"Timorous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to remind us of our own Bush-hawk; and that there is no great protective resemblance is sufficiently manifested, from the fact that our cuckoo is persecuted on every possible occasion by the tits, which are timorous enough in ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks; methinks I see her, as an eagle, mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam; purging and scaling her long abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and in their envious gabble would prognosticate a year of ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... monarchy; different claimants on the Austrian succession were expected to arise; besides, the Elector of Bavaria, the Elector of Cologne, and the Elector Palatine were evidently hostile; the ministers themselves, while the Queen was herself without experience or knowledge of business, were timorous, desponding, irresolute, or worn out with age. To these ministers, says Mr. Robinson, in his despatches to the English court, "the Turks seemed already in Hungary, the Hungarians themselves in arms, the Saxons in Bohemia, the Bavarians at the gates of Vienna, and France the soul of the whole." ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... under the English monarchy, was then as now, capable of attaining high rank and power—with one only exception, that of the function of chief magistrate; higher and nobler rank, than a bartering, timorous commonwealth could afford. And for this one exception, to what did it amount? The nature of riches and influence forcibly confined the list of candidates to a few of the wealthiest; and it was much to be feared, that the ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... and hobgoblins, ill-favoured ones, and shining ones,—the tall, comely, swarthy Madam Bubble, with her great purse by her side, and her fingers playing with the money,—the black man in the bright vesture,—Mr. Worldly-Wiseman, and my Lord Hategood,—Mr. Talkative, and Mrs. Timorous,—all are actually existing beings to us. We follow the travellers through their allegorical progress with interest not inferior to that with which we follow Elizabeth from Siberia to Moscow, or Jeanie Deans from Edinburgh to London. Bunyan is almost the only writer that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various
... animals, because of the manner of approach of the practitioner, are wont to flinch, and there is manifested a pseudo-supersensitiveness. Young animals not accustomed to being handled are likely to be timorous, and one must not hastily conclude that a part is painful to the touch because the subject resents even gentle digital manipulation of such parts. In instances of this kind, one needs to compare sensibility ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... soon see the soldier's mouth relax, and his shoulders imitate a relenting heart. 'En voiture, Messieurs, Mesdames,' sings the Doctor; and on we go again at a good round pace, for black care follows hard after us, and discretion prevails not a little over valour in some timorous spirits of the party. At any moment we may meet the sergeant, who will send us back. At any moment we may encounter a flying shell, which will send us somewhere ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... colour of religion, or to sow tares in the wheat-field, as you do, in a course of weak compliance with desire. Now that he draws so near to his deliverance, he can add but one act of service: to repent, to die smiling, and thus to build up in confidence and hope the more timorous of my surviving followers. I am not so hard a master. Try me; accept my help. Please yourself in life as you have done hitherto; please yourself more amply, spread your elbows at the board; and when the night begins to fall and the ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... having one's head broken with a brickbat, were beginning to question their consciences very closely as to whether it was not a duty they owed to their families to stay at home on Sunday evening. These timorous persons, however, were in a small minority, and the generality of Mr. Tryan's friends and hearers rather exulted in an opportunity of braving insult for the sake of a preacher to whom they were attached on personal as well as doctrinal grounds. Miss Pratt ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... each nothing new, though we merely demonstrate our unity of consciousness, yet is the force of each many times multiplied,—dimless certitude and dauntless courage being bred in hearts where before, perhaps, were timorous hesitation and wavering. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... But Mr. Pendleton's timorous and inferior mind was incapable of translating the command into action. He could only stare dumbly ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... system of weights and measures, the calendar—nothing was too well tried to compete with innovation. In America, the rights of man were eventually tacked on to the tail of the American Constitution as an afterthought to conciliate the timorous, "a tub thrown to the whale," as the first ten amendments have been called. In France, the rights of man overshadowed the working part of the constitution, delaying essential details by their incorporation, ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... to those other sins—sins of defective moral courage in speech and action, sins arising from over-fastidiousness—had he not yielded freely? Was he not a spiritual valetudinarian? He feared so. Offered, in the Eternal Mercy, endless precious opportunities of service, he had been too weak, too timorous, too slothful, to lay hold on them. And so, as it seemed to him very justly, to-night confession, prayer, adoration, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... in his most desperate escapades, was to wade breast-high into one of the huge pools, and examine the worm-eaten surface of the rock above and below the brim. In such remote places—spots where I could never venture being left, a slightly timorous Andromeda, chained to a safer level of the cliff—in these extreme basins, there used often to lurk a marvellous profusion of animal and vegetable forms. My Father would search for the roughest and most corroded points of rock, those offering the best refuge for ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... world. Still, as the obscene jests, the fearful oaths, that from time to time rang through the vault, came on his ear, he cast his haughty eye in such disdain over the groups, that Gawtrey, observing him, trembled for his safety; and nothing but Philip's sense of his own impotence, and the brave, not timorous, desire not to perish by such hands, kept silent the fiery denunciations of a nature still proud and honest, that quivered on his lips. All present were armed with pistols and cutlasses except Morton, who suffered the weapons ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Jane! Your hound