"Milksop" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... do not fear the water—on land," said the king. "I am no such milksop as to need to dry off before a kitchen fire. See, this is the better way"; and catching up a stout hazel-stick, he bade Arvid stand on his guard. Nothing loath, Arvid Horn accepted the kingly challenge, and picking up a similar hazel-stick, he rapped King Charles' weapon ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... athletic and boisterous genius as Fielding's must have entertained. He couldn't do otherwise than laugh at the puny Cockney bookseller, pouring out endless volumes of sentimental twaddle, and hold him up to scorn as a moll-coddle and a milksop. His genius had been nursed on sack-posset, and not on dishes of tea. His muse had sung the loudest in tavern choruses, had seen the daylight streaming in over thousands of emptied bowls, and reeled home to chambers on the shoulders of the watchman. Richardson's goddess ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... an exception as regards his young wife; otherwise he's little better than a milksop," cried the forester, angrily. "Above all, Regine, you must remember my stipulation. My Toni has not seen your son for two years. If he does not please her—she ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... dissatisfaction at the lieutenant's preferring my company to his; he was very angry with me on that account, and gave me many a hearty curse for drawing away his companions; saying, 'I ought to be d—n'd for having spoiled one of the prettiest fellows in the world, by making a milksop of him.' ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... And crieth, 'False coward, wreak* thy wife *avenge By corpus Domini, I will have thy knife, And thou shalt have my distaff, and go spin.' From day till night right thus she will begin. 'Alas!' she saith, 'that ever I was shape* *destined To wed a milksop, or a coward ape, That will be overlad* with every wight! *imposed on Thou darest not ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... take it out again. I shall send an offer of terms to the Governor of Tortuga that he will be forced to accept. Set a course for the Virgen Magra. We'll go ashore, and settle things from there. And tell them to fetch that milksop ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... I like you for saying that!" she retorted. "I would never marry a man who knew nothing of other women—I don't want a milksop; and I would not marry a man who would not lie for the sake of a sweetheart. You lie beautifully! Do you know, Jack, I believe you are a bit of a ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... have blue noses, eh? Ha! ha! Excuse me, then, but is a milksop a man from some state, or ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... and this knowledge told upon his life and character. He was not very popular in society. Young men with cigars in their mouths and the perfume of liquor on their breaths, shrugged their shoulders and called him a milksop because he preferred the church and Sunday school to the liquor saloon and gambling dens. The society of P. was cut up and divided into little sets and coteries; there was an amount of intelligence among them, but it ran in narrow grooves and scarcely one[10] intellect seemed to tower above the ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... be pleased as Punch, as Jack says," rejoined Hildegarde. "To have his milksop fight a duel would probably seem to him a very encouraging thing. And of course, mammina, it isn't like a real, dreadful duel, is it? I mean, it is more a kind of horrid bear-play? But oh, to think of our Jack cutting off a piece ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... we are in for it, you and I; and we will see it through in shape. The old curmudgeon! He might come as well as not if he chose. There is plenty of time to get here, and he knows her mother is gone, for I added that to the dispatch I sent, so as to insure his coming. And where is Neil, the milksop? He, at least, might come. I have no patience with the whole tribe. But we will do what we can for the ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... hoddy-doddy^, noddy, nonny, noodle, nizy^, owl; goose, goosecap^; imbecile; gaby^; radoteur^, nincompoop, badaud^, zany; trifler, babbler; pretty fellow; natural, niais^. child, baby, infant, innocent, milksop, sop. oaf, lout, loon, lown^, dullard, doodle, calf, colt, buzzard, block, put, stick, stock, numps^, tony. bull head, dunderhead, addlehead^, blockhead, dullhead^, loggerhead, jolthead^, jolterhead^, beetlehead^, beetlebrain, grosshead^, muttonhead, noodlehead, giddyhead^; numbskull, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... be supposed, no one after this ventured to call Ellis a milksop, or to speak disparagingly of him in any other way. Jones sunk in public estimation as Ellis rose, and gained great influence among the ship's company, which he did not fail to use to their benefit. He still further increased it by another act, which, ...
— The Ferryman of Brill - and other stories • William H. G. Kingston
... worthy Herhor, forget all this? And if Thou remember, dost Thou not understand the dangers which threaten us from this milksop? Still he has under his hand the rudder of the ship of state, which he pushes in among rocks and eddies. Who will assure me that this madman, who yesterday summoned to his presence the Phoenicians, but quarreled with them today, ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... Neither of them has any effective choice in the matter: their children must either go to the schools that are, or to no school at all. And as the duke thinks with reason that his son will be a lout or a milksop or a prig if he does not go to school, and the coster knows that his son will become an illiterate hooligan if he is left to the streets, there is no real alternative for either of them. Child life must be socially organized: no parent, rich or poor, can ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... to cry again. And suddenly Lucy was really sorry. She had done this, she had degraded her happy brother to a mere milksop, just because he had happened to plant her out, and leave her planted. Remorse suddenly gripped her with ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... him scornfully from head to foot. "You used to have the spirit of a man in you," she answered. "Keeping company with Regina has made you a milksop already. If you want to know what I think of Phoebe and her sweetheart—" she stopped, and snapped her fingers. "There!" she said, "that's what I think! Now go back to Regina. I can tell you one thing—she will never be ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... "What Duke, milksop! Why, who should I mean but the Duke that won Hochstedt and Ramilies:—the Ace of Trumps, my dear, that saved the Queen of Hearts, the good Queen Anne, so bravely. What Duke should I ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... burst out laughing while the tears still lingered on her cheek. "He was a milksop, not a man. I thought he was a man, or I never would have offered him pleasure. And you want me to make a ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... us of that intention. So that we exhorted Firm every day to come round and restore us to our usual state. This was the poor fellow's special desire; and often he was angry with himself, and made himself worse again by declaring that he must be a milksop to lie there so long. Whereas, it was much more near the truth that few other men, even in the Western States, would ever have got over such a wound. I am not learned enough to say exactly where the damage was, but the doctor called it, I think, the sternum, and ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... are to cope withal, A sort of vagabonds, of rascals, runaways— And who doth lead them but a paltry fellow, Long kept in Britaine at our Mother's cost, A milksop, &c.— ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... but it is God that giveth it. God gave to Alexander the Great, Sapientiam et fortunam, Wisdom and good success; yet, notwithstanding, he calleth him, in the Prophet Jeremiah, Juvenem, a youth, where he saith, "Quis excitabit juvenem" (A young raw milksop boy shall perform it: he shall come and turn the city Tyrus upside- down). But yet Alexander could not leave off his foolishness, for oftentimes he swilled himself drunk, and in his drunkenness he stabbed his best and worthiest friends; yea, afterwards he drank ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... of her life, every thought of her mind to his welfare, his interests, walked with him, rode with him, travelled half over Europe, yachted with him. Her friends all declared that the lad would grow up an odious milksop; but I am told that there never was a manlier man than Lord Hartfield. From his boyhood he was his mother's protector, helped to administer her affairs, acquired a premature sense of responsibility, and escaped almost all those vices ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... parted from them at last in sheer necessity. The parting was an unusually hearty one, not only as between him and Tom Pinch, but on the side of Martin also, who had found in the old pupil a very different sort of person from the milksop he ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... will never understand him. He must have his little playful ways. Would you like him to be a milksop?" ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... Dunborough replied with emphasis. 'As you will find, Tommy, if she comes to Oxford, and learns certain things. It will be farewell to your chance of having that milksop of ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... the age of eleven he surprised his father by telling him that he hoped to make himself "a good and useful man." And yet he was not over-serious; though, perhaps, he had little humour, he was full of fun—of practical jokes and mimicry. He was no milksop; he rode, and shot, and fenced; above all did he delight in being out of doors, and never was he happier than in his long rambles with his brother through the wild country round his beloved Rosenau—stalking the deer, admiring the scenery, ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... you mean? Well, my dear, there was something in it, to be sure. You wouldn't have me be a milksop, would you?" ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... 'Whilst they promised them liberty, they themselves are the slaves of corruption!' Young men, is that true about any of you—that you came here into Manchester to a situation, and lonely lodgings, comparatively innocent, and that somebody said, 'Oh, do not be a milksop! come along and see life,' and you thought it was fine to shake off the shackles that your poor old mother used to try to put upon your limbs? And what have you made of it? I will tell you what a great many young men have made of it—I have seen scores of them in the forty years that I have been ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... fifteen was a bitter, lonely, and unattractive boy. Three years of Haverton House, three years of Uncle Henry's desiccated religion, three years of Mr. Palmer's athletic education and Mr. Spaull's milksop morality, three years of wearing clothes that were too small for him, three years of Haverton House cooking, three years of warts and bad haircutting, of ink and Aunt Helen's confident purging had destroyed ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... to make a milksop of him, mother," said Mr Hexton, laughing. "Why, one would think Phil was ten years old, instead of twenty. I say, my boy, had she aired your night-cap for you last night, and ...
— Son Philip • George Manville Fenn
... but the guests still sat round the table with wine-reddened faces. The Prussian King loved to drink deep; he said he abhorred the milksop who could not follow him to the dregs of a tankard, and that was indeed no paltry measure. The Erbprincessin sat to the King's right, his Highness himself was on his Majesty's left. The Erbprinz, white and weary, sat opposite. The holders of important ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... give me, And it ain't to a little I'll strike. Though the tempest topgallant-mast smack smooth should smite And shiver each splinter of wood, Clear the deck, stow the yards, and house everything tight, And under reef foresail we'll scud: Avast! nor don't think me a milksop so soft, To be taken for trifles aback; For they say there's a Providence sits up aloft, To keep watch for the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... no callow milksop, after all," said the Surgeon Denslow, as his eyes followed Harry's retreating form. "His gristle is hardening into something like his ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... wavering and fickle alike in good and ill. He possessed that perseverance and purpose which go to form either the best and noblest men, or, turned to evil, the most hardy and efficient villains. Frank was no milksop. ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... Tom that he felt any new anger toward Maggie for this uncalled-for and, to him, inexplicable caress, I must tell you that he had his glass of cowslip wine in his hand, and that she jerked him so as to make him spill half of it. He must have been an extreme milksop not to say angrily, "Look there, now!" especially when his resentment was sanctioned, as it was, by general ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... then, should I complain in my old age? I have enough to eat, I am well dressed and booted. Also, I have my diversions. You see, I am not of noble blood. My father himself was not a gentleman; he and his family had to live even more plainly than I do. Nor am I a milksop. Nevertheless, to speak frankly, I do not like my present abode so much as I used to like my old one. Somehow the latter seemed more cosy, dearest. Of course, this room is a good one enough; in fact, in SOME respects it is the more cheerful and interesting of the two. ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... yet come to be strong and gain skill with the weapon, I kept it back in order that I might, as I have done to-day, have the pleasure of surprising you, as well as my father, by showing that I was not so great a milksop as you ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... according to her, is to bear rule over her husband and household. The prioress is conventional and weak, aping courtly manners. The wife of the host of the Tabard inn is a vixen and shrew, who calls her husband a milksop, and is so formidable with both her tongue and her hands that he is glad to make his escape from her whenever he can. The pretty wife of the carpenter, gentle and slender, with her white apron and open dress, is anything but intellectual,—a mere sensual beauty. Most of these women are ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... liquor don't hanker to touch The lips of a maiden like you—not much! If a man—not a milksop—should happened to wed A creature like you, he had better be dead; For never a moment of peace would he see Unless he would bow to your every decree, If he smoked a cigar, or drank beer, you would make A hell of his home, and perhaps you would ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... unmanly qualities. Some of the best men, some of the bravest soldiers, have not been ashamed of using this means of grace. Knights of old were accustomed to confess before they went into battle. Read the life of Henry V. of England. He was no milksop, or, as people would say now-a- days, priest-ridden king, but he did not look upon it as an unmanly thing. You are free to choose, or free to refuse it; only pray to be guided aright by God's Holy Spirit to do that which shall be most to His ...
— Boys - their Work and Influence • Anonymous
... are. If we wasn't I'd go hang myself up for a milksop. Are you sure there's no one else ...
— Joe's Luck - Always Wide Awake • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... which still darkens in the East, no such a life as this man had led is possible for any political prisoner in Europe; but even now, when I am an old man, and ought to be able to take things quietly, my blood surges in my veins when I think of that one minute of my life. I was no milksop, and I had led a soldier's life, and had seen plenty of things that were not pretty to look at. But I was horrified, and I can't even write about it now without the old wrath and ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... to maintain, in spite of the reader, that Londonderry is no milksop because he is not going to jilt—that is, murder—poor little Jenny, throw up New Zion, and seek his new love on the wild winds. But the agony of it none the less! O Jenny! Jenny! sweet and true and good and dear as ever,—if ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... Malachi Mulligan. Fertiliser and Incubator. Lambay Island. His project, as he went on to expound, was to withdraw from the round of idle pleasures such as form the chief business of sir Fopling Popinjay and sir Milksop Quidnunc in town and to devote himself to the noblest task for which our bodily organism has been framed. Well, let us hear of it, good my friend, said Mr Dixon. I make no doubt it smacks of wenching. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... "That I should've ever took on with a milksop boss. I'm plumb disgraced—" His voice trailed off into silence as he recognized the twinkle in Larkin's eye. "Oh, I see what yuh mean," he apologized, with a wide grin. "We'll clear out all right. Oh, ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... greedy, vain, and cowardly, would not be brought up to the sticking point. Young George Osborne, Captain of the —th, old Sedley's godson, and the accepted lover of Amelia, thought Joseph was a milksop. He turned over in his mind, as the Sedleys did, the possibility of marriage between Joseph and Rebecca, and was not over well pleased that a member of a family into which he, George Osborne, was going to marry, should ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... long legs in Tate's tavern, "there he was on my car, and I never sensed his ideas. Talk about entertaining angels unaware, it ain't in it! He even cussed mild when I told him his ticket was punched for Green Lake, and he was headed for St. Ange. I never would have took him for anything but a plain milksop till he let forth ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... the early "rollicking" adventure books: not only because of their natural appeal, but because there is plenty of the other thing elsewhere, and hardly any of this particular thing anywhere. To almost anybody, for instance, except a very great milksop or a pedant of construction, Charles O'Malley with its love-making and its fighting, its horsemanship and its horse-play, its "devilled kidneys"[23] and its devil-may-care-ness, is a distinctly delectable composition; ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... short, only put me in the right way, for, at present, I am mightily abroad in that respect." "Then my advice is, that you keep your money at home, or in other words, fund it; unless you wish to be made fun of and laughed at for a milksop, or a bubble merchant, or be taken for one of the Gudgeon family, or a chicken butcher, a member of the Poultry company, where fowl dealing is considered all fair; or become a liveryman of the worshipful company of minors (i.e. miners), where you may ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... a regular exchange of courtesy, took care to miss no occasion of condolence or congratulation, and sent presents at stated times, but had in their hearts not much esteem for one another. The seaman looked with contempt upon the squire as a milksop and a landman, who had lived without knowing the points of the compass, or seeing any part of the world beyond the county-town; and whenever they met, would talk of longitude and latitude, and circles and tropicks, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... the Major, sinking back in his chair, with a softened expression in his society beaten face. "It's no use of nonsense, Jack. I'm an average old sinner, and I'm not old enough yet to like a milksop. But I've known you since you were so high, and I knew your father; he used to stay weeks on my plantation when we were both younger. And your mother—that was a woman!—did me a kindness once when I was in ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... such a milksop, Such a milksop, such a humbug; 180 I must have a graceful husband, I myself am also graceful; I must have a shapely husband, I myself am also shapely; And a well-proportioned husband, I myself ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... "We shall be glad to be away from Winchester, for while Peregrine Oakshott torments slyly, Sedley Archfield loves to frighten us openly, and to hurt us to see how much we can bear, and if Charley tries to stand up for us, Sedley calls him a puny wench, and a milksop, and knocks him down. But, dear madam, pray do not tell what I have said to her ladyship, for there is no knowing what Sedley would ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Alderman, turning with even increased cheerfulness and urbanity to the young smith, "what are you thinking of being married for? What do you want to be married for, you silly fellow? If I was a fine, young, strapping chap like you, I should be ashamed of being milksop enough to pin myself to a woman's apron-strings! Why, she'll be an old woman before you're a middle-aged man! And a pretty figure you'll cut then, with a draggle-tailed wife and a crowd of squalling children crying after you wherever ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... of a milksop about him," he said; "and is, for his age, full of spirit and courage. How so strange an idea could have occurred to him is more than I can imagine. I should as soon expect to see an owlet, in a sparrow hawk's nest, as a monk hatched ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... the greatest fuss about my little wound, mother, or Annie, or Lorna. I was heartily ashamed to be so treated like a milksop; but most unluckily it had been impossible to hide it. For the ball had cut along my temple, just above the eyebrow; and being fired so near at hand, the powder too had scarred me. Therefore it seemed a great deal worse than it really was; ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... one would think I were a milksop. I was hoping for a ghost—a white lady by choice. Did no Carnegie murder his wife, for instance, through jealousy ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... it could not withstand the undermining of ridicule. My young companions, who, as I have observed, had only preceded me six months in the service, were already grown old in depravity; they laughed at my squeamishness, called me "milksop" and "boarding-school miss," and soon made me as bad as themselves. We had not quite attained the age of perpetration, but we were fully prepared to ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of the matter by many a mile." And then, after telling how he went to buy a number of the Chartist newspaper, and found it in a shop which sold "flash songsters," "the Swell's Guide," and "dirty milksop French novels," and that these publications, and a work called "The Devil's Pulpit," were puffed in its columns, he goes on, "These are strange times. I thought the devil used to befriend tyrants and oppressors, but he seems to have profited by Burns' advice ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... any suspicions that I'm going to tell on him, he won't keep them long, to-morrow. He will see that I am the same milksop as I always was—all day and the next. And the day after to-morrow night there 'll be an end of him; nobody will ever guess who finished him up nor how it was done. He dropped me the idea his ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain
... cried. 'Hasn't that man been lashing at you like a dog, and I didn't rush at him, and if I couldn't fight, being a milksop, then bite and kick and scratch, and take my share of it? O God!' he cried, in agony, 'if I had but a chance again! But nobody ever has more than one chance in this world. He may damn me now when ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... milksop, my Lord! I marvel what he means to do. His brains are but addled eggs—all stuffed ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... calm, my good Brigitte," returned Thuillier. "We mustn't do anything hastily. Certainly, if la Peyrade cannot furnish a justification, clear, categorical, and convincing, I shall decide to break with him, and I'll prove to you that I am no milksop. But Cerizet himself is not certain; these are mere inductions, and I only came to consult you as to whether I ought, or ought not, to ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... remarked O'Shea, "I see difficulties. If the doctor here was a young man of parts, I'd easier put ye and Mammy in his care; but old Skipper Pierre is no milksop." ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... notwithstanding the popular idea to the contrary, is quite as often to be found upon the faces of men as upon those of women. Any person of discernment looking on Colonel Quaritch must have felt that he was in the presence of a good man—not a prig or a milksop, but a man who had attained by virtue of thought and struggle that had left their marks upon him, a man whom it would not be well to tamper with, one to be respected by all, and feared of evildoers. Men felt this, and he was popular among those who knew ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... first train this morning?" He leaned back, spreading himself farther across the seat, as if dilated by the joyful sense of his own discernment. "How on earth could Judy think you would do such a thing? I could have told her you'd never put up with such a little milksop!" ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... poor Wil was a good lad—a thought melancholy and milksop though. Why, a pint of ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... milksop that thou art!" said Skarphedinn, "who I am, for I will dare to go forward wherever thou standest before me, and little would I fear though such striplings were in my path. 'Twere rather thy duty, too, to get back thy sister Swanlauga, whom Eydis ironsword and his messmate ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... before I went to the Point, Sandy, I knew the best, and possibly the worst, whiskeys made in Kentucky,—we all did,—and the man or youth who could not stand his glass of liquor was looked upon as a milksop or pitied, and yet, after all, respected, as a 'singed cat,'—a fellow who owned that John Barleycorn was too much for him, and he did not dare a single ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... lawyer, looking at justice as a thimblerig looks at his pea; lift which thimble you may, he will take care the pea shall not be found if he can help it. He smiled a grim, inhuman smile at Bumpkin's tears, and muttered that he was an "unmanly milksop." ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... enough for the coarse jeers of the brutal, and the poignant ridicule of the cruel for many a long day. Something of this derision had begun already, and he had found no secret place to hide his tears. That they would call him a milksop, a molly-coddle, and all kinds of horrid names, he knew, and he had tried manfully to bear-up under persecution. It was not until after many hot and silent drops had relieved the fever of his overwrought brain, that sleep had come to ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... very slow fellow, certainly, and went among men for a clod, and a muff, and a milksop, and a slowcoach, and a bloke, and a boodle, and so forth. And very little he did, for many years: but what he did, he never had ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... smell of the room; the sight of folks drunk upsets him, one daren't beat any one before him; he doesn't want to go into the government service; he's weakly, as you see, in health; fie upon him, the milksop! And all this because he's got his head full of Voltaire." The old man had a special dislike to Voltaire, and the "fanatic" Diderot, though he had not read a word of their words; reading was not ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... it?" said Matcham. "An y' are to marry, ye can but marry. What matters foul or fair? These be but toys. Y' are no milksop, Master Richard; ye will ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... told herself, was the chief element of his charm—his gentleness, which was really a phase of his modesty. 'He was very gentle, he was very modest, he was very graceful and kind,' she said; and she remembered a hundred instances of his gentleness, his modesty, his kindness. Oh, but he was no milksop. He had plenty of spirit, plenty of fun; he was boyish, he could romp. And at that, a scene repeated itself to her mind, a scene that had passed in this same drawing-room more than thirty years ago. It was tea-time, and on the tea-table lay a dish of pearl biscuits, and she and her husband and Vellan ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... sort of attention. Or Rachel at a housewarming in the next farm to his—Rachel in a pale green dress, the handsomest woman there, dancing with Tanner—Rachel quarrelling with him in the buggy on the way home, because he called Tanner a milksop—"He cares for beautiful things, and you don't!—but that's no reason why ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that milksop's head, make him so madly and desperately in love with you that he does not know which way to turn for delicious torment. You can do it I know, and if you do—well, I make no promises; but on the day when all Alexandria is ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... most bullid, and buffited, and purshewd—he who minded it most. He who could take a basting got but few; he who rord and wep because the knotty boys called him nicknames, was nicknamed wuss and wuss. I recklect there was at our school, in Smithfield, a chap of this milksop, spoony sort, who appeared among the romping, ragged fellers in a fine flanning dressing-gownd, that his mama had given him. That pore boy was beaten in a way that his dear ma and aunts didn't know him; his fine ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sea-room for me, And it ain't to a little I'll strike. Though the tempest topgallant-masts smack smooth should smite, And shiver each splinter of wood,— Clear the deck, stow the yards, and house everything tight, And under reefed foresail we'll scud: Avast! nor don't think me a milksop so soft To be taken for trifles aback; For they say there's a Providence sits up aloft, To keep watch for ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... Tom hotly. "I was no milksop or psalm singer, but there is nothing that I ever did there of which I should be ashamed ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... This slang word usually means a milksop, but here it is equivalent to 'a butterfly', 'a weathercock'—a man of changeable disposition. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... that the events of the preceding day might not pass out of our memory without a practical moral lesson, took occasion to give Rashleigh and me his serious advice to correct our milksop habits, as he termed them, and gradually to inure our brains to bear a gentlemanlike quantity of liquor, without brawls or breaking of heads. He recommended that we should begin piddling with a regular quart of claret per day, which, with the aid ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... such an infernal villain as to sell the reversion of the living, and that Methodist milksop of an eldest son looks to Parliament,' continued Mr. Crawley, after ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... he had not been asked to sing (or somebody else had), he would assure me in good round English that I was the most infernal lout that ever disgraced a drawing-room, or ate a man out of house and home, and that he was sick and ashamed of me. "Why can't you sing, you d—d French milksop? The d—d roulade-monger of a father of yours could sing fast enough, if he could do nothing else, confound him! Why can't you talk French, you infernal British booby? Why can't you hand round the tea and muffins, confound you! Why, twice Mrs. Glyn dropped her pocket-handkerchief and had ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... stopped in his violent attacks on the steward's legs and said, breathlessly: "Well, you ain't such a milksop after ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... nothing that was especially shocking to good taste or proper morals. Herod was a love-sick man of lust, who gazed with longing eyes upon the physical charms of Salome and pleaded for her smiles like any sentimental milksop; but he did not offer her Capernaum for a dance. Salome may have known how, but she did not dance for either half a kingdom or the whole of a man's head. Instead, though there were intimations that her reputation was not all that a good maiden's ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... comfort he could get out of the story of it so far was that at least there was no black page in it he would like to cut out. Sally might read them all, and welcome. Their relation to her had become the point to consider. You see, at heart he was a slow-coach, a milksop, nothing of the man of the world about him. Well, her race had had a dose of the other sort in the last generation. Had the breed wearied of it? Was that Sally's unconscious ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... shouldn't say so," replied Leighton, with a furtive glance. He knew that Rickie was a milksop. "First night, you know, sir, ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... good deal too much alive, and could not bear his potations as well as he used to do, and was overheard blaspheming at himself for being so weakly, and having a brain that could not bear a thimbleful, and growing to be a milksop like Colcord, as he said. This person, of whom the Doctor and his young people had had such a brief experience, appeared nevertheless to hang upon his remembrance in a singular way,—the more singular as there was little resemblance between them, or apparent ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... when they shot on the duck points. Ay, and what may surprise you, my dears, I was given a weak little toddy off the noggin at night, while the gentlemen stretched their limbs before the fire, or played at whist or loo Mr. Carvel would have no milksop, so he said. But he early impressed upon me that moderation was the mark of a true man, even as excess was that of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Churchill?" asked Berkeley, whose courage was not of the quality to make a good highwayman. "Crofts has invited them here for a feast with us. How shall we get rid of them? Hamilton has become a mere milksop, and Churchill always was too cautious and politic for this sort of a game. Not only will they refuse to go with us if we tell them of our purpose, but they will try to keep ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... 'fellows,' whom he was not 'seeing,' anything so ridiculous from the point of view of their creed and his. But he could not help its destroying his other appetites. It was coming between him and the legitimate pleasures of youth at last on its own in a way which must, he knew, make him a milksop in the eyes of Crum. All he cared for was to dress in his last-created riding togs, and steal away to the Robin Hill Gate, where presently the silver roan would come demurely sidling with its slim and dark-haired rider, and in the glades bare of leaves they would go off side ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... said more soberly, lifting a finger to his face, "surely you are no milksop to mind how a girl flouts you. Love the Earl—say you? Well, is it not our duty to the bread we eat? Is he not worthy? Is he not the head ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... sister Judith had lived in a pleasant atmosphere of refinement, playing happily together until the boy had grown almost to dread anything common or low. His mother knew he had moral courage, and would face any issue pluckily, but his father feared he would grow up a milksop, ...
— Kalitan, Our Little Alaskan Cousin • Mary F. Nixon-Roulet
... too lively," was her unexpressed conclusion from her mother's dilution of her father's dilution of the ugly truth. "He's sorry and won't do it again, and—well, I'd hate a milksop. Father has forgotten that he was young ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... he hurries, he trembles, but having done the business, he doesn't know what to do with his eyes for shame. He's all squirming from disgust. I just feel like giving him one in the snout. Before giving you the rouble, he holds it in his pocket in his fist, and that rouble's all hot, even sweaty. The milksop! His mother gives him a ten kopeck piece for a French roll with sausage, but he's economized out of that for a wench. I had one little cadet in the last few days. So just on purpose, to spite him, I say: 'Here, my dearie, here's a little ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... were unpleasant gleams in his eyes. His mother was always praising him for being so obedient and well behaved, and not caring to make friends with rude boys, but always preferring feminine society. 'A mother's darling, a milksop,' his father, Andrei Nikolaevitch, would call him; 'but he's always ready to go into the house of God.... And that I am glad to see.' Only one old neighbour, who had been a police captain, once said before me, speaking of Misha, 'Mark my ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... not for all the world that this description of the crown prince should in any way convey the impression to my readers that he is a milksop or an overgrown child! Devoted to every form of sport, a splendid gymnast, a clever oarsman, a skilful driver and a bold rider, an excellent shot, he is in every sense of the word a manly young fellow, who, however, has been kept free from all contact with the darker sides of life, and who still ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... present far too excited to think of anything rationally. Besides, that last remark about the flannel vests had greatly disturbed him. The carriage was full of people, who must have heard it, and would be sure to set him down as no end of a milksop ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... him in certain grooves of thought, or, rather, say they were chosen as favourites from an especial interest in their subjects—an interest which arose from his character of mind, and displayed it. But with all this precocity, he was no milksop or weakling; he was a bright, active lad, full of fun and pranks, not without companions, though solitary when at home, and kept precisely, in the hope of guarding him from every danger. He was so little afraid of animals—a great test of a child's ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... necessary for some one to discover things all over the world. I suppose that's the class we're in now—we're the first navigators, so far as help from any one else is concerned. In Alaska a fellow has to take care of himself, and he has to learn to take his medicine. Now none of us is a milksop or ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... Grey, and he swung angrily round fully to face the Duke, the nostrils of his heavy nose dilating. "Are we to listen to this milksop prattle?" ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... possible dinner for the day—my oyster can full of coffee and a quarter ration of hardtack and sow-belly comprised the menu. If the eyes of some old soldier should light upon these lines, and he should thereupon feel disposed to curl his lip with unutterable scorn and say: "This fellow was a milksop and ought to have been fed on Christian Commission and Sanitary goods, and put to sleep at night with a warm rock at his feet;"—I can only say in extenuation that the soldier whose feelings I have been trying to describe was only a boy—and, boys, you probably ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... told me of those sleepless nights spent long ago, and rolled out his sonorous record of suffering, his watering eye gleamed with pleasure, and I can well imagine how sorely he bored his friends when he was young and his grief was at its most enjoyable height. But he was no milksop, and he resolved that Mr. Billiter should not baulk him. Where is the actor who does not delight in stratagems and mysteries? Bless their honest hearts, they could not endure life without an occasional plot or mystification! Two months after Letty's incarceration, a decently-dressed man called ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... wife," he said one day, "the boy is eleven years old now, and must not grow up a milksop. Teach him if you will to be honest and true, to love God, and to hold to the faith; but in these days it needs that men should be able to use their weapons, also. There are your countrymen in France, who ere long will be driven ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... he was a little milksop and had better go home, and he went, and I haven't spoken to him since, although I met him and his little sister and brother with their go-cart this morning. I don't care about being friends with ...
— Brave and True - Short stories for children by G. M. Fenn and Others • George Manville Fenn
... he, speaking unconsciously aloud, "is this the affection which she professed to bear me? Is this the proof she gives of the preference which she often expressed for her favorite son? To leave her property to that miserable milksop, my half-brother! What devil could have tempted her to this? Not Lindsay, certainly, for I know he would scorn to exercise any control over her in the disposition of her property, and as for Maria, I know she would not. It must then have been the milksop himself in some puling fit of pain or ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... critics who could express their views freely about "Les Miserables" while hesitating to impugn directly the authority of the New Testament, Monseigneur Bienvenu was unsparingly ridiculed as a man of impossible goodness, and as a milksop and fool withal. But I think Victor Hugo understood the capabilities of human nature, and its real dignity, much better than these scoffers. In a low stage of civilization Monseigneur Bienvenu would have had small chance of reaching middle life. Christ himself, we remember, ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... no means a milksop, and, although a Christian man, did not understand Christianity to teach the absolute giving up of all one's possessions to the first scoundrel who shall demand them. The moment, therefore, that the ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... him for me. I didn't know the little milksop had it in him. You ought to thank Sissy, ma'am, for proving that he is not really stuffed with sawdust. Where is ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... it is difficult to call to mind an artist equal histrionically to Signor PADILLA, who is so grave and impressive as that utter bore, "the Elder Germont," so gay and eccentric as Figaro, and so dashing and reckless as the unscrupulous Don Giovanni. That milksop, Germont Junior, known as Alfredo, was adequately played by Signor GIANNINI, whose name, were it spelt GIA-"NINNY," would partly describe the character ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 8, 1890 • Various
... that the two Asshetons were inside, instantly gave orders to have both doors locked, and the injunctions being promptly obeyed, he took possession of the keys himself, chuckling at the success of the stratagem. "A fair reprisal," he muttered; "this young milksop shall find he is no match for a skilful lawyer like me. Now, the ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... usual routine of discipline, so that when I marry Margaret Alison, nobody will be surprised at my being read out of meeting. I shall soon be twenty-five, father, and this thing has gone on about as long as I can bear it. I must decide to be either a man or a milksop." ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... Evidently he was no milksop, for although the wound was pretty severe, the only care he had taken was to tie it loosely up with ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... don't, Sweetwater. The affair is as blind as your hat; nobody sees. We're just feeling along a thread. O. B.'s letters—the real O. B., I mean, are the manliest effusions possible. He's no more of a milksop than this Brotherson; and unlike your indomitable friend he seems to have some heart. I only wish he'd given us some facts; they would have been serviceable. But the letters reveal nothing except that he knew Doris. He writes in one of them: 'Doris is learning ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... howling yet, cry-baby!" cried Kuzmitchov. "You are blubbering again, little milksop! If you don't want to go, stay behind; no one is taking you ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... to scorn, Mark—thou art a milksop, and the son of a milksop, and know'st not what a good fellow can do in the way of crushing ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... said Mr. Korner, "that almost from the day of our marriage you have made it clear that you regard me as a milksop. You have got your notion of men from silly books and sillier plays, and your trouble is that I am not like them. Well, I've shown you that, if you insist upon it, I can be ...
— Mrs. Korner Sins Her Mercies • Jerome K. Jerome
... moment stunned and irresolute. Had there been in Tom's face the faintest glimmer of regret, or the faintest trace of the old affection, he would have stayed and braved all consequences. But there was neither. The spell that bound Tom Drift, his fear of being thought a milksop, had changed him utterly, and as Charlie's eyes turned with pleading look to his they met ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... in his life, and the earlier the better. I've always found the best fellows were wildish once. I don't care what he does when he's a green-horn; besides, he's got an excuse for it then. You can't expect to have a man, if he doesn't take a man's food. You'll have a milksop. And, depend upon it, when he does break out he'll go to the devil, and nobody pities him. Look what those fellows the grocers, do when they get hold of a young—what d'ye call 'em?—apprentice. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... had his glass of cowslip wine in his hand, and Maggie jerked him so as to make him spill half of it. He would have been an extreme milksop if he had not said angrily, ...
— Tom and Maggie Tulliver • Anonymous
... Sec—I would dissuade her! A lover who calls upon the father for help—with permission—is not worth a pinch of snuff. If he has anything in him, he'll be ashamed to take that old-fashioned way of making his deserts known to his sweetheart. If he hasn't the courage, why he's a milksop, and no Louisas were born for the like of him. No! he must carry on his commerce with the daughter behind the father's back. He must manage so to win her heart, that she would rather wish both father and mother at Old Harry than ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... but they could get on no better now than they had done in the old days. Walter still looked upon Willie as a contemptible little milksop, and Willie was inclined to consider Walter's exploits more the result of ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... miscreants, to have made their dwelling, not terrified with the manifold and imminent dangers which they were like to run into; and seeing before their eyes so many casualties, whereto their life was subject, the least whereof would have made a milksop Thersites astonished and utterly discomfited; being, I say, thus minded and purposed, they deserved special commendation, for, doubtless, they had done as they intended, if luck had not withstood their willingness, and if that fortune had not ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... is not a bad one; for the rest, trust to me. I mean no harm; a little mischief only; and, at most, a tweak of one proboscis or more. There's risk, of a certainty, as there is in sucking an egg; but you are a man! Not like that d—d milksop, who gives up his friend as soon as he gets poor, and proffers him a sermon by way of telling him—precious information, truly—that he's in a fair way to the devil. The toss of a ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... innocence in bad luck the sickly glare of cynicism. He asked Jim if he had ever heard of the expression, "The time, the place, and the girl." He had the jury snickering at the thought of a big rich youth like Jim being such a ninny, such a milksop and mollycoddle, as to defy an opportunity ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... present occasion, was apparently a mere youth. He had probably seen twenty summers—scarcely more. Yet his person was tall and well developed; symmetrical and manly; rather slight, perhaps, as was proper to his immaturity; but not wanting in what the backwoodsmen call heft. He was evidently no milksop, though slight; carried himself with ease and grace; and was certainly not only well endowed with bone and muscle, but bore the appearance, somehow, of a person not unpractised in the use of it. His face was ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... turn upon a different point. The odd thing is, not that so many people should have forgotten him, but that he should have been remembered by people at first sight so unlike him. Here is a man, we might say, whose special characteristic it was to be a milksop—who provoked Fielding to a coarse hearty burst of ridicule—who was steeped in the incense of useless adulation from a throng of middle-aged lady worshippers—who wrote his novels expressly to recommend little unimpeachable moral maxims, as that evil courses lead to unhappy deaths, that ladies ought ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen |
