"Foolhardy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... presumable, that this was a mere bravado, in the full confidence that no one would be found sufficiently foolhardy to engage to follow the example. It is needless to say, that the promise of laughing aloud could not have been performed; so that any one might have safely accepted the challenge, conditioning for the full performance ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... 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.
... 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 ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... 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
... 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 ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... 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
... foolhardy, replied—"Not so, friend Stagman. I fear not I shall find my way easily enough through the Fair, and bring my hogs to a good market without him, and save my money at the same time. Already, methinks, I feel the burden ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... 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
... 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 behind bushes along ...
— The Young Engineers in Nevada • H. Irving Hancock
... 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
... foolhardy risk," Julien muttered. "If those fellows could have got at him, they'd have killed him. Have they gone back to their room, I wonder? Let us hear what the people say ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 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 |