hath broken bounds again, And chased my timorous deer, O; If him I see, That hour he'll dee; My brakes shall be his ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... the episode was that a young lady aged some twelve months entered the Povey household on trial. Her exiguous legs twinkled all over the parlour, and she had the oddest appearance in the parlour. But she was so confiding, so affectionate, so timorous, and her black nose was so icy in that hot weather, that Constance loved her violently within an hour. Mr. Povey made rules for her. He explained to her that she must never, never go into the shop. But she went, and he whipped her ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... change—the moderation and caution of the one proposed—several undoubted and very great improvements in details, and, above all, a formal recognition of the principle of agricultural protection, still further allayed the fears of the most timorous. To us it appears, that the simple principle of a scale of duties, adapted to admit foreign corn when we want it, and exclude it when we can grow sufficient ourselves, is abundantly vindicated, and will not be disturbed for many years to come, if even then. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... that breathe the air of heaven, Some boon of strength has Nature given. In forming the majestic bull, She fenced with wreathed horns his skull; A hoof of strength she lent the steed, And winged the timorous hare with speed. She gave the lion fangs of terror, And, o'er the ocean's crystal mirror, Taught the unnumbered scaly throng To trace their liquid path along; While for the umbrage of the grove, She plumed the ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Kenyon. 'I have been cheated and duped. I had grave suspicions of it all along, but I did not act upon them. I have been too timorous and cowardly. This man Longworth has made a pretence of helping me to form a company. Everything he has done has been to delay me. He came out here, apparently, in the interests of the company I was forming, and now he has ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... he wore again his gold-laced coat, but the cocked-hat rested underneath the seat, and none could fathom the import of his gaze. By him sat his three daughters, a-row, in straight-backed dresses of like cut and colour, and peeped over their prayer-books; and Mrs. Buzza, timorous, in bright green satin. But of the throng of Trojan men and women, not though I had a ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Liberty is good, but Unity is its only sure foundation. It is the way to the Unity of Government and People that the thoughts both of The Prince and the Discorsi lead, though the incidents be so nakedly presented as to shock the timorous and vex the prurient, the puritan, and the evil thinker. The people must obey the State and fight and die for its salvation, and for the Prince the hatred of the subjects is never good, but their love, and the best way to gain it is by 'not interrupting the ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... defensive position that I propose to take. I should not think it needful at this time even so much as briefly to reflect any of those timorous and painful arguments pro and con that one finds at times running through the columns of the press, particularly of the religious weeklies, on such a question as, for example, whether nowadays a man can at the same time be a true Christian and a successful business ...
— The business career in its public relations • Albert Shaw
... carry the daily milk, the ice-man to leave the daily ice. But either of these would be afraid of exposing their vehicles to the heating orb of day,—the milkman afraid of turning the milk, the ice-man timorous of melting his ice,—and they probably avoid those directions where they shall meet the sun's rays. The student, who might inform us, has been burning the midnight oil. The student is not in the mood to consider ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... this little colony. His hand took up the ax, and forgot the sword and gun. Day after day he stood looking about him, examining and studying in little all the strange things which he saw; seeking to learn as much as might be of the timorous savages, who in time began to straggle back to their ruined villages; talking, as best he might, through such interpreting as was possible, with savages who came from the west of the Messasebe, and from the South and from the far Southwest; hearing, and learning and wondering of a land which ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... her life a timorous creature, and after her marriage had seldom felt safe out of Northwick's presence. Her portrait, by Hunt, hanging over the mantelpiece, suggested something of this, though the painter had made the most of her thin, middle-aged blond good looks, and had given her a substance of general character ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... in a battle the dastardly and timorous soldier throws away his shield on the first appearance of an enemy, and runs as fast as he can, and on that account loses his life sometimes, though he has never received even one wound, when he who stands his ground has nothing of ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... desert I love to ride, With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side, O'er the brown karroo, where the bleating cry Of the springbok's fawn sounds plaintively; And the timorous quagga's shrill whistling neigh Is heard by the fountain at twilight gray; Where the zebra wantonly tosses his mane. With wild hoof scouring the desolate plain; And the fleet-footed ostrich over the waste Speeds like a horseman who travels in haste, Hieing away to the home of her rest, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... Kephisos contrasted strongly with the flying pallors and seemed at enmity with them. The sky was milky white and gray, broken up in places by clouds of fantastic shapes, along the ruffled edges of which ran thin gleams of sunshine like things half timorous and ashamed. Upon the flat shores near Phaleron the purple seas broke in spray, and the salty drops were caught up by the wind and mingled with the hurrying grains of dust. It was not exactly a sad day, but there was an uneasiness abroad. The delicate calm of Greece was disturbed. Nevertheless ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... reserved called ship-keepers, whose province it is to work the vessel while the boats are pursuing the whale. As a general thing, these ship-keepers are as hardy fellows as the men comprising the boats' crews. But if there happen to be an unduly slender, clumsy, or timorous wight in the ship, that wight is certain to be made a ship-keeper. It was so in the Pequod with the little negro Pippin by nick-name, Pip by abbreviation. Poor Pip! ye have heard of him before; ye must remember his tambourine on that dramatic midnight, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... Well, what would you say? Hel. I am not worthie of the wealth I owe, Nor dare I say 'tis mine: and yet it is, But like a timorous theefe, most faine would steale What law does vouch ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... of the foregoing qualifications must needs be lacking, nevertheless this timorous pen, with more trepidation than courage it must be confessed, begs to call attention to a few obvious details in masculine attire that caricature, more or less, peculiarities in the forms ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... the mob will start of its own volition to find something that may be slain. Also, a mob has no conscience and no remorse. It is the nearest thing to a devil that exists, and it is also the nearest thing to the divine mercy and courage. It is braver than the bravest man; it is more timorous than the most fearful; it is fiercer than a lion, gentler than a lamb. All these things by turns, and each one to the exclusion ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... other times to lounge about in the luxury of a real undress uniform, now puts on his broadcloth and sash, and sustains a sweltering dignity; while all the brown girls of the place, arrayed in their gayest apparel, wage no timorous war on the hearts and pockets of too susceptible skippers. "Ah, me!" exclaimed our landlady, "is it not terrible? Excepting the Senora D. and myself, there is not a married woman in La Union!" "One wouldn't think so," soliloquized ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... loud—my manner was all empressement, except when I was actually angry, and then it was cold. hard, dry, inflexible. I was the last person in the world to pass for an amiable. Now, Julia, on the other hand, was quiet, subdued, timorous—the tones of a strong, decided voice startled her—she shrunk from controversy—yielded always with a happy grace in anticipation of the conflict, and showed, in all respects, that nice, almost nervous organization which attaches the value of principles ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... his lap, and stroking her brindled sides with great tenderness, he bade Dealtry remark how singularly quiet the animal was in its manners. Nay, he was not contented until Peter himself had patted her with a timorous hand, and had reluctantly submitted the said hand to the honour of being licked by the cat in return. Jacobina, who, to do her justice, was always meek enough in the presence, and at the will, of her master, was, fortunately this day, on her ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... closely. She had met her once at Babington House, when she was still Elizabeth Westley, but had thought little or nothing of her since. She was a pale little creature, fair-haired and timorous, and had now a hunted look of misery in her eyes that was very piteous to see. It was plain they had done right in coming: this woman would be of little service ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... Madame Fayel. The old servant did as his master had commanded him, and so went to France; and coming one day to Monsieur Fayel's house, he suddenly met him with one of his servants, who knowing him to be Captain Coney's servant, examined him; and finding him timorous, and to falter in his speech, he searched him, and found the said box in his pocket, with the note which expressed what it contained; then he dismissed the bearer, with injunction that he should come no more thither. Monsieur Fayel, going in, sent for his cook, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... the downy dowagers nestle on the bough While the timorous voices soften low with dread, And we, walking underneath, little reckon their Mysteries are couching in the ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... oppression and avarice. Oppression is often the CONSEQUENCE, but seldom or never the MEANS of riches; and though avarice will preserve a man from being necessitously poor, it generally makes him too timorous to ...
— Common Sense • Thomas Paine
... that timorous breast, which even love of money had failed to rouse. Wardlaw sat up, staring wildly, and asked Wylie what he ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... Cranmer.] at Cambridge was Thomas Cranmer, a learned and amiable divine with marked leanings towards the New Learning; who in his early graduate days had fallen under the influence of the teaching at Cambridge of Erasmus; in scholarship subtle and erudite, in affairs guileless and easily swayed; timorous by nature, but capable of outbreaks of audacity as timid persons often are: a gentle and lovable man, but lacking in that robust self-confidence needed by one who would take a resolutely independent ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... timorous, and vagrant people, and of a disposition so selfish as sometimes to have excited suspicions of their integrity. Their complexion is swarthy; their features are coarse, and their hair is lank, but not always of a black colour; nor have they, universally, the ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... gently. They were quite alone. The stream of daylight from the distant French windows barely reached to this quiet spot. She saw the most wonderful light in his grey eyes; her lips parted in quick, timorous confusion. "I love you. I am sorry for what I did down there. I couldn't help it—nor could you. Yet I took a cruel advantage of you. I know what you've been thinking, too. You have been saying to yourself that ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... speak a language unknown to their neighbors, and are said to easily hold converse with the coolies of the vicinage. When and how did this intercourse exist, is rather difficult to answer. I am even timorous to insinuate it, lest the believers in the chronology of the Bible, who make the world a little more than 5800 years old, should come down upon me, and, after pouring upon my humble self their most damning anathemas, consign ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... the precepts of his erstwhile companions in arms, had never soiled his military escutcheon by labor, nor had he ever risen to the higher planes of criminality. Rather as a mediocre pickpocket and a timorous confidence man had he eked out a meager existence, amply punctuated by seasons of straight bumming and intervals spent as the guest of various inhospitably hospitable states. Now, for the first time in his life, The General faced the possibility of ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... think of offering the scarlet gown of their most honourable degree to the assailant of Price and the Dissenters. The great army of the indolent good, the people who lead excellent lives and never use their reason, took violent alarm. The timorous, the weak-minded, the bigoted, were suddenly awakened to a sense of what they owed to themselves. Burke gave them the key which enabled them to interpret the Revolution in harmony with their ...
— Burke • John Morley
... long time he wandered disconsolately about the rooms, walked to the window, puckering up his lips, heaved deep sighs, and almost fell to whimpering at last. He was always full of forebodings, was afraid of something unexpected and inevitable; he had become timorous; he began to pay great attention to ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... made their way to the little quay, or, rather, the few yards of sea-wall that protect the houses at the corner of the street. But here they could not stand, and were forced to retire to the lee side of the Hotel de la Plage, which, as all know, stands at the corner, with two timorous windows turned seaward, and all the rest seeking the comfort of ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... head to foot. When we would meet a bevy of these creatures on the road in the dusk of evening, their white, fluttering garments would give them the appearance of winged celestials. The Turkish women are generally timorous of men, and especially so of foreigners. Those of the rural districts, however, are not so shy as their city cousins. We frequently met them at work in groups about the villages or in the open fields, and would ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... nothing for the reluctant Mr. Swinton but to obey, and I could not help smiling at his evident discomfiture. All his precise and matter-of-fact self-satisfaction was gone in a moment,—he was nothing but a very timorous creature, afraid to examine into what he could not at once understand. No such terrors, however, were displayed by the sailors who undertook to row him over to the yacht. They, as well as their captain, were anxious ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... newly come to anchor. She was the Sainte-Marie-des-Anges, out of the port of Havre-de-Grace. The Master, after we had signalled for a boat, asked me if I knew the captain. I told him he was a countryman of mine, of the most unblemished integrity, but, I was afraid, a rather timorous man. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... joy and lifted her face to his; as he bent to it he saw that her eyes were full of happy tears. But in another moment she seemed to have descended from her womanly eminence to helpless and timorous girlhood; and he understood that her courage and initiative were all for others, and that she had none for herself. It was evident that the effort of speaking had been much greater than her studied composure betrayed, ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... illumined by a bright and glaring sun (as if bespoken on purpose by the mayor and corporation), with the thermometer at 90 degrees in the shade. The first sight which met the eye after sunrise, was the precipitate escape, from a city visited with the plague of gunpowder, of respectable or timorous people in coaches, carriages, waggons, and every variety of vehicle. "My kingdom for a horse!" was the general cry of all those who could not stand fire. In the mean while, the whole atmosphere was filled with independence. Such was the quantity of American ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... sound continued to re-echo through the island, while the warm sun gleamed brightly down on the two terrified inhabitants of the hut; the cowering animals slunk trembling to their holes; and the timorous birds plunged into the sea, or circled far out ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... a warrior, though a true soldier. He never was a courtier, though he had always a good mind to be one. He never was a good party man, though his whole life was engaged in partisanship. He was very timorous and bashful in conversation, and thought he always stood in need of apologies, which, considering that his "Maxims" showed not great regard for virtue, and that his practice was always to get out of affairs with the same hurry as he got into them, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Ellangowan on Ellangowan's height! In her shriveled hand it would seem she held the very sapling which for the last time she had plucked from the bonny woods which had so long waved above her bit shealing, until driven thence by the timorous and weak-minded laird. With this she again touched me, and in a half ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... again they send suppliant ambassadors, with their garments rent and their heads covered with ashes, imploring assistance from the Romans, and like timorous chickens, crowding under the protecting wings of their parents, that their wretched country might not altogether be destroyed, and that the Roman name, which now was but an empty sound to fill the ...
— On The Ruin of Britain (De Excidio Britanniae) • Gildas
... by Leicester, never saw the flash of Farnese's guns. For the superiority of Spain was not by sea, nor the greatness of England on land. But England thenceforth was safe, and had Scotland in tow. Elizabeth occupied a position for which her timorous and penurious policy, during so many years, had not prepared the world. She proposed terms to Philip. She would interfere no more in the Low Countries, if he would grant toleration. Farnese entered into the scheme, but Philip refused. The lesson of the Armada ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... appeared in the man, made it matter for surprise that he had waited so long before taking another wife. It would not have occurred to most of those who knew him that his extreme devotion to women made him shy, diffident, all but timorous in their presence. But Piers Otway, for all his mental disturbance at this moment, remarked the singular deference, the tone and look of admiring gentleness, with which Mr. Jacks turned to his wife as he ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... was then in London, when the summons came unto me. I was timorous of Committees, being ever by some of them calumniated, upbraided, scorned, and derided. However I must and did appear; and let me never forget that great affection and care yourself (Oh most excellent and learned Esquire Ashmole) shewed unto me ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... other steed, has its own fault, and that fault twofold, sometimes of over-venturesomeness, sometimes of shying and turning tail. The habit engendered, in the irascible part, of being neither over-venturesome nor over-timorous, but going by reason, is termed ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... they said, having got into the convent of Montrieux, the prior, a pious but timorous man, told his monks that flight was the only course which they could take: Gherardo answered with courage, "Go whither you please! As for myself I will remain in the situation in which Heaven has placed me." ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... Ruth cast a timorous glance towards the workers, and murmured something about not having much time to spare, but she placed the water-cans on the ground and sank down on the grass. Stanford throwing himself on the sward at her feet, but, ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Samnites arrived by chance to aid the Romans and impressed the Carthaginians with the idea that Fabius was approaching. When for this reason they retired he thought that he had vanquished them and sent messages to Rome magnifying his exploit and also slandering the dictator; he called Fabius timorous and hesitating and ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... knows if thou are not over timorous even for a love-sick youth," she sighed. "And must thou go when my heart inclineth to hours spent with thee? And yet at night the stars come out so 'tis said, and can be seen from the roof of my dwelling; and when the wind sweeps over ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... our guest as an artistical performer, one is really at a loss to say in what line of character he has excelled the most. The Titanic grandeur of Lear, the human debasement of Werner, the frank vivacity of Henry V, the gloomy and timorous guilt of King John, or that—his last—personation of Macbeth, in which it seemed to me that he conveyed a more correct notion of what Shakespeare designed than I can recollect to have read in the most profound of the German critics; for I take it, what Shakespeare meant ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... of the Express, which had been willed him by the late editor, his uncle. The Express, which had been a slippered, dozing, senile sheet under old Jimmie Bruce, burst suddenly into a volcanic youth. The new editor used huge, vociferous headlines instead of the mere whispering, timorous types of his uncle; he wrote a rousing, rough-and-ready English; occasionally he placed an important editorial, set up in heavy-faced type and enclosed in a black border, in the very centre of his first page; and from the very start he had had the hardihood to attack the "established ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... England, they will not fail to make complaint to the Spanish Council,—and they have no just cause for refusing to set us free. But I trust we shall not have to wait for that. If we had a Governor of spirit, instead of a timorous old man like Sayle, he would have already sent the frigate down here to demand us of the Spaniards. There are not lacking men to carry out the enterprise: Captain Brayne could scarce be restrained from swooping down on the whole garrison—as Rob Searle ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... evergreens in tubs stood about the gravelled spaces in a manner that consoled us with a sense of being once more in the current of polite travel. The waiter wanted none of our humble French, but replied to our timorous advances in that tongue in a correct and finally expensive English. Under the stimulus of this experience we went to a bric-a-brac shop and bought a lot of fascinating old pewter platters and flagons, ...
— A Little Swiss Sojourn • W. D. Howells
... political career because he had been unable to make him acquire even that exterior bearing which confers the necessary dignity upon him who exercises great power, to say nothing of the firmness, precision, and force of will required in governing men. Credulous, timorous, impressionable, and at the same time obstinate, gluttonous, and sensual, this erudite, overgrown boy had become in the imperial palace a kind of plaything for everybody, especially for his slaves, who, knowing his defects and his weaknesses, did ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... circulation only—"the little order first came into notice under the name of the 'Bond of Association,' a High Church society founded by my brother, Lord Reckage. He formed his executive committee, however, on timorous and unexpected lines. He had tried to please the spiteful rather than the loyal. The loyal, he urged, were always forbearing, but the spiteful needed every attention. He disappointed alike the warmest and the most selfish among his supporters. True to his policy, he made ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... the conversion of souls are so many that one may choose laborers of excellent qualifications; for their zeal for the propagation of the gospel and for the spiritual health of those poor Indians impels them. But were that subjection inaugurated, what timorous religious after that would leave his cell (a safe port whither to escape during storms) only to serve in the employ of cura? That is, any change is accompanied by a very great alteration; and he who attempts ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... Some timorous peasant lads behind the door pointed out to him the new arrival, at the same time calling his attention to the fact that the stranger had a pistol in his hand, and it was therefore not advisable to go ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... ways which were little to his advantage; and as for peace, he could hardly endure the thoughts of it. He spoke slightingly of most people, and rather before their faces than behind their backs; unless he was afraid of them, and of that sort there were a great many, for he was naturally somewhat timorous. When he had done himself any prejudice by his talk, or was apprehensive he should do so, and wished to make amends, he would say to the person whom he had disobliged, "I am sensible my tongue has done me a good deal of mischief; but on the other hand, it has sometimes done me much ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... prowess was on every lip; his timely appearance in Regengetz Circus was regarded in the light of divine intervention, although no one questioned the perfectly human pluck that brought it about. Noble ladies smiled upon him in the park, to which they now repaired with timorous hearts; counts and barons slapped him on the back and doughty guardsmen actually saluted him ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... afterwards to inquire. To many whom mere levity brought to the entertainment the general enthusiasm left no choice, while the splendor of the confederacy allured the mean, and its numbers encouraged the timorous. The abettors of the league had not scrupled at the artifice of counterfeiting the signature and seals of the Prince of Orange, Counts Egmont, Horn, Mcgen, and others, a trick which won them hundreds of adherents. This was done especially with a view of influencing the officers ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... I had the privilege myself, damsel," said Guarine; "but for these fellows, they are not so timorous as you suppose them, being even too ready to avouch their roguery when it hath less excuse—Besides, I promised them impunity.—Have you any ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... three yards they saw me and rushed back to the drain. After a few minutes the larger of these two, probably the male, ventured forth again and reached the middle of the road, when he discovered that his more timorous companion had not followed but was only just peeping out. He stopped and elevated his neck some five or six inches, planting the fore-feet so as to lift him up high to see round, while his hindquarters were flush with the road, quite flat in the dust in which his tail was trailing. His ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... priests had also unfolded themselves. The Dominican, Father Bevis, awoke in Clarice a certain amount of liking, not unmixed with rather timorous respect. But he was a grave, silent, undemonstrative man, who gave no encouragement to anything like personal affection, though he was not harsh nor unkind. The Franciscan, Father Miles, was of a type common in his day. The ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... twined in their locks of gold The strange cold forest-fairies dance in glee; Sylphs over-timorous and over-bold Haunt the dark hollows where the dwarf may be, The wild red dwarf, the nixies' enemy; Then, 'mid their mirth, and laughter, and affright, The sudden goddess enters, tall and white, With one long sigh for summers passed away; ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... stately trunks and almost black foliage of pines, intermixed with the lighter verdure of sapling oaks, maples, and poplars, while here and there lay the gigantic corpses of dead trees, decaying on the leaf-strewn soil. And it seemed to little Joe—a timorous and imaginative child—that the silent forest was holding its breath until some fearful ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... where is Argyle now, his kinsmen to rally? Where, where is the chieftain with timorous soul? On Linnhe's grey waters he crouched in his galley, And saw as a traitor the battle blast roll:— Ungrasped was the hilt of his broadsword, still sleeping, Unheard was his voice in the moment of need; Secure from the rage of fierce foemen, death-sweeping, He ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... breasts are not so timorous, nor are our arms so weak, Nor are our veins so bloodless, that we our vow should break, To sell our freedom for the fear of Prince or Paladin,— At least we'll sell our birthright dear, no bloodless ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... passage had been taken by Messrs. Tongs and Ball. Miss Jemima had bidden her brother a reluctant farewell. In her secret soul, she nursed a doubt, of which, indeed, she was half-ashamed, as to the prospect of his safe return; and she endeavoured to fortify her timorous heart by the utterance of sundry sharp speeches concerning the folly of ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... she, the dim wood's lustrous child, Though born amid a race of uncouth men, And gentle as the fawn, which, through the wild, Trembled with timorous haste, and fled, and when She stood within the rude and silent glen, Of deepest forests, she appear'd more bright, Than other nymphs who roamed these regions then, And now—for o'er her form and sylph-like waist, A native modesty ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... the bow, and that had never before used such arms, but against the deer and the timorous goats, destroyed him, overwhelmed with a thousand arrows, his quiver being well-nigh exhausted, {as} the venom oozed forth through the black wounds; and that length of time might not efface the fame of the deed, he instituted sacred games,[71] with contests famed {in ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... song it was, Counting of many unseen stars In an intangible sky Making new milky ways— Silver-shadow-paths that lead From sapphire abysses Into deeper abysses still. The deeps of our souls Lit by passion's burning flowers Tremulous, timorous flames of silver, That with thousand hands Our hearts sought to pluck and scatter, Or make barbed garlands For love's nuptial hour. Nuptial hour, briefer than a moment, Longer than Heaven's Eternal summer, ...
— Sandhya - Songs of Twilight • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... of her great conquest, fearful of the effect of these far-stretching rivers upon her colonial system, timorous in the presence of the fierce peoples who held the vast domain beyond the Alleghanies. It seems clear, however, that the Proclamation of 1763, forbidding settlement and the patenting of lands beyond the Alleghanies, was ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... we start and fear to die! What timorous worms we mortals are! Death is the gate of endless joy, And yet we dread to ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... upon some mats, lolled Tebureimoa, the king; behind him, on the panels of the house, two crossed rifles represented fasces. He wore pyjamas which sorrowfully misbecame his bulk; his nose was hooked and cruel, his body overcome with sodden corpulence, his eye timorous and dull: he seemed at once oppressed with drowsiness and held awake by apprehension: a pepper rajah muddled with opium, and listening for the march of a Dutch army, looks perhaps not otherwise. We were to grow better acquainted, and first and ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... kangaroo, the 'old man,' as he is called, timorous of every unwonted sound that enters his large, erected ears, has been chased far from every ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... From Lilith's famished heart its wildest pain. Wherefore, my Eblis, it were wise to seek Surcease of grief. That Lilith, is so weak Who wedded thee; and that she sinned, knew not. Yet, if we part, mayhap may follow naught Of other ills." "Sweet love," he laughed, "o'er-late Thou art so timorous. At Eden's gate Not so, what time the angel barred her way My Lilith stood. Shelter within my arms. Oh, say, Was not our young love sweet? Hath it grown cold? With me thou sharest endless life; nor old, Nor shrivelled, shalt thou be. And not one trace Of earth's decay (sure doom of thy sad ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... force him to join. The union wasn't no good to him, he never found no difficulty in getting work, and there was good wages for anyone as 'ad a head on his shoulders and wasn't above puttin' 'is 'and to anything as come 'is way. Polly was timorous. If she was 'im she'd join the union, the last time there was a strike she was expectin' 'im to be brought back in an ambulance every time he went out. She turned ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... ten years. She was so timorous that she would grow pale whenever she spoke to any one, and she thought of nothing but the blows with which she was threatened; and she became thinner, more yellow and drier ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... a gentle timorous tap came to the door, so gentle indeed that Betty in the kitchen did not hear it, or she, tall and Roman-nosed as she was, would have answered it before the long-legged dreamer could have reached the door, though he was not above three yards from it. In lack of anything better to do, Robert ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... trecherous tongue with that detested name To afflict thy unblemishd purity, Belisea. I do confes my error was an act Soe grosse and heathnish that its very sight Would have inforcd a Crocodile to weepe Drops as sincere as does the timorous heart When he ore heares the featherd ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... houses with their flowery gardens and then, suddenly timorous, she decided not to go too far afield. She might get lost, she might meet nasty people or horned beasts. A little path on her right hand had an inviting look; it might lead her down through the trees to the water's ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... military education and military environments, he could not understand, and could not calmly brook, the cautious conservatism of the civilian, which would often temporize when swift, determined action seemed necessary, and which was often boastful at home, and timorous in the field. Able in action, fierce in assault, unerring in judgment, watchful in detail; with a sagacity and foresight that amounted almost to genius, and a memory that was marvellous, General Sherman was a great military leader, and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... natural death, and mix with Hindoos, but not with Mussulmen. There are other tribes, vestiges of the Tamulian race, differing somewhat in their rites from these, and approaching, in their habits, more to Hindoos; but all are timorous and retiring. ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... Sirens: Alas! poor souls and timorous, Will ye draw nigh to gaze at us And see if we are fair indeed? For such as we shall be your meed, There, where our hearts would have you go. And where can the earth-dwellers show In any land such loveliness As that wherewith your ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... timorous in their judgments since the all-pervading currency of criticism. They fear to express a revised, frank opinion about any new work, and to relish it honestly and heartily, lest it should be condemned in the next review, and they stand convicted of bad taste. Hence they hedge their opinions, ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... advice of his wisest friends, he resolved to trust his person and family in the hands of a perfidious people. He traversed the desert of Arabia with a timorous retinue of women and children; but as he approached the confines of Irak,[73] he was alarmed by the solitary or hostile face of the country, and suspected either the defection or ruin of his party. His fears were just; ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... be marked The Ring and the Book is blameless for the most characteristic of all the shortcomings of contemporary verse, a grievous sterility of thought. And why? Because sterility of thought is the blight struck into the minds of men by timorous and halt-footed scepticism, by a half-hearted dread of what chill thing the truth might prove itself, by unmanly reluctance or moral incapacity to carry the faculty of poetic vision over the whole ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... Time at every Note for fear of being choaked; He gives us Pain, in not being able to shew his Ability in publick; disgusts the Hearer, and ruins the Compositions in such a Manner, that they are not known to be what they are. A timorous Singer is unhappy, like a ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... mind. put in fear, put in bodily fear; terrorize, intimidate, cow, daunt, overawe, abash, deter, discourage; browbeat, bully; threaten &c. 909. Adj. fearing &c. v.; frightened &c. v.; in fear, in a fright &c. n.; haunted with the fear of &c. n.; afeard[obs3]. afraid, fearful; timid, timorous; nervous, diffident, coy, faint- hearted, tremulous, shaky, afraid of one's shadow, apprehensive, restless, fidgety; more frightened than hurt. aghast; awe-stricken, horror-stricken, terror-stricken, panic- stricken, awestruck, awe-stricken, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... war: we have done our part, but can I help it, if the French will not declare it?-if they are backward, and cautious, and timorous; if they are afraid of provoking too far SO great a power as England, who threatens the liberties of Europe? I laugh, but how not to laugh at such a world as this! Do you remember the language of the last war? ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... her fatigue, she grew suddenly timorous. Her ears began to listen with terrible intentness till they imagined stealthy footsteps in the silken shrinkings of the damp snow. At last her eyes mastered the gloom till she could make out the glimmering pathway, the dim, black trunks shouldering up on either side ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... over-hastily from sleep, wherein they are much more profoundly involved than we, he [the father] caused me to be wakened by the sound of some musical instrument, and was never unprovided of a musician for that purpose.... The good man, being extremely timorous of any way failing in a thing he had so wholly set his heart upon, suffered himself at last to be overruled by the common opinions:... he sent me, at six years of age, to the College of Guienne, at that time the best and ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... course of a day or two the matter of the fireplace was adjusted and the lease signed. Norah Pennington was the tenant's name, and her references all the most timorous landlord ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... encouragement. There are, indeed, courageous invalids who have not come into the secret of right thought so far as health is concerned, and fearing atheltes and scholars who have neglected the secret of courage, and timorous saints who have failed to possess themselves of the confidence of goodness. Nevertheless, the eternal law is evident that the one great enemy of ...
— Mastery of Self • Frank Channing Haddock
... fastened her, and he went away. The bully came down then out of the tree, and he brought the princess to where the king was, and he said, "I got a friend of mine to come and fight the serpent to-day, where I was a little timorous after being so long shut up underground, but I'll do ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... foreboding the kindly but stupid hand of one who tells with many words news that is no news. I have met a bishop with a jocose hand, a humourist with a hand of leaden gravity, a man of pretentious valour with a timorous hand, and a quiet, apologetic man with a fist of iron. When I was a little girl I was taken to see[A] a woman who was blind and paralysed. I shall never forget how she held out her small, trembling hand and pressed sympathy into mine. My eyes fill with tears as I think ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... sheds a milder gleam, What time the may-fly haunts the pool or stream; When the still owl skims round the grassy mead, What time the timorous hare limps forth to feed; Then be the time to steal adown the vale, And listen to the vagrant cuckoo's tale; To hear the clamorous curlew call his mate, Or the soft quail his tender pain relate; To ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... aside, As conscious of my look she stepped— Then suddenly, with timorous eye She ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... and furniture, and that while he would shamelessly hint for things in the houses of the people who were entertaining him, even in the houses of his own subordinates, until the weaker or the more timorous gave him the object of his covetousness, nevertheless for the sake of his country he clung to the uncongenial chair in Whitehall, not merely working like a cart-horse for what he considered to be his nation's good, but suffering without ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... forward needs, but Hardenbergh. More timorous then wise, as I supposed, (For love so hardned me feare was my slave) Did ominate such likelie ill to me If I went forward, that with much enforcement Of what might chance he drave me to retreat. ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... they let fly a volley of arrows, which happily fell a little short of us; this made us halt a little, to return the compliment with bullets; and then being led up by the bold Scot, we fired our pistols in their faces, and drew out our swords; but there was no occasion; for they flew like timorous sheep, & only three of them remained, beckoning to the rest to come back. But our brave commander gallops up to them by himself, shot one dead, knocked another of his horse, while the third ran away; and thus ended our ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... For a single timorous instant the cabman hesitated. Then he took the roll of money and crammed it into his pocket without looking at it. Before Griswold could brace himself there was a quick whish of the whip, a piping cry from the driver, and the horses sprang away ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... five-year-old daughter now brought to him with a very pretty smile. Besides, the children had cast many friendly glances towards Krespel during dinner; now they rose and drew nearer to him, but not without signs of timorous awe. What's the meaning of that? thought I to myself. Dessert was brought in; then the Councillor took a little box from his pocket, in which he had a miniature lathe of steel. This he immediately screwed ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... would avert the eyes of Dante from her: he looks for the sequel: she thinks he looks severely: she says: 'Galeotto is the name of the book,' fancying by this timorous little flight she has drawn him far enough from the nest of her young loves. No, the eagle beak of Dante and his piercing eyes ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... cloud met and exchanged salvos overhead; while all round the horizon we could see sunshine and clear air upon the hills. What with the guns and the thunder, the herds were all frightened in the Golden Valley. We could see them tossing their heads, and running to and fro in timorous indecision; and when they had made up their minds, and the donkey followed the horse, and the cow was after the donkey, we could hear their hooves thundering abroad over the meadows. It had a martial sound, like cavalry charges. And altogether, as far as the ears are concerned, we had a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... case of the wicked uncle and the lost babes over again," declared Noel. "It also smacks of The Pilgrim's Progress. Old Bunyan would have made some good copy out of this. He'd have dubbed you Mistress Timorous and ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... Timorous at heart, Leah Einstein's evil career had been only one of petty wheedling craft, and ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... fortnight they appeared unceremoniously, and, taking casual part in the ordinary work, the affairs of the isolated estate went on as smoothly as before. There was a stranger in the camp, a middle-aged man, timorous, and knowing little of the ways of white men. Of him scarcely any notice was taken. Yet in a few weeks it was evident that the stranger was determined to make himself pleasant. Accordingly, the white man refrained from advances, while for the love of mental exhilaration ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... yards and settled close on the other side of the group of penguins. The latter turned and repeated their former tactics until the skua finally flapped away altogether. It really was extraordinarily interesting to watch the timorous protesting movements of the penguins. The frame of mind producing every action could be so easily imagined and ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... of the waste which their existence as a class necessitates. All this we have to teach people, when we have taught ourselves; and I admit that the work is long and burdensome; as I began by saying, people have been made so timorous of change by the terror of starvation that even the unluckiest of them are stolid and hard to move. Hard as the work is, however, its reward is not doubtful. The mere fact that a body of men, however small, are banded together as Socialist missionaries shows that ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... seemed to go through her entire frame, her very lips turned white and cold, and he, not understanding, timorous, chivalrous and humble, thought that she was repelled by his ardour and frightened by a passion to which she was too pure ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... who perhaps felt a doubt of their own ability to manage the settlement, were willing to acknowledge that they had misjudged him and suggested that at least he had better be given a chance to help them; and other timorous members, having witnessed the warmth of the greeting accorded him, advised that it would be wiser not to rush into any course of action which would displease the majority of the colonists. Thus it came to pass that Smith found the three o'clock meeting like a tiger that has ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... gentleman and a very human creature, with a big heart, a high ideal of what boys might be and abundant tolerance of what they generally were. If he had a quick temper, he had also a quick wit, and a quick appreciation of talent and sympathy with timorous aspirations. ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... the profound ignorance of human life, presumes to exercise the office of historian," tells us that the Romans, who were occasionally called in to aid against the Picts and Scots, "give energetic counsel to the timorous natives, and leave them patterns by which to manufacture arms," we seem to be reading an account of some remote tribe, to whom the Roman sword and buckler were as unfamiliar as the musket was to the Otaheitans when ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... After the potent and vigorous King Cotton was killed by starvation, Confederate finance treated him as Jewish myth declares dead King Solomon was treated. In his million-acred temple, he stood—cold, white and useless—leaning upon his broken staff; while timorous leadership gaped at his ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon |
