"Coward" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Sterett, as he ag'in refreshes himse'f, 'it's needless to go over that hunt in detail. We hustles the flyin' demon full eighteen miles, our faithful dogs crowdin' close an' breathless at his coward heels. Still, they don't catch up with him; he streaks ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... is a noble passage. The difference between the conduct of the brave man and that of the coward is drawn ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... the combined attack of Jarrick and myself, was maintaining the argument. "There is no such thing as instinctive bravery," he affirmed, for the fifth time at least, "amongst intelligent men. Every one of us is naturally a coward. Of course we are. The more imagination we've got the more we can realize how pleasant life is, after all, and how rotten the adjuncts of sudden death. It's reason that does the trick—reason and tradition. Do you know of any one who ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... heart, or of our conscience, as the case may be, and will not let go its hold. And then the heart and the conscience run out continually and lay hold of the future evil and carry it home to our terrified bosoms. We apprehend the coming evil, and feel it long before it comes. We die, like the coward, ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... of these pranks, or she would feel as you do; and I hope every one here will be kind enough not to tell her. It would only be making her anxious to no purpose, whenever the boy is out of her sight. It would be a pity to make a coward of him; and I think I can teach him what is mischief, and what is not, without disturbing her. Come, ladies, suppose you rest yourselves here; you will find a pleasant seat on this bank: at least, I fell asleep on it just now, as if I had been ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... brother; and then, oh, the little sister was almost more than he could bear, and the mother had to whisper, 'Remember your promise to your father, to your dead father.' The mother laid her head on the block, but he could not strike. 'Be not the first coward of our name, strike; remember your promise to us all,' and ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... call me a coward, but I'll never let you count me a mean, miserly rascal," and the cheque with Drumsheugh's painful writing fell in fifty ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... sleep with the repressed hatreds of the submerged waiting their appointed season? And while new worlds flew flaming from the wheel of creation, and old ones died in an eye's twinkling, did not the race dream on contemptuous of the changes which lurked in the restless heavens? Yes, the meanest coward in existence had his innate courage and there was a note of bravery in life on ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... repeated incessant litanies, having no ears for his torrent of invective, having no eyes for his writhings and threats, he had no longer the courage to perpetrate this dark deed. After the first fury of his rage had passed, he could not bring himself to it, and quitted the room like a coward and a man taken in crime, stung to the quick by those prayers continuously said for the monk. The night was passed in ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... know anything from a liar? From what you tell me I know nothing. I have to gather what I can from your character. I see that you are a coward. It is that man that came to you, and who is your master, that has forced you to this. Between me and him you tremble, and are a thing to be pitied. As for knowing what you would be at, from anything ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... no doubt we were ambushed at several points in that defile, but our perfect preparation intimidated our foes. The Indian is cruel as the grave, but he is an arrant coward. He will not risk being the first man shot, though his band ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... town with Mary, taking long horseback rides with her, and going to see her whenever he pleases, I don't know how I keep from killing him. He isn't fit to be in the same town with her. I know the man, went to school with him. He's a cad and a coward and a big fat fool. He has some money— that is, his father has—and a smearing of education, but he's coarse and common and not to be trusted. Van Orm was a gentleman at least, ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... imagination!" replied La Corriveau; "your sickly conscience frightens you! You will need to cast off both to rid Beaumanoir of the presence of your rival! The aqua tofana in the hands of a coward is a gift as fatal to its possessor as to ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... before he has entirely lost his independence, his ideas and feelings have undergone a transformation, and the transformation is so profound as to change the miser into a spendthrift, the sceptic into a believer, the honest man into a criminal, and the coward into a hero. The renunciation of all its privileges which the nobility voted in a moment of enthusiasm during the celebrated night of August 4, 1789, would certainly never have been consented to by any of ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... serious part in anything so foolish as trivial matters of that kind. I now learned for the first time what the prevalent opinion was about these much-maligned occurrences in Germany, and I was in a position to defend my poor friend Rockel, who had been branded as a coward, and to put not only his conduct but also my own in a different light to that in which it had been regarded hitherto even by Hermann Franck, who afterwards expressed his sincere regret that ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... rose to his feet. He wiped the blood from his face, and then seemed undecided what to do. He struck no blow, but spoke in tones loud enough for the watchers to hear him plainly. "I might have expected this," he said. "It was a coward's blow, the kind of blow such as you always strike. But, remember, I always pay my debts—always, even to the uttermost farthing." Then he walked away ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... comfort came to him in swearing to himself that he would stand by that boy through thick and thin, and cheer him, and help him, and bear his burdens, for the good deed done that night. Then he resolved to write home next day and tell his mother all, and what a coward her son had been. And then peace came to him as he resolved, lastly, to bear his testimony next morning. The morning would be harder than the night to begin with, but he felt that he could not afford to let one chance slip. Several times he faltered, for the devil showed him, first, all ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... interruptingly answered: "Yea, forsooth,[34] I may be called a coward and a man of no worth, if now I yield to thee in everything, whatever thou mayest say. Enjoin these things to other men; for dictate not to me, for I think that I shall no longer obey thee. But another thing will I tell thee, and do thou ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... nakedness and hunger garbs himself in clean linen and develops the round of his belly. He is a bloodsucker and a vampire. He lays unholy hands on heaven and hell at cent. per cent., and his very existence is a sacrilege and a blasphemy. And yet here am I, wilting before him, an arrant coward, with no respect for him and less for myself. Why should this shame be? Let me rouse in my strength and smite him, and, by so doing, wipe clean ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... denounce himself and bear the penalty. How could he exist with the knowledge that he was under the ban of the gods? His life would be a curse rather than a gift under such circumstances. Physically, Chebron was not a coward, but he had not the toughness of mental fibre which enables some men to bear almost unmoved misfortunes which would crush others to the ground. As to the comforting assurances of Amuba and Jethro, they failed to give him the slightest consolation. He loved Amuba ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... dignity of truth. What is not false, amid the scurrility of this man's statements, it is not in my nature to brand as false, although oozing from the filthy lips of which a lie is the only natural language. The errors and frailties which I deplore, it cannot at least be asserted that I have been the coward to deny. Never, even, have I made attempt at extenuating a weakness which is (or, by the blessing of God, was) a calamity, although those who did not know me intimately had little reason to regard it otherwise than a crime. For, indeed, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... to her first marriage. He was the London representative of a big Pennsylvania manufacturing concern. He was ambitious, unscrupulous and clever beyond conception. He still is all of these and more, for he is now a coward. ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... the new name they're calling us and it's not complimentary. 'Canwanka' means coward. First we were women, then worms and now cowards, because we won't give up the aid of our fortifications and allow ourselves to be overpowered by the Sioux numbers. Do you hear anything among the cottonwoods on the ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... seemed to stand still. A chill passed along his spine and through his hair; he felt the blood forsake his cheeks. He could not have cried out—not to save his life; but being a man of courage he would not, to save his life, have done so if he had been able. Some trepidation his coward body might feel, but his spirit was of sterner stuff. Slowly the shining eyes rose with a steady motion that seemed an approach, and slowly rose Brading's right hand, holding the pistol. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... teacupful o' water down the nape o' my breeches when I'd got ha'f-way up the hill an' cudn' set the barrow down to fight 'un—the coward! Boo-hoo!" and tears ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... such a coward. I must have been terrible yesterday. I—I almost struck you. And you were certainly brave when the whip hung over you. Why, you did not even attempt to raise a ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... Coryston is in the chair or not—I regard him as merely Glenwilliam's cat's-paw—but if you let this meeting at Martover pass, you will have weakened your position in this constituency, you will have disheartened your supporters, you will have played the coward—and you will have left your mother disgracefully in the lurch—though that latter point I can see doesn't move you ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... studied the manuscripts hidden away in the old monasteries of Armenia and Syria, believes that the Saviour of the world ever condescended to 'pun' on the word Petrus, and say, 'On this Rock (or stone) I will build my Church,' when He already knew that He had to deal with a coward ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... they will not have yet caught you lying often enough to suspect that you are not the unworldly and scrupulously truthful person which you represent yourself to be; nor yet will they know how great a coward you are, nor how soon you will run away, if they fight you with persistency and judgement. You keep the dice and throw them both for your children and yourself. Load them then, for you can easily manage to stop your children from examining them. Tell them how ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... was ruinous to the vanquished. They were exterminated, and Riulph, their leader, was captured, and blinded by William's orders. It is supposed he died under the operation. William's cruelty is attributed to his earlier cowardice, and it is an old saw that no one is so cruel as a victorious coward; but cruelty was not so uncommon a thing in the year 933 that there should be any necessity for attributing the Norman's savageness to the reaction from fear. He probably had called his cowardice caution. His success settled the character of Normandy, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... have thought you'd be such a coward? It's all over now, and we can't go away all of a sudden like this, even if we wanted to, and I don't. I want to stop and see what will happen next, and ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... coward? You think so? But I was no coward when I dared to show myself around here, where I had had to suffer as I did.—But can you tell what makes one suffer most while in there?— It is that the others are not in ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... Committee which had been formed for the celebration of Liszt's Artist-Jubilee in November 1873 at Budapest, had in their name invited Liszt to take part in this.] Nevertheless I could not suit myself to the role of a coward; I will therefore endeavor to surmount my fear and to make myself worthy to share with my brave compatriots in the joy they ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... Uncas, in the music of the Delawares; "the tumbling river washes their bones; their men are squaws: their women owls. Go! call together the Huron dogs, that they may look upon a warrior, My nostrils are offended; they scent the blood of a coward." ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... blow of a sledge-hammer could not have been more crushing in its effect on the Colonel than were the words of the leader; he was completely silenced. Greatly to his credit, however, he stood his ground. He was no coward, for he had faced death and been wounded more than once in his younger days on the field of battle, and had he possessed a weapon at the moment, he would have snuffed out the leader's life as deliberately as he would have blown out the light ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... well with whom he had to deal; he knew if he met Aphiz, as he proposed, there would be a chance for his life, but if he failed him, he feared the unerring aim of his rifle. He was no coward—both of them had faced the enemy together, but he lacked the moral courage that is far more sustaining than mere dogged bravery, or contempt for immediate danger. Thus influence, at ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... the oath to find the Tower! That was ten years ago. The frank, manly young knight stepped forth, and declared proudly that he dared do all that might become a man. But he had some awful experience in the course of the quest that changed him from the soul of honor to a whimpering coward. His own companions spat upon ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... in Hans, "don't tell me that things are so and that we are really alive in what your honoured father used to call this gourd full of tears. Don't tell me, Baas, that I made a coward of myself and swallowed that beastliness—if you knew what it was made of you would understand, Baas—for nothing but a bad headache. Don't tell me that Dogeetah came when my eyes were not open to see him, and worst of all, that Imbozwi and his children were tied to those poles when I was not able ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... to his feet, a shattered man no more. His abject mien fell from him like a garment. "Did I not say it was a lie?" he muttered, fiercely. "Greta, I am ashamed," he said; "your courage disgraces me. See what a pitiful coward you have taken for your husband. You have witnessed a strange weakness. But it has been for the last time. Thank God, I am now the man ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... always said that Michael Pendean was a 'shirker' and a coward. He also assured me that he had done with his niece and should never forgive her for marrying her husband. But that was before Bob went to Princetown, six days ago. From there he wrote quite a different story. He had met them by chance and he found that Mr. Pendean had not shirked but done good work ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... but I will not willingly break it. My heart is no longer in the enterprise. I shall be ashamed to look my neighbours in the face. I shall fear their glances and despise myself. When the pinch comes, I may turn coward and do nothing. The whisper of conscience is more terrible than the roar of a lion. What will it avail you to look for help to such a ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... miseries, thought, I, is now made up; nor is it in the power of anything on earth to give me another pang. Yet another awaited me. My eldest son, George, to whom I had written, went to Thornhill Castle to punish our betrayer; he was attacked by the coward's servants, injured one of them, and was brought into the very prison where I ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... Imperial government, and every body employed by it; calling the Emperor a Turkish despot, a sultan, &c., and Jose Bonifacio a tyrannic vizier. Lord Cochrane, of course, does not escape; and to all old calumnies against him, they now add that he is a coward, for which agreeable compliments they are likely to pay dearly I should think. The Supplement to the Idade d'Ouro of the 25th of April gives lists of the two squadrons, drawn up for the purpose ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... topped by the boulder-cairn. He smiled. What an easy solution of the problem! He had been too intent upon gratifying her last desire to entertain for a moment the thought of suicide. He had always held self-destruction as the last resource of the coward and the criminal, and besides there was ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Samuel made no reply to this. Somehow it seemed the most unworthy thing that his friend had said yet. It meant that Dr. Vince was a coward! ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... would be safer than acting with you in the Fatal Conspiracy. But away, play your own part, and look after the horses like a groom as you are. A play-actor—a stage-player!" he repeated to himself; "that would have deserved a stab, but that Craigengelt's a coward. And yet I should like the profession well enough. Stay, let me see; ay, I would come ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... you," he said heartily. "But there are certain matters which you will have to be told. Brocky Lane has been shot down by one of Jim Galloway's crowd. It was a coward's job done by a man who would run a hundred miles rather than meet Brocky in the open. And now the thing which we don't want known is that Lane even so much as set foot on Mt. Temple. We don't want it known that he was anywhere but on Las ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... Bob Buckley had kept his secret, since these men, for two years his side comrades in countless border raids and dangers, thus spake of him, not knowing that he was the most arrant physical coward in all that Rio Bravo country! Neither his friends nor his enemies had suspected him of aught else than the finest courage. It was purely a physical cowardice, and only by an extreme, grim effort of will had he forced ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... life, a stanch friend, a fond husband, a devoted father, as useful a member of society as you might find in a day's journey, and obnoxious only to political opponents, who fear him more than he dislikes them, is called a 'liar,' a 'coward,' and a 'heartless ruffian.' He is nothing of the kind; he is proudly conscious of this fact; his accusers do not even believe it; the world—that portion of it in which he moves—is satisfied that he is a remarkable instance of truth, of ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... do what you like," answered the Prince, who was no coward and had recovered from his astonishment. "You have bewitched the Princess Pansy, and I mean to hide you where no one will be able to ...
— All the Way to Fairyland - Fairy Stories • Evelyn Sharp
... his auditors, turned and saw who was coming. Bannon noted with satisfaction the scared look of appeal which he turned, for a second, toward the men. It was good to know that Grady was something of a coward. ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... fellow-soldiers, the sound of the triumphant bells, was plunged all at once into the indolence, the intrigues, the busy nothingness of the Court, in which whispering favourites surrounded a foolish young prince, beguiling him into foolish amusements, alarming him with coward fears. Wise men and buffoons alike dragged him down into that paltry abyss, the one always counselling caution, the other inventing amusements. "Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die." Was it worth while to lose everything ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... coward, dost thou forever pip and whimper, and go cowering and trembling? Despicable biped!... Hast thou not a heart; canst thou not suffer whatsoever it be; and, as a Child of Freedom, though outcast, trample Tophet ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... memorable bonds of sympathy. He took the allegiance of his followers and the penalties of his masters in equal good part. He was not the boy to glory in his scrapes, but he was the boy to get into them, and once in, no fear of punishment could make a tell-tale, a cheat, or a coward of him. ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... was not raised one tone, but the tent vibrated with the passionate words. "Are you such a coward that you run away at the first hurt? When the ball struck you in the face at Lords, did you retire—hurt? No; you stuck it, and scored a century! Are you such a dullard that you cannot read beneath a woman's yes and no? Love! Do you know what love means? What ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... you disgrace me? Would you wish me to bear the name of a coward? Would you want my father to turn me out of the house? Would you want my own faction to put their feet upon me, an' drive me ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... of Argyle grew ghastly pale, And he turned his eyes away. The painted harlot by his side, She shook through every limb, For a roar like thunder swept the street, And hands were clenched at him; And a Saxon soldier cried aloud, "Back, coward, from thy place! For seven long years thou hast not dared To look ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... his seat with a pale face, and a death-like sinking at his heart. "Yes, Lord Jesus," he uttered with dry lips, "I am at Thy command. Forgive my coward halting. If Thou wilt send me, ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... that Comet came home, in disgrace—a gun-shy dog, a coward, expelled from college, not for some youthful prank, but because he was—yellow. And he knew he was disgraced. He saw it in the face of the big man, Devant, who looked at him in the yard where he had spent his happy puppyhood, then turned away. He knew it because ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... world, by his photograph, that he was no monstrous freak of reversion to the tiger, but a good looking young man with nothing abnormal about him except his appalling courage and resolution (that is why the terrified shriek Coward at him): one to whom murdering a happy young couple on their wedding morning would have been an unthinkably unnatural abomination under ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... myself have stood. Where there was discontent, I see contentment; where there was turbulence, I see peace, where there was disloyalty, I see loyalty." Then the fury of party anger burst upon him, and bowing to the storm, Robert Peel went forth while men hissed after him such words as "traitor," "coward," "recreant leader." Nor did he foresee that in losing an office he had gained ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... deal to do, you know. I don't know whether it can be Thursday week.' He was putting in the coward's ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... Ferdinando, "if it were my turn next! I must own, that though I should consider myself to be affronted if I were told that I were faint-hearted,—though I should know myself to be maligned if it were said of me that I have a coward's fear of death,—still I should feel far from comfortable if that age came upon me which this system has defined, and were I to live in a country in which it has prevailed. Though I trust that I may be able to meet death like a brave man when it may come, still I should ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... the Toy Soldier slipped out of his hand and fell into a scrap basket. He knew very well that he couldn't stay with a child who was a coward. ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... to the fork, I fled out the great horizontal limb. He followed me, and out I went, farther and farther. At last I was out amongst the small twigs and leaves. The Chatterer was ever a coward, and greater always than any anger he ever worked up was his caution. He was afraid to follow me out amongst the leaves and twigs. For that matter, his greater weight would have crashed him through the foliage before he could have ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... esteem it disgraceful in the highest degree to relinquish these sacred repositories. The man that would refuse to take the field in defence of these hereditary possessions, is regarded by them as a coward, and treated as an outcast from their nation. To the over-hill villages the French had an easy access by means of rivers that emptied themselves into the Ohio and Mississippi. Their middle settlements and towns in the ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... thing for a boy to have said to him, and before all these people too! To ask a chap to do a noble deed and in the same breath to tell him he is a coward! ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... looked upon each other. Long and long they looked, and the heart of each was elated. "I comprehend," Demetrios said. He clapped spurs to his horse and fled as a coward would have fled. This was one occasion in his life when he overcame his pride, and should in ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... is standing back from him, her small flower-like head uplifted, her eyes on fire. "Oh, coward!" cries she. "You do right to speak to me like this—to me, who have no one to ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... Field's room the night the adjutant was so mysteriously missing. The note itself was held forth by the inspector general and she was asked if she cared to have it opened and read aloud. Her answer was that Field was a coward, a dastard to betray a ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... of character, and in the expressions of our opinion respecting it, to realize the meaning of courage and manliness. That sententious Swedish Queen, one of whose foolish maxims I have quoted, has said that Cicero, though a coward, was capable of great actions, because she did not know what a coward was. To doubt—to tremble with anxiety—to vacillate hither and thither between this course and the other as to which may be the better—to complain within one's own breast that this or that thing has been an injustice—to ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... a coward, but you are innocent, eh? And it is that that I love you for. I love you more than my life, and you love your little girl, don't you? I am all yours. You are my only love. ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... very dastard, a coward, a block and a beast, that will not do as much, but they will sure, they will; for it is an ordinary thing for these inamoratos of our time to say and do more, to stab their arms, carouse in blood, [5448]or as that Thessalian Thero, that bit off his ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... his coffee down and yelled for more. It was obvious he'd spent the night without sleep. "So we're going to need men with guts. Gordon, you had training under Murdoch—who knew his business. And you aren't a coward, as most of these fat fools are. I've got ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... Act? That is the situation I have endeavored to portray. Macbeth, wretched criminal, suspects every one of his own dark purposes, or fears their hatred, because he feels himself hateful. He is not a coward, either physically or morally; his fears are all intellectual; he knows that Banquo is too noble to serve him, too powerful to be permitted to serve against him,—so he must out of the way. The murderers have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... confounded, the fiercer was his resentment when he came to himself. Such hatred never existed in a human bosom without marking its progress with violence and death. Mr. Tyrrel, however, felt no inclination to have recourse to personal defiance. He was the furthest in the world from a coward; but his genius sunk before the genius of Falkland. He left his vengeance to the disposal of circumstances. He was secure that his animosity would never be forgotten nor diminished by the interposition of any time or events. Vengeance ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... terrible lion, whom bloody rage hurries through the midst of slaughter. It is sweet and glorious to die for one's country; death even pursues the man that flies from him; nor does he spare the trembling knees of effeminate youth, nor the coward back. Virtue, unknowing of base repulse, shines with immaculate honors; nor does she assume nor lay aside the ensigns of her dignity, at the veering of the popular air. Virtue, throwing open heaven to those who deserve not to die, ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... distant danger for the sake of an adequate reward. But this courage was supported and fed solely by the self-persuasion of consummate genius, and his profound confidence both in his good fortune and the inexhaustibility of his resources. Physically he was a coward! immediate peril to be confronted by the person, not the mind, had ever appalled him like a child. He had never dared to back a spirited horse. He had been known to remain for days in an obscure ale-house in the country, to which a shower had accidentally driven him, because it had been ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... coward in the minds of those who were left, and losing heart they turned to those subtle and cunning devices that had never before failed in their attacks on mankind. Their great endeavour now was to inveigle Monkey into a position where certain destruction would be ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... was an absurd hope? The fact is, Victor, I have been a coward—a nervous, wretched coward from first to last. I shut my eyes to the truth. I feared you might fall in love with this girl, but I put the fear away from me. The time has come when the truth must be spoken, when my love for you can shield you ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... with fear. Not all kinds; for there are some things we ought to fear, such as dishonour and pauperism, the fear of which is compatible with dauntless courage, while the coward may not fear them. Fearlessness of what is in our control, and endurance of what is not, for the sake of true honour, constitute the courageous habit. Its excess is rashness or foolhardiness, the deficiency cowardice. Akin to it, but still spurious, ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... and most credited of which was that Davis had demanded from Nelson an apology for language used in the original altercation, and that Nelson's refusal was accompanied by a slap in the face, at the same moment denouncing Davis as a coward. However this may be, Nelson, after slapping Davis, moved toward the corridor, from which a stairway led to the second floor, and just as he was about to ascend, Davis fired with a pistol that he had obtained from some one near by after the blow had been struck. The ball entered Nelson's breast ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... if you think I can make you happy," one day when Margot Lorenzi had tearfully confessed her love for him, it would be doubly weak—worse than weak, Stephen thought—to throw her over now. It would look to the world as if he were a coward, and it would look to himself the same—which would be more painful in the end. So he could listen to no advice, and he wished to hear none. Fortunately he was not in love with any other woman. But then, if he had loved somebody else, he would not have made the ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... "a wondrous anxiety oppresses me. It seems to me I am in the presence of a sphinx, who is in the act of solving a great mystery! I am a coward, and would take refuge in flight, but curiosity binds me ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... slaves came into Bristol Harbour in the time of our fathers? I would have given L500 to have had you and the Anti-Slavery Society in Dara during the three days of doubt whether the slave-dealers would fight or not. A bad fort, a coward garrison, and not one who did not tremble—on the other side a strong, determined set of men accustomed to war, good shots, with two field-pieces. I would have liked to hear what you would all have said then. I do not say this in brag, for God knows ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... He jumped back, eyes widening, to face his oncoming opponent in an open space. He was no coward, that kid, and he knew how to handle a vibroblade. In his own unwise, suicidal way, he was perfectly capable of proving himself. He held out the point of that shimmering metal shaft, ready to parry any offensive thrust that Mike ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... somewhere to a cave, and slink there. And yet, 'tis a noble and heroic thing, the wind! who ever conquered it? In every fight it has the last and bitterest blow. Run tilting at it, and you but run through it. Ha! a coward wind that strikes stark naked men, but will not stand to receive a single blow. Even Ahab is a braver thing—a nobler thing than that. Would now the wind but had a body; but all the things that most ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... of his eyes broadened out to the circumference of his iris, and his limbs seemed to diminish as if endowed with the contractility peculiar to the mollusca and certain of the articulate; for Frycollin, the valet, was an egregious coward. ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... so; but I am too great a coward. Think of the shame that I should have to endure from my aunt, and all the world would taunt me with my folly and madness. I think it would kill what little good there is in me. For although I should be willing to suffer if I have done wrong, yet there would be no use in going where ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... it, Mr. Thorold," I said. "If anybody does wrong because he is afraid of the consequences of doing right, he is another sort of a coward—that is all." ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... juxtaposition in their conflict and contrast, struck the spark of comedy. Downright, as his name indicates, is "a plain squire"; Bobadill's humour is that of the braggart who is incidentally, and with delightfully comic effect, a coward; Brainworm's humour is the finding out of things to the end of fooling everybody: of course he is fooled in the end himself. But it was not Jonson's theories alone that made the success of "Every Man in His Humour." The play is admirably written and ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... silence that could be felt.... None offered an explanation that I could hear.... 'Why don't you answer?' thundered Gallipoli.... There was an unmistakable murmur.... 'Don't YOU try to slide out of this, you COWARD! I'll hold every one of you responsible for this! Where's my ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... I tell you!" A smile almost fiendish broke over the furrows of the rugged face. "You wouldn't dast shoot, unless perhaps it was a woman, you coward!" ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... (viz., the death of Drona)? Fight ye with faces turned towards every direction. Behold now the high-souled Karna, the son of Vikartana, that great bowman of mighty strength, careering in battle, using his celestial weapons! Through fear of that warrior in battle, that coward, viz., Dhananjaya, the son of Kunti, always turns back like a small deer at the sight of a lion! It is he who, by the ordinary methods of human battle, brought the mighty Bhimasena endued with the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... horrible eugenist, because he wants to get a super-man who, having more than two legs, will be a vastly superior person to a man. Chesterton loves men. He tells us why St. Peter was used to found the Church upon. It was because he 'was a shuffler, a coward, and a snob—in a word, a man.' Even the Thirty-Nine Articles and the Councils of Trent have failed to find a better reason for the founding of the Church. It is a defence of the fallibility of the Church, the practical nature of that Body, an organization ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... made a terrible bungle of his generalship, he was at least a brave man. Leaping into his chariot, and calling to the handful of faithful soldiers to follow him, he bade Menna lash his horses and charge the advancing Hittites. Menna was no coward, but when he saw the thin line of Egyptian troops, and looked at the dense mass of Hittite chariots, his heart almost failed him. He never thought of disobedience, but, as he stooped over his plunging horses, he panted to the King: "O mighty strength of Egypt in the ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Ancient Egypt • James Baikie
... Well.—Johnson comments, 'I cannot reconcile my heart to Bertram; a man noble without generosity, and young without truth; who married Helena as a coward, and leaves her as a profligate: when she is dead by his unkindness, sneaks home to a second marriage, is accused by a woman whom he has wronged, defends himself by falsehood, and is dismissed to happiness.' This is just. Bertram is atrocious. ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... Affront that nothing but Blood can expiate. The Reason perhaps may be, because no other Vice implies a want of Courage so much as the making of a Lie; and therefore telling a man he Lies, is touching him in the most sensible Part of Honour, and indirectly calling him a Coward. [I cannot omit under this Head what Herodotus tells us of the ancient Persians, That from the Age of five Years to twenty they instruct their Sons only in three things, to manage the Horse, to make use of the Bow, and to ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... purposes of spite, Pawns in the day, and butchers in the night; With that malignant envy which turns pale, And sickens, even if a friend prevail, Which merit and success pursues with hate, And damns the worth it cannot imitate; 130 With the cold caution of a coward's spleen, Which fears not guilt, but always seeks a screen, Which keeps this maxim ever in her view— What's basely done, should be done safely too; With that dull, rooted, callous impudence, Which, dead to shame and every nicer sense, Ne'er ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... said Jack softly, as he bent over the poor fellow and held his hand, "who could think you a coward for saving my life?" ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... it vanished when it was pointed out to her that it was really a sign of the Bride's infinite superiority.... So the three Houghtons accepted—one with amused pity, and the other with concern, and the third with admiration of such super-refinement,—the fact that Eleanor was a coward. Yet if she had not been a coward, something she did would not have been particularly brave, nor would it have wrung from Mary Houghton ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... a clout from the Boer — to plaster anew with dirt? An Irish liar's bandage, or an English coward's shirt? We may not speak of England; her Flag's to sell or share. What is the Flag of England? Winds ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... in his life. He had to escape regeneration. To do that, he was willing to take any chance, coward though he was—even if it meant that he ...
— Divinity • William Morrison
... Lucius Domitius, Roman Emperor; born 37; died 68; probably the most prominent type known of wickedness and cruelty, and, nevertheless, a coward. ...
— The Angel of Death • Johan Olof Wallin
... when alone in the crowded thoroughfare of travel, to have one's last bank-note declared a counterfeit. I knew I should not be able to see her face, under the shade of this disappointment; and so, coward that I was, I turned this trouble, where I have turned so many ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... resistance to their attack. I should have taken my death by almost rushing on the point of their terrible knives. But Moncrieff's calm earnest voice restored me in a moment. At its tones I felt raised up out of my coward self, and prepared to ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... cried. "I will not believe it. I will not yield to such things. I will not be coward enough to give up a friend for such ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... announced. All rose to meet her, and all looked at her with equal interest. She was calmer than on the previous day, and she carried a package of papers in her hand. Her red lips were compressed, and her eyes looked defiantly round upon all present. Whatever might be her faults, she was not a coward when brought face to face with danger. She was determined to carry the matter through, both because she knew that she had no other alternative, and because she believed herself to be doing a righteous act, which, at the same time, fully satisfied her desire ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... money had come to him, his pecuniary cares were comparatively light, and he believed that he could be very happy with Margaret and his children. But then to be pointed at daily as a lion, and to be asked by all his acquaintances after the lamb! It must be owned that he was a coward; but are not most men cowards in ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... on the impulse I made up that fib. I'm not sorry even now—I think. Yet I did mean to tell you, sooner or later, the truth. Honestly, I shouldn't have kept silence long if you hadn't found out. I'm not a coward when ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... enough of a coward. There is nothing cowardly about him. If Phineas Finn could have struck an enemy with a club, in a dark passage, behind his back, I will never care to speak to any man again. Nothing shall make me believe it. If I did, I could never again believe ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... am growing a coward," she said in a broken voice. "O Hamish, it does seem as though our troubles were too many and hard to ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... stone: Aloft the waking screech-owl 'gan to sing, And past him skim'd the bat with flapping wing. The fears of nature woke within his breast; He left the hallowed spot of Mary's rest, And sped his way the church-yard wall to gain, Then check'd his coward heart, and turn'd again. The shadows round a deeper horrour wear; A deeper silence hangs upon his ear; A stiller rest is o'er the settled scene; His flutt'ring heart recoils, and shrinks again. ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... place breathed out decay; the decay of humanity, of cleanliness, of the honest decencies of life turned foul. Something lethal exhaled from that dim doorway. There was a stab of pestilence, reaching for the brain. But the old charlatan was no coward. ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... it's the maple-tree," Ruth replied in a husky whisper. How she envied Amy. Amy frankly acknowledged to being a coward, and poor Ruth wished that she herself did not have a reputation for courage to sustain. For certainly that sound was not the whisper of the wind in the boughs of the maple. It was in the room, apparently at ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith |
