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More "Foolhardy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he could not quite justify the scheme. All the efforts of his imagination, as he rode home, to bring his judgment to the same side with itself, had failed, and he had been driven to confess the project a foolhardy one. But, on the other hand, had he not had a leading thitherward? Whence else the sudden conviction that Scudamore had taken her, and the burning desire to seek her in Raglan stables? And had he not heard mighty arguments ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... must wait for their attack, sir knight. It were foolhardy to attempt to seek them in their own hills, and yet they must stop us. They will attack before ...
— ...After a Few Words... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... temperament did not allow the younger brother to follow the tortuous course through which the elder wound himself to his object. A cold, calm circumspection carried the latter slowly, but surely, to his aim; and with a pliable subtlety he made all things subserve his purpose; with a foolhardy impetuosity, which overthrew all obstacles, the other at times compelled success, but oftener accelerated disaster. For this reason William was a general, and Louis never more than an adventurer; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... me steadily for a moment or two, and I fancied that there was something of that admiration in his gaze which a cautious man sometimes feels for the foolhardy. ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... aught in the hall now?" Osberne answers from where he sat: "There is but little, for I am little." Then they turn and see him hugging himself up in the sack, and something at his back, they cannot see what; and the goodman says: "What hast thou been about all day, kinsman? Thou art forever foolhardy and a truant; of right, stripes should pay the for thy straying." Said Osberne: "I have been shepherding sheep; may it not buy me off the stripes that I have found two of the lost ones, and brought back ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... slipped in attempting the most foolhardy course on earth, and there was a lot of talk about the dangers of guideless climbing. But I guessed the truth, and I am sure Dupont knew, though ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... the left of the lounge door, yawned the well of the basement stairway. And one chance was no more foolhardy than another. Like a shot down that dark hole he dropped—and brought up with a bang against a closed door at the bottom. Happily, it wasn't locked. Turning the handle, he stumbled through, reclosed the door, and intelligently ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... determined to set about it at once, and use up the hours before him as long as he could, without any further delay. If by any possibility he could stop that leak, he determined to start off at the next high tide, that very night, and run the risk. It was a daring, even a foolhardy thought; but Tom was desperate, and the only idea which he had was, to ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... sheriff, met me on Baltimore Street, and informed me he held the warrant for my arrest. I assured him it would be foolhardy to try to execute it, for one of us would certainly be injured. I recommended him to report to Judge Bond, and I assured him I would ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... who followed Roland thought him more than brave, they considered him foolhardy. But Roland, caring little whether they followed or not, retraced his own steps in default of those of the bandits. The two men, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... all would come out as the hermit foretold. So it was with a sort of confidence, and a boy's love of adventure, too, that I had run into danger thus, while now that I had come off so well, my confidence was yet stronger. However, it would not make me foolhardy, for my father was wont to tell me that one may only trust to luck after all care taken to be well ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... unsuspecting simplicity made me foolhardy; I would stuff him recklessly full of lies; rout him out o' field grandly, and stop ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... half so eager to undertake it; but I had said I would and now I must stick to my word, or acknowledge that I was a big bluffer. I went up to the office and Fred Bennett gave me the orders. But as he did so he said: "Bates, that's a foolhardy thing for you to do, and I reckon the old man must be crazy to allow you to try it, but rather than give in to that mob out there I'll see you through with it. Now don't you forget for one minute, that you have twenty-three ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... "I have just been trained and trained about fire. I know it's an awfully dangerous thing. It's just foolhardy to run any sort of risk with it, and it's wise when you make a fire in the open air like this, to stand on the same side as the wind comes from, even if you haven't any skirts ...
— Tattine • Ruth Ogden
... drawn in. The great wheels began to turn and hiss, the Barbara's passengers waved good-by to the foolhardy lunatics who had elected to go back into the jaws of destruction. Mrs. Colfax was put into a cabin; and Virginia, in a glow, climbed with Captain Lige to the hurricane deck. There they stood for a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... a thing as asking the cabin-boy to climb the rigging when the sea is rough, and before he has had a chance to prove himself a good climber in pleasant weather. Master Willy, don't obey any such foolhardy order. The Captain, I am sure, does not want you to try any ...
— The Shipwreck - A Story for the Young • Joseph Spillman
... not bad, and it has a wide compass; but what else are all these fantastic warblings and flourishes, these preposterous runs, these never-ending shakes, but delusive artifices of style, which people admire in the same way that they admire the foolhardy agility of a rope-dancer? Do you imagine that such things can make any deep impression upon us and stir the heart? The 'harmonic shake' which you spoilt I cannot tolerate; I always feel anxious and pained when she attempts it. And then this scaling ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... would be anything in such a lofty sphere for her. She almost trembled at the audacity which might have carried her on to a terrible rebuff. She could find heart only to look at the pictures which were showy and then walk out. It seemed to her as if she had made a splendid escape and that it would be foolhardy to think of applying in that ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... be possible that the garrison within the fort has been reduced to a number equal, or even less, than your force; but I should say it would be foolhardy in the extreme to make such a venture without a certain knowledge of the extent of the force behind the breastworks. But the riflemen have opened on the regiment nearest to them," added the captain, as the crack of a rifle ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... noon. Of course, under such conditions of existence, there is no great probability that much risk will be encountered by any one gifted with the ordinary instinct of self-preservation. Should any one be foolhardy enough to dare for himself the experiment, he would scarcely find a surridgi to furnish animals, or a guide willing to pilot him. And should he even make a start of it, am I not the very man to know what a lesson he would get in the course of the first six ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... this idea struck me as unfortunate. The elder Dumas had worked that vein so well and so completely, I doubted if any literary gold remained for another author. It seemed foolhardy to resuscitate the Three Guardsmen epoch—and I doubted if it were possible to carry out his idea and play an intense and pathetic rôle disguised with ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... abandon this foolhardy undertaking. How can you expect to find Weiss in all that confusion? Most likely he is no longer there by this time; he is probably making his way home through the fields. I assure you that Bazeilles ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... build or remodel?" is a question with so many facets that it would be foolhardy to try to answer it categorically. Circumstances alter cases in all phases of life and particularly so when one is endeavoring to decide whether the country home is to be a new structure, or an old one remodeled to make the best use of its desirable features and suit the ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... reckless and foolhardy, and more especially of those who were either merely hunters and not farmers, or else who were of doubtful character, lived entirely by themselves; but, as a rule, each knot of settlers was gathered together into a little ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... a soldier for the time being, and under my command. I order you not to go, for we have too much need of all our brave burghers to defend the country to let any man risk his life in a foolhardy adventure." ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... His rifle was a well-tried repeating Winchester, and he carried a light, short-handled axe in his belt besides the regulation knife; so he had no serious misgivings as he trod the crackling, moonlit snow beneath the moose-hide webbing of his snowshoes. But not being utterly foolhardy, he kept to the open stretches of meadow, or river-bed, or snow-buried lake, rather than in the close ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... believe," said the sheriff who had been listening with keen interest to the hunter's account of his bold but fruitless attempt to compel the submission of the desperado, "I cannot believe, after all, that the fellow will be so foolhardy as to persist in his refusal to surrender, when he knows there is now no longer any chance for him to escape. I will try him faithfully before resorting to ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... puberty new diseases are prone to show themselves and old ones to be outgrown, so at marriage a like change must be at least expected, and he who blindly or thoughtlessly hazards a leap in the dark is foolish, or rather foolhardy. ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... Wessex. But on St. Brice's day, the king treacherously gave orders that all Danes in the immediate English territory should be massacred. The West Saxons rose on the appointed night, and slew every one of them, including Gunhild, the sister of King Swegen, and a Christian convert. It was a foolhardy attempt. Swegen fell at once upon Wessex, and marched up and down the whole country, for two years. He burnt Wilton and Sarum, and then sailed round to Norwich, where Ulfkytel, of East Anglia, gave him "the hardest ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... down the best estimate they could make of all these things in the Northern States. The Northern States made two (or I shouldn't wonder if it were three) times as good a showing in men and resources as the Confederacy had. 'Judge,' said my father, 'this is the most foolhardy enterprise that man ever undertook.' But Yancey of Alabama was about that time making five-hour speeches to thousands of people all over the South, declaring that one Southerner could whip five Yankees, and the awful slaughter began ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... bravery. For telling of his loyalty to the Union he was insulted and hissed at on the streets of Nashville, and when he received a hoop skirt from his lady friends he reluctantly concluded to take up arms against the country he loved so well. He paid the penalty of foolhardy recklessness in the first battle ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore
... Nat must have been aboard the schooner secretly; what he told his father and his eagerness to bet with me on a proposition that seemed foolhardy on the face of it clinch the thing in my mind. The misguided fool! That, Elsa, is an example of how low a man will go who has been spoiled and brought up without the slightest idea ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... instances of a similar folly which I observed throughout the American war. I speak of military officers especially. There is something in the character of Englishmen which makes them over-confident and foolhardy, and they will require to be taught by some very severe lessons before they learn the importance of caution. This want of caution in an officer, when entrusted with the lives of brave men, is a very great fault, and shows great folly and an unfitness for command. The vice, I am happy to say, is not ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... our regimental commander, who growled, 'Well, if you will go I suppose you will; but it would be a foolhardy thing for even ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... plunged he gave the lad a parting kick, which knocked out one of his eyes, just as the Calender was deprived of his eye in the "Arabian Nights." Still worse was the fate that overtook a woman, who, at midnight on New Year's Eve, when all water is turned into wine, was foolhardy enough to go to a well. As she bent over it to draw, one came and plucked out her ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... you? But it is so, even since I myself have been in residence at Withersby Hall—something like three and a half years—there have been several mysterious disappearances, Sir Nigel, and all directly traceable to a foolhardy desire to investigate these phenomena. For myself, I leave well enough alone. I trust you are going to ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... the supernatural potency of these gimcracks? No, and yes. Not to be foolhardy, he quietly slipped down every day to the levee, had a slave-boy row him across the river in a skiff, landed, re-embarked, and in the middle of the stream surreptitiously cast a picayune over his shoulder into the river. Monsieur D'Embarras, the imp of death thus placated, must have ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... beckoned to the captain to row up beside us and deliver his papers; he stepped silently on board, and we exchanged salutes. As I saw that the two boat-loads of twenty-five men were lying off within hearing, on either side of us, I took this opportunity to admonish the captain about his foolhardy attempt to escape, and how he thereby had endangered the lives of his crew. The latter, realizing the justice of my remarks, thanked us for having saved them by respectfully lifting their caps. The captain awkwardly excused himself by saying he had ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner
... very brave general," said Hudelist, gently; "a courageous captain, and a most defiant and foolhardy enemy of France. How unwavering were the courage and intrepidity with which he met the Viceroy of Italy everywhere, and attacked him, even though he knew beforehand that he would be unable to worst the superior enemy! How great was the magnanimity with ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... Bolivar's palace was attacked by a group of conspirators whose object was to murder him. They took the guard by surprise, wounding and killing several of its members, and started towards Bolivar's room. The Liberator intended to fight, but was persuaded that it would be foolhardy; so he jumped through the window to the street and hid for a while. The conspirators, crying, "Death to the tyrant and long life to General Santander and the constitution of Cucuta," went in pursuit of him. Colonel William Ferguson, the Liberator's Irish ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... warn you! I warn you!" His hold tightened upon her with sudden brutality, quelling her effort at freedom. "There are worse things than marriage," he said. "Are you utterly ignorant, I wonder, or deliberately foolhardy? Why do you always force upon me the role of villain? I tell you again, you ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... war with England began, President Madison and his advisers thought it foolhardy to attempt to oppose Great Britain on the ocean, for she had the strongest fleet of any nation in the world, and so decided to confine the war entirely to land. It was Bainbridge who brought about a change of this unwise policy by impassioned pleading, ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... one opinion expressed when the captain finished his story, and that was that Rodney Gray was a foolhardy ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... shower. When it was running nicely and he was under it, he started to sing. But his voice didn't sound as much like the voice of Lauritz Melchior as it usually did, not even when he made a brave, if foolhardy stab at the Melchior accent. Slowly, he began to realize that ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... his army. Now, to engage in a combat wherein you risk your whole fortunes without putting forth your entire strength, is, as I observed before, when condemning the defence of a country by guarding its defiles, an utterly foolhardy course. On the other hand, it is to be said that a prudent captain, when he has to meet a new and redoubtable adversary, ought, before coming to a general engagement, to accustom his men by skirmishes and passages ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... authorities could no longer close their eyes, especially at a time when rumours of war were rife, to the rapid development of heavier-than-air craft on the Continent. So far, as we have seen, the aeroplane had been regarded in England as little more than the plaything of a few adventurous but foolhardy spirits. A certain amount of experience in piloting and handling aeroplanes had been gained by a handful of Army officers, but the machines used either belonged to the officers themselves, to civilians, or to aviation firms. I was at that time a general ...
— Aviation in Peace and War • Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes
... and retreat. Fortunate indeed is he or she who in a crisis is by chance equipped with neither too little nor too much knowledge—who knows enough to enable him to advance, but does not know enough to appreciate how perilous, how foolhardy, how harsh and cruel, advance will be. Mildred was in this instance thus fortunate—unfortunate, she was presently to think it. She knew enough about loveless marriage to shrink from it. She did not know enough ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... will go well with you, I am sure it will.—And do you really think so, Sir? Your counsel, which I have long followed, weighs much with me, I verily believe that I must write to Mr. F. B. by the first vessel.—If thee persistest in being such a foolhardy man, said my wife, for God's sake let it be kept a profound secret among us; if it were once known abroad that thee writest to a great and rich man over at London, there would be no end of the talk of the people; some ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... them for her own ends without scruple. And thou, foolish boy, blind and self willed as thou art, unheeding my warnings, hast played into her hands; and now others as well as thyself may be brought into sore peril through thine own foolhardy recklessness." ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... which appear in the market, it may safely be said that sixty are nothing but the simplest kind of wells, into which the capital of foolhardy speculators is sunk almost instantly. Out of the remaining forty, twenty-five may be looked upon as suspicious enterprises, partaking too much of gambling speculations. Among the last fifteen even, a careful choice must be made before ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... the better of his discretion, he thought to be a modern Alexander, to make Europe Protestant, subdue Rome, and carry his conquering eagles into Egypt and Turkey and Persia. How, by unwise measures and foolhardy endeavors, he lost all the fruits of his hundred victories and his nine years of conquest in the terrible defeat by the Russians at Pultowa, which sent him an exile into Turkey, kept him there a prisoner of state for over five years; and how, finally, when once again at the head of ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... passed its experimental ordeal, and stands firmly established in popular regard. It was started at a period when any new literary enterprise was deemed almost foolhardy, but the publisher believed that the time had arrived for just such a Magazine. Fearlessly advocating the doctrine of ultimate and gradual Emancipation, for the sake of the UNION and the WHITE MAN, it has found favor in quarters where censure was expected, and patronage where opposition ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... a thorough good scolding," he went on presently. "What possessed you to attempt bathing in a rough sea like that? Seriously"—speaking more earnestly. "It was a most foolhardy thing ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... room. He had telephoned to Polly Widdicombe to come down and christen the ship. Polly was delayed and Davidge was frantic. In fact, the Widdicombe motor ran off the road into a slough of despond, and Polly did not arrive until after the ship was launched from the ways and the foolhardy ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... tantrum, rolling on the ground, pawing it in frenzy, squealing in maddened rage. Then Shortie was on his feet, desperate determination showing in every line of his body. With heedless, desperate, foolhardy courage he charged ...
— The Planet with No Nightmare • Jim Harmon
... witnessed that notable event. The travelers were informed that they had been mourned as lost for many weeks past, and Government was fitting out a party to seek them as soon as possible. The general opinion was, that the globe had collapsed or exploded, and that the foolhardy explorers had all perished in the forests of Upper Canada. This was the accepted theory, and nothing could exceed the severity with which the editors of the papers politically opposed to the administration censured it for the extravagance and all-round idiocy of the whole ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... distance hewn out of the rock, winding upward along the face of the precipice. The view, as one rises, is of the break-neck description. The way is really safe enough, even on mule-back, ascending; but one would be foolhardy to ride down. We met a lady on the summit who was about to be carried down on a chair; and she seemed quite to like the mode of conveyance: she had harnessed her husband in temporarily for one of the bearers, which ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... confess that I was abjectly afraid. I declared that I would go no farther. I threatened in my terror to cut the sheet of the sail. I attacked the Professor with considerable acrimony, calling him foolhardy, mad, I know not ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... was to stay and fight. But his nerves were not strong enough to execute so foolhardy a resolution. He seemed to see a man behind every maple-trunk. Darkness was fast coming on, and he knew that his absence from supper at his boarding-place could not fail to excite suspicion. There was no time to ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... denunciations of the Johannesburg conspirators, who had bungled their side of the business and who had certainly shown no rashness. At any rate, whatever the merits of their case, no one in England accused the Johannesburgers of foolhardy courage or impassioned daring. They were so busy in trying to induce Jameson to go back that they had no time to go forward themselves. It was not that they lost their heads, their hearts were ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... though a very religious man himself, laughed at all I had suggested about its being an intimation from Heaven, and told me several stories of such foolhardy people, as he called them, as I was; that I ought indeed to submit to it as a work of Heaven if I had been any way disabled by distempers or diseases, and that then, not being able to go, I ought to acquiesce in the direction of Him, who, having ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... sufficiently. Take one of his greatest things, the "Bastion Saint-Gervais" in the Mousquetaires. If he has not made you see the heroic hopeless town, and the French leaguer and the shattered redoubt between, and the forlorn hope of the Four foolhardy yet forethoughtful and for ever delightful heroes, with their not so cheerful followers, eating, drinking, firing, consulting, and flaunting the immortal napkin-pennant in the enemy's face—you would not be made to see it, though the authors of Ines ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... truthfulness of it which is so offensive. It may be of interest to state, that the facts therein named are the recollections of old Dr. McClay, a Baptist minister of known power and veracity. The fact of Paine's miserable, and cowardly, and man-forsaken end is too true. Let no one be foolhardy enough to follow them, rejecting to do it, a fourfold cord of strong testimony; nay, we may add, a stronger cord of fivefold testimony, as Paine's nurse testifies like ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... an air of indifference at great losses, feel them none the less. I consider it my duty as a gentleman to say that his bearing through the ordeal did credit to his noble family and his personal character. The Archduchess, who is foolhardy and insolent, does not deserve such a lover, and it is grievous to think that such a termagant should have so much power over such a man. I regard her as I would some poisonous reptile. Piety—which improves most women—only seems to render her the more defiant, and love—which softens most wills—makes ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... Christmas day,—they having fixed upon Christmas eve to be married,—and Dawson promised he would; but he did assure me afterwards, as we were walking along the road to meet the stage waggon, that he would certainly feign some reason for not coming. "For," says he, "I am not so foolhardy as to jeopardise my Moll's happiness for the pleasure this feast would give me. Nay, Kit, I do think 'twould break my heart indeed, if anything of my doing should mar my Moll's happiness." And I was very well pleased ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... tempting a spot we lay in wait for them, they invariably avoided that particular place and seized their victim for the night from some other camp. Hunting them by day, moreover, in such a dense wilderness as surrounded us, was an exceedingly tiring and really foolhardy undertaking. In a thick jungle of the kind round Tsavo the hunted animal has every chance against the hunter, as however careful the latter may be, a dead twig or something of the sort is sure to crackle just at the critical moment and so give the alarm. Still I never gave up hope of some day finding ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... were in the world, have even condemned you; they have been fruitful, but you fruitless; they have been fearful of danger, but you foolhardy; they have taken the fittest opportunity for their own preservation, but thou hast both blindly, and confidently gone on ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... it seems to me that a thousand daggers have sprung from this little paper, to make my heart's blood flow. Who is the foolhardy woman that would entice my husband from his loyalty to me? Woe, woe to her when I shall have learned her name! And I will learn it!" cried the unhappy wife. "I myself will take this letter to the emperor, and he shall open it in my presence. I will ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... retreated, crying that a wise and prudent man never strives with dragons, the second advanced recklessly, without thinking of protecting himself. The third, however, set to work in a business-like way, not only to rescue his foolhardy brother, but to slay the dragon. On perceiving this, the father resumed his wonted form, and announced he would divide his realm into three parts, of which the best share, Iran or Persia, was bestowed upon Trij, the son who had shown both ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... through the meal in polite silence or in measured commonplaces, turning the happy parliament into a frigid Gothic ceremony. Why had he not kept in mind that sufficient to the hour is the pleasure of it? Famished for her companionship, a foolhardy impulse of temptation had risked its loss. The waiter set something before them and softly withdrew. Jack signaled the unspoken humility of being a disciplined soldier at attention on his side of the barrier and Mary signaled a trifle ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... that she was of defective intellect—well—Jeb would face much to be allowed to handle that $134.92. (This was the "proppity" in question. It was a "back" pension and there was to be $2.11 per month henceforth.) But Jeb was not foolhardy, and he had trudged back from town without having done what the young "'squire" had advised, and Sabriny's "proppity" was in ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... to the king's speech: "It is my duty, sire, not to be silent; and I shall give my advice, since it is desired. The resolution now adopted is contrary to my judgment; for I call it foolhardy to fight under these circumstances, although we have so many and such fine men. Supposing we make an attack on them, and row up against this river-current; then one of the three men who are in each half room must be employed ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... working himself into a little craze of foolhardy curiosity. He had dropped a piece of bark on Vix's head; he had used up his list of bad words, and he had done it all over again, without getting a sign of life. So after a couple more dashes across the glade he ventured within a few feet of the really watchful ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... other chance!" cried Blood, in broken-hearted frenzy. "If ye say it was desperate and foolhardy, why, so it was; but the occasion and the means demanded nothing less. I fail within an ace ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... you not always believed Critobulus to be a man of sound sense, not wild and self-willed? Should you not have said that he was remarkable for his prudence rather than thoughtless or foolhardy? ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... He never drank again, never cussed nor stormed, and I've laid it by as an item, that the badness and sameness of men lies in their wits—if you want a companionable, safe man, you've got to turn to sich as are bereft of their senses—and most women is that foolhardy they prefer wits and ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... seem foolhardy in a prince so little popular as Philip the Fair; but Philip in reality risked nothing, and knew it; the feudality did not possess sufficient union, the people did not have enough force to profit on this occasion against the Crown. Besides, the Pope ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... something rose in his throat. The canoe was familiar. He had seen it a few hours before on the upper bay, and now his keen sight made out the figure of Belding. Instantly he grasped the cause of this foolhardy deed. A glance at Elsie told him she was unaware who it was that thus ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... seeing him. They found his footprints the next morning in their snow-shoe tracks, and wondered how far behind them he had been. I don't know whether it was a vein of real courage that nerved him up to doing such a foolhardy thing as to follow a man with the intention of attacking him, or whether it was simply a case of recklessness. The probability is, however, that he was hungrier than usual, and that the smell of the warm blood made him forget everything else. Anyhow, he had a pretty close call, for the shanty-boy ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... who fights pluckily is said to be MAKANG, and the same word is applied to any daring or dashing feat, such as crossing the river when it is dangerously swollen. To disregard omens would be MAKANG also; it seems, therefore, to have the flavour of the word rash or foolhardy. ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... Scriven, but he adduces no authority. In 1681 Lady Slingsby performed Queen Margaret in Crowne's Henry VI, the First Part with the Murder of Gloucester, an adaption of Shakespeare's I Henry VI, suggested by the great success of his previous alteration. She also played Regan in Tate's foolhardy tinkering with King Lear; Sempronia in Lee's powerful Lucius Junitis Brutus; and in December, Marguerite in the same author's excellent The Princess of Cleves. In 1682 she acted another Roman role, Tarpeia, in an anonymous tragedy, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... half-way across and was merely struggling to keep his head above water. The two huskies went off the spring-board so close one behind the other that it looked foolhardy, and struck out rapidly for the drowning man, but he had gone down his ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... she understood one-half the truth, not even her love for her niece would have impelled her to leave her comfortable home, nor would she ever have given her consent that Warrenia should engage in any such wild, foolhardy undertaking. But Aunt Cynthia's education had been of the early fashionable kind, which furnished only the smallest modicum of knowledge. You may be sure that the younger ones, who knew a good deal more about the country and the people, ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... weakness," replied her husband, "for my own sponge. Moreover, foolhardy as it may seem, I still clean my teeth. The only question is, what to put ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... to suggest my method. One of these was Sarah's foolish notion that our silver must, every night, be brought from the dining-room and deposited under our bed. This I considered a most foolhardy tempting of fate. It coaxed any burglar who ordinarily would have quietly taken the silver from the dining-room and have then gone away peacefully, to enter our room. The knowledge that I lay in bed ready at ...
— The Water Goats and Other Troubles • Ellis Parker Butler
... actually in the river itself. His guards of honor were having a time of it to keep their feet in the face of the current, but they were still willing to go on, believing that the farther the statue went into the stream, the sooner the waters would go down. At last, however, the most foolhardy withdrew. The Saint came back. Though the procession at once went on to the next road and to the ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... crew, the effect, which came with startling suddenness, took the form of a swift and terrible retribution. Scarce had the man released the safety snaps ere a swift arm of the storm-monster encircled the ship, rolling it over and over, with the result that the foolhardy warrior went overboard at ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... that keeps people guessing. This applies to his mental as well as his physical capacity. Frankly cordial, he resents familiarity. You would never think of slapping him on the shoulder and saying, "Hello, Jan." More than one blithe and buoyant person has been frozen into respectful silence in such a foolhardy undertaking. ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... into the China seas, and there told them how the Chinamen used to slip on board his ship and steal with supernatural dexterity, and the sailors catch them by the tails, which they observing, came ever with their tails soaped like pigs at a village feast; and how some foolhardy sailors would venture into the town at the risk of their lives; and how one day they had to run for it, and when they got to the shore their boat was stolen, and they had to 'bout ship and fight it out, and one fellow who knew the natives had loaded the sailors' guns with currant ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... like foolhardy talk when it was considered that the other two men would return armed. But Harry had unlimited confidence in his friend, and so followed Tom, crouching, until they had hidden ...
— The Young Engineers in Nevada • H. Irving Hancock
... calling to the perils of war, and begging that the actual declaration of war might be averted. When this had availed nothing, and the young nation had rushed into battle with a courage that must seem to us now foolhardy, the Nantucketers adopted the doubtful expedient of seeking special favor from the enemy. An appeal for immunity from the ordinary acts of war was addressed to the British Admiral Cochrane, and a special envoy was sent to the British naval officer commanding the North American station, to ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... friends thought Katie interested in some work which she did not care to talk about. They thought it interesting, though foolhardy to let it bring those lines. Katie was not a beauty, they said among themselves, and could not afford lines. Her charm had always been her freshness, her buoyancy and her blitheness. Now ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... he gave a little twist and a wriggle and slipped out of my hands as if he had been an eel. Then, before I had quite recovered sufficiently to make a grab at the empty air, he hurled himself against the window. It was one of those foolhardy things that succeed just because of the sheer, daring recklessness of the man who carries them through. He swept through the glass with a splintering crash that must have been audible for half-a-block away, and then, while the falling pieces still tinkled on the floor, he placed his ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... there were good-byes to be said. The polar winter was near at hand, when the sea for miles beyond the barrier would freeze solid and it would have been foolhardy for the Brutus, which had discharged all her coal but that necessary to steam north with, to have remained longer. She sailed early in the morning, bearing with her letters to their friends in the north, which the boys could not help thinking might be the last they would ever ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... and angry. Knowing, as well as he did, the dangerous character of Arizona, New Mexico, Northwestern Texas and Indian Territory, he could not excuse such a foolhardy proceeding as that of a small colony settling in the very heart of that section. The nearest point where they could hope for safety was Fort Severn, fifty miles distant. There was a company of soldiers under command of an experienced ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... God; and she appeared loquacious, vain, crafty, gorgeous in her attire. She had threatened the English that if they did not quit France she would have them all slain. She commanded armies, wherefore she was a slayer of her fellow-creatures and foolhardy. She was seditious, for are not all those seditious who support the opposite party? But recently having appeared before Paris in company with Friar Richard, a heretic, and a rebel,[2035] she had threatened ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... of accomplishing an undertaking so foolhardy were, even when contemplated in the most favorable light, exactly nil. And then there flashed into my mind a number of questions which—and I trust you 'll believe me when I assert it—had never come to me before: Who was my uncle's heir? To whom, when he died, would the ruby ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... covered with snow, so that it was impossible to get either on foot or by train higher than Kaltbad—and when once an official saw us attempting to walk through a likely field for a better view, warned us sternly against any such foolhardy attempt. ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... succession, of heads set close together like a mosaic, and covering the whole surface of the great street, and by the roar which went up, cheering everything which made its appearance; whether it were the struggling activity of the crowd moving in the center of the street, the sudden fall of foolhardy boys who had climbed into trees or up lampposts, or the short and sharp fights which went on between spectators for the best ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... archbishop of Armagh, born in Yorkshire, a high-handed Churchman and imitator of Laud; was foolhardy enough once to engage, nowise to his credit, in public debate with such a dialectician as Thomas Hobbes on the questions of necessity ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... after Lester had gone, thinking deeply. What a twisted career! What an end to great possibilities? What a foolhardy persistence in evil and error! He shook his head. Robert was wiser. He was the one to control a business. He was cool and conservative. If Lester were only like that. He thought and thought. It was a long time before he stirred. And still, ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... of Francisco Pizarro to penetrate to Uiticos, his brother, Gonzalo, "undertook the pursuit of the Inca and occupied some of his passes and bridges," but was unsuccessful in penetrating the mountain labyrinth. Being less foolhardy than Captain Villadiego, he did not come into actual conflict with Manco. Unable to subdue the young Inca or prevent his raids on travelers from Cuzco to Lima, Francisco Pizarro, "with the assent of the royal officers who were with him," ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... with a change of tone. "I'm not saying this for Alf Henley's sake, for I hate him; he is the only man in this county that ever tricked me out of my rights, and I'll get even with 'im, sooner or later, but I'm thinking now about you. You may be foolhardy enough to try some slip-up game on him. I'm not afraid you'll meet him like a man, for, if it had been in you, you'd have done it before this, but you may think you can do your job in the dark, so listen to me, ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... brother. A cloud over the palace of another Emperor was interpreted as a portentous monster, half monkey and half snake, and one of the Minamoto warriors won fame for his daring in shooting an arrow at the cloud, which then vanished. Equally foolhardy and marvellous was the deed of Fujiwara Michinaga, who alone of a band of courtiers in the palace dared one dark night to go unattended and without lights from one end of the palace to ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... It would seem a foolhardy thing to do—to invite battle with such an overwhelming force, when they might quietly reach their boat and make away without detection. But their blood was up, and there was a friend and ally in peril of ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... a most extraordinary request. Damme, I'd like to get hold of Fagin all right, but I need to know more of your plan, and the reason you have for asking such a detail. It looks foolhardy to my mind." ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... hang up the keys, which are as big as the historic key of the Bastille, which you may remember to have seen at the Musee Carnavalet. Then I close and bolt all the shutters downstairs. I do it systematically every night—because I promised not to be foolhardy. I always grin, and feel as if it were a scene in a play. It impresses me so much like a tremendous piece of business—dramatic suspense—which leads up to nothing except my going quietly upstairs ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich
... with almost foolhardy bravery, sat his horse directing his dilapidated artillery fire in Cuba, and thus conspicuous, made himself even more marked by wearing a white sombrero, he was not playing the part of a fool; he was following his natural impulse to exert a moral force on his comrades who ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... enormous circular black eyes so wide open and fixed, that, having heard of its threatening demonstration against the cavalry who attacked it on the previous day, they felt certain it meant mischief, and was only waiting for some foolhardy wight to venture within its reach, to seize and devour him. They had been despatched by a despotic king to capture or kill the creature; but, whilst every man there would have emulated his neighbour in rushing to certain death against the ranks of an enemy, there seemed to be ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... quick on the trigger. A foolish and morbid publicity has cloaked men of this class with a notoriety which cheap and pernicious literature has greatly helped to disseminate. They have been made romantic when they were brutal, brave when they were foolhardy, heroes when they were only bullies and blackguards. This man, Abe Barrow, the prisoner at the bar, belongs to that class. He enjoys and has enjoyed a reputation as a 'bad man,' a desperate and brutal ruffian. ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... they did away with the expense and care of carpets. It is true that we are to have no carpets in the apartments where these hardwood floors have been laid, but these handsome floors simply emphasize and italicize a man's poverty unless they are dotted with rugs, and there is none so foolhardy as to deny that the average rug costs five times as much as the average carpet. And the care demanded by a hardwood floor is exacting, for that shining surface, upon which every spot of dust stands out so distinctly, must be gone over daily ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... the dragon had him," muttered King Aetes to himself, "and the four-footed pedant, his schoolmaster, into the bargain. Why, what a foolhardy, self-conceited coxcomb he is! We'll see what my fire-breathing bulls will do for him. Well, Prince Jason," he continued, aloud, and as complaisantly as he could, "make yourself comfortable for to-day, and to-morrow morning, ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... for the salvation of souls, and for the destruction of heresy. He should always be calm in times of trial and difficulty, and never give way to outbursts of anger or temper. He should be a brave man, ready to face death if necessary, but while never cowardly running from danger, he should never be foolhardy rushing into it. He should be unmoved by the entreaties or the bribes of those who appear before his tribunal; still he must not harden his heart to the point of refusing to delay or mitigate punishment, as circumstances may ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... Weary, foolhardy to the last, stayed longest; but even Weary could not but admit that the case was hopeless. The brush was thick and filled the gully, probably from end to end. Riding through it was impossible, and ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... bone, after thirty his skin was moist but not damp, and there was not a drop of sweat on the skin-leather of his fatigue cap. When he got to Koongat Bridge he was like a racer after practice, ready for a fight from start to finish. Yet he was not foolhardy. He knew the danger that beset him, for he could not tell, in the crisis come to Mandakan, what designs might be abroad. He now saw through Boonda Broke's friendship for him, and he only found peace for his ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... did not appeal to Duane. His curiosity was aroused; it did not, however, tempt him to any foolhardy act. He turned southwest and rode a hundred miles until he again reached the sparsely settled country. Here he heard no more of rangers. It was a barren region he had never but once ridden through, and that ride had ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... of the queen of watering-places in her palmy days was filling fast, as it had done for the last two nights. Other attractions lost their power. Ombre, basset, hazard, lansquenet, loo, spread their cards and counters in vain for crafty or foolhardy fingers. The master of the ceremonies found his services at a discount; no troops of maidens, no hosts of squires, answered to his appeal; no double sets were forming to the inspiring strains of "Nancy Dawson." The ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... the old man phlegmatically. "It is high time you were off. You are foolhardy to match your chances with justice. Prison ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... the lake-side in a place where the rushes went down into the water, and there steeped my wrists and laved my temples. If I could have done so with any remains of self-esteem, I would now have fled from my foolhardy enterprise. But (call it courage or cowardice, and I believe it was both the one and the other) I decided I was ventured out beyond the possibility of a retreat. I had outfaced these men, I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... there must be some truth in his insistence of there having always been something childlike in their relation. In the unreserved and instant sharing of all thoughts, all impressions, all sensations, we see the naiveness of a children's foolhardy adventure. This unreserved expressed for him the whole truth of the situation. With her it may have been different. It might have been assumed; yet nobody is altogether a comedian; and even comedians themselves ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... from all foreboding! They rush into the outspread net of murder In the blind drunkenness of victory; I have no pity for their fate. This Illo, This overflowing and foolhardy villain, That would fain bathe himself ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... his peace? Calm would he pray, with his own thoughts to ward Thy thunder off, nor want the angels' guard. But Pippa—just one such mischance would spoil Her day that lightens the next twelve-month's toil 70 At wearisome silk-winding, coil on coil! And here I let time slip for naught! Aha, you foolhardy sunbeam, caught With a single splash from my ewer! You that would mock the best pursuer, 75 Was my basin over-deep? One splash of water ruins you asleep, And up, up, fleet your brilliant bits Wheeling and counterwheeling, Reeling, broken beyond ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... his plans for the future, the duke was too good a soldier to disregard any risk, however slight. In love and battle, every peril should be avoided; every vulnerable point made impregnable. Besides, the fool was audacious, foolhardy; his language of covert mockery and quick wit proved him an intelligent antagonist, who might become a ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... no petting. Within certain limits he would acknowledge an authority which had been made real to him by chains and imprisonment, and reluctantly suspend an intended blow and retreat to a corner when insistently commanded, yet the fires of rebellion never were extinguished and it would have been foolhardy to get within effective reach of his paw. To strangers he was ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... "'Foolhardy chaps, that live in towns, What dangers they are all in! And now lie shaking in their beds, For fear the roof should fall in! Poor creatures, how they envies us, And wishes, I've a notion, For our good luck, in such a storm, To be upon ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... of disorderly impulses, and a capacity for self-contradiction. He is the most extraordinary contrast to Teddy, whose confidence in the universe amounts almost to effrontery. Teddy carries our national laxness to a foolhardy extent. He is capable of leaving his watch in the middle of Claverings Park and expecting to find it a month later—being carefully taken care of by a squirrel, I suppose—when he happens to want it. He's rather like a squirrel himself—without the habit of hoarding. He is incapable of ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... populace; there were then thousands of sturdy New Englanders in the towns about, ready to crowd into Boston at the proper signal; and what were two single regiments to do if they had come? It was foolhardy in Hutchinson to resist the demand of the determined gathering at the Old South. He had been wise the evening before, but on that day his sagacity deserted him. When Lord North, the unwise minister of King George, heard of the circumstances, ...
— Under the Liberty Tree - A Story of The 'Boston Massacre' • James Otis
... of a homesite as foolhardy, but Paoa was unaware of the sudden and rapid rise the river made when heavy rains and cloud-bursts loosed their torrents high upon the slopes of Mauna Kea. Hina, goddess of the river, warned the visitor of his danger and told him how the angry waters would sweep everything before ...
— Legends of Wailuku • Charlotte Hapai
... Corps, to get life's supreme sensation—scouting ten thousand feet in air, while dozens of batteries fired at him; a nose-to-earth volplane. The thinking Carl, the playmate Carl that Ruth knew, was masked as the foolhardy adventurer—and as one who was not merely talking, but might really do the thing he pictured. And Martin Dockerill seemed so dreadfully to take it for granted that ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... state, that the facts therein named are the recollections of old Dr. McClay, a Baptist minister of known power and veracity. The fact of Paine's miserable, and cowardly, and man-forsaken end is too true. Let no one be foolhardy enough to follow them, rejecting to do it, a fourfold cord of strong testimony; nay, we may add, a stronger cord of fivefold testimony, as Paine's nurse testifies ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... the threshold, but he was too much afraid of the old man. "It's impossible that this beautiful girl can be his daughter," thought he, "for she has a kind heart. She must be the poor girl who was brought here in my place, and for whose sake I undertook this foolhardy enterprise." He did not fall asleep for a long time, and even then his uneasy dreams gave him no rest. He dreamed of all sorts of unknown dangers which threatened him, and it was always the form of the fair girl that came to ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... about six or seven feet away from the window he gave a little twist and a wriggle and slipped out of my hands as if he had been an eel. Then, before I had quite recovered sufficiently to make a grab at the empty air, he hurled himself against the window. It was one of those foolhardy things that succeed just because of the sheer, daring recklessness of the man who carries them through. He swept through the glass with a splintering crash that must have been audible for half-a-block away, and then, while the falling pieces still ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... find, outside of France, some occupation for his brother Henry of Anjou, such as the vacancy of the Polish throne seemed to offer.[912] Such frankness would have been patriotic and timely, although a politician, influenced only by a regard for his own safety, would have regarded it as foolhardy ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... the Augusta men steadily pushing the Indians back. But when they gave ground quickly, as if in a panic, it was to tempt the foolhardy into rushing forward. The riflemen had learned their lesson, however, and maintained their alignment. The advance was through nettles and briers, up steep muddy banks and over ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... with fond concern, "it frightens me to see you thus foolhardy, in tempting alike the Queen's anger and ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... place than this will be found in which to say a few words about the remarkable man who planned and led this movement about Hooker's flank,—a manoeuvre which must have been condemned as foolhardy if unsuccessful, but whose triumph wove a final wreath to crown ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... Kenkenes thought impatiently, "such impiety is foolhardy." But he drifted into the group of Hebrews and stood between the woman of Israel and her insulters. The bearers glanced at him, at one another, and closed up beside him, but he had eyes only for the majestic ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... she had heard this pistol shot, she had obeyed a foolish impulse to find her father's pistol. How reckless! How foolhardy! How stupid! Because, to come right down to a fine point, here she was shut up in a perfectly huge room, as black as the pit, ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... has passed its experimental ordeal, and stands firmly established in popular regard. It was started at a period when any new literary enterprise was deemed almost foolhardy, but the publisher believed that the time had arrived for just such a Magazine. Fearlessly advocating the doctrine of ultimate and gradual Emancipation, for the sake of the UNION and the WHITE MAN, it has found favor in quarters where censure was expected, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... no fighting;" these deluded men said, "it will be a mere holiday excursion. The turbulent and foolhardy Americans will be brought to their senses, and, like whipped spaniels, will fawn upon the hand which ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... working and wasting themselves to nothing in their own mad way. Look at them—staking everything, aren't they? There's but this much wrong with it all; they forget that gambling isn't courage, 'tis not even foolhardy courage, 'tis a horror. D'you know what gambling is? 'Tis fear, with the sweat on your brow, that's what it is. What's wrong with them is, they won't keep pace with life, but want to go faster—race on, tear on ahead, driving ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... would have caused them to fall on the neck of even a foreign soldier in adoration. The thirst for joviality often led wayward sailors to crave for drink, and under its baneful influence they were easily wafted into a delirium of foolhardy devices that would never have entered the ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... proper precautions to guard against surprise. This is only one of many instances of a similar folly which I observed throughout the American war. I speak of military officers especially. There is something in the character of Englishmen which makes them over-confident and foolhardy, and they will require to be taught by some very severe lessons before they learn the importance of caution. This want of caution in an officer, when entrusted with the lives of brave men, is a very great fault, and shows great folly and an ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... that she might be able to check the animal and bring it to a standstill. She did not pause to think what a foolhardy thing she was doing. All of a sudden the animal swung about in a half circle. He literally cracked the whip with Harriet Burrell. The rein slapped the side of a big tree. Harriet was lifted from her feet and hurled with great force into the middle of a heap of brush. ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge
... Washington a special grudge, being quite aware that it was he who was in the habit of removing the famous Canterville blood- stain, by means of Pinkerton's Paragon Detergent. Having reduced the reckless and foolhardy youth to a condition of abject terror, he was then to proceed to the room occupied by the United States Minister and his wife, and there to place a clammy hand on Mrs. Otis's forehead, while he hissed into her trembling husband's ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... anything in such a lofty sphere for her. She almost trembled at the audacity which might have carried her on to a terrible rebuff. She could find heart only to look at the pictures which were showy and then walk out. It seemed to her as if she had made a splendid escape and that it would be foolhardy to think of applying ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... acquire; but, released from his close, personal responsibility, the single man follows the crowd, and soothes his own mortification and wounded pride by joining in the cry that is to immolate a victim. Yet Abercrombie was not the foolhardy and besotted bully that Braddock had proved himself to be. His misfortune was to be ignorant of the warfare of the region in which he was required to serve, and possibly to over-estimate the imaginary ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... be marred. But helpful and merciful as they are, they invest the unknown to-morrow with a solemn power which it is good, though sobering, for us to feel, and they silence on every lip but that of riot and foolhardy debauchery the presumptuous words, 'To-morrow shall be as this day, and much ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... whom he was always in touch; but how could a mere handful of a score of Indians cope successfully with the men of the mission, aided, as they would be, by the trained soldiers of the presidio? Pomponio had sense enough to see that such procedure would be foolhardy, and he abandoned the plan for the time, hoping his little body of followers would increase, when the disparity in strength and numbers between the two sides might ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... Tare perceived that his antagonist was foolhardy enough to try a fall with him, he complacently allowed his body to be encircled and calmly murmured: 'Ho, ho! then you would wrestle with me, eh, Fatia Negra! Very ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... one-tenth as flagrant as that by which our government captured the famous Seminole chieftain Osceola, and held him prisoner until his death; but with two doughty warriors to combat, it would seem that nothing could be more foolhardy than any such effort on the part ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... joy and gratitude in the picturesque emotional ejaculations of the colored race. It is easy also to imagine the sharp anxiety of those who had the President's safety in charge during this tiresome and even foolhardy march through a city still in flames, whose white inhabitants were sullenly resentful at best, and whose grief and anger might at any moment culminate against the man they looked upon as the incarnation of their misfortunes. But ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... the poet's biography. After having achieved that admirable and despicable performance, he disappears into the night from whence he came. How or when he died, whether decently in bed or trussed up to a gallows, remains a riddle for foolhardy commentators. It appears his health had suffered in the pit at Meun; he was thirty years of age and quite bald; with the notch in his under lip where Sermaise had struck him with the sword, and what wrinkles the reader may imagine. In default of portraits, this is all I have ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... suppose that it is older than Homer, and that it was not originally told of Odysseus, but was attached to his legend, as floating jests of unknown authorship are attributed to eminent wits. It has been remarked with truth that in this episode Odysseus acts out of character, that he is foolhardy as well as cunning. Yet the author of the Odyssey, so far from merely dove-tailing this story at random into his narrative, has made his whole plot turn on the injury to the Cyclops. Had he not foolishly exposed himself and his companions, by his visit to the Cyclops, ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... with England began, President Madison and his advisers thought it foolhardy to attempt to oppose Great Britain on the ocean, for she had the strongest fleet of any nation in the world, and so decided to confine the war entirely to land. It was Bainbridge who brought about a change of this unwise policy by impassioned pleading, ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... are a soldier for the time being, and under my command. I order you not to go, for we have too much need of all our brave burghers to defend the country to let any man risk his life in a foolhardy adventure." ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... trembling in every limb. He was the pluckiest man I ever knew and capable of any piece of foolhardy daring. But this time he ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... in America who was foolhardy enough deliberately to choose sculpture as a profession was Horatio Greenough, born in 1805, of well-to-do parents, and carefully educated. It is difficult to say just what it was that turned the boy to this difficult and exacting art—an unknown art, too, so far as America was concerned. ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... history, we must go back to the year 1492, and understand the conditions of the various States of Italy at that date. On April 8 in that year, Lorenzo de' Medici, who had succeeded in maintaining a political equilibrium in the peninsula, expired, and was succeeded by his son Piero, a vain and foolhardy young man, from whom no guidance could be expected. On July 25, Innocent VIII. died, and was succeeded by the very worst Pope who has ever occupied S. Peter's chair, Roderigo Borgia, Alexander VI. It was felt at once that the old order ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Mok was a coward, but two glasses of beer were enough to turn his nature in precisely the opposite direction. A glass less would have left him timorous, a glass more would have made him foolhardy and silly. He saw that somebody was about to stab his old friend. In five long, noiseless steps, or leaps, he was behind that somebody, and had seized the arm which held ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... your home it is foolhardy to become inattentive even for one hour, including what are normally considered sleeping hours. I have found the most profoundly ill mentally ill person still to be very crafty and aware even though they may appear to be unconscious ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... extreme verge, had listened to the strongly manifested wishes of France, and selected his advisers from amongst those of the constitutional Royalists who stood the highest in public consideration, I say, with a feeling of conviction which may appear foolhardy, but which I maintain to this hour, that there was every reasonable hope of surmounting the last decisive trial; and that the country taking confidence at once in the King and in the Charter, the Restoration and constitutional government would have ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... be holding out still. The Belgians have astonished everybody, themselves included. It was generally believed even here that the most they could do was to make a futile resistance and get slaughtered in a foolhardy attempt to defend their territory against invasion. They have, however, held off a powerful German attack for three or four days. It is altogether marvelous. All papers have the head lines: "Les forts ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... dog! great as was his bravery, his size, his strength, what could they avail in such foolhardy strife? One jerk of the black snout, one flash of the white tusks, and, with a last yelping scream, the body of poor Shark goes whirling up into the air, and falls a bleeding, bisected, lifeless lump. Poor Shark! with all his faults, I think ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... automobile. "Land's End to John O'Groat's" is nothing for an automobile, though it is the longest straightaway bit of road in all Britain, 888 miles, to be exact. If you are out for a record on an automobile you do it as a "non-stop" run. It's dull, foolhardy business that, and it proves nothing except your ability to keep awake for anything between thirty-six and forty-eight hours, which you can do just as well sitting up with a ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... felt the embarrassment usual in any one guilty of so foolhardy an action. He had expected to surprise Clemence, and he found her upon her guard; the thought of the disloyal part he was playing at this moment made the blood mount to his cheeks and took away, for the time being, his ordinary assurance. He sought in vain for a speech which might first ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... Edith," said he to himself,—"unless it be one who saw her with my eyes." But yet he did not approve of the marriage. "They were poverty stricken," he said, and Clayton went about from day to day with his life in his hand. "A brave man," he said to himself; "but singularly foolhardy,—unless it be that he wants to die." He had not been called upon for his consent, for Edith had never yielded. She, too, had said that it was impossible. "If Ada would have suited, it might have been possible, but not between ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... appeared a more than foolhardy enterprise, and it was told in Israel that Micaiah, a prophet, the son of Imlah, had predicted its disastrous ending. "I saw," exclaimed the prophet, "the Lord sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... ocean. It is also to be found in Reginald Scott's book on Witchcraft, which was written in the sixteenth century. It would be in vain to ask what was the original of the tradition. The choice between the horn and sword may, perhaps, include as a moral that it is foolhardy to awaken danger before we have arms in ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... her going through the meal in polite silence or in measured commonplaces, turning the happy parliament into a frigid Gothic ceremony. Why had he not kept in mind that sufficient to the hour is the pleasure of it? Famished for her companionship, a foolhardy impulse of temptation had risked its loss. The waiter set something before them and softly withdrew. Jack signaled the unspoken humility of being a disciplined soldier at attention on his side of the barrier ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... not have another chance to talk to you privately for some time. A few things are to be impressed on your minds. The first is this. Take no foolish chances. Don't be foolhardy. We cannot afford to waste our tools. And in this struggle tools are what you are, not boys, not human beings that will feel cold, and heat, and pain and privations; just tools. So take ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine
... to stay and fight. But his nerves were not strong enough to execute so foolhardy a resolution. He seemed to see a man behind every maple-trunk. Darkness was fast coming on, and he knew that his absence from supper at his boarding-place could not fail to excite suspicion. There was no time to be lost. ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... he had paid dearly for his foolhardy contempt of public opinion, it was the fashion at Saint Germains to excuse him by throwing the blame on others. Some Jacobites charged Anne with having purposely kept out of the way. Nay, they were not ashamed to say that Sancroft had provoked the King to send ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... have all the adventures we ever talked about. Probably Chris will go with me. I haven't quite the pluck to try it alone, as I know you would do in my place. I may brace up to it, though. Dad has given me permission to do just as I please. He says he trusts me not to be foolish or foolhardy and to keep him informed of my plans. Isn't he a good Dad? Come if you ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... reckless dissipation. He had never forgotten Lucy through it all, but even her image only goaded him to fresh extravagances—anything to deaden the sting of remembrance—anything to efface the maddening past. So Cousin Edward too became a Jacobite; and was there a daring scheme to be executed, a foolhardy exploit to be performed—life and limb to be risked without a question—who so ready and so reckless ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... disregarding the entreaties of his companions to stay quiet, he went to the Auditorium and spoke for more than an hour. Only towards the end did the audience perceive that he showed signs of fatigue. This extraordinary performance was most foolhardy, and some of his carping critics said that, as usual, Roosevelt wanted to be theatrical. But there was no such purpose in him. He felt to the depths of his soul that neither his safety nor that of any other individual ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... but foolhardy Satorians leaped through the opening and stared in bewilderment as they saw no one moving. Arcot, Morey, and Torlos were hanging invisible in the air ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... a fellow had, but women were so cursedly unaccountable. Supposing she should take it into her head to accept him! No logic could take account of a woman's whimsies. Then what a pretty fix he would have got himself into, just by a foolhardy freak! But there was a strain of Norse blood in Hunt, and in spite of occasional touches of ague, the risk of the scheme had in itself a certain fascination for him. And yet he could n't help wishing he had carried out a dozen desperate devices for disgusting ...
— Potts's Painless Cure - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... prince got off his horse and beat out the fire and then spread a cloth over the embers so that the snake could crawl out. When the snake was safe the prince asked for the boon that had been promised him: "No boon will you get" said the snake: "you did a foolhardy thing in saving me, for now I am going to eat you, and you cannot escape ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... of courtship, but by a public performance and repeated legal signatures. A man naturally thinks it will go hard within such august circumvallations. And yet there is probably no other act in a man's life so hot-headed and foolhardy as this ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... adduces no authority. In 1681 Lady Slingsby performed Queen Margaret in Crowne's Henry VI, the First Part with the Murder of Gloucester, an adaption of Shakespeare's I Henry VI, suggested by the great success of his previous alteration. She also played Regan in Tate's foolhardy tinkering with King Lear; Sempronia in Lee's powerful Lucius Junitis Brutus; and in December, Marguerite in the same author's excellent The Princess of Cleves. In 1682 she acted another Roman role, Tarpeia, in an anonymous tragedy, Romulus and Hersilia, produced 10 ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... interested in some work which she did not care to talk about. They thought it interesting, though foolhardy to let it bring those lines. Katie was not a beauty, they said among themselves, and could not afford lines. Her charm had always been her freshness, her buoyancy and her blitheness. ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... have been often in his mind. He was undertaking a wellnigh desperate task,—to overthrow the Pharisees in Jerusalem itself. No other alternative was left him. And here we believe Mr. F. W. Newman to be singularly at fault in pronouncing this attempt of Jesus upon Jerusalem a foolhardy attempt. According to Mr. Newman, no man has any business to rush upon certain death, and it is only a crazy fanatic who will do so. [21] But such "glittering generalizations" will here help us but little. The historic data show that to go to Jerusalem, even at ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... is indeed not bad, and it has a wide compass; but what else are all these fantastic warblings and flourishes, these preposterous runs, these never-ending shakes, but delusive artifices of style, which people admire in the same way that they admire the foolhardy agility of a rope-dancer? Do you imagine that such things can make any deep impression upon us and stir the heart? The 'harmonic shake' which you spoilt I cannot tolerate; I always feel anxious and pained when she attempts it. And then this scaling up into the region of the third line above ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... would, at the very least, be foolhardy, and that he had much better throw his pack of cards into the fire, wash the Kings of Israel and Judah off his shirt, destroy his strings and hooked wires, and keep his Examination-coat for a shooting one. But all their arguments were ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... The attempt would seem foolhardy in a prince so little popular as Philip the Fair; but Philip in reality risked nothing, and knew it; the feudality did not possess sufficient union, the people did not have enough force to profit on this occasion against ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... so well understood, that, exclusive of those who profess themselves doctors, every raw surgeon, every idle apothecary, who can make interest with some foolhardy coachmaker, may be seen dancing the bays in all places of public resort, and grinning to one another from their respective carriages. Hence proceed many of those cruel accidents which are recorded in the daily papers. An apothecary's ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... as steam could carry him. But now, if he did not come—well, what Nick had said was true, and they would know that the end of the old close friendship had come. But, for the young wife's sake, if he should come, he and Nick must not let him do anything foolhardy and they must try to keep him out ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... to him as a million does to most people. Hastily drawing on his trousers, he began stealthily descending the stairs. Fortunately for him, his aunt and mother were asleep, else they would have put an emphatic veto on his foolhardy scheme. The bolts of the door were softly slid back, the door itself silently drawn inward an inch or two, and the lad peeped out. His position gave a full view of the front of the woodshed, and the sight was an interesting one. The tiger had partially entered. Indeed, little ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... looking out to sea. I think, Mr. Jones, you owe us apologies more than gratitude, for your folly was responsible for the incident. You were altogether too venturesome. Such action on this coast, where the surf rolls high and creates an undertow, is nothing less than foolhardy." ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... were irritable and strenuous, bitter in their denunciations of the Johannesburg conspirators, who had bungled their side of the business and who had certainly shown no rashness. At any rate, whatever the merits of their case, no one in England accused the Johannesburgers of foolhardy courage or impassioned daring. They were so busy in trying to induce Jameson to go back that they had no time to go forward themselves. It was not that they lost their heads, their hearts were the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... up here, but - the dry land's a fine place too, and we don't mind squalls any longer, and eh, man, that's a great thing. Blow, blow, thou wintry wind, thou hast done me no appreciable harm beyond a few grey hairs! Altogether, this foolhardy venture is achieved; and if I have but nine months of life and any kind of health, I shall have both eaten my cake and got it back again with usury. But, man, there have been days when I felt guilty, and thought I was in no position for the ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... twenty-one veteran rangers had started in the chill night was by no means so foolhardy as appears on the surface. The leader was leaving his base of supplies with a rear guard of but three men. Yet the army on the march consisted of but eighteen. He knew that the United States Arsenal had but one guarded gate and that the old watchman had not fired a gun in twenty-five years. It would ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... to attempt to walk, however good a crutch might be found, would have been foolhardy, for it was only with the greatest difficulty ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... while something rose in his throat. The canoe was familiar. He had seen it a few hours before on the upper bay, and now his keen sight made out the figure of Belding. Instantly he grasped the cause of this foolhardy deed. A glance at Elsie told him she was unaware who it was ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... would have entered the blackness of the undergrowth they tried to dissuade him; and the wagerer was most insistent of all that he abandon his foolhardy venture. ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... up their ears aghast—down the rapids at Kohiseva on a stick of timber; it was more than any had ever ventured yet. True, there was the man some ten years back—a foolhardy fellow from a neighbouring district—who had tried the lower reach, which was less dangerous by far, but he was dead when ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... clear of the entrance I saw the enemy distant about a thousand metres. I at once recognized her as being one of the oldest type of Russian torpedo boats afloat. When I established this fact, a devil entered into my mind, and did a most foolhardy act. ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... track of the railway from the Cape to Cairo. Who are you, that a nation should go to war for you? If you are missing, what will your newspapers say? A foolhardy tourist. What will your learned friends at the bar say? That it was time for you to make room for younger and better men. YOU a national hero! You had better find a goldfield in the Atlas Mountains. Then all ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... must have been aboard the schooner secretly; what he told his father and his eagerness to bet with me on a proposition that seemed foolhardy on the face of it clinch the thing in my mind. The misguided fool! That, Elsa, is an example of how low a man will go who has been spoiled and brought up without ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... supernatural potency of these gimcracks? No, and yes. Not to be foolhardy, he quietly slipped down every day to the levee, had a slave-boy row him across the river in a skiff, landed, re-embarked, and in the middle of the stream surreptitiously cast a picayune over his shoulder into the river. Monsieur D'Embarras, the ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... again, and every one noticed that his rapier was higher than usual and seemed not to cover him at all. He brandished it in the air in a way that looked utterly foolhardy. Bauer came on furiously, feeling that if he failed now he must be laughed at for ever. His long arm turned with the rapidity of lightning, and every one saw the whistling blade flash towards Rex's unprotected cheek. To the amazement of all present the cut did not take effect. ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... cupola crowd was that it could not get down. And they seemed to be too far apart to be of much help to each other, for the cupola Crows had lost little time in lifting the trap-door of the belfry and finding that the ladder was gone, and none of them was hardy—or foolhardy—enough to risk the drop into the uncertain dark. So there ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... custom, and make his home for the winter with his father; "and I will take the ship to Greenland, if you will bear me company." They all replied that they would abide by his decision. Then said Biarni, "Our voyage must be regarded as foolhardy, seeing that no one of us has ever been in the Greenland Sea." Nevertheless they put out to sea when they were equipped for the voyage, and sailed for three days, until the land was hidden by the water, and then the fair wind died out, and north winds arose, and fogs, ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... of war were rife, to the rapid development of heavier-than-air craft on the Continent. So far, as we have seen, the aeroplane had been regarded in England as little more than the plaything of a few adventurous but foolhardy spirits. A certain amount of experience in piloting and handling aeroplanes had been gained by a handful of Army officers, but the machines used either belonged to the officers themselves, to civilians, or to aviation firms. I was at that time a general staff ...
— Aviation in Peace and War • Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes
... I felt much better since I had had supper. And as I took the cup from the shelf the fantastic idea came into my mind to ask my protegee to come in and drink her coffee by the fire in the parlour. I must frankly own it was foolhardy; it was rash, it was even dangerous. But there it is! One cannot help the way one is made, and I am afraid I am not of those who invariably take the coldly prudent course and stick ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... reasons we couldn't understand," she replied. "To do what we are warned against from any quarter, without good reason, must be foolhardy ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... it was certainly in nobody's power to stop her, Gipsy had to take the consequences of her own foolhardy act. The colt, after an amount of kicking and plunging, stood for an instant stockstill, then, rolling its eyes, set off at a furious gallop round the meadow. That Gipsy managed to stick on to its back even she herself afterwards confessed was almost a miracle, but she kept her seat somehow. ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... could require of a conveyance, until the report of horsemen crossing the heath at a gallop sets it dishonourably creaking and complaining in rapid motion, and the squire curses his miserly purse that would not hire a guard, and his dame says, I told you so!—Foolhardy man, to suppose, because we have constables in the streets of big cities, we have dismissed the highwayman to limbo. And here he is, and he will cost you fifty times the sum you would have laid out to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... would to Heaven we had not!" replied he—"nay, it was not I neither; it was Diego: he was grown foolhardy, and would go on, though I advised him not—if ever I open a ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... meet him here! Think what that would mean to me! You are very foolhardy, Mr. Glenarm. I had no ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... to my cost, and a very foolhardy one, or I should never have attempted to find Sandypoint in this confounded storm. Edith—you'll excuse my calling you so, my name is Charley—wouldn't it have been better if you had left me here and gone for some one. I'm dreadfully afraid ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... coupler and hand-brake. It was he who agitated unceasingly for national protection to railway men, and to the brakeman especially. He and his fellow reformers asked for a law compelling the use of a brake which would relieve the crew from such awful exposure and foolhardy risk of life on the icy roofs of the cars in winter, and for couplers which, by abolishing the iron link and pin, would save the constant and almost certain crushing of the hands which the shifting of the cars compelled when coupled in the ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... see it," said Diana. "She says the boat wasn't as bad as all that, and they were in no real danger, and that I did a very silly, idiotic, foolhardy thing. She doesn't understand I was trying to save her life. ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... The foolhardy feat of entering a shop Robert did not attempt until his very last day in Edinburgh, and then only because he was absolutely compelled to do so by the necessity of executing a commission for his sister Margaret—the purchase of ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... never-ceasing holloas—every man shouting in proportion to the amount of his subscription, until day is made horrible with their yelling. There is no pushing, jostling, rushing, cramming, or riding over one another; no jealousy, discord, or daring; no ridiculous foolhardy feats; but each man cranes and rides, and rides and cranes in a style that would gladden the eye of a director of ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... offensive could be attempted until the outlets from the Trentino were thoroughly and effectively stopped up. For Italy to have advanced in the Carso, with her rear open to attack by the Austrians coming through the Tyrolean passes, would have been foolhardy. Italy's first step, therefore, was to start a simultaneous forward movement through every pass from Stelvio on the west to the pass near Pontebba on the north. These movements naturally were of an offensive nature, although they ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... meeting them in the shape of a dragon. While the eldest son retreated, crying that a wise and prudent man never strives with dragons, the second advanced recklessly, without thinking of protecting himself. The third, however, set to work in a business-like way, not only to rescue his foolhardy brother, but to slay the dragon. On perceiving this, the father resumed his wonted form, and announced he would divide his realm into three parts, of which the best share, Iran or Persia, was bestowed upon Trij, the son who had shown both ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... Street, and as you did not care to return to your lodgings near Saint Botolph's Church without Aldgate, you privily despatched Dick Taverner to bring your horses from the Falcon in Gracechurch Street, where you had left them, with the foolhardy intention of setting forth this morning to Theobalds, to try and obtain an interview ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... and green fields and hedges and farm-yards and orchards, away over that wide blank of sea, and away beyond the place where the sky came down to the water. And to think of steering right out among those waves, and leaving the bright land behind, and the dark night coming on, too, seemed wild and foolhardy; and I looked with a sort of fear at the sailors standing by me, who could be so thoughtless at such a time. But then I remembered, how many times my own father had said he had crossed the ocean; and I had never dreamed of such a thing as doubting him; for I always thought him a marvelous being, ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... occupying the passes of the Alps. The Romans only learned that the passes were threatened, when in August the consul Publius Scipio returned without his army from Massilia to Italy, and perhaps even then they gave little heed to the matter, because, forsooth, the foolhardy attempt would be frustrated by the Alps alone. Thus at the decisive hour and on the decisive spot there was not even a Roman outpost. Hannibal had full time to rest his army, to capture after a three days' siege the capital ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... between the two aviators for courage in attempting what would have been considered a foolhardy feat a year or two before. Bleriot's state, with an abscess in the burnt foot which had to control the elevator of his machine, renders his success all the more remarkable. His machine was exhibited in London for a time, and ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... could not pass another bucket after seeing the chum he loved so well plunge into the doomed building. From right and left he heard many things spoken, and presently understood what it was induced Jack to attempt what seemed so like a foolhardy thing. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... and I informed him of the death of Arthur Pym, whom he regarded as a foolhardy adventurer, capable of any ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... letter, I felt sure that the Abbe du Boise was George Hamilton. I could hardly bring myself to believe that he would be so foolhardy as to visit Whitehall, though I knew the adventure was of a nature likely to appeal to his reckless disregard of consequences. I knew also that, if successful, he would win the reward without which life had ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... for Windsor[10] who moved the rejection of this Bill described it as a reckless and foolhardy experiment. I see the miner emerging from the pit after eight hours' work with the assertion on his lips that he, at any rate, has paid his daily debt to his fellow men. Is the House of Commons now going to say to him, "You have no right to be here. You have only ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... to our regimental commander, who growled, 'Well, if you will go I suppose you will; but it would be a foolhardy thing for even ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... about electricity, and not too much. He did not know the possible from the impossible. "Had I known more about electricity, and less about sound," he said, "I would never have invented the telephone." What he had done was so amazing, so foolhardy, that no trained electrician could have thought of it. It was "the very hardihood of invention," and yet it was not in any sense a chance discovery. It was the natural output of a mind that had been led to assemble just the right materials ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... these evolutions, the general discipline of the ship, to maintain silence, and to enforce the most prompt obedience, without permitting foolhardy volunteering ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... had assembled to see the aeronaut make his first foolhardy attempt, as they called it. Never before had a spark-spitting motor been hung under a great reservoir of highly inflammable hydrogen gas, and most of the group thought the daring inventor would never see another sunset. Santos-Dumont moved around his suspended ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... as he got into the taxi, he would have called footless and foolhardy an hour before, and at any other hour his judgment might have restrained him. But just now he seemed controlled by a force greater than smooth-running judgment—a composite of many forces: by sudden ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... time riddled by the flying stones and everything in and about it was plastered with mud. It would have been foolhardy indeed to attempt to ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... persistent and repeated efforts to capture Vicksburg, on whose fall the opening of the Mississippi River depended. Five different plans he tried before he finally succeeded, the last one appearing utterly foolhardy, and seeming to go against every known rule of military science. In spite of this it was successful, the Union army and navy thereby gaining control of the Mississippi River and cutting off forever from the Confederacy a great extent of rich country, ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
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