"Cowardice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... vanished altogether. Yet when she was quite dressed and her mirror bade her take courage she sat down and wrote a note of apology pleading a sudden indisposition. But she did not send it. Even in the writing her cowardice came home to her and she tore it up before she had signed her name. The wheels of the cab which was to take her to the big house rattled down the lane under her windows, and slipping her cloak over her shoulders she ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... the prince could raise no army capable of cutting its way through the great beleaguering force. In vain did they attempt to provoke or anger the Spaniards into renewing their attacks. Sorties were constantly made. The citizens gathered on the walls, and with shouts and taunts of cowardice challenged the Spaniards to come on; they even went to the length of dressing themselves in the vestments of the churches, and contemptuously carrying the sacred vessels in procession, in hopes of infuriating the Spaniards into an attack. But Don Frederick and his generals were ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... have insisted upon conferring a boon, which was not wanted; and how happened it, that Yankees, with all their acknowledged shrewdness in money matters, could never to this day perceive how they were protected by it? Yet New-England is reproached with cowardice and ingratitude to her Southern benefactors! If one man were to knock another down with a broad-axe, in the attempt to brush a fly from his face, and then blame him for not being sufficiently thankful, it ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... be intemperate and inconsistent Prudent man, when I imagine him in this posture Psalms of King David: promiscuous, indiscreet Public weal requires that men should betray, and lie Puerile simplicities of our children Pure cowardice that makes our belief so pliable Put us into a way of extending and diversifying difficulties Pyrrho's hog Quiet repose and a profound sleep without dreams Rage compelled to excuse itself by a pretence of good-will Rage it puts them to oppose silence and coldness to their fury Rash and incessant ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne
... and nearly every sentence that escaped their compressed grating, was commenced or concluded with some outburst of profanity. His presence made the field alike the field of blood, and of blasphemy. Hated for his cruelty, despised for his cowardice, his death was deplored by no one outside his own house—if indeed it was deplored there; it was regarded by the slaves as a merciful interposition of Providence. Never went there a man to the grave loaded with ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... made of the neglect showed to Jeremiah Markland, a great philologist, as some one ventured to call him. "He is a scholar, undoubtedly, sir," replied Dr. Johnson, "but remember that he would run from the world, and that it is not the world's business to run after him. I hate a fellow whom pride, or cowardice, or laziness drives into a corner, and does nothing when he is there but sit and growl; let him come out as I do, and bark. The world," added he, "is chiefly unjust and ungenerous in this, that all are ready to encourage a man who once talks of leaving it, and few things do really provoke ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... Administration at Washington, which it has already intimidated. Well may we exclaim, "Oh, for the courage of Roosevelt!" And whenever the country shall be in great anxiety or in direct peril from the cowardice of those who have sworn to defend its welfare and its integrity, that cry shall rise to the lips of ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... men rose a whimper of fear, and then another. You see, they were cold and hungry and some of them were wounded, and they were cut off from hope. It wasn't cowardice. I call no man a coward. They had faced death a thousand times, some of them. Yet there was danger in ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... period, it appears, the unfavourable news from the royal army, and the manifest cowardice, treason, and treachery, every where seeming to pervade the unhappy and devoted kingdom of Naples, plunged the excellent queen into an agony of grief which admitted not of consolation. "None, from this ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... the value was never paid from the revenues of Hanover. The motion was hunted down by the new ministry, the patriot lord Bathurst, and the earl of Bath, which last nobleman declared, that he considered it as an act of cowardice and meanness, to fall passively down the stream of popularity, to suffer his reason and integrity to be overborne by the noise of vulgar clamours, which had been raised against the measures of government by the low arts of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... indeed always of mixed kind, their honesty being more or less corrupted by the various weaknesses of the painter, by his vanity, his idleness, or his cowardice; (the fear of doing right has far more influence on art than is commonly thought,) that only is altogether to be rejected which is altogether vain, idle, and cowardly. Of the rest the rank is to be estimated rather by the purity of their metal than the coined ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... Father," said Wislac, "and why I cannot, save for sheer cowardice, I know not, having been brought up on Thames side, and never daring to go ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... of Chilaw, writes to me that "the Moors of Ceylon believe themselves to be of the posterity of Hashem; and, according to one tradition, their progenitors were driven from Arabia by Mahomet himself, as a punishment for their cowardice at the battle of Ohod. But according to another version, they fled from the tyranny of the Khalif Abu al Malek ben Merivan, in the early part of the eighth century. Their first settlement in India was formed at Kail-patam, to the east of Cape Comorin, whence that place is still ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... influence, that subtile contagion, finer than anything visible, ponderable, or tangible,—that effluence from eye, voice, tone, manner, which, according to the character which is behind, communicates an impulse of faith and courage, or an impulse of cowardice and untruth; which may be transmitted onward, forward, on every side, like the widening circles in a disturbed lake,—circles which meet and cross each other without disturbance, and whose influence may be ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... Certainly he should have talked to Agneta beforehand. But the fact was he had his cowardice, like other men, and he had been trusting to the girl herself, to this beauty he heard so much of, to soften the first shock of the matter to the present ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of seeing several men suffer, with various degrees of bravery and cowardice, and all variety of groans and contortions, Mole heard himself ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... Nay, if we wish to avoid anxiety we must avoid virtue itself, which necessarily involves some anxious thoughts in showing its loathing and abhorrence for the qualities which are opposite to itself—as kindness for ill-nature, self-control for licentiousness, courage for cowardice. Thus you may notice that it is the just who are most pained at injustice, the brave at cowardly actions, the temperate at depravity. It is then characteristic of a rightly ordered mind to be pleased at what is good and grieved at the reverse. Seeing then that the wise ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... steel. The artist's style, too, was then completely formed; and, for our parts, we should say that we preferred his manner of 1825 to any other which he has adopted since. The first picture, which is called "The Point of Honor," illustrates the old story of the officer who, on being accused of cowardice for refusing to fight a duel, came among his brother officers and flung a lighted grenade down upon the floor, before which his comrades fled ignominiously. This design is capital, and the outward rush of heroes, walking, trampling, twisting, scuffling at the door, ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to worth has been a willing stranger. The halter of Jerusalem shall see A unit for his virtue, for his vices No less a mark than million. He, who guards The isle of fire by old Anchises honour'd Shall find his avarice there and cowardice; And better to denote his littleness, The writing must be letters maim'd, that speak Much in a narrow space. All there shall know His uncle and his brother's filthy doings, Who so renown'd a nation and two crowns ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... his brother's action; but it had been done so long before—done on the spur of generous affection, and actuated by the strange hazard that made the keeping of a woman's secret demand the same reticence which also saved the young lad's name; to draw back from it now would have been a cowardice impossible ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... their hands. They wished to rule; but when they might, they were afraid. The commons were on their side, the moderate men, the party of law, the lovers of republican government, and for the most part the magistrates; but they shrank from their fortune, "more from cowardice than from goodness, because they exceedingly feared their adversaries." Boniface VIII had no prepossessions in Florence, except for energy and an open hand; the side which was most popular he would have accepted and backed. But he said, "Io non voglio perdere gli uomini perle ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... as we all gave a cry of horror and execration; 'do not dishearten our brave lads! Cowardice is catching and will run through an army like ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and that the end of all things had come. That day of Monmouth ever remained in his memory as the most awful and hopeless of his life. An ordinary defeat was nothing. But the American arms branded with cowardice, Washington ignobly deposed, inefficient commanders floundering for a few months before the Americans were become the laughing-stock of Europe,—the whole vision was so hideous, and the day so hopeless in the light of those cowardly hordes, that he galloped through the ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... were of the dearest importance; for they relieved his mind from a weight which had been oppressing it for some time, and set his heart at rest. Egan, it must be remarked, was an odd mixture of courage and cowardice: undaunted by personal danger, but strangely timorous where moral courage was required. A remarkable shyness, too, made him hesitate constantly in the utterance of a word which might explain away any difficulty in which he chanced to ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... Little Rock in custody. I also forwarded Colonel Cooper's letter to Richmond, with an indorsement, asking to withdraw my approval of General Pike's resignation, that I might bring him before a court-martial on charges of falsehood, cowardice, and treason. He was also liable to the penalties prescribed by section 29 of the act of Congress regulating intercourse with the Indians and to preserve peace on the frontiers, approved ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... dead was held not less contemptible in a samurai than the fear of man. The samurai child was pledged to fear nothing. In all such tests, the demeanor exacted was perfect impassiveness; any swaggering would have been judged quite as harshly as any sign of cowardice. ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... fourteen months. And indeed he was so weak that he could not stand to hear the sentence, and after having greeted the deputation that death sent to him, he asked to sit down, saying that he did so not from cowardice of soul but from weakness of body; then he added, "You are welcome, gentlemen; far I have suffered so much for fourteen months past that you come to me ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... spine, severing the backbone and killing the creature instantly. The other dog, apparently cowed by the death of its mates, stood motionless, in a crouching attitude, glaring at each man in turn, and seemingly undecided which to attack first; and its hesitation or cowardice was fatal. The two men fired almost together, one bullet drilling a hole in its skull, and the other smashing in at one side of its body and out at the other. It did not live long enough to raise even a whimper, but dropped dead where it stood, ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... the people lived, hating three things with all their hearts: idleness, want, and cowardice; and for the rest carrying their hearts high, and having their hands full. The[52] hour of rising, winter and summer, was four o'clock, with breakfast at five, after which the labourers went to work and the gentlemen to business, of which they had no little. In the ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... he called, poetry of his own; for, of course, our little hero was a poet. All the common usages of life, all the ways of the world, and all the customs of society, seemed to be quite unknown to him; add to these good qualities, a magnificent conceit, a cowardice inconceivable, and a face so irresistibly comic, that every one who first beheld it was compelled to burst out a-laughing, and you will have some notion of this strange little gentleman. He was very proud of his voice, and uttered all his sentences in the richest tragic tone. He was little better ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... from himself the horrible fact of his cowardice; he was thoroughly frightened! He would have run from the spot, but his legs refused their office; they gave way beneath him and he sat again upon the log, violently trembling. His face was wet, his whole body bathed in a chill perspiration. He could not even cry out. Distinctly he heard behind ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... sided with the Jews, before they fell away; and its but little matter what kind of men Joshua commanded, so that he was doing the right bidding. Aven them cursed millaishy, the Lord forgive me for swearing, that was the death of him, wid their cowardice, would have carried the day in old times. Theres no rason to be thinking that the soldiers were ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... have made your case, but you haven't. What you say is true enough; I wasn't afraid of drowning—didn't think much about it, either way, I guess. But what I say is true, also. There are many kinds of courage, and quite as many kinds of cowardice. I am a ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... from dat dar door!" bawled Washington. The black man was as timid as a fawn as a usual thing; but he was devoted to the old professor and he had that feeling of gratitude for Mr. Henderson that overcame his natural cowardice. When the Indians, without giving him a glance, rushed at the door, and a single shot from the half-opened window missed them by ten feet, Wash uttered another yell and sprang ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... Legislatures (see also Parliament), history of; to make new laws a modern conception; origin of representative; early, included all fighting men; annual sessions, history of; biennial or quadrennial sessions of; moral cowardice of; modern distrust of; sessions of limited. Legitimacy, common law as to. Lent, observation of, required by statute of James I. Levees on the Mississippi. Liability (see Corporation). Libel, and slander, legislation relating to; against government; modern statute abolishing law. Liberties, ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... house, guild and guild, but a united, not to say ferocious, esprit de corps against every one else. Fisticuffs and wrestlings were the amenities that passed between them, though always with a love of fair play so long as no cowardice, or what was looked on as such, was shown, for there was no mercy for the weak or weakly. Such had better betake themselves at once to the cloister, or life was made intolerable by constant jeers, blows, baiting and ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... are not afraid of me, which is a greater happiness than I had reason to expect, I think you may be amused to witness the fear of those who accuse your sex of cowardice. With your permission, I will send for the cook and steward, and inquire about ...
— The Three Cutters • Captain Frederick Marryat
... sir," the Collector broke in, "you have in the name of justice committed one damnable atrocity upon this child, and plead your cowardice as an excuse for committing another. Influential, am I? And you prate to me of not being affected by that? Very well; I'll take you at your word. This girl resisted your ruffian in the discharge of his duty? So did I just now, and with such effect ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... spite of all? She was great-hearted enough for anything. Perhaps for anything but that. To her, cowardice must be the last lowest depths of degradation. Anyhow he had done the straight thing by Grumper, in leaving the house without any attempt to let her know, to say farewell, to ask her to believe in him for a while. If there had been any question as to the propriety of his trying ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... cowardice. The man who cannot frankly acknowledge the "Jim-Crow" car as a fact and yet live and hope is simply afraid either of himself or of the world. There is not in the world a more disgraceful denial of human brotherhood than the "Jim-Crow" car of the southern United States; but, too, just ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... disciples. They gave him at the best a very feeble return for his great love for them. They were inconstant, weak, foolish, untrustful. They showed personal ambition, striving for first places, even at the Last Supper. They displayed jealousy, envy, narrowness, ingratitude, unbelief, cowardice. As these unlovely things appeared in the men Jesus had chosen, his friendship did not slacken or unloose its hold. He had taken them as his friends, and he trusted them wholly; he committed himself to them absolutely, without reserve, without condition, ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... meant it, but there was no cowardice in him; and the steel had already flashed in the sunlight to make good his threat, when she touched me ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... he had miscalculated the strength of his nerves. Albeit as brave a man as ever stepped, when his enemy was before him, Barney was, nevertheless, strongly imbued with superstitious feelings; and the conflict between his physical courage and his mental cowardice produced a species of wild exasperation, which, he often asserted, was very hard to bear. Scarcely had he resumed his work when a bat of enormous size brushed past his nose so noiselessly that it seemed more like a phantom ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... to say whether I was or not; but I am inclined to acquit myself of the charge of cowardice. My sensations were peculiar and rather unpleasant, I freely admit; but looking back upon them now in the light of long years of experience, I am disposed to attribute them entirely to nervous excitement. Hitherto my nostrils had never sniffed the odour of powder burned ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... consider it, seems first to correspond entirely to the popular view, that the wanderer carries over to the nighttime the activities of the day, or to speak more correctly, of the most important day of the last month. We saw in the first act how she reproaches Macbeth for his cowardice, encourages him and controls his actions. Only in two points, very significant ones to be sure, does it appear that she has now taken over her husband's rle upon herself; in the disturbance of her sleep ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... mysterious cavity to where the sloping sides were crusted with bright yellow sulphur, and listened to the mutterings which warned him of the pent-up wrath and power of the mighty volcano. They knew that at any moment flame and stifling sulphurous vapor might be belched forth, but now no cowardice was shown. They had come provided with ropes and baskets, and it only remained to see who should descend. Lots were therefore drawn, and it fell to Montano, who was accordingly lowered by his followers in a basket 400 feet into the treacherous region ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... have gone out to her husband in a rush of feeling. The battle would have been won for them both. The thing that had stung her pride and crushed her spirit was that he had not struck a blow for her. His cowardice had driven her to Jake Houck's arms because there was no other ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... occasion an opportune one for exploring caves, but to have withdrawn would have demanded a "moral courage," as people commonly say when they mean cowardice, which I did not possess. We stepped within a narrow crevice of the great cliff. Moore lit a lantern and went in advance; the negro followed with ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... interfere with the girl's chances by hanging about her to the obvious exclusion of other men, but it was worse to seem to justify his weakness by dressing up the future in delusive ambiguities. He saw himself sinking from depth to depth of sentimental cowardice in his reluctance to renounce his hold on her; and it filled him with self-disgust to think that the highest feeling of which he supposed himself capable was ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... they produce all sorts of diseases, more or fewer, and in every degree of intensity; and being carried to the three places of the soul, whichever they may severally assail, they create infinite varieties of ill-temper and melancholy, of rashness and cowardice, and also of forgetfulness and stupidity. Further, when to this evil constitution of body evil forms of government are added and evil discourses are uttered in private as well as in public, and no sort of instruction is given in ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... aviators (and in fact all German observers, such as infantry and cavalry patrols) make it a principle to avoid, if possible, any combat; this is, of course, interpreted as cowardice by the Allies, who seem eager for a fight on any terms. There is a distinct reluctance among aviators for engaging in aerial duels. As one French aviator said to me: "You are both killed and that does no one any good." This reluctance is fairly universal, ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... it shall be if her terms are not acceded to, will be the signal for his Majesty's overthrow. And, for the third"—emotion mastered him; his voice choked and failed; he deported himself for a moment like one afraid to let even his own ears hear the thing spoken of aloud, then governed his cowardice and went on—"For the third thing, monsieur," he said, lowering his tone until it was almost a whisper, "the recovery—the restoration to its place of honour before the coronation day arrives of that fateful gem, Mauravania's pride ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... statesmen and generals; in the Odyssey we are taught the maxims of private prudence and individual virtue, and the instances are applicable to all mankind: in both, Honesty, Veracity, and Fortitude are commended, and set up for imitation; in both, Treachery, Falsehood, and Cowardice are condemned, and exposed for our ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... It is, in its way, a test of character. You may have weathered adversity with credit. New York will see how you behave in prosperity. I often suspect the headline which says that So-and-So won't talk, to cover a good deal of moral cowardice. So-and-So has probably become afraid of the intoxicating fumes of publicity. Fame, he discovers, blended with the unfamiliar high-tension atmosphere of Manhattan Island, is heady stuff. He finds many of his old notions burst asunder amid ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... "It is not cowardice, sir," retorted Quintal. "I will join if others do. Try some one else. Try Martin there, ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... appalled at his impulsive act, sealing for ever these lips from which so much was to be extorted. What could he say? How could he explain? Ideas of headlong flight somewhere, anywhere, passed through his mind; even the craven and absurd notion of hiding under the table occurred to his cowardice. It was too late; his officers had rushed in tumultuously, in a great clatter of scabbards, clamouring, with astonishment and wonder. But since they did not immediately proceed to plunge their swords into his breast, the brazen side of his character asserted itself. Passing the sleeve of his ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... ways, the consuls at length said, "Conscript fathers, lest you may say that you were not forewarned, a great disturbance is at hand. We require that they who accuse us most severely of cowardice, would assist us in raising the levies; we shall proceed according to the resolution of the most intrepid amongst you, since it so pleases you." They return to their tribunal, and on purpose commanded one of the most factious of the people, who stood in their view, to be called upon by name. ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... principle applies particularly to moral habits. Truth telling, bravery, obedience, generosity, thought for others, church going, and so on must be followed by positive satisfaction, if they are to be part of the warp and woof of life. Punishing falsehood, selfishness, cowardice, and so on is not enough, for freedom from supervision will usually mean rejection of such forced habits. A child must find that it pays to be generous; that he is happier when he cooeperates with others ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... early morning bathe one little bit. I suppose there will be a notable moment when the ecstasy actually begins, but at present I can't see it coming at all. The only thing I look forward to with any pleasure is the telling Dahlia and Myra at breakfast what I think of their cowardice. That and ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... said, "because I was afraid to trust you—there are a number of Europeans among the Japanese forces. I couldn't know that you wouldn't have given the alarm, and for one man to run from fifty thousand isn't cowardice; it's common sense—even bravery, perhaps, when ...
— In the Clutch of the War-God • Milo Hastings
... author gives a list of fifty names of "persons who either are the actual governing powers in Soviet Russia now or were responsible for the establishment of the present regime there." There is both guile and cowardice in the latter part of this charge. It is easy to argue, with a certain plausibility, that every person who helped in the revolution of March, 1917, must be held "responsible for the establishment of the present regime." I have heard many Russians ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo
... own experience—who is not awakened from his spiritual lethargy, and confounded at his own cowardice, when he considers the fervor and courage of the saints? All our pretences and foolish objections are silenced, when we see the most perfect maxims of the gospel {048} demonstrated to be easy by example. When we read how many young noblemen and tender virgins ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... I replied. "Hitherto, my conscience has spoken plainly enough to make your verdict superfluous. If to-day its voice is weakened, here is the cause of my cowardice. I received, about two months ago, ...
— The Red Inn • Honore de Balzac
... at some personal risk also, which is not yet done away with. However, no time nor circumstances shall alter my tone nor my feelings of indignation against tyranny triumphant. The present business has been as much a work of treachery as of cowardice,—though both may have done their part. If ever you and I meet again, I will have a talk with you upon the subject. At present, for obvious reasons, I ran write but little, as all letters are opened. In mine they shall always find my sentiments, but nothing that can lead to ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... the more men killed and wounded, the more brilliant and brave had been its work. This assumption is absolutely fallacious. Heavy losses may be the result of great bravery with splendid work. On the other hand, they may be the result of cowardice or inefficiency. Suppose, under trying circumstances, officers lose their heads and fail to properly handle their men, or if the latter prove cowardly and incapable of being moved with promptness to ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... our canteens were empty—all on account of the blundering mismanagement of the United States officer who cammanded us. I was only a private, and a private's business is not to question, but to obey. And that major over us, cashiered for cowardice later, was not a Kansas man. Thank ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... not affection, but cowardice, that led Druce to think of Elsie first. Since he had been locked up he had crumbled under his trouble. He was so much shaken in mind and body by the killing of Anson and by his arrest that he was actually afraid to go out ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... but it is essential. Without it he is not yet man. Without it thought can never ripen into truth. Whilst the world hangs before the eye as a cloud of beauty, we cannot even see its beauty. Inaction is cowardice, but there can be no scholar without the heroic mind. The preamble[42] of thought, the transition through which it passes from the unconscious to the conscious, is action. Only so much do I know, as I have lived. Instantly we know whose words are loaded ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... is not your life you are defending, monseigneur; consider, among all these calumnies which pursue you, and against which Heaven knows you should be steeled by this time; your most bitter enemies have never accused you of cowardice—as to your life, at Steinkirk, at Nerwinden, and at Lerida, you proved at what rate you valued it. Pardieu! if you were merely a private gentleman, a minister, or a prince of the blood, and you were assassinated, ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... election. Virginia and the Border States were more deliberate; and Virginia's "pausing" was the theme of much mockery in the State and out of it, from friend and from foe alike. Her love of peace, her love of the Union, were set down now to cowardice, now to cunning. The Mother of States and Queller of Tyrants was caricatured as Mrs. Facing-both-ways; and the great commonwealth that even Mr. Lodge's statistics cannot displace from her leadership in the history of the country was charged with trading on ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... when he gets it, with his comrades; and so generosity strikes down selfishness. In a thousand ways he is tried, and that by sharp critics. His smallest faults are necessarily apparent, for, in the varying conditions of the soldier, every quality is put to the test. If he shows the least cowardice he is undone. His courage must never fail. He must be manly and independent, or he will be told he's a baby, ridiculed, teased, and despised. When war assumes her serious dress, he sees the helplessness of women and children, he hears their piteous appeals, and ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... had fallen. Some seconds had elapsed, longer than hours, and his spirit had sunk into the numb torpor of idiocy. He was conscious, indeed, that he must presently think and act, but he would wait, refusing to understand, to know, to remember, out of fear, weakness, cowardice. He was one of those procrastinators who put everything off till the morrow; and when he was compelled to come to a decision then and there, still he instinctively tried to ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... whose make-up cowardice had been omitted, laughed sneeringly at her and did not stand back. His two hands out before him, his ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... herself had never been laid up in her life, except when her leg was broken, and her views on the subject of ill-health were marked. She regarded the catching of scarlet-fever or influenza as an act of cowardice, consumption or any organic disease as scarcely, if at all, less disgraceful than drunkenness or fraud, while the countless little ailments to which feminine flesh seems more particularly heir she condemned as the most deplorable of female failings, ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... and then—I hardly dare to look ahead—but I leave it all in your hands. I would like to meet your mother and sister—but when, and where? I feel inclined to say, not yet, only I know that is just cowardice, and a shrinking from possible pain in seeing you. So I leave it to you to do what is best, and I trust to your honor and your love not to tempt me beyond bearing-point—and remember, I am trying, trying hard, to do what is right—and trying not to ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... Conjectures smell of Cowardice. Our Father's Temper shews us the reverse: All Danger he defies, and, once resolv'd, No Arguments will move him to relent, No Motives change his Purpose of Revenge, No Prayers prevail upon him to delay The Execution of his fix'd Design: Like the starv'd Tyger in ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers
... terrible guest [Trouble] brings for us, if we will accept it, the boon of fortitude, patience, self-control, wisdom, sympathy, faith. If we reject that, then we find in our hands the other gift,—cowardice, weakness, isolation, despair. If your trouble seems to have in it no other possibility of good, at least set yourself to bear it like a man. Let none of its weight come on other shoulders. Try to carry it so that no one shall even see it. Though your heart be sad within, let cheer ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... grandiloquent soliloquy, and persuades himself that he is protecting “the weak and the humble” (pointing to himself) “against the powerful and the strong” (pointing to the baby). Alas, too many of us take liberties with those whom we do not fear, and excuse our little acts of cowardice with arguments as fallacious as those ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... as his thoughts went back to the scene of the banquet and the suspicions entertained there as to his own courage, it pleased him to reflect that, whatever happened, a Singleton would never again be able to charge his chief with cowardice. ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... exciting. Down the steep hill we dashed at full speed, our horses seeming clearly to understand what we were about. Already several more Mexicans had, through their cowardice, lost their lives. We were within two hundred yards of the scene of strife. "Now's the time!" shouted our leader. "Hurrah, hurrah! my lads! Give way, you red scoundrels!" we all shouted at the top of our voices. ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... dissembling, that Duhaut and his accomplices seemed to lose all distrust of their intentions; and Joutel says that they might easily have avenged the death of La Salle by that of his murderers, had not the elder Cavelier, through scruple or cowardice, opposed the design. ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... do this in shame of cowardice: Caesar should be a beast without a heart, If he should stay at home to-day for fear. No, Caesar shall not: danger knows full well That Caesar is more dangerous than he: 45 We are two lions litter'd in one day, And I the elder and more terrible; And Caesar shall ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... course that wouldn't affect any of you, but it would help to keep us more select for the future. (Cheers.) In fact, I don't see, gentlemen, why we shouldn't make the club big enough to take in any fellow who, like all of you, hates cowardice, and meanness, and dirtiness, and that sort of thing. (Cheers, not unmixed with blushes.) We may not all think alike about everything, but, if we are all agreed it's good form to be gentlemen, and honest and brave, I don't see why we can't be 'Select Sociables' ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... the matter by dint of argument: for his opponents then to skulk, to lay ambushments, to keep a narrow bridge of licensing where the challenger should pass, though it be valour enough in soldiership, is but weakness and cowardice ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... 1915, the retreat spread like a contagion to the entire west Galician front, compelling the Russians to evacuate northern Hungary up to the Lupkow Pass; in that pass itself preparations are afoot to abandon the hard-earned position. It is not fear, nor the precaution of cowardice that prompted this wholesale removal of fighting men: the inexorable laws of geometry demanded it. The enemy was at Krempna; as the crow flies the distance from Krempna to the northern debouchment of Lupkow is eighty miles; yet Lupkow was threatened, for the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... I thought, at our infamy and cowardice, at the perfidy of our princes, at the torpid, passive indifference of our people. It is high time that Germany, which is now tottering about like a somnambulist, should be aroused by a manful word from her slumber, so as to take heart again and draw the ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... point for which Missionary Finley had been playing. The preliminary conversation had been aimed to bring The Panther to see that the only way he could save himself from the charge of cowardice was by meeting Kenton in mortal combat. Such an issue, in which one of the contestants must fall, was extremely distasteful to the man of peace. There could be only one combination of circumstances that would justify, in his judgment, that supreme ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... any semblance of cowardice the benignity of an animal that scorns to take any notice of what it sees is a feeble and puny opponent is amazing, a fit illustration of the weakness of the ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... her beyond the power of her temper to support, unable to stop her tongue, she vehemently told him he was a coward, who durst not so talk to a man! He had proved himself a coward; and was become the by-word and contempt of the whole county! Even women despised his cowardice! ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... Neifkins knew Kate and his lip curled at her cowardice. He raised his head haughtily; he would not subject his ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... We too readily assume that everything has two sides and that it is our duty to be on one or the other. We must be defending or attacking something; only the lily-livered hide their natural cowardice by asking the impudent question, What is it all about? The heroic gird on the armor of the Lord, square their shoulders, and establish a muscular tension which serves to dispel doubt and begets the voluptuousness of bigotry and fanaticism.[28] In this mood questions ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... ground, as well as that the French were outflanking our left. The general and colonel looked sternly and significantly at one another like two fighting cocks preparing for battle, each vainly trying to detect signs of cowardice in the other. Both passed the examination successfully. As there was nothing to be said, and neither wished to give occasion for it to be alleged that he had been the first to leave the range of fire, they would have remained there for a long time testing each other's courage had it not been ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Prince de Conti, who was led like a child by his brother, the cowardice of M. de Longueville, who had been to offer his service to the Queen, and the declaration of MM. de Bouillon and de La Mothe had mightily disfigured my tribuneship. But the folly of Mazarin raised its reputation, for he made the Queen refuse audience ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... you shall do—that is to say, of course, if you don't mind. Whenever you see me showing moral cowardice, or want of moral courage, and I suppose that comes much to the same thing, and you would like to give me a hint without speaking, would you put one of your hands quietly on the table, and then the ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... The gravest divines not only believed stories similar to that of the double-headed serpent, and other tales of witchcraft, but they made such narrations the subjects of preaching and prayer; and as cowardice makes us all cruel, men who were blameless in many of the relations of life, and even praiseworthy in some, became, from superstition, cruel persecutors about this time, showing no mercy towards any one whom they believed to be in league with the ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... not the goad, fear not the pace, Plead not to fall from out the race— It is your own Self driving you, Your Self that you have never known, Seeing your little self alone. Your Self, high-seated charioteer, Master of cowardice and fear, Your Self that sees the shining length Of all the fearful road ahead, Knows that the terrors that you dread Are pigmies to your splendid strength; Strength you have never even guessed, Strength that has never needed rest. Your Self that holds the mastering ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... not comprehend this strange behavior of Bud. Thinking to make him tell her his trouble by taunting him with cowardice, she asked: ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... of cowardice that we all of us have in us," he said finally, "the distrust of myself, and the doubt of all systems of life of which I know anything, prompts me to answer yes; for I think even if we had died, you and I would still be together. I think sometimes we have been, in the past, ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... with gloomy eyes and hand upraised in warning, her image rose before his mental vision as he sat gazing over the smouldering fire out into the darkness. And now the pride of his manhood rebelled, and it seemed base cowardice to cast aside, from dread of a woman's wrath and censure, all that a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... said to herself: "There is no backbone to this firmness, and I am a fraud." She had always yearned for responsibility, yet now that it was in her hand she trembled, and she would have dropped it and run away from it as from a bomb, had she not been too cowardly to show her cowardice. ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... this time to have been not far short of eight thousand. But no men of any position or influence in the country had joined them with the exception of Hamilton; and his authority, whether the story of his cowardice at Glasgow be true or not, was not what it had been at Rutherglen and Drumclog. The preachers seemed to have exercised the only control over the rabble; and such control, as was natural, seems rarely to have lasted beyond the length of their sermons, which, indeed, were not commonly short. As the ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... it, Harry. You've been through too many perils to be suspected of cowardice. Well, ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... regarded this act of Cleopatra as the mere cowardice of a woman who feared to look upon an armed conflict and join in the din of battle. But she was surely made of sterner stuff. She had probably computed with the utmost care the chances of the rivals, and had made up ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... And pictures grim as Vernet's. Yet with these Some softer tints may blend, and milder keys Believe the storm-stunned ear. Let us keep sweet, If so we may, our hearts, even while we eat The bitter harvest of our own device And half a century's moral cowardice. As Nrnberg sang while Wittenberg defied, And Kranach painted by his Luther's side, And through the war-march of the Puritan The silver stream of Marvell's music ran, So let the household melodies be sung, The pleasant pictures on the wall be hung,— So let us ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... Aristomenes was reproached for, was his not being wounded; therefore he confined himself to that point: "I am," says he, "called fortunate because I have escaped from the battle without wounds. If that were owing to my cowardice, I should deserve another epithet than that of fortunate; and, instead of being admitted to dispute the prize, ought to undergo the rigour of the laws that punish cowards. But what is objected to me as a crime, is in truth my greatest glory. For, if my enemies, astonished at my valour, durst ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... why we were afraid to speak to this man or that woman about salvation? Shall we be able to understand how we were ashamed to do what we knew was a Christian duty before one whom we knew to be a mocker at religion? Our cowardice shall seem small to us then. Let us now measure our actions by the standard of that scene, let us now look upon the things of time in the light of eternity, and we shall see them better as they are, and live more as we shall wish then we had done. It is not too ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... gravely. And then the tears came into Dulce's eyes. Was Phillis actually going to tell them? She would have run away, only she was ashamed of such cowardice. ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... felt and was indignant at heart at all these discriminations, all these compromises with conscience, this general fear of everything, the real cowardice of all hearts and the mask of ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... witness,' said the Burgomaster to himself, when, somewhat later, he was thinking the matter over more quietly, 'that neither cowardice nor disloyalty to my prince made me speak as I did. But when I think that the town may yet share the awful fate that befell Magdeburg, then indeed I set the well-being of my thousands of fellow-citizens far above my own reputation for valour. Alas! who can give ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous
... angrily; "because it is cowardice to wish to frighten a man from his duty—insulting! because you think me ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... might tell Brian of the message from Doctor Paul, and ask his opinion about speaking to Father Beckett. As for myself, I resolved not to make any confession, unless it were certain that Jim lived. And I'm not sure, Padre, whether that decision was based on sheer, selfish cowardice, or whether I founded it partly on the arguments I presented to myself. I said in my mind: "If it's true that everything you did in the beginning was for Brian's good, why undo it all at the most critical hour ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... credulity of panic. He placed everything in the most unfavourable light, and was ready to tell every tale and magnify trivial rumours into acts of treason. He was despondent when conciliation prevailed in England. The officers of the army and navy despised him for his cowardice and duplicity, and did not conceal their contempt." (History of the United States, Vol. VI., ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... over-reached himself, and only succeeded in inspiring all parties with distrust; and, as too often happens, this deceiver was deceived in his turn, and in the end betrayed by men in whom his whole trust had been placed. Another curious feature of Lodovico's character was the strain of moral cowardice which, in spite of great personal bravery, marked his public actions at the most critical moments. This sudden failure of courage, or loss of nerve, that to his contemporaries seemed little short of madness, absolutely inexplicable in a man ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... one know how much excited cowardice there often is in boldness? He went to the door with furtive steps, and stopped to listen; his heart beat furiously. Suddenly, however, the noise of the bell over his head startled him like an explosion. He seized the lock, turned the key, and ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... under the great words of a great man, in the preface of one of the great books of the world: "For herein may be seen noble chivalry, courtesy, humanity, friendliness, hardiness, love, friendship, cowardice, murder, hate, virtue, and sin. Do after the good and leave the evil, and it shall bring you to good fame and renommee. And for to pass the time this book shall be pleasant to read in, but for to give faith and belief that all ...
— The Fall Of The Grand Sarrasin • William J. Ferrar
... good-morning. The touch of the dog seemed to bring her closer to his master; she put him away; she dared not suffer even that treachery to her purpose: because, in fact, the very circumstances that had forced her to give him up made it weak cowardice to turn again. It was a simple story, yet one which she dared not tell to herself; for it was not altogether for her father's sake she had made the sacrifice. She knew, that, though she might be near ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... particularly when he was inclined to drink and sexual intercourse, for in both these directions he was quite insatiable and on such occasions was exceedingly easy to master. Moreover, he was afflicted by cowardice, which frequently roused in him so great alarm that he could not calculate anything as he ought. They anticipated this failing of his, too, and it was no inconsiderable help toward getting the better of him. By frightening him half to death they would reap great benefits, and in other people they ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... in the defence of Rome, but courage behind walls is the commonest of all courages. No training could make the Spaniards stand against us in the open field, but they were heroes in Saragossa. The caprices of courage and cowardice are innumerable. The French have no moral courage, they cannot stand ridicule, they cannot encounter disapprobation, they bow before oppression; a French soldier condemned by a court-martial cries for mercy like a child. The same man in battle ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... was brought on under circumstances very unfavorable to the Greeks. Want of water and a difficulty about provisions had necessitated a night movement on their part. The cowardice of all the small contingents, and the obstinacy of an individual Spartan, disconcerted the whole plan of the operation, and left the Lacedaemonians and the Athenians at daybreak separated from each other, and deserted by the whole body of their allies. Mardonius attacked ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... of the laws of Congress, and even counseled and endured every forced submission to the bogus laws. Though they had defiant and turbulent spirits in their own ranks, who often accused them of imbecility and cowardice, they maintained a steady policy of non-resistance, and, under every show of Federal authority in support of the bogus laws, they submitted to obnoxious searches and seizures, to capricious arrest and painful imprisonment, rather than by resistance ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... Sardinia and Tripolis had been captured, and he saw the fleet of Basiliscus to be such as the Romans were said never to have had before. But, as it was, the general's hesitation, whether caused by cowardice or treachery, prevented this success. And Gizeric, profiting by the negligence of Basiliscus, did as follows. Arming all his subjects in the best way he could, he filled his ships, but not all, for some he kept in readiness ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius
... dealt at his own authority in Milan, caused him to give over the fortress and the army to the Austrians without more ado; an act which looked like revenge, but it was most likely prompted by moral cowardice. The capitulation signed with Field-Marshal Bellegarde on the 23rd of April, so exasperated the army that the officers in command of the garrison decided to arrest Eugene, but it was found that he was already on his way to Germany, ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... "It is our own cowardice that invites the spittle, Miriam. Where is the spirit of the Maccabaeans whom we hymn on this feast of Chanukah? The Pope issues Bulls, and we submit—outwardly. Our resistance is silent, sinuous. He ordains yellow hats; we wear yellow hats, but gradually ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... attributed to our want of courage. The trial need never have come on, or might have been brought to another issue; and the end of all, which is the crowning absurdity, will seem to have been permitted by us, through cowardice and baseness, who might have saved you, as you might have saved yourself, if we had been good for anything (for there was no difficulty in escaping); and we did not see how disgraceful, Socrates, and also miserable all this will be to us as well as you. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... precise step, the seat invested by Mr. James Ollerenshaw, she arrived at the point whence she could distinguish the features of her forestaller; she was somewhat short-sighted. She gave no outward sign of fear, irresolution, cowardice. But if she had not been more afraid of her own contempt than of anything else in the world, she would have run away; she would have ceased being an empress and declined suddenly into a scared child. However, her fear of her own contempt ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... are recorded. This is however very probable; as it is not easy to account for the continuance of Lincoyan in the command on any other principles. It may be concluded, however, that, owing to the caution, or cowardice rather of the Araucanian toqui, these actions were so ill conducted and so inconclusive, as to give very little interruption to Valdivia in his triumphant progress through these provinces, between the Biobio and Callacalla, or from ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... were skulking, a still larger number of people came down to look them up in the same incautious manner, and before they had time to cry out they also were slaughtered. An officer and several more men, swearing fearfully at the cowardice of their companions, now jumped below, and were in like manner cut down. I scarcely like to say how many people were killed in this fearful way. Our men now made a dash aft with such fury that the Spaniards on deck thought only of defending their lives. Two dead bodies came tumbling down ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... and thank the immortal gods," said he "that in such an affair the victorious enemy did not assail our very camp, when you were hurrying into the rampart and the gates with such consternation. There can be no doubt but you would have abandoned the camp with the same cowardice with which you gave up the battle. What panic was this? What terror? What sudden forgetfulness of who you are, and who the persons with whom you were fighting, took possession of your minds? Surely these are the same enemies in conquering and pursuing whom when conquered you spent the preceding ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... he could do so with some prospect of success; and if his discretion was somewhat in advance of the average amount of that qualification as manifested by Irish chieftains hitherto, his valour redeemed him from all possible imputation of having made it an excuse for cowardice, or any conciliation with the "English enemy," which was not warranted by motives ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... words,—Go home and marry Margaret. I shook as I have seen men shake with the ague. All that might have been,—what might be still,—the happiness cast away, and perhaps yet within my reach,—the temptation of the Devil, who appealed to my cowardice, to fly from Flora, break my vows, risk my honor and her life, for Margaret,—all this rushed through me tumultuously. At length ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... steady a hand and as serene a countenance as if he had been practising at a target. Others were equally calm and determined. There were some, however, even of the brave, who, from constitutional excitability, and not from any cowardice of spirit, exhibited symptoms of nervousness. Their cheeks paled and their hands shook. But, the momentary tremor past, these men become perhaps the most resolute and efficient ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... to protect the commerce of the world in one of its greatest Eastern thoroughfares, and to preserve the lives and property of people of all nations resorting to those marts. We broke it down, and we cannot, dare not, display the cowardice and selfishness of failing to replace it. However men may differ as to our future policy in those regions, there can be no difference as to our present duty. It is as plain as that of putting down a riot in Chicago or New York—all the plainer because, until recently, we ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... on a crowd of deceitful subterfuges. He inveighed bitterly against the stipulation in the Edict, that the states should pay the wages of the soldiers, whom they had just proclaimed to be knaves and rebels, and at whose hands they had suffered such monstrous injuries. He denounced the cowardice which could permit this band of hirelings to retire with so much jewelry, merchandize, and plate, the result of their robberies. He expressed, however, in the name of the two provinces, a willingness to sign the Edict, provided the states-general ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... retaliation. With the multitude, self-restraining meekness under provocation is a virtue which stands quite low in the catalogue. It is very frequently set down as pusillanimity and cravenness of spirit. But it is not so; for there is a self-restraint under provocation which is far from being cowardice, or want of feeling, or shrinking from consequences; there is a victory over passionate impulses which is more difficult and more meritorious than a victory on the bloody battle-field. It requires more power, more self-command, often, to leave off contention, when provocation ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... forth upon those hands which had upheld her in the darkest stages of her passage from impending servitude to acknowledged independence. But faith has its limits, as well as temper, and there are points beyond which neither can be stretched without sinking into cowardice, or plunging into credulity. This, my friends, I conceive to be your situation. Hurried to the very verge of both, another step would ruin you for ever. To be tame and unprovoked when injuries press hard upon you, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall |
