"Cold feet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "that they took us for game wardens. Mebbe now they've been shooting deer out of season, and got cold feet when they knew some people were ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone
... closing of the pores and a resulting cold. Rubber boots or overshoes are very bad if worn constantly. The rubber, being waterproof, holds in the perspiration and we often find our stockings damp even when the walking is dry. Rubber boots also make our feet tender and cause cold feet. Tight shoes are also bad for the reason that they check circulation. The best footwear for a boy who lives in the country will be Indian moccasins or shoepacs worn with several pairs of lumbermen's woollen stockings. Such footwear would not do for skating, ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... wash-kitchen in a spiritless way, and did not return again that night. She did not move. It seemed a long time to the child before she turned, her face wet with tears, and took him up in her arms, chafing his cold feet. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... said to the old woodman, 'look at this poor girl, and see what pretty cold feet she has. They are as white as our milk! And look and see what an odd cloak she has, just like the bit of velvet that hangs up in our cupboard, and which you found that day the little cubs were killed ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... at his house, and when she didn't he figured she must have gone to Nellie's. It was only when Rodney Kipp fires the grammy question at him that he sees he's made a wrong calculation and begins havin' cold feet. ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... annoying that it should be so cold to the feet. With my sore throat, I am sure to have influenza,—'that I cast myself at thy feet'—tell me, dear, do you know if the chapel-keeper has a footwarmer? Nothing is worse than cold feet, and that Madame de P. sticks there for hours. I am sure she confesses her friends' sins along with her own. It is intolerable; I no longer have any feeling in my right foot; I would pay that woman for her foot-warmer—'I ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... "Got cold feet," returned Lillian, laconically. "You see she isn't naturally evil enough deliberately to plan to kill you. I give her credit for that with all her devilishness, but something happened today between her and Dicky. I don't know what it was that drove her nearly frantic. I saw her look at ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... the lips of the imprisoned man. "Are you there, oh dwellers in the cesspool of respectability?" he shouted. "Do you stand in the mud with cold feet listening? I have been with your wives. Eleven Caxton wives without babes have I been with and it has been fruitless. The twelfth woman I have just left, leaving her man in the road a bleeding sacrifice to thee. I shall call out the names of the eleven. I shall have revenge also upon the husbands ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... dawn is distinctly chilly, and the A.M.'s are beginning to stamp their cold feet upon the dewy grass, but very careful and circumspect is the Pilot, as he mutters to himself, "Don't worry and flurry, or you'll die in ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... do as they are doing. Plunge in and have a good time. You made all the money you ever made when you were living the life of a red-blooded, natural man. Marrying that woman has given you cold feet, and she knows it. Forget it all. Sail in and be glad you are alive. Look at me. Things have happened to me that would have finished many a woman, but I took a cocktail, won a game of poker, and was as chipper as if nothing out ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... from one victory to another, October 18, just before the capitulation of Ulm, he wrote to Josephine from Elchingen: "I have been more tired than I should have been; for a week getting wet through every day, and cold feet, have done me a little harm, but staying in to-day has rested me. I have carried out my plan and have destroyed the Austrian army by simple marches. I have taken sixty thousand prisoners, one hundred and twenty cannon, more than ninety flags, and more than thirty generals. I am going to attack ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... sir, that you would tell me just what you would like for your cold feet," said Jules, in an entreating tone, "for I shall be very glad to give it to you, if ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... Zeb looked doubtfully at Charley's leather shoes and heavy ulster. "You'd be findin' that coat a weary burden, and you'd be gettin' wonderful cold feet." ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... of yours, Sebalt," she cried to the kennel-keeper. "You are roasted enough by this time. Sit near the fire, monsieur le docteur; you must have very cold feet. Stretch out your ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... sedatives for headache, tissue paper to put down my back, little compress plasters to put on my diaphragm, and waterproof cork soles for my shoes, for it appeared that above all things I must not have cold feet. Oh, how droll and amusing it all was! I took everything, paid attention to all the recommendations, and believed everything ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... deal of time, through all of which poor Beverly was fretting and fuming and stamping his cold feet in the passage, hearing the occasional questions of his sister, uttered with thunder tone in the "setting-room" above, but hearing no word of the ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... had what Harriet callth 'cold feet.' Then I gueth I didn't feel much of anything till I felt mythelf thitting in the thand with thome of me dry and thome of me wet, and Harriet trying to drag me out ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... thought they were Cats, and so she was afraid. For she was very lightly clad; and (except in Egypt) Cats are terrible to undomesticated goddesses. Diana shivered as she strung her bow for defense. She felt that she was divine, but she knew that she had cold feet. ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... terribly cold for them, sleeping in an igloo, without fire or blankets, merely a shelter from the wind, and forced, as they were, to sleep in their clothes. I have had such experience and know what it is. In such cases one suffers more from cold feet than anything else. They would be intensely cold with dry stockings, but one's stockings are always wet from perspiration after walking, and when compelled to wear them at ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... can say is," said Queenie, "that if you don't go out I shall give you up. I've no use for men with cold feet." ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... result of cold feet, or a surface chill. Simple methods of relief are, to hold the breath, to expire, or blow the breath out as long as possible before taking the next breath; to sip water from a cup held by another person while the tips of the two ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... announces that he ain't goin' to have any cops campin' around in the directors' room. It was all blithering nonsense! Hadn't he lived through all sorts of warnin's before? And he'd be eternally blim-scuttled if he was goin' to get cold feet over ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... suppose, you have an odd case of a transference of something that was happening in the brain to the extremities. My feet were quite warm to the palm of my hand, but to my sense they were frozen. But what a testimony to the fitness of the American idiom, "cold feet," as signifying a depressed and desponding mood! But, somehow or other, the tale was finished and the "notion" was at last out of my head. I have gone into all this detail about "A Fragment of Life" because I have been assured in many quarters that it is the best ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... some sort of death-bed scene like is announced in the small bills. We've been playin' it low down on them two folks, and for one, I wish't I was out of it. Pinto, this here particular trusted henchman has shore got cold feet right here." ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... not tired—of you taking money away from us. And now when we've all got a hunch that you are going to lose you get cold feet.") ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... saintly image, carven out of stone, With my smile, as to stir you heart from its icy rest, Or win a tender glance from your royal eyes, Ione; But your sad smile lures me on, as toward some fatal rock Is the fond wave drawn, but to break with passionate moan. Break! to be spurned from its cold feet with a stony shock, As you would spurn my suppliant heart from ...
— Poems • Marietta Holley
... transfer the seat of government to Bordeaux, the Spanish Ambassador, Marquis de Villa Urrutia, was about to quit Paris with President Poincar, but the King of Spain wished his representative to remain in Paris. The marquis, however, to use an American expression, got "cold feet" and expressed a wish to go to Bordeaux. When this news reached King Alfonso, it so happened that Lieutenant-general de los Monteros, Marquis de Valtierra, Captain-general of Northern Spain at Burgos and San ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... command. "You don't want to get cold feet before you start. If you do accidentally forget once or twice, don't worry. I know the piece as well as you do, and I can prompt you from behind without any one noticing it. At first it made me awfully cross when they wanted ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... who, at the time of his marriage, had considered himself fairly well able to meet all current demands on his purse, and even to retire and live in reasonable comfort on what he had managed to put away, got cold feet as soon as he realised that he was a father. The first cry from Tommy junior brought the cold sweat to the brow of the auctioneer, who was sitting in his home "den" awaiting news from his wife's room. He stole softly downstairs and made his way to the verandah, in the belief that some of ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... lighter than No. 1; for small women it is the best in size, for use over the stomach and bowels, the limbs, and for cold feet. ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon
... "Cold feet," she jeered, but with a smiling face. "All you have to do is ask him. All he can do is say no. And what if he does? You faced the Chicago Terror ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... of my hands and haul, will you, Pashy?" he pleaded. "That's it; pull hard! It's gittin' sort of muggy in behind here. I'll never complain at havin' cold feet ag'in if I git out of this. Now, then! ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... off her hood and shawl in silence, untied her wet shoes, and placed her cold feet on the clean, warm stove-hearth; took in the brightness of the room, the shiny candlesticks, the neatly-spread tea-table; took whiffs of the steaming tea,—all in utter silence; only, when Kitty's father, looking out, said, "There's been business done here since you went away," something in her ...
— Tip Lewis and His Lamp • Pansy (aka Isabella Alden)
... put often into hot water, they will become habitually cold, and make one more or less delicate and nervous. On the other hand, by rubbing the feet often in cold water, they will become permanently warm. A cold foot-bath will stop a violent fit of hysterics. Cold feet show defective circulation. ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... a man who made jokes about cold feet and yellow streaks and the chances of death and the like and laughed at his own jokes. But there was a quiver of barely checked hysteria in his laughing and his eyes shone like the eyes of a man in a fever and the sweat kept popping out in little ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... yourself! Then Union Pacific fell off an eighth; they killed an insurrecto in Mexico; the third secretary of a second-rate life-insurance company died and Wall Street put crape on the door. All your friends got cold feet and it was the other fellow who had urged you to buy that property. The colonel says you dropped a hundred and twenty-five thousand. That's a stiff option. Can't you get any ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... terribly," he said. "I'm sorry." Then he rose from his seat, took his cap from the table, and went into the night. The fellows crowded up to the fire to warm their cold feet and talk it over. Mr. Allen was firm in his belief that Sleepy had good stuff in him, and he believed they were going to ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... character arrived, their heads covered with thin shawls or calico sun shades. They stand there in the chilly morning wind that blows through the valley along the mountains, patiently waiting their turn at the provision table, making no complaint of cold feet and chilled bodies. In the line are people who, ten days ago, had sufficient of this world's goods to enable them to live comfortably the remainder of their lives. ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... us down!" he said between his teeth. "They're scared; they've got cold feet—they're going to quit. Shluker and Pinkie were with me at the iron plant. We went back to Matty's from there. Matty's with them, too. They say the Pug knows every one of us, and every game we've pulled, and that in revenge for ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... "I'll get cold feet if I listen to you long," laughed yearling Holmes grimly. "I wonder if I'd better pull these gloves off and ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... serious-minded sort of fool. Had great veneration for 'his juty.' No real knowledge of the Criminal Code, and minus common sense, yet begad! the silly beggar tried to be more regimental that the blooming Force is itself. I systematically put the wind up to him 'till he got cold feet and quit." ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... ventured Bandy-legs, a minute later. "He acts like he was trying to see if the bridge was steady, the way he's trying to shake it. Bet you he feels that quivering, and it's giving him a bad case of cold feet already. They went and dared him to come out here, and Shack never would stand for a dare, you know. But he's ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... ever before listen to sech folly! I suppose he takes that gun I has as threats! I'm a onprotected young female, an' nacherally, when I embarks on this yere elopement, I packs one of paw's guns. Besides, this sweetheart of mine might get cold feet, an' try to jump the game, an' then I'd need said weepon to make good my p'sition. But it's never meant for that pastor! When I'm talkin' to him to prevail on him to come along, an' that gun in my hand at the ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... a deal of patience, with oftentimes cold feet and chattering teeth; but, attended to faithfully and patiently, is quite as successful as chasing a deer all day on tracking snow, while it can be practiced when the leaves are dry and no other mode of still hunting offers the ghost of a chance. When ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... hard-faced mistress sat, smoothing the wrinkled sheet, Peering into the face, so helpless, and feeling the ice-cold feet. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... . get busy!' I says to myself. 'You can kid along with a bunch of bums, 'n' it sounds good—don't get cold feet the first time some class opens his bazoo at you!' But I can't make a noise like a word, on ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... consternation till they got close enough to see what has happened. The pull over sea ice was very heavy and in face of strong wind and drift. Every member of the party was frostbitten about the face, several with very cold feet. Pushed on after repairs. Found drift streaming off the ice cliff, a new cornice formed and our rope buried at both ends. The party getting cold, I decided to camp, have tea, and shift foot gear. ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... 'em they come in a tilt with the'r hats in the'r hands. I never lived before, it seems to me, an' I care less than I ever did about the future state. This is good enough for me. If it will just go at the present pace all the time, I won't care to git cold feet an' retire to a ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... he would have made the finest soldier of the lot of us," added Wagstaffe. "You remember his remark to me, that we only had the bye to play now? He was a true prophet: we are dormy, anyhow. (Only cold feet at Home can let us down now.) And he only saw three months' service! Still, he made a great exit from this world, Bobby, and that is the only thing that matters in these days. Ha! H'm! As our new Allies would say, ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... by this time so thoroughly embarrassed that I pled cold feet, and made my escape from the apartment. It was a furious windy morning, with a sky much cleared, and long and potent intervals of sunshine; and I wandered until dinner in the wild country towards the east, sorely staggered ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Edwin was disturbed in his studies by a greater than the paper boy, a greater even than his father. Mr Osmond Orgreave came stamping his cold feet into the shop, the floor of which was still a little damp from the watering that preceded its sweeping. Mr Orgreave, though as far as Edwin knew he had never been in the shop before, went straight to the coke-stove, bent his knees, and began to ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... there on that platform all alone—not a soul with him, because these two dubs that ought to be standing by him, they've got cold feet already. And he'll be up there all alone, except for a pitcher of cold water and a glass, and a table and a chair; and he'll begin to spout. I dunno whether he c'n talk or not; but we'll let him run on for maybe ten minutes, and about the time he thinks he's making a hit ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... assures us in one of the little human touches with which his chronicle abounds. When Eskild was going away to end his days as a monk in the monastery of Clairvaux, he rested awhile with Absalon at his castle Haffn, where he was received as a father. The old man suffered greatly from cold feet, and Absalon made a box with many little holes in, and put a hot brick in it. With this at his feet, Eskild was able to sleep, and he was very grateful to Absalon, both because of the comfort it gave him and "because that he perceived that filial piety rather than skill ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... engaged, and an expert calculator was summoned to give an estimate of the cost of such an undertaking. The estimate was placed at $75,000.00. This enlightenment gave the community a volcanic eruption; an epidemic of "cold feet" took possession of them, and they retired to warm these extremities at their respective air-tight heaters. In the meantime the commissioners had guaranteed payment to the experts whom they had engaged, and their personal notes were urgently requested. The expenses ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... cried, impatiently. "The little fool! An attack of cold feet, I guess—he ought to spell his name with ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo |
