in the crowded thoroughfare of travel, to have one's last bank-note declared a counterfeit. I knew I should not be able to see her face, under the shade of this disappointment; and so, coward that I was, I turned this trouble, where I have turned so many ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... resistance to their attack. I should have taken my death by almost rushing on the point of their terrible knives. But Moncrieff's calm earnest voice restored me in a moment. At its tones I felt raised up out of my coward self, and prepared to ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... cried. "I will not believe it. I will not yield to such things. I will not be coward enough to give up a friend for such ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... announced. All rose to meet her, and all looked at her with equal interest. She was calmer than on the previous day, and she carried a package of papers in her hand. Her red lips were compressed, and her eyes looked defiantly round upon all present. Whatever might be her faults, she was not a coward when brought face to face with danger. She was determined to carry the matter through, both because she knew that she had no other alternative, and because she believed herself to be doing a righteous act, which, at the same time, fully satisfied her desire ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... money had come to him, his pecuniary cares were comparatively light, and he believed that he could be very happy with Margaret and his children. But then to be pointed at daily as a lion, and to be asked by all his acquaintances after the lamb! It must be owned that he was a coward; but are not most men cowards in ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... on the impulse I made up that fib. I'm not sorry even now—I think. Yet I did mean to tell you, sooner or later, the truth. Honestly, I shouldn't have kept silence long if you hadn't found out. I'm not a coward when ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... enough of a coward. There is nothing cowardly about him. If Phineas Finn could have struck an enemy with a club, in a dark passage, behind his back, I will never care to speak to any man again. Nothing shall make me believe it. If I did, I could never again believe ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... am growing a coward," she said in a broken voice. "O Hamish, it does seem as though our troubles were too many and hard to ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... stone: Aloft the waking screech-owl 'gan to sing, And past him skim'd the bat with flapping wing. The fears of nature woke within his breast; He left the hallowed spot of Mary's rest, And sped his way the church-yard wall to gain, Then check'd his coward heart, and turn'd again. The shadows round a deeper horrour wear; A deeper silence hangs upon his ear; A stiller rest is o'er the settled scene; His flutt'ring heart recoils, and shrinks again. ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... place breathed out decay; the decay of humanity, of cleanliness, of the honest decencies of life turned foul. Something lethal exhaled from that dim doorway. There was a stab of pestilence, reaching for the brain. But the old charlatan was no coward. ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... it's the maple-tree," Ruth replied in a husky whisper. How she envied Amy. Amy frankly acknowledged to being a coward, and poor Ruth wished that she herself did not have a reputation for courage to sustain. For certainly that sound was not the whisper of the wind in the boughs of the maple. It was in the room, apparently at ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... me a liar? Do you mean to call me a coward?" cried one after the other—the bigger boys now being louder and ...
— Wilton School - or, Harry Campbell's Revenge • Fred E. Weatherly
... you'll think it's dreadful of me," she faltered, "but—I wish you needn't go. I've never been on the real sea before since I was a baby: only getting from England to Ireland the shortest way, and on the Channel. This is the first storm I've seen. I never thought I was a coward. I don't like even women to be cowards. I adore bravery in men, and that's why I—but no matter! I don't know if I'm afraid exactly, but it's a dreadful feeling to be alone, without any one to care whether you drown ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... exclaimed Deerfoot, his voice as firm and unwavering as his nerves; "coward! Serpent that creeps in the grass and strikes the heel of the hunter; Arorara speaks with a double tongue; he says he took the scalp of Deerfoot, but the scalp of Deerfoot is here, and he dares Arorara and Waughtauk and Tecumseh and all the chiefs and sachems ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... pardon all my rudeness,' he said, in a shamefaced manner. 'But, to be very candid with you, I was never met so boldly before, and I like it. We men of the world hate nothing so much as a coward. If some of your brethren had the courage of their convictions and challenged us poor devils boldly, things might be different. We like men to show that they believe in Hell by trying to keep us from it.' But now I am sounding my own praises. It is enough to say that he promised ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... an end when Grady, following the glances of his auditors, turned and saw who was coming. Bannon noted with satisfaction the scared look of appeal which he turned, for a second, toward the men. It was good to know that Grady was something of a coward. ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... animal food that has not a deathy smack. It cannot be thought that he has any reverence or awe of the mystery of life. Neither is he a coward; at least, not such a coward as to fear the dying kick of a lamb or sheep. Yet so long as his victim can stand, or sit, or lie in a strong struggle, the raven keeps aloof—hopping in a circle that narrows ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... all, even you. I was like a disappointed child. I had to do something—and on the impulse I made up that fib. I'm not sorry even now—I think. Yet I did mean to tell you, sooner or later, the truth. Honestly, I shouldn't have kept silence long if you hadn't found out. I'm not a coward when it's ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... barriers and the number mounted on the temples, they withdrew to their city. They had proved themselves to be warriors of such mettle as a god indeed by the breath of his spirit may raise up and bring to perfection in a single day, but into which it were impossible for mortal men to convert a coward even ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... shame if thou art dead. I sailed together with thee; let us die Together. What a coward slave were I, Creeping through Argos and from glen to glen Of wind-torn Phocian hills! And most of men— For most are bad—will whisper how one day I left my friend to die and made my way Home. They will say I watched the sinking breath Of thy great house and plotted for thy death To wed thy ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides
... Macbeth, the ambitious criminals; Hamlet, the young man with a great mind and a great heart but with a feeble will which collapses under too heavy a task and comes to the verge of insanity; Cordelia, the English Antigone, the devoted daughter of the proscribed King Lear; Falstaff, glutton, coward, diverting and gay, a kind of Anglo-Saxon Panurge. A whole dramatic literature has come from Shakespeare. To France he was introduced by Voltaire and then scorned by him because he had succeeded only ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... back it, the spectacle of a gentleman actually refusing to fight a duel was a little short of an enormity. In his mind he vaguely pondered whether he should strike that long-legged Englishman in the face and call him a coward, or whether such conduct in a lady's presence might be deemed ungentlemanly, ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... he'll take it! He'll take it because he's a big man, and because you need him, and because he's no coward. And with the biggest man in Westville on your side, you'll see how public opinion ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... homage to society—shorn of his virtues or his splendor, he does not care to face his fellows. Among atheists—Christians being without the question of suicide—among atheists, whatever may be said to the contrary, none but a base coward can take up ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... diamonds away from the Jew, hold them for a while, and then, since the fellow was after all a friend, return them. To break into Reichman's store at night would be dangerous. Reichman himself was no coward, and he employed a savage night-watchman, just out of Sing Sing. So Blizzard planned a robbery in a spirit of farce, and in the broad ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... for emitting any such sentiments. A man that won't fight for his country is worse than a horse-thief. If I was the cap, I'd put you in the guard-house for thirty days on round steak and tamales. War,' says Willie, 'is great and glorious. I didn't know you were a coward.' ...
— Options • O. Henry
... he stretched out his hand to pull it to him, but this time it ran at him, and he was so alarmed that he leapt the railing and scudded away to his boat. You must not think, however, that he was a coward, for he came back next night with a crust in one hand and a stick in the other, but the perambulator had gone, and he never saw another one. I have promised to tell you also about his paddle. It was a child's spade which he had found near St. Govor's Well, and he thought ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... sword's point in my heart! I am your son. You are as noble a gentleman as Brutus was! Kill me, then! I am a murderer: but I am a Davenant, and no coward!" ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... the gallantry of her distraction; Her blazing eyes darting the wandering stars, To have seen her mouth the heavens, and mate the gods, While with her thundering voice she menaced high, And every accent twanged with smarting sorrow; But what's all this to thee? thou, coward, yet Art living, canst not, wilt not find the road To the great palace of magnificent Death; Though thousand ways lead to his thousand doors, Which, day and night, are still unbarred for all. [Clashing of Swords. Drums and Trumpets without. Hark! 'tis the noise ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... upon him, "Liar, coward!" and his hands gripped his brother's throat with deadly force, as though the spoken word could be killed so; and as Christian struggled, lifted him clear off his feet and flung him crashing backward. So furious was he, that, ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... the dark deck, and picking off the captain when he appeared on the poop. That is what Boston and Blackie expected me to do. But I dismissed this thought without serious consideration. It was uncertain, and I meant to make sure of the brute. Besides, it was, I felt, cowardly, and I would not be a coward. I intended to get into the cabin and shoot Swope in his own arm-chair, so to speak. Afterwards—well, they could do what they pleased with me. My friend ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... and I dined with the Duke of Albemarle. At table the Duchesse, a very ill-looked woman, complaining of her Lord's going to sea the next year, said these cursed words: "If my Lord had been a coward he had gone to sea no more: it may be then he might have been excused, and made an embassador," (meaning my Lord Sandwich). This made me mad, and I believed she perceived my countenance change, and blushed herself very much. I was in hopes others had not minded it, but my Lord Brouncker, ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... friend the surgeon is doing well. He need not have sent for me; but your carving doctor is a great coward when it ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... true," said the tender-hearted Jessie; "what is to be done? Our landlady goes to bed early. It would never do to rouse her—and then, she may perhaps be as great a coward as we are. Oh! if there was only a man in the house. Even ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... struggles with her conscience, God knows she has never given me one angry look, or uttered one word of reproach. What is the result? That I don't love her! Why? Is it possible? Can it be true? I can't understand. She is suffering; her days are numbered; yet I fly like a contemptible coward from her white face, her sunken chest, her pleading eyes. Oh, I am ashamed, ashamed! [A pause] Sasha, a young girl, is sorry for me in my misery. She confesses to me that she loves me; me, almost an old man! Whereupon I lose my head, and ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... the government.—The people of Amiens have lately, in one of these sudden effusions of discontent, burnt the tree of liberty, and even the representative, Dumont, has been menaced; but these are only the blows of a coward who is alarmed at his own temerity, and dreads the ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... his shoulders he took to the brazen underground chamber, which he had built, when Hercules came in with the body of the Nemean lion. There he stayed for several days, according to a good old historian, Diodorus, who in writing of the King told that he was so great a coward. ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... dim, starlit trail for an hour or so and found no break in the level monotony of the mesa. He peered ahead, hoping to see the blur of a hill against the southern stars. The air was cool and clear and sweet. He plodded along, happy in the prospect of work. Although he was a physical coward, darkness and the solitudes held no enemies for him. He felt that the world belonged to him at night. The moon was his lantern and the stars were his friends. Circumstance and environment had wrought for him a coat of cheerful effrontery which passed for hardihood; a coat patched with slang and ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... have the same effect on her which the sound of my voice had produced when I first entered the room. After she had said the word which called me a coward, after she had made the avowal which branded me as a thief—while her hand lay in mine I was her ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... wretched upstart, the hireling. To think he should stoop to an office stenographer! Once on that thought, she decided that he should not be allowed to have a woman as an assistant any more. He owed it to her to love her after all she had done for him, the coward, and to let other women alone. Her brain whirled with strange thoughts. She was really not sane in her present state. She was so wrought up by her prospective loss that she could only think of rash, impossible, destructive things to do. She dressed swiftly, feverishly, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... do that, I think," replied von Schalckenberg. "He is a cruel, unscrupulous, and absolutely selfish man, but, if I have read his character aright, we shall also find that he is far too much of a coward to attempt to ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... his gorgeous feathers as usual, he rolled out the long call, drawing himself up straight the instant it was done, turning his head from side to side to catch the first beat of his rival's answer—"Come out, if you dare; drum, if you dare. Oh, you coward!" And he hopped, five or six high, excited hops, like a rooster before a storm, to the other end of the log, and again his quick throbbing drumcall ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... head, were for going at once to our rescue; but the maidens implored, and Yorke averred it was too late, and reported the savages in such numbers as would make such an undertaking only foolhardy. (And by this you must not judge Yorke a villain and a coward; he would have been the first to volunteer and the loudest to urge on the others, but he had heard Fatima's hoofs behind him, and knew we were safe, and, rascal that he was, could not resist his practical joke nor his negro love of producing ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... Sea-Gull—"Surely I will dare whatever danger Dares the Red Fox—dares my rival; She shall never call me coward." So she swung above the waters— Dizzy height above the waters, Pushed and aided by her rival, To and fro with reckless daring, Till the strong tree rocked and trembled, Rocked and trembled with its burden. As above the yawning billows ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... Jane, "if you are not a coward, which I strongly suspect you are;" and when was a spirited boy of thirteen so urged on that had the prudence to know where to stop with propriety to himself. Marten, choking with rage, did advance to the door pointed out, and put his head inside, and there, on ...
— Brotherly Love - Shewing That As Merely Human It May Not Always Be Depended Upon • Mrs. Sherwood
... they told her. She pleaded with them, and said Mary must be Queen, and that for herself she was so young—only sixteen; and she did not care to be Queen, but only wanted to live a quiet life with her husband, Lord Dudley. But they argued with her, and told her she was a coward; that it was for the good of England, and that if she refused she would be wicked; and at last she consented. Then all her ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... all this has to do with the fear you profess to feel," said Hatch. "I didn't fancy you were a coward, O'Toole." ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... ghastly pale, And he turned his eyes away. The painted harlot by his side, She shook through every limb, For a roar like thunder swept the street, And hands were clenched at him; And a Saxon soldier cried aloud, "Back, coward, from thy place! For seven long years thou hast not dared To look him ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... of the culprit. Leicester was in Bommel when he heard of Baron Hemart's faint-heartedness or treachery, and his wrath was extravagant in proportion to the exultation with which his previous success had inspired him. He breathed nothing but revenge against the coward and the traitor, who had delivered up the town in "such ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... was revealing, uplifting—a source of strength to go on. He was not to blame for what had happened; he could not change the future. He had a choice between playing the part of a man or that of a coward, and he had to choose the former. There seemed to be a spirit beside him—the spirit of his mother or of some one who loved him and who would have him be true to an ideal, and, if needful, die for it. No night in all his life ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... Eagle[3] screams no more Defiance high and loud; The wing is broken that could soar Through battle's smoky cloud, And wounded by a coward's spear, His perch is ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... is your weak imagination!" replied La Corriveau; "your sickly conscience frightens you! You will need to cast off both to rid Beaumanoir of the presence of your rival! The aqua tofana in the hands of a coward is a gift as fatal to its ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... for small things, but megalokindynos, i.e. endangering himself for great things. And Seneca says (De Quat. Virtut.): "Thou wilt be magnanimous if thou neither seekest dangers like a rash man, nor fearest them like a coward. For nothing makes the soul a coward save the consciousness ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... seeming lack of everything but hard fighting on Rupert's part. The allies indulged in bitter mutual recriminations. Rupert blamed both D'Estrees and Spragge; D'Estrees found fault with Rupert for running to leeward; and D'Estrees' own second, Martel, roundly called his chief a coward, in a letter which earned him an imprisonment in the Bastille. The French king ordered an inquiry by the intendant of the navy at Brest, who made a report[53] upon which the account here given has mainly rested, ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... Ossaroo was possessed of a high degree of courage; and, most of his life having been spent as a shikaree, he had become well inured to the risk of losing it. Had he been a coward, or unused to such perils as at that moment surrounded him, he would in all likelihood have succumbed through fear; and toppled helplessly over upon the shoulders of the merciless monster that was threatening to ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... evincing his prowess; but now, when we are fairly engaged, when death and ruin stare us in the face, and when nothing but the most intrepid courage can rescue us from contempt and disgrace, sorry am I to say it, many of those who were foremost in noise, shrink coward-like from the danger, and are begging pardon without striking a blow. This, however, is not general, but dejection of spirits is an epidemical disease, and unless some fortunate event or other gives a turn to the disorder, in time it may ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... am afraid I'm a dreadful coward," he suddenly confessed. "I have been rather badly ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... tone," said O'Mally, coloring, "why, the thing is done. Henceforth I am your major-domo. No one can call me a coward." ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... it was really a sign of the Bride's infinite superiority.... So the three Houghtons accepted—one with amused pity, and the other with concern, and the third with admiration of such super-refinement,—the fact that Eleanor was a coward. Yet if she had not been a coward, something she did would not have been particularly brave, nor would it have wrung from Mary Houghton the admission: "I ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... for that spirit, seer, I've watched and sought my life-time long; Sought him in heaven, hell, earth and air— An endless search, and always wrong! Had I but seen his glorious eye Once light the clouds that 'wilder me, I ne'er had raised this coward cry To cease to think, and cease to be; I ne'er had called oblivion blest, Nor, stretching eager hands to death, Implored to change for senseless rest This sentient ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... be hanged to you! You are a coward as well as a hog!" and the belligerent broker followed him out ...
— Halsey & Co. - or, The Young Bankers and Speculators • H. K. Shackleford
... get ready to leave Marseilles the next day, and that I would pay for his journey to Paris; but that if he did not like to do so, I should leave him to his fate, and in three days he would be expelled from Marseilles. The coward began to weep and said he would go ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... explain to-night, and you must at least pretend to be interested. As regards my nerves, I can assure you this kind of thing is a relief after the other. I do not think I am a coward as a rule, but I am afraid of this unknown scoundrel. I have a presentiment that I am in very ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... Gladys caught the word "dead" and her heart turned to water within her. The horror of the afternoon's experience had made her see herself in her true light and she was overwhelmed with shame at the sight. This Sahwah whom she had twitted as being a coward and a baby because she would not break her word, was made of the stuff that heroes are made of, and had probably given her brave life to save her worthless one. Looking back over the weeks she had spent in camp, she could not remember one instance where she had done anybody a favor or entered ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... sounded sweet—of using a phrase which could be packed like a hand-bag with anything you chose to put into it? Graham was in love with her. That boy in New York, whom she had found in a panic of lonely terror lest he should prove a coward in the great ordeal he was facing overseas had been for a few hours in love with her. What would be the content of the phrase ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... and I have stuck to it ever since. You niver know when it may be useful." As he spoke he continued to hold the black muzzle of his pistol in a dead line with the centre of the young man's forehead, and to follow the latter's movements with a hand which was as steady as a rock. Ezra was no coward, but he ceased his advance ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... better to run away so soon than to be killed? Is there any bravery in staying in a place where you are likely to be murdered by some coward?" ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... have been,' continued Lady Monteagle. 'You have been to Richmond; you have been with Miss Herbert. Yes! I know all. I am a victim, but I will not be a dupe. Yorkshire indeed! Paltry coward!' ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... Morla was a coward, and there is no doubt a traitor also. On returning to the town he urged the necessity of instantly capitulating; and most of those in authority took a similar part, except Castellas, the commander of the regular troops. The peasantry and citizens kept firing ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... not be a coward, feeling your mercy in my success alone; but let me find the grasp of your hand ...
— Fruit-Gathering • Rabindranath Tagore
... Scotch, Welsh, Dutch—Catholic, Protestant, infidel—fell on their knees, and, if they did not pray, they paid that outward homage to Religion which sometimes the most indifferent and irreligious cannot resist paying her. Infidelity is a great coward, as well as a false guide. In her hour of ease and satiety, she pretends to scorn the threats and judgments of the Most High, and, like Satan in his pandemonium, to make war on Heaven; but no sooner does the roaring of the thunderbolt shake the earth, or the vast abyss open ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... hypocrites and warn of danger from false teachers, (2 Cor. xi. 13-15; Gal. i. 6, 7,) that "their folly may be made manifest to all men." (2 Tim. iii. 8, 9; 2 Peter ii. 1, 3.)—The cruel enemy, who in the day of prosperity boasts of his success, in the day of adversity becomes the most arrant coward and cringing suppliant,—whether it be Saul or Shimei. (1 Sam. xv. 30; 2 Sam. xix. 18.) Haughty persecutors have been changed to humble suitors for an interest in the prayers of their victims,—"to worship before their feet." "The word of Christ's ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... before he repeated: "You found the breeze nipping! There is scarcely an air astir. And you understand the relations existing between Miss Austin and me? I want a better reason. Millicent, you, at least, are not a coward—dare you give it me?" ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... ask you to be as quiet as possible for I am not able to give the challenge of the bull moose quite as loudly. Now I do not know who he was or what party he represented. He was a coward. He stood in the darkness in the crowd around the automobile and when they cheered me and I got up to bow, he stepped forward and ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... not deserve to live," I said to the genius, "if I were such a coward as to slay a lady who is not only unknown to me, but who is at this moment half dead herself. Do with me as you will—I am in your power—but I refuse ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... a wide grin. "That was a suicidal rush on you, Lee. A damned stupid tactic ... a rush like that is only as strong as the weakest coward in it. All it takes is one man to break and run, and everybody else will run too. So it was easy for me ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... THE hue, which coward dread on my pale cheeks Imprinted, when I saw my guide turn back, Chas'd that from his which newly they had worn, And inwardly restrain'd it. He, as one Who listens, stood attentive: for his eye Not far could lead him through the sable air, And the thick-gath'ring ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... that the dear little girl was in her present position. Lastly, a man was better fitted to meet death in such a peculiarly awful form than a sweet young girl. Not, however, that I meant to let these gentry torture me to death — I am far too much of a coward to allow that, being naturally a timid man; my plan was to see the girl safely exchanged and then to shoot myself, trusting that the Almighty would take the peculiar circumstances of the case into consideration ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... tore a road, With his gunners' rammers run Through our ports at every load, Till clear the blue beyond us through our yawning timbers showed. Yet with entrails torn we clung Like the Spartan to our fox, And on deck no coward tongue Wailed the enemy's hard knocks, Nor that all below us trembled like ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... madman would be buried beneath the fragments of his throne; I behold him with scorn; to me he is merely a crown, and when that is gone he is nothing. But he who loses his crown and lives without it, is more than a king; from the rank of a king, which may be held by a coward, a villain, or madman, he rises to the rank of a man, a position few can fill. Thus he triumphs over Fortune, he dares to look her in the face; he depends on himself alone, and when he has nothing left to show but himself he is not a nonentity, he is somebody. ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... haggard and drawn, and I knew of the great tension her nerves must be undergoing. Her father was certainly no coward. Fearing that he could not escape by either the front or back door of the hotel his mind had been quickly made up, and he had made his exit by that window, taking his chance to hide and avoid detection on those ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... but I hate in proportion to the love I bear my country. I hate because my heart has always bled for the wounds she has opened in the bosom of France. Yes, but coward is he who has the ability to save a fellow-creature, yet folds his arms, deaf to pity! My enemy in the jaws of death is my brother. If need be I would jump into the flood to save Sir Hudson Lowe, free to challenge him afterwards, and try to ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... the Stuarts, there are no songs about them and no praises in the West, whatever there may be in the South. Why would there, and they running away and leaving the country the way they did? And what good did they ever do it? James the Second was a coward. Why didn't he go into the thick of the battle like the Prince of Orange? He stopped on a hill three miles away, and rode off to Dublin, bringing the best of his troops with him. There was a lady ...
— The Kiltartan History Book • Lady I. A. Gregory
... meant to have it. For some seconds, we both waited on the wall in breathless silence, and then Alec, with a reckless disregard of what might be in store for him, gently let himself drop, and I, fearing more, if anything, than the present danger, to be for ever after branded as a coward if I held back, timidly followed suit. By a great stroke of luck we alighted in safety on a soft carpeting of moss. Not a word was spoken, but, falling on hands and knees, and guiding ourselves by means of a dark lantern Alec had bought ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... be modestly confident, but most of all be modestly confident within. Over-confidence is bad, but to tolerate premonitions of failure is worse, for a bold man may win attention by his very bearing, while a rabbit-hearted coward invites disaster. ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... resource. He besought and implored his dear Strong, his best friend, his dear old Ned, not to throw him over: and when he quitted his dearest Ned, as he went down the stairs of Shepherd's Inn, swore and blasphemed at Ned as the most infernal villain, and traitor, and blackguard, and coward under the sun, and wished Ned was in his grave, and in a worse place, only he would like the confounded ruffian to live, until Frank Clavering had had ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... person—Adam Salton! He pulled out a pistol and shot at him, happily missing. Adam was himself usually a quick shot, but this time his mind had been on something else and he was not ready. However, he was quick to carry out an intention, and he was not a coward. In another moment both men were in grips. Beside them was the dark well-hole, with that horrid effluvium stealing ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... would admit of no compromise short of the offender's blood. He had been struck by the white man, and blood alone must atone for the aggression. Unless that should wipe out the disgrace he could never again hold up his head among his people—they would call him a coward, and say a white man struck the Big Eagle and he dared not ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... has been abed— Sees here a yawl wrecked on the slushy sea, Or there a chestnut from its roost blown down, Or last year's birds' nests scattered on the lea, Or some stale scandal rampant in the town— Sees everywhere the petty work of night, Of sneaking winds and cunning, coward rats, Of hooting owls, of bugaboo and sprite, Of roaches, ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... happier man on earth," answered the herald. "In truth, there was not a coward among them all; but the bravest of the brave was Siegfried. He it was who took the two kings prisoners; and everywhere in the thickest of the fight there was Siegfried. And now our little army is on its homeward march, with a thousand prisoners, and large numbers of the enemy's ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... Swartboy was more cunning than brave—though he was far from being a coward. Still he was by no means inclined at that moment to go up to the door of ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... was no coward, but probably thinking that prudence was the better part of valor, refrained from handling his gun, and the two soon rode ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... Carrat perceived the ghost, he was very much frightened, and clutching Madame Bonaparte, said to her in a tremor, "Madame, Madame, do you see that ghost? It is the spirit of the lady who died lately at Plombieres."—"Be quiet, Carrat, you are a coward."—"Ah, but indeed it is her spirit which has come back." As Carrat thus spoke, the man in the white sheet advanced toward him, shaking it; and poor Carrat, overcome with terror, fell backwards in a faint, and it required all the attentions which were ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... sum of money in gold. Pocketing the money, he hurried into his cab and drove away. The man was Villiers Wyckliffe, and there was anything but a pleasant look on his face, for at heart he was an arrant coward. "Confound those fellows," he muttered to himself, "they may get here at any time. I had to come back here for money, but I'll go back to Toowoomba again, as it is a handy place to make for the open country ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... his finger at the murderer. "No, I won't get out of this door. Shoot, you coward! Shoot an unarmed man. You will not live to get a hundred feet away. This place is watched for you; you could not have got within a hundred yards of it to-night except for this snow." Barnhardt pointed through ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... and wretched survivor? If you have not, then are you not a judge of those who have. But if you have, and can still shake hands with the murderers, then are you unworthy the name of husband, father, friend or lover, and, whatever may be your rank or title in life, you have the heart of a coward and the spirit of ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... despise them as you ought; to teach you to love what He loves, and hate what He hates. God wishes you no longer to be merely His children, obeying Him you know not why; still less His slaves, obeying Him from mere brute coward fear, and then breaking loose the moment that you forget Him, and fancy that His eye is not on you: but He wishes you to be His sons; to claim the right and the power which He has given you to trample your sins under foot; to rise up by the strength ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... history requires. Possibly too, the spirit of party which exhibits objects in a dim and confused light may have sunk the credit of their historians. One half of the nation is always at variance with the other half. I have met with people who assured me that the Duke of Marlborough was a coward, and that Mr. Pope was a fool; just as some Jesuits in France declare Pascal to have been a man of little or no genius, and some Jansenists affirm Father Bourdaloue to have been a mere babbler. The Jacobites ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... to bed agin, and Peter, taking no notice of Ginger Dick, who kept calling 'im a coward, got into bed alongside of Ginger and ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... thereto? And therefore may it be a great comfort, as St. James saith, to every man who feeleth himself challenged and provoked by temptation. For thereby perceiveth he that it cometh to his course to wrestle, which shall be, unless he willingly play the coward or the fool, the ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... Whoever wins will be the hero of his kind, and the defeated must do as the winner says thereafter. This is a rare honor that I have brought you. The whole world will see the race. The animal world will shout for you, and the spirits will cheer me on. You are not a coward, and therefore you will not refuse ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... Mackenzie again took heart of grace. I do not think that there was, of nature, much of the coward about her. Indeed, the very fact that she was there alone at Littlebath, fighting her own battle with the world, instead of having allowed herself to be swallowed up by the Harry Handcocks, and Tom Mackenzies, proved her to be anything but a coward. ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... day; but Nature had denied him the headstrong boldness, the desperate recklessness of disposition, requisite for this amiable occupation. His infirmity had consequently often led him to play the coward. At the same time it probably was the means of restraining him from many of those evils into which his lavish and simple disposition might have been enticed, and he was now settling down quietly in the character of a good-natured, well-furnished simpleton. Fond of dress ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... upon each other. Long and long they looked, and the heart of each was elated. "I comprehend," Demetrios said. He clapped spurs to his horse and fled as a coward would have fled. This was one occasion in his life when he overcame his pride, and should ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... get you, some coward terror will. Never mind; I can do without you, child. I never looked for you to have kept so long at your post. All the rest have fled ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... yourself, and do not know what might happen if he were to tell you that he too has been hit by one of Eros' darts. You may turn red and white, and look at me as if I were your enemy, and talking contemptible nonsense. I have seen many strange things, but I never saw any one before you who was a coward out of sheer courage, and yet of all the women I know there is not one to whom fear is less known than my bold and resolute Klea. The road is a hard one that you must take, but only cover your poor little heart with a coat of mail, and venture in all confidence to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... know the secret of the lock. Returning to his seat, he made up his mind to wait a while before allowing his fears to get the better of him. This is what every brave boy would do under the circumstances, he said to himself, resolving not to be a coward. ...
— The Magic Soap Bubble • David Cory
... the coward," called out the others. Then the tavern-keeper's son, Adolph, shouted down the street, "Cain." He gave the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... departure from Paris on the 2d of August, 1792, the tragedy hastened to its denouement. On the night of the 9th, the tocsin was sounded, and the King and the Royal Family looked upon their fate as sealed. Notwithstanding the personal firmness of His Majesty, he was a coward for others. He dreaded the responsibility of ordering blood to be shed, even in defence of his nearest and dearest interests. Petion, however, had given the order to repel force by force to De Mandat, who was murdered upon the steps of the Hotel de Ville. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... customarily cool and sardonic, ridiculed Cuthbert in the Southern Recorder of which he was editor. Cuthbert retorted in his own columns that Grantland's conduct in the emergency had proved him a skulking coward.[81] No blood was shed, even ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... let him severely alone, but Dan, though he said he despised him for being a coward, watched over him with a grim sort of protection, and promptly cuffed any lad who dared to molest his mate or make him afraid. His idea of friendship was as high as Daisy's, and, in his own rough way, he lived ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... there for his dishonesty Who hangs his head, and a' that? The coward slave, we pass him by, And dare to steal for a' that. For a' that and a' that, Our grabs and games, and a' that, Our business is to make a pile And ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... white and green waves fiendishly running, and showing their malign eyes sparkling with hungry expectation. "Come out, come out!" they seemed to say; "come out, you little black imp of a steamer; don't be hiding behind there like a coward. We dare you to come out here and give us a chance at you—we will eat you up, as so many ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... himself to give him counsel; no man is so noble-hearted but what he may find a nobler-hearted man than himself to keep him up to what is true and just and honourable, when he is tempted to play the coward, and be false to God's Spirit within him. No man is so pure-minded but what he may find a purer- minded person than himself to help him in the battle against the world, the flesh, and ...
— David • Charles Kingsley
... translated Ned. "So Noddy Nixon did that to himself to get out of the big battle! Well, it's just like the coward! I'm glad he isn't ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... letter," the woman said, "that he has disgraced himself, been a coward, run away from some danger which he ought to have faced; and that he can't stand the shame of it." "He says," the woman's voice faltered for the first time, and instead of looking the Colonel in the face, as she had been doing, her eyes were fixed on the floor—"he says ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... Hugues' men were about. Some twenty of them had come to Puysange, Melite said, in the hope that Reinault might aid them to save their master. She protested that her brother was a coward for not doing so; but Adhelmar, having his own opinion on this subject, and thinking in his heart that Hugues' skin might easily be ripped off him without spilling a pint of honest blood, said, simply: "Twenty and twenty is two-score. It is not ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... "Bang! And it's all over. Is it a wise or a stupid thing to shoot oneself? Is suicide a cowardly act? Then I suppose that I am a coward!" ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... of the mellow, ringing tones that he knew so well came to him from the distance, till his heart seemed breaking with but one forbidden longing—to look once more in those brave eyes that made every coward and liar quail, and ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... felt that it had been a fair hunt. After that he always gave fair warning. As he ran, he howled for very joy. No longer did he carry his bushy tail between his legs, for no longer did he feel like a coward and a sneak. Instead, he carried it proudly. Of all the animals who hunted, he was the only one who gave fair warning, and he felt that he had a right to be proud. All the others hunted by stealth. He alone ...
— Mother West Wind "How" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... captain calls up his crew, tells them, "Gentlemen, you see how it is; I don't question but we may clear ourselves of this caper, if you will stand by me." One of the crew, as willing to fight as the rest, and as far from a coward as the captain, but endowed with a little more wit than his fellows, replies, "Noble captain, we are all willing to fight, and don't question but to beat him off; but here is the case: if we are taken, we shall be set on shore and then sent home, and lose perhaps ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... state: Queen ELIZABETH II (since 6 February 1952) head of government: Lieutenant Governor Sir John COWARD (since NA 1994) and Bailiff Sir Graham Martyn DOREY (since NA February 1992) cabinet: Advisory and Finance Committee appointed by the Assembly of the States elections: none; the monarch is hereditary; lieutenant governor appointed by the monarch; bailiff ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Mrs Moffatt's bedroom was closed. Was it already deserted—its drawers and wardrobes despoiled of their treasures; a bundle of worthless trifles left behind?—Cornelia's heart beat in sickening throbs; she knew a coward wish that she might be too late. To pay up and go quietly home seemed an easy way out of the difficulty into which she ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... another figure fills the postern, and in an instant Angelica is torn aside by Master Willie Joffers (well versed, for all his mumming, in matters of chivalry). "Kisses for such coward lips?" cries he. "Nay, but a swinge to silence them!" and would have struck trousered Angelica full on the mouth. But decollete Geoffrey Dizzard, crying at him "Sweet termagant, think not to baffle me by these airs of manhood!" had sprung in the way and on his ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... use of my trying to put off a danger which, you say yourself, cannot be averted? If my tooth aches, I have it drawn at once, instead of tormenting and making myself miserable for weeks by putting off the painful operation as a coward or a woman would, till the last moment. I can await this coming danger bravely, and the sooner it comes the better, for then I shall have it ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... its problems. I don't understand this from you, Victoria. It doesn't sound like you. And as for letting go the helm now," he added, with a short laugh tinged with bitterness, "I'd be posted all over the country as a coward." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Haward's voice in her ear, all the old terms of endearment for a frightened child,—"little maid," "little coward," "Why, sweetheart, these things are shadows, they cannot hurt thee!" She controlled her tears, and was the happier for her weeping. It was sweet to sit there in the lush grass, veiled and shadowed from the world by the willow's drooping green, ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... not appear. Nor, what is still more curious, do we hear anything of that Martelli, the bravo, 'who kept his sword for the defense of Lorenzino's person.' The one had arrived accidentally, it seems. The other must have been a coward and escaped ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... his Majesty could succeed by raising an army in the West?" said Mr. Jermyn. "The present usurper (he meant James II) is a great coward. The West is ripe to rebel. Any strong demonstration there would paralyse him. Besides, the army wouldn't fire on their own countrymen. We'd enough of that in the Civil War. What do you think of ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... once fall before it. The wood scene with Adam Bede still further illustrates the same characteristics. This man, so genial and kindly, rages fiercely in his heart against him whom he has unwittingly wronged. Frank and open, apparently the very soul of honour, he shuffles and lies like a coward and a knave; and this in no personal fear, but because he shrinks to lose utterly that goodwill and esteem of others,—of Adam in particular, because Adam constrains his own high esteem,—which are to him the reflection of his own self-worship. Repentance comes to him at last, because conscience ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... insulted his wife. They only laughed the more, said he had drunk too much wine, and shouldering him out, bade him go look to his woman. He went. Carmen had witnessed it all from the house. She called him a coward and goaded him with bitter taunts until mad with anger and drink he went out in the court once more and shook his fist in the face of Francisco. They hailed his return with bantering words. Luigi was spoiling for a fight they laughed, and would find one before the day ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... disciples, and obeyed the scamp with an implicitness and prostrate humility even more melancholy than absurd, both as to housekeeping and as to the ceremonies, washing of feet, etc., which he enjoined. When he was angry with his female disciples, he frequently whipped them; but, being a monstrous coward, he never tried it on a man. The least opposition or contradiction threw him into a great rage, and set him screaming, and cursing, and gesticulating like any street drab. When he wished more clothes, which was pretty often, one of his dupes furnished the money. When he wanted ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... man in this college who is trying to be a high cock of the walk, but he will never succeed till he shows his right by meeting me face to face with weapons of which I have knowledge. I have met him with his weapons, and if he is not a coward he will give me a show. But I think he is a coward and a sneak, ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... and kill him. That's why he wanted you to listen last night. That's why he wants to get you and Mr. Felix together. Mr. Dalton won't stay here if he knows Mr. Felix is looking for him. He's too big a coward." ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... I'm a coward," he muttered, "and I suppose I am; but I won't show it;" and shouting a cheery order to the fisherman to lower away, the lad descended farther and farther, with the right of his candle flashing now from the walls, which were wet and ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... "You are not a coward, Cora Kimball," exclaimed Mabel, "and I know perfectly well you would denounce him if ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose
... has long and somewhat deservedly obtained a very bad name as a bully and a coward; and certainly his habit of barking at everything that passes, and flying at the heels of the horse, renders him often a very dangerous nuisance. He is, however, valuable to the cottager; he is a faithful defender of his humble dwelling; no bribe can seduce him from his duty; and he is a ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... any more. You can punish me any way you like, and I'll be glad of it. It was all my fault. I made her go and get the apples for me, and I ate them. Connie didn't eat one of them. She said stolen apples would not taste very good. It was all my fault, and I'm so sorry. I was such a coward I didn't dare tell you last night. Will you forgive me? But you must punish me as hard as ever you can. But please, Prudence, won't you punish me some way without letting Lark know about it? Please, please, ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... murmur, though both her pride and her heart are sore. She has scarcely a dozen friends. Her paralytic father is the theme of ribald jest; and now they laugh at her because the one man who perhaps could have saved the throne has deserted her like a coward. Hang him, I say!" ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... 1840. Time passes on, and what progress do I make, either in usefulness in the earth, or preparation for heaven? Self-indulgence is the bane of godliness, and is, alas! mine.' This world's goods are snares, and are, alas! snares to me. Coward that my heart is, when pride is piqued, I have not resolution to conquer my own spirit. Pride, indolence, and worldly-mindedness are bringing me into closer and closer bondage: the first keeps me from true worship by preventing ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... one of this class, a coward in captain's uniform, and one of our own officers, Captain Deyoe, as brave a fellow as ever drew a sword. The demoralized captain, his sword thrown away and its sheath after it, came hurriedly upon the bridge, ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... weapons, Burgundy! Do words With dread inspire thee? 'Tis a coward's fear, And the betrayer of an ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... leave the army. "Until now I have fought for you," he said; "let me henceforth fight for God. . . . I am a soldier of Christ, and it is not lawful for me to take part in a bloody battle." The Emperor was very angry. "Coward!" he cried. "It is not religion that causes you to refuse to ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay
... violence and iniquity unrebuked; of conciliating the practitioners of violence and iniquity; and of contenting himself with an inward hope of turning the world into a right course by fine words. He had no audacity in Marat's sense, but he was no coward. He knew, as all these men knew, that almost from hour to hour he carried his life in his hand, yet he declined to seek shelter in the obscurity which saved such men as Sieyes. But if he had courage, he had not the initiative ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... his thoughts toward Andy Foger were not very pleasant ones. Andy was the son of a wealthy man of the town, and his good fortune in the matter of money seemed to have spoiled him, for he was a bully and a coward. Several times he and Tom Swift had clashed, for Andy was overbearing. But this was the first time Andy had ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-cycle • Victor Appleton
... and who was so very civil. "Besides, it is something for my advantage," added Parley. "I will not open the door, that is certain; but as he is to come alone, he can do me no harm through the bars of the windows. And he will think I am a coward, if I don't keep my word; no, I will let him see that I am not afraid of my own strength; I will show him I can go what length I please, and stop short when I please." Had Flatterwell heard this boastful speech, he would have been ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... bear; a great deal I have borne; but do not be a coward. I knew you before she did, and have loved you better, and have treated you better than ever she will do. Of ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... Tristram, that is the worshipfullest knight that now is living, and all knights speak of him worship; and for jealousness of his queen he hath chased him out of his country. It is pity, said Sir Lamorak, that ever any such false knight-coward as King Mark is, should be matched with such a fair lady and good as La Beale Isoud is, for all the world of him speaketh shame, and of her worship that any queen may have. I have not ado in this matter, said King Mark, neither nought will I speak ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... with Rachel, and during the pauses he tried several times to lead the conversation on to the injustice she had done him in calling him a coward. At first she avoided the subject, which was, indeed, too serious a one for the ballroom; but Worse was persistent—it was not very often that he had the opportunity of speaking with her—and at last Rachel promised ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... was remarkable. No animal that man has broken to his use is keener to recognize a master and flout a coward than the horse. No coward has ever been able to do anything with ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... have found out from the old coachman that I was not the coward they deemed me," he thought. "If so, I'll see ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... the kind," she retorted, trying to break from his grasp. "Do you suppose you can kill me, too, without being found out? There is a detective here now, and Sir David Southern is not at hand to lay the blame on. You coward! How dare you ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... father before him had loved them. He squared his shoulders, and his jaws hardened. No man, without justice on his side, should dictate to him; no man should order him to hire this man or discharge that one. He alone had that right; he alone was master. Bennington was not a coward; he would not sell to another; he would not shirk the task laid out for his hand. Unionism, such as it stood, must receive a violent lesson. ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... to know who threw that rope? If he isn't too big a coward, he'll tell me. I guess Mr. Simms will settle ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... their recent defeat at Leuktra. Pompeius, on hearing that Caesar, with only five thousand three hundred men, had taken a town in Italy, left Rome in terror, either yielding to this small force like a coward, or else falsely supposing it to be more numerous than it was. He carefully carried off his own wife and children, but left the families of his partizans unprotected in Rome, when he ought either ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... and come to the question with minds that are truly candid? Whoever shrinks from this is a liar to his own self, and as such, the worst and most dangerous of liars. He is as one who sits in an impregnable citadel and trembles in a time of peace—so great a coward as not even to feel safe when he is in his own keeping. How loose of soul if he knows that his own keeping is worthless, how aspen-hearted if he fears lest others should find him out and hurt him for ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... not the magical musician. Now those letters were as dust of the road. The sphere of beauty was a glass lamp-globe for delirious moths. She had changed. Belief in the real change gave her full view of the compliant coward she had been. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... know them, because thou art ever with thy lady, and hast her good favour; but I know them well; and the best I can get from them is Lazy Flanderkin, and Greedy Flanderkin, and Flemish, sot—-I thank the saints they cannot say Coward Flanderkin, since ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... You and I know that there's some sort of madman in command, a man that quotes the Bible and speaks English; but madman or not, he's a great general, and woe betide Virginia if he gets among the manors. I was sent to the hills to get news, and I've got it. Would it not be the part of a coward to bide here and make no ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... your own nerves, laughed the voice, when, if you had not been a coward, you might have faced it down and lied again, and all would have been well. But you shall have another chance, and lying is very easy, even when the nerves are over-wrought. You will do better the ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... You coward!" she cried. "You have made me shoot a man, and I never shot a man in ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... Bump of cowardice is 's big 's an egg. This man, fren's," said he, dropping the victim's head and advancing impressively, "is a very dangerous character. Look out for 'm. He's a liar, an' a thief, an' a coward, an' a——" ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... too evident. Spencer, regarding him from a single viewpoint, deemed him a coward, and his gorge rose at ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... thousand lives Like many men's. And yet men love to live As if mere life were worth their living for. What but perdition will it be to most? Life's more than breath and the quick round of blood; It is a great spirit and a busy heart. The coward and the small in soul scarce do live. One generous feeling—one great thought—one deed Of good, ere night, would make life longer seem Than if each year might number a thousand days, Spent as is this by nations of mankind. We live in deeds, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... fine, breezy, sunny world full of beauty, interest, and deep satisfaction for our humanity, the doors of which you are closing on yourselves. If some people have traveled there unwisely or have lost their way in it, that is only a coward's reason for staying outside. Things may seem to be going very well with you in spite of your attitude while you are still in the early twenties—you may say that you are getting from life all that you want. But as you approach the thirties you will infallibly discover ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... hesitatingly; I reviled him for a coward; but the pain, even of the first strokes, was too much for me. I could feel the sweat on my forehead, my finger nails dug into the sides of the stone, its sharp edge cut into the soft inside of my clutching fingers, I bit my tongue to keep from shrieking, yet my voice, as I taunted Agathemer and ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... nothing but the azure breast Of ocean and the sky—the sea and sky, And the lone bark; no clouds were floating by Where the sun set, but his great seraph light, Went down alone, in majesty and might; And the stars came again, a silver troop, Until, in shame, the coward shadows droop Before the radiance of these holy gems, That bear the images ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... you consider that, being crippled, I shall not have the strength to kill you? But there's no question of my killing you, Florence. Have you ever known me kill people? Never! I'm much too big a coward, I should be frightened, I should shake all over. No, no, Florence, I shan't touch you, ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... of the hateful Spaniards was a fatal argument. Instead of respecting their monarch, though in his official robes, the populace howled angry curses at him as a degenerate Aztec, a coward, no longer a warrior or ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... hither with such idle stories at a time when there's already far too much discord among the people! You good-for-nothing vagabond! What! I suppose you want the peasant folks to beat the landlords to death, burn their castles to the ground, and rob them of everything? Coward and rebel as you are, the gallows-tree is far too good for you. I tell you what it is. I'll put you in irons and send you to the county jail, and there you may sit till your turn comes to stand before ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... "People are different," he said. "A man is not a coward because he cries. I have seen two boys fighting and pulling each other's hair and crying all the time, but they fought on. They did not cry because they ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... before the patience and perseverance of Crook and his handful, finally wore out the Indians, presents, perhaps, the one instance where they were brought fairly to bay and the soldiers had an opportunity to give them a thorough beating. This unique battle demonstrated also how desperately even a coward will fight when his back is against a wall. And it showed, as few other frontier fights have shown, the splendid courage of the regular American soldier in this arduous, ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... honoured presence of Falstaff," and applauding the "sweet, sound, ripe toothsome, wholesome kernel" of Falstaff's character as well as humour. He even defied the opinion of his idol, Victor Hugo, and contended that Falstaff was not really a coward. All the world will agree that Swinburne was right in glorifying Falstaff. He glorified him, however, on the wrong plane. He mixed his planes in the same way in his paean over Captain Webb's feat in swimming the English Channel. "I consider ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... prosaic: "mad avarice" is an unhappy combination; and "the coward distance yet with kindling pride" is not only reprehensible for the antithetical turn, but as it is a quotation: "safe distance" and "coward distance" you have more than once had recourse to before—And the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... little parley, a little edging toward him, a sudden blow might have served. Yet I was glad in my heart that I had not used craft; cat traits are not instinctive with me; craft, stealth, a purring ambush—faugh! I was no coward to beat him down unawares. I had openly declared him prisoner, and I was glad I had done so. Why, I might have shot him as we talked, had I been of a breed to do murder—had I been inhuman enough to slay him, unwarned, ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... "I'm a coward, Aileen, and you are just like our Father Honore; but I will put all behind me. I will not regret. I will work out my own salvation here in my native place, among my own and among strangers. I vow here I will, ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... Attorney-General assured Mme. Bourjot that the action would not be taken, she felt quite a coward after all the terror she had gone through, and weak and helpless from emotion, she could not endure any more, and so ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... fine spectacular heroism of other officers of lower rank. Currie, the most picturesque physique on the West front, was no man for mere gallantry. Poor dashing Mercer, beloved of the ranks, later paid the penalty for the sort of bravery that inspires troops but does not win battles. Currie was no coward. But he was cautious. The Scot in him preordained that he might be a necessity higher up. He just flung his left flank around south and hung on. We read ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... Marquis de la Roche-Guyon. It will always be a matter of thankfulness to me that I was not left to sacrifice the fairest woman in the world to the rescue of a thankless coward.' ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... Jake Kloon; Leverett was as treacherous as only a born coward can be; Sid Hone, Harvey Chase, Blommers, Byron Hastings, — he knew them all too well to trust them, — a sullen, unscrupulous pack, partly cowardly, always fierce, — as are any creatures that live furtively, feed only by their wits, and slink ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... more, than this very one. Reject this, and you may die in your sins. Why do I say this? Is it to frighten your soul? Oh, no! It is to persuade you. I show you the peril. I show you the escape. Would I not be a coward beyond all excuse, if, believing that this great audience must soon be launched into the eternal world, and that all who believe in Christ shall be saved, and that all who reject Christ will be lost—would I not be the ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... to-day a persistent cause. Moreover, since interpueblo warfare exists and head taking is its form, head-hunting is a necessity with an individual group of people in a state of nature. Without it a people could have no peace, and would be annihilated by some group which believed it a coward and an ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... her cousin Theodahad partner of her throne (not, as sometimes stated, her husband, for his wife was still living). The choice was unfortunate. Theodahad, notwithstanding a varnish of literary culture, was a coward and a scoundrel. He fostered the disaffection of the Goths, and either by his orders or with his permission, Amalasuntha was imprisoned on an island in the Tuscan lake of Bolsena, where in the spring of 535 she was murdered in ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... of hewn stone. What kind of a man could he have been? What were his reflections as he went about his farm-work and thought of his sister at the head of armies? Was he merely a lout or something worse—the prototype of our Conscientious Objector: a coward who disguised his cowardice with ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... and who made the journey a lively and eventful one by her total lack of desire to proceed over the road from Edgewood to Acreville. But that, the cow's tale, belongs to another time and place, and the coward's tale must come first; for Elisha Simpson was held to be sadly lacking in the manly quality ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... craven thought came upon me to use a bullet to end it all, and once I actually lifted my revolver to my head; but dead Inyati's last whisper seemed again to sound in my ear had I made a "good fight," to end it like a coward? ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... through the mud, cursing Mannering, cursing the Motor Pirate, above all cursing myself for my own pusillanimity. Why had I listened to Winter? Why should I have allowed myself to be persuaded to play the part of coward, merely that Winter's car should have ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... are a coward," my wife went on. "Just think of his arriving there, all excitement over his ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... get nothing from these fools," he muttered; "and I am very much afraid of being here between a drunkard and a coward. Here's an envious fellow making himself boozy on wine when he ought to be nursing his wrath, and here is a fool who sees the woman he loves stolen from under his nose and takes on like a big baby. Yet ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... come together. Raise the draw! Close the gates! Let the first to flee be the first to die, and at the castle gates! Let them make an unwilling stand in defense of their own lives and so defend the gates! They tell me a coward fights hard when cornered. Dare disobey at your peril! It is the command ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... not believe that this man was a coward. It was his boast that he could shoe anything that could walk into his shop, and he lived up to the boast. I give him that due, on my honour. Many a devil walked into that shop wearing the hoof and hide of a horse ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... because he is such a coward. Pray, he couldn't help it; he was too frightened. You were too frightened, weren't you, Robert? You are such a coward!" ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... down and across for some familiar landmark, and looked in vain, growing momentarily more frightened at the attention she was attracting by standing irresolutely there. Flossy Shipley, in her girlhood days, had been almost a hopeless coward; and Flossy Roberts felt, by the throbbing of her heart, that she had not yet outgrown her girlish character. Suddenly she gave a little exclamation of delight, and with a spring forward laid her hand on the arm of one whom ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... honest poverty That hangs his head, and a' that? The coward slave, we pass him by, We dare be poor for a' that! For a' that, and a' that, Our toil's obscure, and a' that: The rank is but the guinea's stamp, The man's the gowd for ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... has done for you," I insisted, "hasn't made any one happy. It has only kept making things worse and worse for you and every one else, and finally it has made you a coward." ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... outlaw her and condemn her taste in everything. As they passed out of the cathedral, she would rather have gone home than continued the walk as he begged her, if she were not tired, to do; but this would have been flight, and she was not a coward. So they sauntered down the Rue Fabrique, and turned into Palace Street. As they went by the door of Hotel Musty, her pleasant friends came again into her mind, and she said, "This is where we stayed last week, with ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... [rising in alarm]. Pettikins, none of that, if you please. If you hint the slightest doubt of Hector's courage, he will go straight off and do the most horribly dangerous things to convince himself that he isn't a coward. He has a dreadful trick of getting out of one third-floor window and coming in at another, just to test his nerve. He has a whole drawerful of Albert Medals for ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... Sunday, and take a fair start, as Flossy says, it isn't pleasant to go in after the exercises have fairly opened?" As she said this, for the first time in her life Miss Ruth Erskine began to have a dim idea that possibly she might be a coward; this certainly ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... to Mr. Alcando he was not a coward, but this was very unusual for him, to make pictures in the face of a great danger—to stand calmly with a camera, turning the crank and getting view after view on the strip of celluloid film, while a flood of ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... thou wilt have it,—like a coward, fled, Fled while his soldiers fought; fled first, Ventidius. Thou long'st to curse me, and I give thee leave. I know thou cam'st ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... treachery; he indeed has obtained release though he has been wrongfully slain. I am his foster brother; I put that wazir to death with a blow of my sword, and made the attempt to kill the king; but he entreated mercy, and swore that he was innocent; I having spurned him as a coward, allowed him to escape. Since then, my occupation has been this, to carry the bier, in this manner, through the city, on the first Thursday of every moon, and to mourn for the ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... mean by that?" he demanded. "Have you turned coward, that you surrender to a couple of ...
— The Boy Allies Under the Sea • Robert L. Drake
... horrid murder. He wanted me to have no more to do with them, and when he saw I was attached to them, begged me earnestly to treat them always as inferiors, to 'keep them in their place'; and this I promised, coward-like, to do, although I knew that, in the way he meant, ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... darkness was coming on, and she had a sense of being surrounded. It agitated her, but she pulled herself together, stood still and admonished herself. She called herself a fool; she asked herself if she was going to be a coward. She laughed out loud at her own apprehension; but a chill stole into her blood when she heard near by— there was no doubt about it now—mockery of her own laughter. Then suddenly, before she could ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Carnaby was no coward. His steel-grey eyes blazed as he met his cousin's look. "Carnaby dear, do you know what you are to me? You are my kinsman; my only male relation. I'm so fond of you already, don't spoil it! Think what you can be to me if you will. I am all alone in the world and when you grow a little older ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... up the train—we're not stopping any man from crossing right now. What I have in mind now is to ask you, do you classify me as a coward just because I ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... thou wretch, thou coward, Thou little valiant, great in villany! Thou ever strong upon the stronger side! Thou fortune's champion, that dost never fight But when her humorous ladyship is by To ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... Easterns are brave men and we of Egypt have always heard that among them none is braver than Idernes who gained his advancement through courage and skill in war. Let him therefore come out together with the lord who named me a liar, armed with swords only, and I, who being a liar must also be a coward, together with my servant, a black dwarf, will meet them man to man in the sight of both the armies, and fight them to the death. Or if it pleases Idernes better, let him not come and I will seek him and kill him in the battle, or by him ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... rope enough to hang himself. He'll swing as high as Haman ere long. Robin told me of the coward's treachery." ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... to himself that he was the greatest coward and the greatest villain that ever stood on earth. Words he had none. Then they heard Lady ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... you coward. If he insists on hurling a boot at your head, why dodge it—dodge it! Or wait, stay where you are. ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... always," muttered Nigel, "believed myself to be a man of ordinary courage, but now—I shall write myself a coward, ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... there looking like a devil. Hate me if you like—but don't betray us, moaning and moping because you can't have the moon. Put on your armour, and go down into the battle. Don't play the coward, boy!" ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... say, you worry me. You are a coward, like all other men are! You are frightened of that poor creature!" He immediately jumped up and said, furiously: "I should like to know what he does, and why you are so set against him? Does he make you unhappy? Does he beat you? Does he deceive you ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... unchartered passion. So long as I could keep my love well masked and hidden what harm could come to her or any if I should give it leave to live in prison? None, I thought; and yet at times was made a very coward by the thought. For love, like other living things, will grow by what it feeds upon, and once full-grown, may haply come to laugh at bonds, ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... Phil," said Harry, grinning. "I say, Fred, he is such a coward; worse than you are a ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... face. I saw that he was of middle size, fairly well dressed, and as some blown sand had drifted over his boots and ankles I knew that he had been there for some hours. There was blood upon his collar, and the fingers of his right hand were tightly clenched. I told myself that I was a coward, and I set my teeth. I must lift his head from the water, and cover him up with my own coat while I fetched help. But when I stooped down a deadly faintness came over me. My fingers were palsied ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... yourself in the waters of the Nile rather than break through man's stupid superstition and convention! Why do you look so amazed? Am I touching on some old memory? Come, let us leave these black embers of coward mortality and return to ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... passing of Napoleon centers attention anew on one of the baffling figures of all time—a man at once attractive and repulsive; a soldier of infinite courage who on at least one occasion acted the coward; a master strategist who, to the last, seemed never to fully grasp that strategy by which he almost ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... had kicked him out of the road, and lying in his straw bed the poor wretch had burned with resentment, cowed, helpless; and sleeping, had dreamed of killing the brute and awoke with a tune on his black lips. He knew Lije Peters, neighborhood bully without being a coward, a born black-mailer, a ruffian with the touch of humor, ignorant with sometimes an allegorical cast of speech. As he entered the room he looked about and seeing no ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... loyalty and honour forbade, by becoming ardent in the pursuit and effecting the capture of Spurling, that so he might prove his innocence. An emotion of shame and self-disgust throbbed through him that it should have been possible for him, even for a moment, to entertain such a coward's thought as that. He shook himself free from temptation and looked about. What was Pere Antoine doing? What had he meant by saying that he was perhaps preventing him from being hanged? Did he still believe him to be guilty, as he had evidently done ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... bed. He took one out of a cardboard box in his bag, and thought it might do him good to smoke it now. But an adult tobacco-smoker looked so curiously at the little thin cross between cigar and cigarette, that it was transferred to a pocket unlit, and the coward hid himself behind his paper, in which there were several items of immediate interest to him. Would the match hold out at Lord's? If not, which was the best of the Wednesday matinees? Pocket had received a pound from home for his expenses, so that these questions ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... are a mean coward to set us afloat in a hostile country, without giving us our arms," said Simpson, who had once before asked for the weapons, and had ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... think a little differently, if you can. You and I between us have made an infernal mess of things. It was chiefly my fault. And as regards Palliser—well, I am sorry. Only the fellow—he may have been lovable to you, but he was a coward and a sneak to me—and he ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... said contemptuously. "You must eat less supper, Eleanor. If you were not such a coward you would not dream such things. I have no patience with ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... "I'm not a coward. Any man would be disturbed, to put it mildly, over the conviction that his life was threatened every hour, but it was of her I was thinking—of Anita! I could not bear to think of leaving her alone to face the world, penniless and hedged in on all sides by enemies. ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... way through the brown tan on the face of Braxton Wyatt, and his eyes fell before the cold gaze of the Spaniard. But he raised them again in a moment. Braxton Wyatt was not a coward, and he never permitted a guilty conscience to last longer ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... began to state that I could not promise he would not openly embrace my religion, they interrupted me, repeating that he was my child more than theirs, and could never come to any harm under my care. Coward as I was, I did not use the opportunity then given to set before them their own danger, and commend the pure faith that I knew their child held. I had occasionally talked in a general way, and once very strongly, when the mother told me of ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... not love the adventure of mental combat, but he was no coward. "It seems to me," he said, "that it preaches such radical changes in our government that it is seditious. To be frank, Mr. Moreton, I think the government ought ...
— The Beauty and the Bolshevist • Alice Duer Miller
... The crowd of young Kromlaix men looked at each other in consternation. Was the handsomest, the strongest, and the most daring lad in their village a coward? It was the dark year of 1813, when Napoleon was draining France of all its manhood. Even the only sons of poor widowed women, such as Rohan Gwenfern was, were no longer exempted from conscription. Having lost ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... "And I am a coward, that is why I take it, for otherwise I also must dare a heavier. But what of Issachar? This meeting can scarcely be kept a ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... John Welsh and David Hume. Of Hume there is no particular account, but Welsh we have met before. Though he had been under denunciation as a rebel ever since the Pentland rising (in which he had, indeed, borne no part), he had never given his voice for war; and, though assuredly neither a coward nor a trimmer, had always kept from any active share in the proceedings of his more tumultuous brethren. His plan, and the plan of the few who at that time and place were on his side, was temperate and reasonable. They asked for no more than they were willing to give. ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... now this side, now that, one moment on the perch above, the next on the edge of the dish, plainly longing to be in, yet the mere approach of the smallest bird in the room drove him away. Not that he was afraid, he was not in the least a coward; he met everybody and everything with the dignity and bravery of a true thrush. Neither was it that he was disabled when wet, which makes some birds hesitate; he was never at all disordered by his bath, and however long he soaked, or thoroughly he spattered, his plumage remained ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... interesting and abidingly memorable. We have already reached a point where we perceive the unreality of the importance which the chronicles have sought to give to mere kings and captains. If the king was a hero, we love him; but if he was a sot or a coward, his jeweled crown and purple robes leave him as unconsidered by us as the beggar in his rags. Whatever influence, favorable or unfavorable, democracy may exert to make easy or difficult the advent of the noblest kind of man, ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... satisfaction to follow Mr. Reed's further orders to keep a sharp lookout all that night, about the premises. Meantime Eben Slade, who like most men of his sort was a coward at heart, had hastily withdrawn to a safe distance, after finding what he sought under the walnut-tree. Soon he sat down in the woods that crossed his road, and there, by the light of a candle-end that he had with him, eagerly ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... restore (what he supposed I had lost) my courage. I must not be down-hearted; many of the best men had made a failure in the beginning. I told him I had no head for business, and his kind face darkened. "You must not say that, Loudon," he replied; "I will never believe my son to be a coward." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... uncivilised instincts, but it does not make them civilised to join with a million other people in indulging them. I think that a man who refuses to join from conviction, at the risk of being hooted as a coward, is probably ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... she was nearing him again in the dance. "I want that extra five you whispered you'd give me," Antoinette heard the tall chap say. "That kick was worth it. If you don't cough up I'll tell the lady how much it cost you, you coward, to be a hero twice." Antoinette looked intently at the tall man. There was a mole on his right cheek. She was wise all of a sudden. Then she grew faint with the shock of ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... possibly be worse than it is already, drowned as I am in misery without her: whereas, if I could succeed! Ah! I would barter even emancipation for a single kiss! And O that my courage may not fail, turning coward at the very first sight of her again! For the struggle to appear indifferent, in such an ocean of rapture, will be terrible indeed, since even now, the very thought of it makes me tremble, being enough to make me fall weeping at her feet. And now the sun is setting, and it is time to go: ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... gave himself up, the coward—the lying turn-tale! The treacherous dog! Swearing it off on me to save a few years of his miserable life out of jail. See here!" stopping suddenly before Mr. Pinkerton, "That traitor made me swear I would never squeal. All I got out of the whole swag was ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... tell you!" A smile almost fiendish broke over the furrows of the rugged face. "You wouldn't dast shoot, unless perhaps it was a woman, you coward!" ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... well-armed attendants. The latter, at the approach of the rioters, implored their master to make his escape, if possible, to the fortress of the Alhambra, where the count of Tendilla was established. But the intrepid prelate, who held life too cheap to be a coward, exclaimed, "God forbid I should think of my own safety, when so many of the faithful are perilling theirs! No, I will stand to my post and wait there, if Heaven wills it, the crown of martyrdom." [30] It must be confessed he ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... place in the conservatory of Mr. Merton's house, in Park Lane, where Lord Arthur had dined as usual. Sybil had never seemed more happy, and for a moment Lord Arthur had been tempted to play the coward's part, to write to Lady Clementina for the pill, and to let the marriage go on as if there was no such person as Mr. Podgers in the world. His better nature, however, soon asserted itself, and even when Sybil flung herself weeping into his ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... never seen," says I, "the fellow's a rank coward!" As for Bentley, he only fumbled with his ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol
... not depressed. His coward fears of a few moments ago were gone, and he could face the situation now with considerable aplomb. Of course, it was disturbing to learn that he was probably a fugitive from justice; and with ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... name of fury seized your coward hearts?" cried their dissatisfied leader, drawing ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... cause of evil thoughts, and that he holds his position by keeping comfort away from many around him, and his fine surroundings become to him as tinsel and dross. Dyspepsia, ennui and weariness of spirit claim him. He is a poverty-haunted coward, ashamed that he is so; and, saddest of all, he is not a Christian. He does not believe that if he seeks the kingdom of God, which means only to do aright, all things of material beauty will be added to ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... and noisy, but there was a sudden silence as he entered. He was well-known here, and every pair of eyes was fixed upon him keenly. That he bore the scrutiny without flinching proved him to be no coward. The attitude of the crowd in the wine shop was not reassuring. His task was to be more difficult than he imagined, and he rose to the occasion. With a careless nod intended to comprehend every one in the room, and as though he perceived nothing extraordinary in the manner of his reception, he crossed ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... Hal, indeed!" he cried. "I thought the wind blew from that quarter," and he angrily faced his eldest son. "So, sirrah; 'twas you that did urge this foolish boy to work your traitorous purpose in such coward guise!" ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... known amongst the Fan. The marriage tie has some significance, the women will not go astray except with the husband's leave, which is not often granted. The men wax wroth if their mothers be abused. It is an insult to call one of them a liar or a coward; the coast-tribes would merely smile at the soft impeachment; and assure you that none but fools—yourself included by implication—are anything else. Their bravery is the bravery of the savage, whose first ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... these years, and I have only myself to blame. I have taught her to live it. I began it when I carried her away from here; I should have kept her at home and had her face the consequences of her sin then. I ought to have laid Archie in her arms and kept him there. I was a coward and could not, and in my fear I destroyed the only thing that could have saved her—the mother-love. Now she will run her course. She's her own mistress; no one can compel her ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... it was beastly so to butcher him. If any quarrell were twixt him and you, You should have bad him meete you in the field, Not like a coward under your owne roofe To knock him downe as he had bin an oxe, Or silly sheepe prepard for slaughter house. The Lord is just, and will revenge his blood, On you and yours for this extremitie. I will not stay an hower within your house, It ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... ever said anything against the Fenians, and I told him he had always claimed that the Fenians were the nicest men in the world, and it seemed to relieve him very much. When he got home and found the house there he was tickled, and when Ma called him an old bald-headed coward, and said it was only a joke of the boys with a foot ball, he laughed right out, and said he knew it all the time, and he ran to see if Ma would be scared. And then he wanted to hug me, but it wasn't my night ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... a word on that?" demanded the Cap'n, grimly. He came close up, whirling the cudgel. "You're an old, cheap, ploughed-land blowhard, that's what you are! You've cuffed 'round hired men and abused weak wimmen-folks. I knowed you was a coward when I got that line on ye. You don't dast to stand up to a man like me. I'll split your head for a cent." He kept advancing step by step, his mien absolutely demoniac. "I've married your sister because she ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... so. A coward is a man who is afraid and runs away; the man who is frightened but does not run away, is not quite a coward," said the prince with a smile, after a ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... "And, therefore, the coward policy of this hermit is like that of these miserable princes, who, forgetful of their knighthood and their faith, are only resolved and determined when the question is retreat, and rather than go forward against an armed Saracen, would ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... a false picture is this that my coward heart hath drawn! There is Another in that room, I cried half loud, Another there before me, whose swift feet have outrun my poor trudging through the snow. For He is there who lit that feeble lamp itself, and it burns only by His will. Death-lamp though it be, it ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... It is better to be safe than sorry; and it is better to be scared than syphilitic. "I dare do all that may become a man," says Macbeth; "who dares do more is none"; let a man dare if he will with his own body, aye, his own soul; he is but a coward who does not shrink from buying voluptuous moments with the hazard of wife and child. Hydrophobia is far less perilous than venereal disease, and if one hundredth as many were attacked by it the world would be placarded with scarlet danger signs; the man who ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... is not a coward," resumed Jack, ignoring the query. "As for Feversham yonder, I can tell why he would ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... not yield thus to passion; it is criminal. I have too much indulged the flattering dreams of desire. Yet what to do?—How to act?—Must I tamely quit the field the moment an adversary appears; turn recreant to myself, and coward-like give up my claims, without daring to say such and such they are? No. Justice is due as much to myself as to any other. If he be truly deserving of preference, why let him be preferred. I will rejoice.—Yes, Oliver, mill.—He who is the ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... oath to find the Tower! That was ten years ago. The frank, manly young knight stepped forth, and declared proudly that he dared do all that might become a man. But he had some awful experience in the course of the quest that changed him from the soul of honor to a whimpering coward. His own companions spat upon him and ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... no question of Spain. I mean to stay here in England and fight the matter out. My wife would be the first person to tell me so. I cannot imagine her speaking to me again if I were coward ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... his progress to stare at the rough shack which housed the man he hated. He was no coward, and he would not take advantage of the loneliness and isolation of the spot to do him harm surreptitiously, but vividly the thought thrilled through him that someday he would assail him. Smoke was curling from the mud-and-stick ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... realms beyond the northern star, To loud Valhalla's echoing halls, I bear the hero ere he falls; The valiant dwell in those abodes, And sit amid carousing gods; Not goblets rich, nor flasks of gold, But skulls of mantling mead they hold; The coward while he gasps for breath, ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... his mother called to him, in a dear, high voice. "This is the child that has come between us and turned you from a man into a coward. Here alone is the cause of our troubles. Behold! I will remove it forever from ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... prepared a potion, Made of Concentrated Ages, Made of Many Mingled Feelings— Highest Hope and Deepest Terror— Mixed our best and worst together, Reverence and Love and Service, Coward Fear and rank Self-Interest— Gave him this when he was little, Pumped it in before the Person Could examine his prescription. So the Person, thus instructed, Now believed the things he told him; Paid the price as he was able, Died—the Priest said, went to Heaven— ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... Chesterton contends, a really horrible eugenist, because he wants to get a super-man who, having more than two legs, will be a vastly superior person to a man. Chesterton loves men. He tells us why St. Peter was used to found the Church upon. It was because he 'was a shuffler, a coward, and a snob—in a word, a man.' Even the Thirty-Nine Articles and the Councils of Trent have failed to find a better reason for the founding of the Church. It is a defence of the fallibility of the Church, the practical nature of that Body, an organization founded by ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... reflective mind, that is, moves chiefly among considerations of outward success and failure, while his inner being is convulsed by conscience. And his inability to understand himself is repeated and exaggerated in the interpretations of actors and critics, who represent him as a coward, cold-blooded, calculating, and pitiless, who shrinks from crime simply because it is dangerous, and suffers afterwards simply because he is not safe. In reality his courage is frightful. He strides ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... commanded for Mithridates in Boeotia, and afterwards had left him, and was now in the Roman army, maintained that if Lucullus would only show himself in Pontus, he might make himself master of everything at once, Lucullus replied that he was not a greater coward than huntsmen, which he should be if he passed by the wild beasts and went to their empty dens. Saying this he advanced against Mithridates, with thirty thousand foot-soldiers and two thousand five hundred cavalry. On arriving in sight of the enemy, he was startled ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... will back me living, or carry me off dead, and save my body." At news of this mighty host, and the ardor with which they were animated, the Emperor Henry V. advanced no farther, and, before long, "marching, under some pretext, towards other places, he preferred the shame of retreating like a coward to the risk of exposing his empire and himself to certain destruction. After this victory, which was more than as great as a triumph on the field of battle, the French returned, every one, to ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... said slowly and distinctly, "but you must not be a coward. There is any amount of love and good in the world, but you must search for it. Being misunderstood is one of the trials we all must bear. I think that even the most common-minded person in the land has inner thoughts and ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... lying on your lap, Your hand aneath my cheek; Love stounds my bosom through and through, But yet I canna speak. My coward heart wi' happiness, Wi' bliss is brimin' fu'; But, oh! its fu'ness mars my tongue, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the window panes). I ought never to have concealed what sort of a life my husband led. But I had not the courage to do otherwise then—for my own sake, either. I was too much of a coward. ...
— Ghosts - A Domestic Tragedy in Three Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... right hand of mine; I grudge thee this quick-beating heart; They never gave me coward sign, Nor played ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... he intrepidly forgot the danger while he exposed himself to the greatest peril. His natural courage, indeed, too often made him forget the duty of a general; and the life of a king ended in the death of a common soldier. But such a leader was followed to victory alike by the coward and the brave, and his eagle glance marked every heroic deed which his example had inspired. The fame of their sovereign excited in the nation an enthusiastic sense of their own importance; proud of their king, the peasant ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... he ag'in refreshes himse'f, 'it's needless to go over that hunt in detail. We hustles the flyin' demon full eighteen miles, our faithful dogs crowdin' close an' breathless at his coward heels. Still, they don't catch up with him; he streaks it like some ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... retirement from every-day political conflicts which is, to say the least, very short-sighted. Extreme radicalism spurns the comparative inactivity, and says, "Lo, a sluggard!" Extreme conservatism spurns it, and says, "Lo, a coward!" It is only too true that cowards and sluggards both may take shelter under a shield of indifference; but it is equally true that any reasonably acute mind, if only charitably disposed, can readily distinguish between an inactivity which springs from craven or sluggish propensity, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... a bit in such rubbish," said Mrs. Badger, whose courage had come back with the absolute silence in the attic chamber. "I believe you're a coward, Nathan Badger. I'll go upstairs myself and see if I can't ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... Brouncker and I dined with the Duke of Albemarle. At table the Duchesse, a very ill-looked woman, complaining of her Lord's going to sea the next year, said these cursed words: "If my Lord had been a coward he had gone to sea no more: it may be then he might have been excused, and made an embassador," (meaning my Lord Sandwich). This made me mad, and I believed she perceived my countenance change, and blushed herself very much. ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... he needed me. But, but, but, I did not want to marry, and I wished that Harold had asked anything of me but that, because—because, I don't know what, and presently felt ashamed for being such a selfish coward that I grudged to make a little sacrifice of my own inclinations to help a ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... to think about slavery in the time of Garrison, or about the reformation in the time of Martin Luther. To those who try to get out of it it is not unfitting to quote Thomas Huxley's famous sentence: "He who will not reason is a bigot; he who dare not reason is a coward; he who can not reason ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... what Barry says, that I am the chief cause of the attack. The savages have heard of my chests of specimens, and naturally suppose that they contain treasure; so that I should be an ungrateful wretch, as well as a big coward, were I to run away. We Germans are not in the habit of doing that. But, from the appearance of your house, I very much doubt whether you can hold it against a determined attack. Would it not be wiser for you to unite with your brothers-in-law, and ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... offender's blood. He had been struck by the white man, and blood alone must atone for the aggression. Unless that should wipe out the disgrace he could never again hold up his head among his people—they would call him a coward, and say a white man struck the Big Eagle and he ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... drinke to kill a man or soe, why 'twas in my drinke, not I, and let my drinke be hangd for't; or, I say and I sayt, let um stay till I am drunke againe and then hange me; I care not, I shall not be sensible of it. Oh this sack! it makes a coward a Hector: the Greekes and Troians drinke no other; and that and a wench (for theres the divell out) made um cuffe ten yeares together, till at length when they had bled more than they coulde drinke they grew sober, the contented Cuckold tooke his wife home againe ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... precise counterpart of the parrot-like twist his mother had given at the luncheon table. It was an odd movement, at once timid and vicious, and in an instant I saw the spirit of Frank Jervaise revealed to me. He was a coward, hiding his weakness under that coarse mask of the brooding, relentless hawk. He had winced and retreated at my unspoken threat, as he had winced at the thought of his thrashing at school. He had taken his punishment stoically enough then, and might take ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... a critical moment. Riddell was no coward, nor was he one of those sickly individuals who, not satisfied to be struck on one cheek only, invite a repetition of the assault on the other side. Physically weak and nervous as he was, he had sufficient British instinct to move him to stand ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... warrior was in his canoe traveling across the Black-Sea-Water. At last he saw the gloomy wigwam of the cruel magician. He shot an arrow at the door and called, "Come out, O coward! You have killed women and children with your fatal breath, but you cannot kill a warrior. Come out and fight, if you are ...
— The Book of Nature Myths • Florence Holbrook
... expression, and you know how people say it. Or if you make money soon after you resign, they will say that you preferred a fortune to risking your life for your country. Or else they will say that a woman has made a coward of you, and that ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... sophistry as was devised by Agesilaus, in that great perplexity of the people as to the treatment to be given to those who had played the coward at the battle of Leuctra, when after that unhappy defeat, he decreed, that the laws should sleep for that day, it would be hard to find any parallel to; neither indeed have we the fellow of it in ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... test of a man is the fight he makes, The grit that he daily shows: The way he stands on his feet and takes Fate's numerous bumps and blows, A coward can smile when there's naught to fear, When nothing his progress bars, But it takes a man to stand and cheer While some other ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... most ignorant monster: I am in case to justle a constable.[424-5] Why, thou debosh'd[424-6] fish, thou, was there ever man a coward that hath drunk so much sack as I to-day? Wilt thou tell a monstrous lie, being but half a ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... all our goodly train How few will find our banquet hall! Yet why with coward lips complain That this must lean, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... "Coward! Coward!" he called after her, "to run away from a poor old cripple and then call him names." He thrust the letter into his pocket, and seizing his crutch began deliberately and carefully to descend the stairs, with grave, set face, not unlike ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... something strange about this," said Sir Gervaise gloomily, catching his son by the arm. "He is no coward. That I'll warrant." ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... or was making a circuit for a more convenient spring upon them, certain it is that our three young gentlemen either became tired of waiting for him, or had thought better of their mad attempt. One proposed returning to the boat, the others assented; and after denouncing the tiger as a coward, and wholly unworthy of the name of a royal tiger, they commenced their retreat as the dark set in; gradually their pace quickened, in two minutes they were in a hard trot; at last the panic took them all, and by the time they ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... it, read the answer. The puzzle was too deep for them. Yet it was only this: to Monsieur, honour was more than a pretty word. If he could not find his cause honest, he would not draw his sword, though all the curs in the land called him coward. ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... he shrilled. "He's a liar and a bully and a coward. He'd—he'd be a murderer if he dared—but he daren't." And his face dropped on his arms folded on his crutch, and he broke into a passion of crying. Then Betty knew she might go to him. She went and knelt down and put her ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... from the strange presence, and caught at a post for support. His self-possession was gone; he trembled like the most abject coward. Only for a moment—and then, when he looked ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... needless to say that a liar and slanderer is a coward; consequently Mr. Shodd, with the consequences before his eyes, never again alluded to Rocjean, and shortly left the city for Naples, to bestow the light of his countenance there in his great character of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... do think it was quite unsuitable. Thus, too, it was very chivalrous and orderly perhaps, for him to hate De Wilton, and to seek to supplant him in his lady's love; but, to slip a bundle of forged letters into his bureau, was cowardly as well as malignant. Now, Marmion is not represented as a coward, nor as at all afraid of De Wilton; on the contrary, and it is certainly the most absurd part of the story, he fights him fairly and valiantly after all, and overcomes him by mere force of arms, as he might ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... the hands of scheming politicians and wire-pullers for sinister purposes—how readily it can be made use of directly it has become a mere unreasoning instinct and habit. If a war is wanted, or conscription, or a customs tariff—it may be merely to suit the coward fears of autocratic rulers, or the selfish interests of some group of contractors or concession-hunters—all that the parties concerned have to do is to play the patriotic stop, and they stand a good chance of getting what ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... expression that almost daunted poor Joyce, who was half a coward at heart, anyhow, so she meekly ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... Are only varied modes of endless being.' Act ii. sc. 8. 'Directs the planets with a careless nod.' Ib. 'Far as futurity's untravell'd waste.' Act iv. sc. 1. 'And wake from ignorance the western world.' Act iv. sc. 2. 'Through hissing ages a proverbial coward, The tale of women, and the scorn of fools.' Act iv. sc. 3. 'No records but the records of the sky.' Ib. '... thou art sunk beneath reproach.' Act v. sc. 2. 'Oh hide me from myself.' Act ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... "He hasn't seen the dead men there, forward. It would be some satisfaction if he would show himself to be a coward, after all. I could throw it in his teeth when he attempts to tyrannise ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... did not come. Oxford contented himself with quarreling in a loud voice; but those whom he was trying to impress were not deceived by his bluster, and all present knew that he had proved himself a coward. ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... suggestion he revised and enlarged it, as hastily as he had written it; and it appeared anonymously in the spring of 1777. The original purpose of the Essay is indicated by the motto on the title-page: "I am not John of Gaunt your grandfather, but yet no Coward, Hal"; but as Morgann wrote he passed from Falstaff to the greater theme of Falstaff's creator. He was persuaded to publish his Essay because, though it dealt nominally with one character, its main subject was ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... individual ruled. In this more primitive society, the strongest held sway until a stronger displaced him. The giant called Ling was by no means the most human-seeming creature there, but he was plainly the ruler and plainly meant so to continue. Parr was no coward, but he was no fool. As the six-foot bludgeon whirled upward between him and the sky, he cast down his own stick ...
— The Devil's Asteroid • Manly Wade Wellman
... people, the sons of the men of the Civil War, the sons of the men who had iron in their blood, rejoice in the present and face the future high of heart and resolute of will. Ours is not the creed of the weakling and the coward; ours is the gospel of hope and of triumphant endeavor. We do not shrink from the struggle before us. There are many problems for us to face at the outset of the twentieth century—grave problems abroad and still graver at home; but we know that we can solve them and solve them well, provided only ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... don't take better aim, then," said Norton impatiently. "You are firing wild just now. Matilda has a right to think as she likes, and she don't shut her eyes and fire. There's nothing of a coward about her. But then we don't think as she thinks, about some things; and I say we'll get this liqueur stand and she shall find ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner
... the Strafe-Barrack I thought of these things: I thought of my father and mother... of the good times we had at home... of the sweet influences of a happy childhood, and the inestimable joy of belonging to a country that stands for fair play and fair dealing, where the coward and the bully are despised, and the honest and brave and gentle ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... looked upon me as below notice; but, morally, he assured me that he would give me a written character of the very best description, whenever I chose to apply for it. "You're honest," he said; "you're willing, though lazy; you would pull, if you had the strength of a flea; and, though a monstrous coward, you don't run away." My own demurs to these harsh judgments were not so many as they might have been. The idiocy I confessed; because, though positive that I was not uniformly an idiot, I felt inclined to think that, in a majority of cases, I really was; and there were ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... know," whispered his mother. "Never you fear, never fear." And then, as if to herself, she added, "Thank the Lord you are not a coward, whatever." ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... am," he repeated with a mirthless laugh. "Don't you suppose I ought to know? I want to get out of bullet range every time I'm shot at. And—if anybody ever turns coward, I prefer that it should be trooper Ormond, not trooper Berkley. And that is the ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... you a coward!" Sir Ralph exclaimed; "now I know it," and, with a taunting laugh, he ordered his men to follow him, issued from the village, and prepared, with his little band, to charge the Roundhead horse, about a hundred ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... the Revenge?" quoth Master Jeremy Sparrow. "Go hang thyself, coward, or, if you choose, swim out to the Spaniard, and shift from thy wet doublet and hose into a sanbenito. Let the don come, shoot if he can, and land if he will! We'll singe his beard in Virginia as we did ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... concerned with the child's case than his wife's. Her distress, the added reason for her abhorrence of India, cut him to the heart and made him a coward of consequences. It was the child, that insignificant atom of indefinite humanity, that had intruded itself between them and was daily usurping his place in his wife's thoughts. At first he had been fool enough to imagine that it was going to be the link ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... It would be a bold thing to give the answer that was on her tongue, but she was no coward, and this was a crisis of importance. A proper impression made upon this woman might be productive of more good results than if ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... strong, the artistic, the effective thing to do. "And when he came down he might tread on me," she said to herself, with a little shudder. "I wish I had the courage. But no—it might hurt, after all. I am a coward, too." ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... period when this history begins, a coward—for cowards are always to be found in conspiracies which are not confined to a small number of equally strong men—a sworn confederate, brought face to face with death, gave certain information, happily insufficient ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... instant came the sound of a heavy blow and of a groan, then another blow and the sound of one falling upon the ground. Then the clashing of steel, and in the midst Lord Falworth crying, in a dreadful voice, "Thou traitor! thou coward! thou murderer!" ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... by sea. In July Perkin arrived at Cork, but there was no shelter for him there now that Kildare was Lord Deputy, and in September he made his way to Cornwall. Followed by 6,000 Cornishmen he reached Taunton, but the news of the defeat of the Cornish at Blackheath depressed him, and the poor coward ran away from his army and took sanctuary in Beaulieu Abbey. He was brought to London, where he publicly acknowledged himself to be an impostor. Henry was too humane to do more than ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... white soul in spite of his bad character,—he had been made out a little fiend who would shoot you on the slightest provocation. The girl had been thrust into the background, and the hero had been made into a coward and a paltry villain; they were all desperadoes upon the screen. Never in his life had Bently Brown been made to suffer such an affront. Never had he dreamed that his work would be made a ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... much show of wrath did Heliodora yield. As she left the room, her eyes turned to Sagaris, who had shrunk into a corner, coward fear and furious passion distorting his face. The lady having been borne away, a few soldiers remained in the house, where they passed the night. On the morrow Bessas himself paid a visit to that famous ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... her hand, and now she stepped quickly forward, for there was nothing of the coward about Black Madge. There was not a thing ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... at Roanoke he was cast down at the news of Perry's victory on the lake, because he thought it would prolong the contest; and he exulted in the banishment of Napoleon to Elba, although it let loose the armies and fleets of Britain upon the United States. "That insolent coward," said he, "has met his deserts at last." This Virginia Englishman would not allow that Napoleon possessed even military talent; but stoutly maintained, to the last, that he was the merest sport of fortune. When the work of restoration was in progress, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... back. Willoughby risked only his health in that white palace on the Red Sea. There could not have been a moment when Feversham was in a position to say, "Your life was forfeit but for me, whom you call coward." And Durrance, turning over in his mind all the news and gossip which had come to him at Wadi Halfa or during his furloughs, had been brought to conjecture whether that fugitive from Khartum, who had told him ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... is one word in the extended vocabulary of barrack-room abuse that cannot pass without comment. You may call a man a thief and risk nothing. You may even call him a coward without finding more than a boot whiz past your ear, but you must not call a man a bastard unless you are prepared to prove it on ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... was mentioned again, together with Sipiagin's servant, Kirill, and a certain Mendely, known under the name of "Sulks." The latter it seemed was not to be relied upon. He was very bold when sober, but a coward when drunk, and ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... unsuccessfully attacked for two days, and that on the third it had been relieved by Tegethoff dashing through the Italian fleet, and destroying the "Re d'Italia" and the "Palestro," without himself losing a single ship. There were riots in Florence, and the cry was now that Admiral Persano was a coward and a traitor. To add to the gloom of the moment the ram "Affondatore," which had been injured in the battle, sank at her anchors when a sudden gale swept the roadstead ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... deserved it. He was horrid. But I don't wish you to meet him again just now. He is no coward, and he might ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... God and the kingdom of heaven, will you not have an ample recompense? Is there here a man who would give up all for lost because some favorite hope has been disappointed, or who regrets the wordly substance which he has expended on so divine an enterprise? Shame on thy coward spirit and thine avaricious heart! Do the holy Scriptures, does the experience of ages, does the nature of things justify the expectation that we shall carry war into the central regions of delusion and crime, without opposition, without trial? Show me a plan which encounters ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... seen the blood flow from the wound, than his opponent changed itself into a griffin, and raising itself from the ground swooped upon him. His defence now became more difficult, as the evil spirit continued to attack him in ever changing forms, but Sir Wendelin was no coward, and knew well how to use his arm and sword. At length, however, the knight began to feel that his strength was deserting him; his sword seemed to grow heavier and heavier in his hand, and his legs felt as if an hundredweight had been attached to them. His squire, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and they regarded it with indifference. A few expressed hostility to it. One captain, who had been a prisoner before and seemed glad to have been captured again, a bloated, overgrown, swaggering, filthy bully, of course a coward, formerly a keeper of a low groggery and said to have been commissioned for political reasons, was repeatedly heard to say in sneering tones in the hearing of rebel sentries, "Some of our officers have got escape on ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... me—and what then? My hump shall shorten the imperial robe, My leg peep out beneath the scanty hem, My broken hip shall twist the gown awry; And pomp, instead of dignifying me, Shall be by me made quite ridiculous. The faintest coward would not bear all this: Prodigious courage must be mine, to live; To die asks nothing but weak will, and I Feel like a craven. Let me skulk away Ere life o'ertask me. [Offers ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... most dastardly cowardice at others. It must be owned, that this last is an extraordinary mixture; but I am inclined to believe, in despite of the many proofs of rash and impetuous courage, that Napoleon was in the main, and whenever life and existence was at stake, a cool and selfish coward. His rival Moreau always thought so. Immediately before the campaign of Dresden, in a conversation on Napoleon's character, this General observed, [17]"Ce qui characterise cet homme, ce'st le mensonge et l'amour de la vie; Je vais l'attaquer, je le battrai, et je le verrai a mes ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... a large city. You see, therefore, Ulrich, that a marriage with you would by no means appear to me a very fortunate thing; and, moreover, if you had allowed yourself to be compelled to marry me, had you not refused to do so, I should have despised you all my life long as a miserable coward. I thank you, therefore, for resisting the men so bravely, for I should have been sorry to be obliged to despise you; you are my dear Elza's cousin, and I myself have always liked ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... like a coward who plunges headlong into danger. "Father, I should like to have another child." He did not reply, as he did not understand her. Then she explained, timid and unable to ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... hard as he could with his fists clenched. The little imp, who looked as wicked as imp could be, instantly gave the broad back of the great fellow half a dozen strokes. Hereupon all the bystanders, and the officers of his Excellency, burst into a fit of tremendous laughter, and the big coward was allowed to escape, sneaking off like a dog with his tail between his legs. The Rais came up to me smiling with great self-complacency, and said—"Well, isn't that the way to administer justice?" I then astonished the hangers-on of his Excellency's Court, by relating to them ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... out of Heaven," said he, in answer to her query. "They come every night, but I wouldn't listen, till one day my boy was took. Then I heard another voice, demandin' me to tell folks what was what about God. But I was afraid an' a—coward." ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... me all. It was as I had surmised. Goby de Mouchy, my wretched, besotted, miserable secretary, in his visits to the chateau of the Marquis de Bechamel, who was one of our society, had seen Blanche. I suppose it was because she had been warned that he was worthless, and poor, artful and a coward, she loved him. She wormed out of the besotted wretch the secrets of our Order. 'Did he tell you the NUMBER ONE?' ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Polly, Owen Murray, true to his new passion for the Leghorn family, had been reviving Mr. G. Bird and now with regard for decorum, he set him quietly upon his feet. Did the Golden Bird run like a coward from the scene of the catastrophe of his making? He did not. He deliberately stretched his wings, gave a mighty crow, and walked over and began to peck in my smock-pockets at corn that had lain there many long weeks ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... mouth, and bit it for some time, as was his custom when composing; after which he covered his head with his garment and reclined against a pillar. The guards who accompanied Archias, imagining this to be a mere trick, laughed and called him coward, whilst Archias began to renew his false persuasions. Demosthenes, feeling the poison work—for such it was that he had concealed in the reed now bade him lead on. "You may now," said he, "enact the part of Creon, and cast me out unburied; but at least, O gracious Poseidon, I have not polluted ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... of a remote sea, swelled in a moment into a roar of menace. And as a mob is capable of deeds from which the members who compose it would severally shrink, as nothing is so pitiless, nothing so unreasoning, so in the sound of its voice is a note that appals all but the hardiest. Soane was no coward. A year before he had been present at the siege of Bedford House by the Spitalfields weavers, where swords were drawn and much blood was spilled, while the gentlemen of the clubs and coffee-houses looked on as at a play; but even he felt a slackening of the pulse ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... that the man who had met death here upon this wild, lonely mountain was none other than the owner of the gray roadster, the coward who had fled from the consequences of his negligence, and turned it into a ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... how are you?" he said, and he took Kittrell's hand as warmly as ever. For a moment Kittrell was relieved, and then his heart sank; for he had a quick realization that it was the coward within him that felt the relief, and the man the sickness. If Clayton had reproached him, or cut him, it would have made it easier; but Clayton did none of these things, and Kittrell was irresistibly drawn to the ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... loved her," he repeated, still with his back to the Boy. "By-and-by I could have righted it, but she—she wasn't the kind to hang about and wait on a man's better nature when once he'd shown himself a coward. She skipped the country." He leaned his head against the end of the shelf over the fire, ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... wild shout. "Whooroo! It's come! I knowed it would! The day I couldn't hold my tongue, though I passed my word I would when the coward showed the deed he didn't dare to git recorded! Waugh!" He shouted again, with bitter laughter. "Ye do! In the eyes o' them as follow Martin Pike ye stand fer the Beach and all its wickedness, do ye? Whooroo! It's come! Ye're an offence in the eyes o' Martin ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... made his bid for liberty; but he was no coward to desert his companions. He uttered a choking cry of mingled fear and defiance, and rushed in between his friends to swing a heavy blow with his fist fair upon the giant's unprotected temple. Now ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... I only meant that I was not quarrelsome, and have indeed put up more than once with practical jokings which I might have resented had I not known how skillful with the sword I am, and that in this campaign I shall have plenty of opportunities of showing that I am no coward." ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... her, but she neither heeded nor heard him. Like most cruel men, he was a coward. He dared not follow her into the place where she ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... just a plain no-account coward!" snapped Jimmy. "I'm not going to climb up there, but I'll tell you what I am going to do; I'm going to wait right down here until you come down, if it isn't until next year. Nobody can drop things on my head and not get paid back. ...
— The Adventures of Jimmy Skunk • Thornton W. Burgess
... were vibrating betwixt fear and vengeance. He had all the ignorant man's fear of superior brains, all the coward's sneaking resentment of a fancied imposition. He could see that fear had blinded his eyes to the real but covert threat of Firmstone's words. Here was his chance to free himself from Firmstone's clutches. Here his ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... me as we drove to the station to meet her, "try to remain, within bounds. The only thing I ha—criticize about Bee is that she makes such a coward of you. Remember when she tries to browbeat you, that I consider your taste and common sense better than hers, and that in any stand you take I am back of you, no matter what ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... a man, a noble man, and put your personal gratification below justice, honour, and gratitude. This is the first real trial of your life, George, are you going to play the coward in it?" ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... of Cadiz, the Marquis de Solano, was murdered by the enraged and mistaken citizens, to one of his murderers, who had run a pike through his back, he calmly turned round and said, "Coward, to strike there! Come round—if you ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the ashes from his over-alls, rose and shaking with rage, pointed a trembling finger at the trader. "You're a doggone liar! You're a doggone coward! You're a doggone thief!" ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... when I turn towards the north wind, my horns, more bushy than a battalion of spears, emit a howling noise. The forests thrill; the rivers swell; the husks of the fruit burst, and blades of grass stand erect like a coward's hair. Listen!" ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... ha, ha! Sherakim not to be found! The cowardly babbler! Jared, command more wine! Sherakim has fled—he is afraid of a shadow—he has not the courage of a maiden. Have I not known him of old? Did not a thunderstorm always make him cry? Ha, ha, ha! Sherakim the orator! fool! coward!" ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones
... of an alien crime, and borne it as his own; to undo now all that he had done in the past, to fling out to ruin now the one whom he had saved at such a cost; to turn, after twelve years, and forsake the man, all coward though he was, whom he had shielded for so long—this was not possible to him. Though it would be but his own birthright that he would demand, his own justification that he would establish, it would have seemed to him like a treacherous and craven thing. ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... my vengeance when I had deemed it most secure. But enough! To his heart, Gerald, now that in the fulness of his wine and his ambition, he may the deeper feel the sting of death—strike to his heart— what! do you falter—do you turn coward?" ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... collars, whips, and handcuffs, leave me not to walk over precipices! That I have been called by all the newspapers a 'free man,' will avail me little, if my pilgrimage have ended in death and wreck. O that the newspapers had called me slave, coward, fool, or what it pleased their sweet voices to name me, and I had attained not death but life! ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... "I—I was a coward, Charley," she said with a kind of ferocity of remorse. This self-accusation on her part ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... was thought, have induced him to make some show of resistance, or to have gone to the rescue of a young and delicate girl; but none of these things did he do, and, if the story related was true, the young man had acted like a base coward at the best, and submitted without a murmur to the outrages that were perpetrated in his presence. Instead of acting like a man, he stood tamely by and allowed a woman to be cruelly beaten, the bank robbed, and the robbers to walk ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... now—Oh speak! For my soul is stirred to avenge thee; Tell me what barbarous horde, without law, unrighteous and heartless, Hateful to gods and to men, thus have bound thee, a shame to the sunlight, Scorn and prize to the sailor: but my prize now; for a coward, Coward and shameless were he, who so finding a glorious jewel Cast on the wayside by fools, would not win it and keep it and wear it, Even as I will thee; for I swear by the head of my father, Bearing thee over the sea-wave, to wed thee in Argos the fruitful, Beautiful, ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... among his family and his slaves. He is credited, too, with an observance of high principle in public life, which it might be difficult to illustrate from his recorded actions. But the warmer-blooded Andrew Jackson set him down as "heartless, selfish, and a physical coward," and Jackson could speak generously of an opponent whom he really knew. His intellect must have been powerful enough, but it was that of a man who delights in arguing, and delights in elaborate deductions from principles which he is too proud to revise; a man, too, who is fearless in ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... "Why should I turn my back for thee? Is there no equity in thee? Dost thou not fear to bring reproach upon the Arabs by driving a man like myself captive, in dishonour and humiliation, before thou hast proved him in the field, to know if he be a warrior or a coward?" The Bedouin laughed and replied, "By Allah, I wonder at thee! Thou art a boy in years, but old in talk. These words should come from none but a doughty champion: what wantest thou of equity? "If thou wilt have me be thy captive, to serve thee," said Kanmakan, "throw down thine arms and put off ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... The wood scene with Adam Bede still further illustrates the same characteristics. This man, so genial and kindly, rages fiercely in his heart against him whom he has unwittingly wronged. Frank and open, apparently the very soul of honour, he shuffles and lies like a coward and a knave; and this in no personal fear, but because he shrinks to lose utterly that goodwill and esteem of others,—of Adam in particular, because Adam constrains his own high esteem,—which are to him the reflection of his own self-worship. Repentance comes to him at last, because conscience ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... voice steady, went on. "I have just a word more to say. I would like to give credit for this that happened to me to the One we have been reading about this afternoon, and I do so with all my heart. I came near being coward enough and mean enough to go away without owning this up before you. How He did it, I do not pretend to know. I'm not a preacher. But He did it, and that's what chiefly concerns me. And what He did for me I guess He can do for any of you. And now I've ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... chief of state: Queen ELIZABETH II (of the United Kingdom since 6 February 1952) is a hereditary monarch head of government: Lieutenant Governor and Commander in Chief Vice-Admiral Sir John COWARD (since NA 1994) and Bailiff Mr. Graham Martyn DOREY (since February 1992) were appointed by the queen cabinet: Advisory and Finance Committee (other committees); appointed by the Assembly of ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Palfrey opened the discussion on Marriage. He declared that Marriage was the coward's refuge from Love. He said that Marriage had been invented by lawyers and parsons for the purpose of obtaining fees and authority. These unpleasant people, the lawyers and the parsons, had contrived to make Love an impropriety and had reduced Holy Passion to the status of a schedule ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... have you been? Has some insulting taunt Cast by a coward in a public place Where you could not resent it, stung your patience? These are the pebbles small ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... facing the audience] Alone in the temple, within sight of the goddess almost. I know 'tis but an image—yet am I steeped in terror, even to the marrow of my bones. [He utters an agonized cry] Ah!—I thought I beheld in the darkness—No—I know that there is nothing—Oh! coward nature! Because I was cradled amid tales of religion, because I grew up in the fear of the gods, because my father and my father's father, and all those from whom I come, were crushed by this terror even from the blackest night of time, I tremble, and my reason totters. All this is false, I ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... I will tell you," she said at this juncture. "All the time I have been here my one thought has been of escape. I dreamed nothing else save getting my poor mother away from the clutches of that coward who had hypnotized her in the past, and made her believe he was a good man as well as her cousin from Alsace-Lorraine. And I know of a way ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... thought. He no doubt preys upon everyone as he has preyed upon me. He is without tenderness, knows nothing of the meaning of tenderness. The colourless creature he has married will serve his body. That is what he wants. He does not want beauty. He is a coward who dare not stand up to beauty and ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... had he not told her she was mistaken? Perhaps because she had just been laying bare to him the pain that was in her heart. Her call had been for sympathy, not merely for truth. She wondered whether she was a coward. Since they had returned from Capri the season and Vere had surely changed. Then, and always afterwards, Hermione thought of those three days in Capri as a definite barrier, a dividing line between two periods. Already, while ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... after Job returned, "The craven dog won't take the oath," said he, "and may my right hand rot above ground before it shall turn key for him unless he does." But when Dawson saw that Job had left the room, and withdrawn the light, the conscience-stricken coward came to the door, and implored Job to return. "Will you swear then?" said Jonson; "I will, ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... absolutely no one, now, to whom he could turn for the understanding born of long and intimately affectionate association. Mariana was lost to him in her own poignant affair ... No children. So many, so much, dead. His countenance, however, grew firm with the determination that age should not find him a coward. He had always been bitterly contemptuous of the men that, surfeiting their appetites, showed at the impotent last a cheap repentance. But he had done nothing pointedly wrong; he had—the inversion repeated ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the craving of others besides himself. Now, as he listened to the fierce harangue of the Chief, as his alert ears caught the mutterings behind and about him, he saw the pit yawn suddenly at his feet. But though a brute and a traitor, he was no coward. His veins began to run hot, his sinews to stretch for the death struggle which ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... appointed season? And while new worlds flew flaming from the wheel of creation, and old ones died in an eye's twinkling, did not the race dream on contemptuous of the changes which lurked in the restless heavens? Yes, the meanest coward in existence had his innate courage and there was a note of bravery in life ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... weak imagination!" replied La Corriveau; "your sickly conscience frightens you! You will need to cast off both to rid Beaumanoir of the presence of your rival! The aqua tofana in the hands of a coward is a gift as fatal to its ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... self-respect in the eyes of the home folks and of the world in general, had uttered a direct falsehood and cut herself off from him and from those who loved her. This was too much for any decent man to stand. Was he a coward? Would he shelter himself—as he ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... risen and recovered herself) Mistress, a sharp swift terror struck me low A moment since, hearing of this thy woe. But now—I was a coward! And men say Our second thought the wiser is alway. This is no monstrous thing; no grief too dire To meet with quiet thinking. In her ire A most strong goddess hath swept down on thee. Thou lovest. Is that so strange? Many there be Beside thee! ... And because thou lovest, wilt fall And die! ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... man, probably thinking he spoke for the crowd, cried out: "This is cowardly on your part, Lincoln!" Lincoln only gazed with contempt on the men who would have murdered one unarmed Indian but who quailed before his single hand. "If any man thinks I am a coward," said he, "let him test it." "Lincoln," was the reply, "you are larger and heavier than any of us." "That you can guard against," responded the captain. "Choose your weapons!" The insubordination ended, and the word "coward" was never associated with ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... with the story of the happenings on that night in Birmingham. Lloyd George was called a coward and sneered at for allowing himself to get away in disguise, and if poisonous words could have checked a man's career he would have been finished from that time. A few days after the riot an M. P. met Joseph Chamberlain in the lobby ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... entirely. The sight of this disgusted me so that I became furious, and in the measure that my anger rose my fear subsided and vanished. I railed at the poor fellow and abused and cursed him shamefully, threatening to kill him for being a coward and a fool. I made him draw the bullet and reload his musket in a ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... cold blood, had offered up his life to save a helpless woman and her child. She wondered whether he would have done this if he had heard the answer that was upon her lips. Perhaps that was why she had not been given time to speak that answer, which might have made a coward of him. For nothing more had been heard of Robert Seymour; indeed, already the tragedy of the ship Zanzibar was forgotten. The dead had buried their dead, and since then worse disasters ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... does not need to be scared. It is better to be safe than sorry; and it is better to be scared than syphilitic. "I dare do all that may become a man," says Macbeth; "who dares do more is none"; let a man dare if he will with his own body, aye, his own soul; he is but a coward who does not shrink from buying voluptuous moments with the hazard of wife and child. Hydrophobia is far less perilous than venereal disease, and if one hundredth as many were attacked by it the world would be placarded with scarlet danger signs; the man who decried the precautions as intimidation ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... I do this? It is not because I am a coward, for there are few men who are in reality braver than I am. I carried my firstborn in my arms round the drawing-room when she was a week old, and I have done other things equally brave, the enumeration of which I spare ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various
... he knew when he was beaten; and he was no coward either, for he stepped to the bunk, took the infected bed-clothes fairly in his arms, and carried them out of the house without a check ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... of young Kromlaix men looked at each other in consternation. Was the handsomest, the strongest, and the most daring lad in their village a coward? It was the dark year of 1813, when Napoleon was draining France of all its manhood. Even the only sons of poor widowed women, such as Rohan Gwenfern was, were no longer exempted from conscription. Having lost half a million men amid the snows of Russia, Napoleon had called ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... ammunition is kept, and here I found the two soldiers, one hiding in a corner, and the other with a lighted match in his hand. 'What are you going to do with that match?' I asked. He answered, 'Light the powder, and blow us all up.' 'You are a miserable coward,' said I, 'go out of this place.' I spoke so resolutely that he obeyed. I then threw off my bonnet; and, after putting on a hat and taking a gun, I said to my two brothers: 'Let us fight to the death. We are fighting for our ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... know what to do," mourned the young man. "I'm all in a whirl. I'm no coward, Captain Wass. I'm willing to face the music. But I'm ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... while the combatants on a greater scale will carry arms, and take up positions, and lie in ambuscade? And let their combats be not without danger, that opportunity may be given for distinction, and the brave man and the coward may receive their meed of honour or disgrace. If occasionally a man is killed, there is no great harm done—there are others as good as he is who will replace him; and the state can better afford to lose a few of her citizens than ...
— Laws • Plato
... right to say that life is a failure; you have no right to lie down on your arms and give, up the fight. That is the act of a coward. After all, it is not the way to ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... my presence! I saw no more. A dizziness came over me. Consternation seized my inmost soul. Drawing back behind the rock. I held my face close up to it and shut both my eyes. Don't talk to me about courage! Every man is a coward by nature. Of what avail was it that I had killed whales and chased grizzly bears? Here I was now, hiding my face, shutting my eyes, trembling in the hot sun like a man with an ague, both knees knocking together, ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... afforded him neither pleasure nor any pretence of cleverness or courage but proved him to be nothing more nor less than a cheat, a simpleton, and an arrant coward. Antoninus made a campaign among the Alamanni and wherever he saw a spot suitable for habitation he would order: "There let a fort be erected: there let a city be built." To those spots he applied names relating to himself, yet the local designations ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... was! You are a coward, and you can tell John he is the same. Such foolish men, to be afraid!" With that Mr. Sesemann went to his room to write a ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... me while I lie, Cobham's a coward, Polwarth is a slave, And Lyttelton a dark, designing knave; St. John has ever been a wealthy fool— But let me add Sir Robert's mighty dull, Has never made a friend in private life, And was, besides, a tyrant ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... eyes on Jim's face to see how the shorter guide took it. He realized that Jim was at least no coward, even though he might fear the wrath of such a forest bully as the ex-logger, and present lawless poacher Cale Martin; for he had shut his teeth hard together, and there was a grim expression on his face, as if he did not mean to ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... be that Bob Masters was a coward. He always said that he was. Personally I do not believe it, for he had the sweetest ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... father have told you this, Pathfinder?" the girl demanded a little earnestly. "Perhaps he fancied you would think the better of me if you did not believe me a silly coward, as so many of my sex love to make ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... easily," she had said with a laugh that was more than half a sob. And for his mother's sake he had vowed to be gentle to all women who might cross his path. And how had he kept his vow? Tonight his egoism had swallowed his oath and he had fled like a coward to be alone with his misery. A great sob rose in his throat. Craven by name and craven by nature he thought bitterly and he cursed again the father who had bequeathed him such an inheritance, but as he did so he stopped suddenly for a soft ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... naive, at times. He watched her digest the idea, sitting up on the hay, her chin cupped in her two hands, straws in her hair. Her eyes were swollen and her nose red, and his handkerchief was now almost as wet as her own. "I thought I was an awful coward," ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... completely and confessed everything she had hidden in the garden at Luciennes. On her way to the scaffold, she was a most pitiable sight to behold—the only prominent French woman, victim of the Revolution, to die a coward. The last words of this once famous and popular mistress were: "Life, life, leave me my life! I will give all my wealth to the nation. Another minute, hangman! A moi! A moi!" and the heavy iron cut short her pitiful screams, thus ending the life ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... with much anxiety. As my old readers know, he was a coward at heart, and the thought of being put under arrest for the robbery of Aaron Fairchild's shop made him ...
— The Rover Boys on the River - The Search for the Missing Houseboat • Arthur Winfield
... them, certain it is that our three young gentlemen either became tired of waiting for him, or had thought better of their mad attempt. One proposed returning to the boat, the others assented; and after denouncing the tiger as a coward, and wholly unworthy of the name of a royal tiger, they commenced their retreat as the dark set in; gradually their pace quickened, in two minutes they were in a hard trot; at last the panic took them all, and ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... "You are a coward, Harold Townsley!" As she faced him, her head thrown back, her opera cloak lying in artistic disorder at her feet, exposing the richly trimmed dress, and the soft outlines of her fine figure, her eyes flashing and her bosom rapidly heaving, ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... ordered bed until his temperature should be pleased to go down: which was not for many a weary day. Possibly it was the best thing that could have happened to Wally. He grew, if not reconciled, at least accustomed to his loss; grew, too, to thinking himself a coward when he saw the daily struggle waged by the two people he loved best. And Norah was wise enough to call in other nurses: chief of them the Hunt babies, Alison and Michael, who rolled on his bed and played with ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... writhing harder, wrenched free a hand and arm. Blindly she beat upwards into that evil satyr's face. "You beast! You toad! You coward!" ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... "How-dare you! Oh, coward that you are!" exclaimed another voice, low and repressed, yet vibrant with bitter scorn; "you know that I found you out—in ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... see you all! As if there was a single one of you who had not hit out his hand as he could!... If there had been a man who had stayed with his arms folded while the others were fighting I would spit in his face and call him: Coward! Coward!..." ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... in them have had something of this virtue; but the Christian religion manifests it with unexampled splendor. "Lead me, Zeus and Destiny!" says the prayer of Epictetus, "whithersoever I am appointed to go; I will follow without wavering; even though I turn coward and shrink, I shall have to follow all the same."[187] The fortitude of that is for the strong, for the few; even for them the spiritual atmosphere with which it surrounds them is bleak and gray. But, "Let thy loving spirit lead me forth into the land of righteousness";[188]—"The ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... "You coward!" he shrieked. He flung himself at the German officer, who was trying frantically to get at his cartridges. So sudden was the attack that he was taken utterly by surprise. Before he could defend himself, Frank was wrenching his arm. A moment ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Trail • George Durston
... rashness with thy death, And rue too late thy over bold attempts; For with this sword, this instrument of death, That hath been drenched in my foe-men's blood, I'll separate thy body from they head, And set that coward ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... "art turned coward of the sudden. I have seen thee face half a score of shag-headed Irish kerns to thy own share of them; and now thou wouldst blink and go back to shun the ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... dark, inclined to be fat, and not unpleasant in feature. But it was with a scowling brow that he replied to Diggle. Desmond was no coward, but he afterward confessed that as he stood there watching the two faces, the dark, lowering face of Angria, the smiling, scarcely less swarthy face of Diggle, he felt his knees tremble under him. What ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... pass unpunished. How unfortunate. Scarcely twenty-four hours have elapsed since fortune seemed to smile upon me from every side, and now the very destiny I most dreaded stares me fully in the face." A reprimand, or the sentence of a court-martial, I shrank from with a coward's fear. It mattered comparatively little from what source arising, the injury to my pride as a man and my spirit as a soldier would be ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... the old devil wait till you are done with her! Pump the old wretch! Find out what he wants! Say that I went off for a day's jaunt!" Alan Hawke smiled grimly as he seated himself tenderly at Justine Delande's side. "Old Hugh did not last long! They must have had their first skirmish. If he is a coward at heart, she will rule him with a rod of iron. What is her hold over him? I warrant that the jade will never tell me. She will fight him to the death in silence, and try to hoodwink me. We will see, ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... girder, as his father before him had loved them. He squared his shoulders, and his jaws hardened. No man, without justice on his side, should dictate to him; no man should order him to hire this man or discharge that one. He alone had that right; he alone was master. Bennington was not a coward; he would not sell to another; he would not shirk the task laid out for his hand. Unionism, such as it stood, must receive a violent lesson. ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... [Object of fear] bug bear, bugaboo; scarecrow; hobgoblin &c. (demon) 980; nightmare, Gorgon, mormo[obs3], ogre, Hurlothrumbo[obs3], raw head and bloody bones, fee-faw-fum, bete noire[Fr], enfant terrible[Fr]. alarmist &c. (coward) 862. V. fear, stand in awe of; be afraid &c. adj.; have qualms &c. n.; apprehend, sit upon thorns, eye askance; distrust &c. (disbelieve) 485. hesitate &c. (be irresolute) 605; falter, funk, cower, crouch; skulk &c. (cowardice) 862; "let 'I dare not' wait upon 'I would'"; take fright, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... a bulky packet which, being opened, revealed a tin of dog soap. I could only infer that he wished to saddle Togo, our prize-bred Airedale, with the blame. Coward! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 1, 1916 • Various
... his fat fists. Amazement fled before rage upon that furious face, perspiration streamed from every pore. His eyes shot this way and that like black bullets. No other man in the world can become so infuriated as the coward, for the brave man knows that he can satisfy his anger. He reserves it as a force to use in vengeance. He is temperate in that. But the worm-soul, which must crawl and be satisfied with merely stinging the heel of his enemy, knows no such temperance. He is the ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... them was a coward, Miss Burnham!" he replied, warmly. "You are speaking cruelly and unjustly of as brave a set of fellows as ever lived! The strongest man among them set the example; he volunteered to stay by Frank, and to bring him on in the track of the ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins
... not tried to run away. Even with the anger surging through her, Rose-Marie admitted that the child was not—in one sense—a coward. He had waited, brazenly perhaps, to hear what she had to say. With blazing eyes ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... how cruel would be the triumph of an exasperated, avaricious, and insolent set of men; if we were defeated, how many of our wealthiest and noblest citizens must fall. Yet when I argued thus and offered my advice I was taunted for being a coward." ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... circumstances which surrounded him, was not without its appropriate interest. He was summoned in early youth, and without warning, to face a crisis of tremendous hazard, being at the same time himself a man of no very great constitutional courage; perhaps he was even a coward. And this we say without meaning to adopt as gospel truths all the party reproaches of Anthony. Certainly he was utterly unfurnished by nature with those endowments which seemed to be indispensable in ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... he was tempted to run right into the house, then something inside of him seemed to say, "Don't be such a coward, Chalmers! Don't you remember what the teacher told you today about General Washington and other ...
— Dew Drops, Vol. 37, No. 34, August 23, 1914 • Various
... "O faithless coward! O dishonest wretch!" said Isabel. "Would you preserve your life by your sister's shame? Oh, fie, fie, fie! I thought, my brother, you had in you such a mind of honor that, had you twenty heads to render up on twenty blocks, you would have yielded them up all before ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... thou, Destiny, whithersoever ye have appointed me to go, for I will follow, and that without delay. Should I be unwilling, I shall follow as a coward, but I must follow all ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... act like a man. Upon what grounds did I found the hope that Fulton would not soon find out about Lucy and me? Why, on the grounds of moral cowardice, of course. I dreaded to face any drastic, final issue. There was no other reason. Well, if I was to prove to myself that I was not a moral coward, Fulton must be told and the issue faced, and Fulton himself must be out-faced. It was not enough to love and be loved in secret. That way lies stealing and cheating. We must come into the open hand ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... against us; but the knowledge that, if we are taken, this horrible fate is certain to be ours, makes our men fight with a desperate fury; and never to give in, as long as one is left. This it is that accounts for the wonderful victories which we have gained there. He would be a coward, indeed, who would not fight with thumbscrews ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... paid the penalty with their lives. Only picture in your mind's eye the circling hawks above gyrating monotonously, the fluttering captives in mid-air, darting now here, now there to escape, and still coward-like huddling together; and the motley group of sportsmen on the bank and you have the whole scene before ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... south-east, an' the small boat wass makin' very bad weather, indeed. The skipper wass very trunk, an' Tuncan, who wass steerin', said they should put in to shelter for the night. But the skipper wass quarrelsome, an' called Tuncan a coward an' a nameless man from Skye, an' they came to plows. Tuncan let go the tiller, an' the small boat came broadside on, and shipped a big sea, an' when Tuncan got to the tiller an' put it up, the skipper was gone. They never saw him, so they came on to the Clyde, where ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... Ottawas, Miamis, Shawnees, and Delawares. All come to smoke pipes with the Wyandots and hear what we have to say. We small nation, but mighty warriors. No Wyandot ever coward." ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... look onward, upward, Where the starry light appears,— Where, in spite of the coward's doubting, Or your own heart's trembling fears, You shall reap in joy the harvest You have ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... seven that she, after a few hours, gave up the spirit, and like her child [was] murdered in the most dissolute manner.... Can we longer allow that our fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, relatives, yes, our children, are murdered by these coward and common murderers? or has not the time yet arrived to prevent this civilised nation, or to punish them ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... he opened. "The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of men and women." Paine laid his lash fiercely on the Tories, branding every one as a coward grounded in "servile, slavish, self-interested fear." He deplored the inadequacy of the militia and called for a real army. He refuted the charge that the retreat through New Jersey was a disaster and he ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
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