"Craven" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 'C.M.' stands for Claude Milne. That was the only name with those initials in the hotel books on that date. He had come from New York, and he left an address to which letters were to be forwarded, an hotel in Craven Street. I traced him there. He stayed a week, and, I gather, spent a rollicking time, mostly returning to bed in the early hours not too sober. No friends seem to have looked him up. He appears to ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... his own verdict, after a week's trial of the lads. One would not, the other apparently could not work. Johnny, the elder, was dull and liverish from intemperance; and the round-faced adolescent, the news of whose fatherhood had raced the wind, was so sheep-faced, so craven, in the presence of his elders, that he could not say bo to a battledore. There was something unnatural about this fierce timidity—and the doctor in Mahony caught a quick glimpse of the probable reverse ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... same monarch exercised. Soon after, John was excommunicated personally. When he found that Philip of France was prepared to seize his kingdom, and that his crimes had so alienated him from his own people that he could hope for little help from them, he cringed with the craven fear so usually found in cruel men, and made the most abject submission. In the interval between the proclamation of the interdict and the fulmination of the sentence of excommunication (A.D. 1210), John ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... lord of Yorkes fole," [Footnote: Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York (1502).] may likewise choose the French Josse or Gosse. Goss may also be a dialect pronunciation of gorse, the older form of which has given the name Gorst. Coward, though humble, cow-herd, is no more timid than Craven, the name of a district in the West ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... visibility of but a part of the hand and its busy writing. Whose was the body, and where was it? No wonder if the riotous mirth was frozen into awe, and the wine lost flavour. Nor need we do more than note the craven-hearted flattery addressed to Daniel by the king, who apparently had never heard of him till the queen spoke of him just before. We have to deal with the indictment, the sentence, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... craven," said Lenore, contemptuously. "As soon as he saw me with the pony he ran off, scared by his own bad conscience. Then I called after him, and threatened him ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... forefathers lived under the yoke of the oppressor. Too long have our old been buried in paupers' graves afther lives of misery no other counthry in the wurrld can equal. Why should it be the lot of our people—men and women born to a birthright of freedom? Why? Are ye men of Ireland so craven that aliens can rule ye as they once ruled the negro?" ("No, no!") "The African slave has been emancipated and his emancipation was through the blood and tears of the people who wronged him. Let OUR emancipation, ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... every man to have that greater love which will make him lay down his life for a friend, but it is the sheer poltroon and craven who will watch a friend linger and expire in agony without lifting a finger to save him. Knave or fool—what does it matter when either is ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... removed his hand. He found such patriotism somewhat craven. Genuine patriotism comes only from the heart. It knows no parleying with reason. English ladies will declare abroad that there are no fogs in London, and Mr. Pembroke, though he would not go to this, was only restrained by the certainty of being found out. On this occasion ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... I am here. But it is my fault if I leave this strange old earth the poorer for my failure.... I will no longer be little. I will find strength. I will endure.... I still have eyes, ears, nose, taste. I can feel the sun, the wind, the nip of frost. Must I slink like a craven because I've lost the love of one man? Must I hate Flo Hutter because she will make Glenn happy? Never!... All of this seems better so, because through it I am changed. I might have lived on, ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... in his hands, turned in his tracks as if struck with vertigo. A flash of craven inspiration suggested to him an expedient not unknown to European statesmen when they wish to delay a difficult negotiation. Booted and spurred, he scrambled into the hammock with undignified haste. His handsome face had turned yellow with the ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... wealth and commerce of London, conducted as it was by energetic and enterprising men, was a prolific source of peerages. Thus, the earldom of Cornwallis was founded by Thomas Cornwallis, the Cheapside merchant; that of Essex by William Capel, the draper; and that of Craven by William Craven, the merchant tailor. The modern Earl of Warwick is not descended from the "King- maker," but from William Greville, the woolstapler; whilst the modern dukes of Northumberland find their head, not in the Percys, but in Hugh Smithson, a respectable London apothecary. ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... (THE TEST.) Brooding sat Diego Laynez o'er the insult to his name, Nobler and more ancient far than Inigo Abarca's fame; For he felt that strength was wanting to avenge the craven blow, If he himself at such an age to fight should think to go. Sleepless he passed the weary nights, his food untasted lay, Ne'er raised his eyes from off the ground, nor ventured forth to stray, Refused all converse ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... pearls and jewels and gems, over a shift of fine silk purfled with rubies. Under the whole was that which tongue refuseth to explain, whereat was confounded the brain and whose love would embrave the craven's strain. On her head she set a crown of red gold, inlaid with pearls and gems and she tripped in pattens of cloth of gold, embroidered with fresh pearls[FN284] and adorned with all manner precious stones. Then she put her hand upon the old woman's shoulder and commanded to ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... Demophoon to nurture him as her own on the food of gods, and to plunge him through the flames of a fire that would give him immortal life. As the pusillanimous and sordid fears of the mortal mother lost to the child for evermore the possession of Olympian joys and of perpetual youth, so did the craven and earthly cares of bodily needs hold the artist back from the radiance of the life of the soul, and drag him from the purifying fires. Yet he had not been utterly discouraged; he strove against the Metanira of circumstance; he did his best ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... you are incapable of craven fear,' cried Clotilde, answering aloud the question within herself of why she so much admired, why she so fondly loved him. To feel his courage backing his high good sense was to repose in security, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Self has grown too mad for me to master. Craven, beyond what comfort I can find, It cries: "Oh, God, I am stricken with disaster." Cries in the night: "I am stricken, I am blind...." I will divorce it. I will make my dwelling Far from my Self. Not through these hind'ring tears Will I see men's tears ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... dismiss her, without offering any apology, however, for their shameful treatment of her. To such discourtesies travellers in Russian territories are too often exposed. It is surprising that a powerful government should stoop to so much craven fear and petty suspicion. ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... brought in a bill reforming the administration of the Court of Chancery, but the new budget, which has been looked for with a great deal of interest, has not yet made its appearance. During the debate on the Papal Aggression Bill, Mr. Berkley Craven demanded legal interference in the case of his step-daughter, the Hon. Miss Talbot, who, being an heiress in her own right to eighty thousand pounds, had been prevailed upon to enter a convent for the purpose of taking the veil. As the ceremony was to be performed before she ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... and seven sons and daughters were in the cabin of the Teton Swift Foot. Old age came over the husband, but not the wife. When his knees had grown feeble, and his voice faint, and his eye dim, and his heart craven, her faculties were in full perfection—her cheek still wore the blush of youth, and her step was lighter than the fawn of four moons. And, if time had abated nothing of her wondrous beauty and sprightliness, neither had it of her goodness, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... had been! What an unconscionable craven, to sacrifice this pure and conscientious creature to his passion for one who had made his life wretched by her variable ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... craven publicly." "Warn him to go heeled, and then force the issue!" "Shoot him down like the ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... Swinburne. And then when these critics have to skate over the "Poems and Ballads" episode—thin, cracking ice!—how they repeat delicately the word "sensuous," "sensuous." Out with it, tailorish and craven minds, and say "sensual"! For sensual the book is. It is fine in sensuality, and no talking will ever get you away from that. Villiers de l'Isle-Adam once wrote an essay on "Le Sadisme anglais," and supported it ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... a slave in New Bern, N.C., Craven County, the 2nd day of March 1859. My full name is Hattie Rogers. My mother's name was Roxanna Jeffreys. Her husband was named Gaston Jeffreys, but he was not my father. My father was Levin Eubanks, a white man. I was born ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... and they were soon on their way to Craven Street. When they arrived, Rose left Oliver in the coach, and sending up her card, requested to see Mr. Brownlow on business. She was shown up stairs, and presented to Mr. Brownlow, an elderly gentleman of benevolent appearance, in a bottle-green coat, and with him was ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... in that most delightful of all books about London, The Town, tells us that No. 7 Craven Street, Strand, was once the dwelling of Benjamin Franklin, and he adds, with the manliness which is always such a curious element of his unmanliness: "What a change along the shore of the Thames in a few years (for two centuries are less than a few in the lapse of time) ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... candle-sticks lay a horse-pistol. As the fingers approached it, their trembling increased. Twice they hesitated, craven flesh rebelling against a recreant will. They shook so frightfully upon encountering the butt that it seemed as if to grasp it were beyond their power. Once they had seized it, however, the trembling left them and passed ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... itself as the hurrying dialogue is read! The key-note of merriment is struck by the Prince himself as he implores the aid of Poins to help him laugh at the excellent trick he has just played on the boastful but craven Falstaff, and the bustle and hilarity of the scene never flags for a moment. Even Francis, the drawer, whose vocabulary is limited to "Anon, anon, sir"—the fellow that had "fewer words than a ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... man who made heir-hunting a profession. As will be generally admitted, it is not a profession that can be successfully followed by a craven. It requires the exercise of unusual shrewdness, untiring activity, extraordinary energy and courage, as well as great tact and varied knowledge. The man who would follow it successfully must possess the boldness of a gambler, the sang-froid of a duelist, the keen perceptive powers and patience ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... tyrant in his traitorous mind, But durst not follow what he had decreed, Yet if the innocents some mercy find, From cowardice, not truth, did that proceed, His noble foes durst not his craven kind Exasperate by such a bloody deed. For if he need, what grace could then be got, If thus of peace he broke or loosed ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... Vitelli and Oliverotto were dealt with that very night. There is a story that Oliverotto, seeing that all was lost, drew a dagger and would have put it through his heart to save himself from dying at the hands of the hangman. If it is true, then that was his last show of spirit. He turned craven at the end, and protested tearfully to his judges—for a trial was given them—that the fault of all the wrong wrought against the duke lay with his brother-in-law, Vitellozzo. More wonderful was it that ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... had not; and at nine o'clock I sent Frison out again; and at ten and eleven—always with the same result. I was like a man waiting and looking and, above all, listening for a reprieve; and as sick as any craven. But when he came back, at eleven, I gave up hope and dressed myself carefully. I suppose I had an odd look then, however, for Frison stopped me at the door, and asked me, with evident alarm, where I ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... fright thee, craven-heart? Has not many a universal genius, who might have reformed the world, rotted upon the gallows? And does not the renown of such a man live for hundreds and thousands of years, whereas many a king ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... reading in my MS., says, "By Jove, sir, I didn't know you and my mother were took in this kind of way. The year I joined, I was hit very bad myself. An infernal little jilt that threw me over for Sir Craven Oaks of our regiment. I thought I should have gone crazy." And he gives a melancholy ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... has had as many amours as the Grand Seignor can boast wives, and with just as little of affection in the affaires de cour as his sublime highness, only with something more of publicity. Harriette gives the honour of her introduction into the mysteries of Cytherea to the Earl of Craven; but it is well known that a certain dashing solicitor's clerk then living in the neighbourhood of Chelsea, and near her amiable mamma's residence, first engrossed, her attention, and by whom she exhibited increasing symptoms of affection, which being properly ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... Thou craven priest, go, get thee hence! No fear have I of fate so fell. Go, suck the milk of innocence, Leave me to quaff ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... professors, that we are an unheroic nation skulking behind our mahogany counters, whilst we are egging on more gallant races to their destruction. This is a description given to us in Germany—'a timorous, craven nation, trusting to its fleet.' I think they are beginning to find their mistake out already. And there are half a million of young men of Britain who have already registered their vow to their King that they will cross the seas and hurl ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... exceedingly neat about her own personal attire, she was somewhat quaint and old-fashioned in appearance; at least, she had been until a short time since, when Milly and I, with Bessie Sandford, who was also a distant relation of Miss Craven's, had taken her in hand, and by dint of a little teasing, and much persistence and coaxing, had induced her to submit herself to our dictation in the matter of dress. But she could not, quite yet, reconcile herself to our requirements; at least, ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... Henry W. Morris. Captain Thomas T. Craven. Commander Henry H. Bell. Commander Samuel Phillips Lee. Commander Samuel Swartwout. Commander Melancton Smith. Commander Charles Stewart Boggs. Commander John De Camp. Commander James Alden. Commander David D. Porter. Commander Richard Wainwright. Commander William B. Renshaw. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... into the Yorkshire speech, as all Yorkshire people do when heart-touched. For Yorkshire is neither a dialect nor a patois; it is the pure English of a thousand years ago, the English Chaucer spoke, and which Yorkshire has preserved in all its purity—especially about the Craven district. Mrs. Hatton had gone through finishing schools of the latest fashion and she made no trips in her usual social conversation, unless deeply moved, but if a little Yorkshire was a fault, it was a very ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... "I wish you hadn't—I wish we hadn't. I know just exactly what he feels like now. He feels as if he'd like to kill you for it, and I daresay he would if you hadn't been a craven, white-feathered skulker and ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... above, it is less than the sin of that Evil Spirit who has cast Me into your power, and is urging you to extreme measures against Me. The devil sinneth from the beginning." Even in His sore travail, the Lord was tender and pitiful to this weak and craven soul, and spoke to it as though Pilate and not He were ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... nothing in that way, not even begun to teach him the quarterstaff, though he avouched that when there was cause the young lord was no craven, no more than any Clifford ever was—witness when he drove off the great hound, which some said was a wolf, when it fell upon the flock, or when none could hold him from climbing down the Giant's Cliff after the lamb that had ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with a sigh. All his strong instincts cried out to find Sandersen and, having found him, to shoot him and flee. Yet he had a sense of fatality connected with Sandersen. Lowrie's own conscience had betrayed him, and his craven fear had been his executioner. Quade had been shot in a fair fight with not a soul near by. But, at the third time, Sinclair felt reasonably sure that his luck would fail him. The third time the world would be very apt to ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... defrauded. O Zanoni! why still upon THY brow the resignation that speaks no hope? Tramp! tramp! through the streets dash the armed troop; faithful to his orders, Black Henriot leads them on. Tramp! tramp! over the craven and scattered crowd! Here, flying in disorder,—there, trampled in the mire, the shrieking rescuers! And amidst them, stricken by the sabres of the guard, her long hair blood-bedabbled, lies the Italian woman; and still upon her writhing lips sits joy, as they murmur, "Clarence! I have not ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... menace. A breeze crept in through the open casement, and swayed the heavy black curtains round her Highness's bed, and she started back, thinking that some hostile hand had moved the folds. In vain she told herself how baseless were her fears. She chid herself for a craven, but her heart still fluttered fearfully, and her lips were a-tremble when she reached the little room. She sank down in her chair with a sigh of relief. Here in this little room, she reasoned, there could ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... not know, all his advantages; that many of the most urgent arguments for advance could not present themselves to his mind. He could not know the panic in which Hanoverian London was cast; he could not know that desperate thoughts of joining the Stuart cause were crossing the craven mind of the Duke of Newcastle; he could not know that the frightened bourgeoisie were making a maddened rush upon the Bank of England; he could not know that the King of England had stored all his most precious possessions on board of yachts ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... we adjourned at once to the wood behind the village. A little open glade was soon found; the ground was soon measured; the pistols were soon loaded. De Caylus looked horribly pale, but it was the pallor of concentrated rage, with nothing of the craven hue in it. Dalrymple, on the contrary, had neither more nor less color than usual, and puffed away at his cigar with as much indifference as if he were waiting his turn at the pit of the Comedie Francaise. Both were clothed in ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... responded my companion, "an' a gent who's plumb weak an' craven, that a-way, onder certain circumstances, is as full of sand as the bed of the Arkansaw onder others. Thar's hoss-back courage an' thar's foot courage, thar's day courage an' night courage, thar's gun courage an' knife courage, an' no end of courages besides. An' then thar's the ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... flock! Thou whose soft showers distil On ocean waste or rock, Free as on Hermon hill, Do Thou our craven spirits cheer, And shame ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... until there fell upon his ears the shouts of the Indians. When he saw the effect upon the wolverine he was amused at the sudden change. While busy robbing the "cache" he seemed the monarch of all he surveyed, by his saucy appearance. Now he looked and acted as a craven coward, whose one thought was in reference to his escape. Alec, watching him, saw him spring upon a fallen log, and for an instant look in different directions toward the deep forest. The prospect did not seem to satisfy him, for, springing down, he at once began ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... hoards his fame, And shuns to peril it with younger men." And, greatly moved, then Rustum made reply:— "O Gudurz, wherefore dost thou say such words? Thou knowest better words than this to say. What is one more, one less, obscure or famed, Valiant or craven, young or old, to me? Are not they mortal, am not I myself? But who for men of nought would do great deeds? Come, thou shalt see how Rustum hoards his fame! But I will fight unknown, and in plain arms; Let not men ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... fallen that towering ambition which thought to exercise uncontrolled dominion over this continent, to rule with more than regal sway the rich islands and peninsulas of Asia, and to dictate peace to fallen England from the guns of her armadas. After five wars waged with no craven spirit in less than three-quarters of a century, after she had exhausted every resource and more than once banded against her island foe every naval power in Europe, she was forced to succumb to British perseverance and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... practice while her goodman was poach—nay, then, I mean gamekeeper on my Lord the Marquis of Carrabas's estates," put in Standish gravely, and Billington, who stood by, started, tried to look fierce, but ended with a craven laugh. ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... it was not, I have pointed out those features which seemed to me objectionable,—certainly with no design so ridiculous as that of setting up myself against Harvard University, but equally certainly with no heart so craven as to shrink from denouncing what seemed to me wrong because it would be setting myself against Harvard University. Opinions must be judged by their own weight, not by the weight of the persons who utter them. The fair fame of Harvard is the ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... vitriol. The dwarf reminded me of times when I had flown at my children in anger and punished them for faults which a little inquiry would have taught me that others, and not they, had committed. He reminded me of how I had disloyally allowed old friends to be traduced in my hearing, and been too craven to utter a word in their defense. He reminded me of many dishonest things which I had done; of many which I had procured to be done by children and other irresponsible persons; of some which I had planned, thought upon, and longed to do, and been kept from the performance ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... by Malagigi's lore; Who, cheating good Rinaldo with a spell, To sea the champion in a pinnace bore. Too tedious were the tale at length to tell. Hence evermore Gradasso had opined, The gentle baron was of craven kind. ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... Wednesday evening. The house at Craven Hill opened its doors at ten o'clock, and until midnight there was no lack of company. Singular people, more or less; distinguished from society proper by the fact that all had a modicum of brains. Some ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... hailstorm, the Campus Martius on election day, the soldier knowing no fear, cheerful amid hardships under the open sky, the restless Adriatic, the Bantine headlands and the low-lying Forentum of the poet's infancy, the babe in the wood of Voltur, the Latin hill-towns, the craven soldier of Crassus, and the stern patriotism of Regulus. Without these the Inaugurals would be but barren and cold, to say nothing of the splendid outburst against the domestic degradation of the time, so full of ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... Pamlico Sound offered neither the resources nor facilities to be found in such ports as Boston, New York, Dover, Savannah, Wilmington in North Carolina, and Charleston in South Carolina. What could he have procured with his piastres and bank-notes in the small markets of New-Berne? This chief town of Craven County contained barely six thousand inhabitants. Its commerce consisted principally in the exportation of grain, pigs, furniture, and naval munitions. Besides, a few weeks previously, the schooner had loaded up for some destination which, as ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... days, from a bluff, self-confident and brave soldier to a shrunken craven, trembling at shadows. If he had known where the danger lay, or what it was, he would have met it valiantly enough; but he knew scarcely more than did his humblest soldier. He knew that the peril was very great; he knew that at any moment his magazines might blow up beneath his ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... to live," I said to the now craven and shrinking Ikkie, "you get in that buckboard and make for Casa Grande. Drive there as fast as you can. Tell my husband that our boy, that my boy, is lost on the prairie. Tell him to get help, and come, come quick. And stop at the Teetzel ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... Peyton, of Pelham, knight and baronet. Sir Edward's relative, the first American Peyton, settled in Westmoreland County. Within one generation the family had spread to Stafford County, and within another to Loudoun County also. Thus it befell that there was a Mr. Craven Peyton, of Loudoun County, justice of the peace, vestryman, and chief warden of Shelburne Parish. He was the father of nine sons and two daughters. One of ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... that distinguished themselves in the opposition were Beaufort, Strafford, Craven, Foley, Litchfield, Scarsdale, Grower, Mountjoy, Plymouth, Bathurst, Northampton, Coventry, Oxford and Mortimer, Willoughby de ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... devil-may-care challenge he must fight it out alone. Moreover, as his furtive glance went round the ring of faces, he doubted whether a rope and the nearest telegraph pole might not be his fate if he went the limit. Sourly he accepted defeat, raging in his craven spirit at ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... dauntless as ever, her eye calm and steadfast, her hand firmly grasping the Magna Charta of our birthright, and the birthright of all the race. While a raging and vindictive foe bays her in front, and the leal and true are pressing in countless hosts around her at her call, a false and craven crew are basely creeping in at undefended passages, and, with lies and slanders and deceitful tongues, endeavoring to undermine the foundations of her strength. Base sappers and miners! Thank God ye are ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... with herself, but still she staid on. For love makes the proudest a craven, and turns the strength of the strongest into weakness; and so, in spite of herself, she staid, because ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... for this, never for this Was thy being lent; For the craven's fear is but selfishness, Like ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Are we pledged to craven silence? Oh, fling it to the wind, The parchment wall that bars us from the least of human kind, That makes us cringe and temporize, and dumbly stand at rest, While Pity's burning flood of words is ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... corner-country. Do those men ever reflect, who talk so glibly of this government as too large, and as one which must inevitably be sundered, to what a degradation they calmly look forward! No; Union,—come what may,—now and ever. Greatness is to every brave man a necessity. Out on the craven and base-hearted who aspire to being less than the co-rulers of a continent. See how vile and mean are those men who in the South have lost all national pride in a small-minded provincial attachment to a State, who love their local county better still, and concentrate ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... look beyond thy brow's concealment! I see thy spirit's dark revealment! Thy inner self betrayed I see: Thy coward, craven, shivering ME!' ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... only to you, as I would to my own heart. The old man told me so—in his last moments. And then there is the look of the man. If you could have seen how his craven spirit ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... come again," observed Van Reypen, "I saw you, Bill, when you invited him to leave! I'm no craven, but I shouldn't care to return to any one who had looked ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... LIFE.—You consorted with her for your mutual shame and death, and then called it "seeing life." Had your mother met you, you would have shrunk away like a craven cur. Had your sister interviewed you, she had blushed to bear your name; or had she been seen by you in company with some other whoremaster, for similar commerce, you would have wished that she had been dead. Now what think you of this "seeing life?" And it is for this ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... homage paid them by the generality of the untitled male passengers, especially those on the fore part of the coach, who used to contend for the honour of sitting on the box with the coachman when no sprig was nigh to put in his claim. Oh! what servile homage these craven creatures did pay these same coach fellows, more especially after witnessing this or t'other act of brutality practised upon the weak and unoffending—upon some poor friendless woman travelling with but little money, and perhaps a brace of hungry children with her, or ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... appears surrounded by Philistine soldiers. He rails at the Israelites as slaves, sneers at their God as impotent and craven, lifts up the horn of Dagon, who, he says, shall pursue Jehovah as a falcon pursues a dove. The speech fills Samson with a divine anger, which bursts forth in a canticle of prayer and prophecy. There is a flash as of ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... self-interest, to protect the rights and to advance the welfare of the Colonies. His words are significant, and it seems well to quote them, since they gather up the policy which he consistently followed: 'If Great Britain gives up her supremacy from a niggardly spirit of parsimony, or from a craven fear of helplessness, other Powers will soon look upon the Empire, not with the regard due to an equal, as she once was, but with jealousy of the height she once held, without the fear she once inspired. To build up an empire extending over every sea, swaying many ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... in his craven heart on his adversaries; and the kind-hearted Frenchman led the other two away, and urged them to keep clear of the bully. When, however, he heard how the affair had taken place, he was very much inclined to go and inform the Doctor, to try and ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... loathe a coward, and I thought you were a brave man. When I heard—when I was told—O, it does not seem possible that you could be so craven." ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... scene-painters, such as Roberts and Stanfield, Grieve and Telbin, and to come down to the present time, Beverley and Calcott, Hawes Craven and O'Connor, there seems little occasion to speak; the achievements of these artists are matters of almost universal knowledge. It is sufficient to say that in their hands the art they practise has been greatly advanced, even to the eclipse now ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... went limping to the rear, seeking surgical aid; while badly wounded men were eagerly caught up and borne off the field by their "comrades in battle" or by white-livered recreants, anxious to desert their braver companions and place themselves in safety. A certain percentage of such craven-hearted libels on humanity—let it be said here—are always to be found in every army and on every battle-field, dusky backgrounds against which brave men show the brighter, and ever ready to take advantage ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... something boiled up and over in my heart, Michael Daragh. I caught hold of him and shook him and I was so strong I scared myself. "You pitiful, craven-hearted old coward," I said, "all you can think of is your sour old self! If you loved him—if you knew the first faint beginning of love—" I snatched up the letter I had addressed to Dan'l and ran over to the dresser for my purse. "You stay in here with the truth and ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... may be given in many ways And loyalty to truth be sealed As bravely in the closet as the field, So generous is fate; But then to stand beside her, When craven churls deride her, To front a lie in arms, and not to yield, This shows, methinks, God's plan And measure of a stalwart man, Limbed like the old heroic breeds, Who stands self-poised on manhood's solid earth, Not forced to frame excuses for his birth, Fed from within with ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... His high hat had rolled away. His broadcloth suit was covered with dust. But he did not note these details of his abasement. Like a craven thing fascinated by a snake he had his starting eyes fixed upon Pan, and his face was something no man ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... weary feet, Although they ran for no great prize; And violets are very sweet, Although their roots are in your eyes. But hark to what the earthworms say Who share with you your muddy haven: "The fight was on — you ran away. You are a coward and a craven. ...
— Trees and Other Poems • Joyce Kilmer
... been of equal stature and strength, the Judges of the Common Pleas might have been seen, in their robes, presiding from sunrise till sunset over a combat to be fought, as the law prescribed, with stout staves and leathern shields, till one should cry "Craven," and yield up the field. Fortunately for them, the alleged murderer was so superior in bodily strength to his adversary, that the latter declined the contest. But the public advancement of the claim for such a mode of decision was fatal to any subsequent exercise ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... of Norfolk and Suffolk; the Middle Anglian of Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and East Derbyshire; and the North Anglian of the West Riding of Yorkshire—spoken most purely in the central part of the mountainous district of Craven. 5.Northumbrian," spoken throughout the Lowlands of Scotland, Northumberland, Durham, and ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... dastard, strike a Woman! th'art a craven I warrant thee, thou wouldst be loth to play half a dozen of venies at wasters with a good fellow for a ...
— Philaster - Love Lies a Bleeding • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... Pagan should charge the court with injustice, the Grand Master declared his readiness to wait till the shadows were in the west, to see if a champion would appear for the culprit. But the general belief prevailed that no one would stand up for her; and the craven knights whispered to each other, when the day was far gone, that the time had come for declaring the pledge of Rebecca forfeited. At this instant, a knight, urging his horse forward, appeared on the plain advancing towards ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... saw the fury of the squall, he felt that all his skill and all his courage would avail him as nought to save the Sea Hawk. In this, his last dire extremity, no craven fear filled his heart, and though for his own life he cared not, he remembered that there were others whose lives depended on him. To fly towards the stern before the vessel's deck had become completely perpendicular, was the work of one moment, while in the next he dragged Ada and Nina, ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... their fear. For except in extraordinary instances of exposure, there are few living men, who, at bottom, are not very slow to admit that any other living men have ever been very much nearer death than themselves. Accordingly, craven is the phrase too often applied to any one who, with however good reason, has been appalled at the prospect of sudden death, and yet lived to escape it. Though, should he have perished in conformity with his fears, not a syllable of craven would you hear. This is the ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... whispered, as she gazed from him to the black, cold guns. Without them he appeared shorn of strength, defenseless, a smaller man. Was she Delilah? Swiftly, conscious of only one motive—refusal to see this man called craven by his enemies—she rose, and with blundering fingers buckled the belt round his waist where ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, "Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven, Ghastly, grim, and ancient Raven, wandering from the Nightly shore— Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... feeling of shame or from craven weakness, Isaac Boxtel did not venture that day to point his telescope either at the garden, or at the laboratory, or ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... he cried—"the news was a joyous surprise to me. Only so recently as yesterday morning I was under the gloomy apprehension that the Imperial Cabinet would continue to back Ollivier's craven declaration 'that France had not been affronted!' The Duchesse de Tarascon, at whose campagne I was a guest, is (as you doubtless know) very much in the confidence of the Tuileries. On the first ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... turned the page over. He leaned back and went on again, having just remembered. Of him that walked the waves. Here also over these craven hearts his shadow lies and on the scoffer's heart and lips and on mine. It lies upon their eager faces who offered him a coin of the tribute. To Caesar what is Caesar's, to God what is God's. A long look from dark eyes, a riddling sentence to be ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... stand made by Thomas against the victorious Confederates, gained for him the title of the "Rock of Chickamauga." Surrounded on all sides by a force that a craven commander might have deemed irresistible, Thomas thought out his plans as coolly as if miles away from danger. "Take that ridge!" he said calmly to General James B. Steedman, when that fearless soldier came up with his division; ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... in Prince's Street at supper at Mr Page's, and at ten o'clock at night Mr Page went home with me; and, coming down Drury Lane there stood a coach by my Lord Craven's door, and the hood of the coach was drawn, and a great many men stood by it. Just as I came to the place where the coach stood, two soldiers came and pushed me from Mr Page, and four or five men came up to them, and they knocked my ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... After the craven conduct of the deputies, it is no wonder if the dregs of the people went further, and paraded the streets singing songs in praise of the assassin. The Pope summoned the Presidents of the two Chambers and Marco Minghetti, whom he requested ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... brake out a-laughing loudly, till all the dusk wood rang with the merry sound of his fresh voice; at last he said: "Well, well, thou art but a craven to be a secret murderer: the Lord God would have had an easy bargain of Cain, had he been such as thou. Come on, and do thine errand to Jack of the Tofts, and I will hold thee harmless, so far as I may. Though, sooth to say, ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... in the pale moon. The cold, steady stars shine down on the upturned faces of the South's best and bravest. No craven blenching when the tattered Stars and Bars bear up in battle blast. And yet the starry flag crowns mountain and rock. It sweeps through blood-stained gorges and past battle-scarred defile. Onward, ever southward. The two ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... Harangue a craven soldiery, What heroes they will seem to be! But let them snuff the smoke of battle, Or even hear the ramrods rattle, Adieu to all their spunk and mettle: Your own example will be vain, And exhortations, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... the Moors prevail! the Christians yield! Their coward leader gives for flight the sign! The sceptred craven mounts to quit the field - Is not yon steed Orelio?—Yes, 'tis mine! But never was she turned from battle-line: Lo! where the recreant spurs o'er stock and stone! - Curses pursue the slave, and wrath divine! Rivers ingulph him!"—"Hush," in shuddering tone, The Prelate said; "rash ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... upon the poop, in the midst of the smoke and fire, encouraging his men. To do him justice, he was no craven, though his white hat, his short gray trousers, and his long snuff-coloured surtout reaching to his heels (the self-same coat in which he had spited Boldheart), contrasted most unfavourably with the brilliant uniform of the latter. At this moment, Boldheart, ...
— Holiday Romance • Charles Dickens
... spirit of gallantry which courted personal danger in the defence of the sovereign ... of women because they are often lovely, and always helpless; and of the priesthood.... Now, Childe Harold, if not absolutely craven and recreant, is at least a mortal enemy to all martial exertion, a scoffer at the fair sex, and, apparently, disposed to consider all religions as different modes of superstition." The tone of the review is severer than the Preface indicates. Nor does Byron attempt to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... away his sword). I will need thee no longer, sword of my fathers! My son is in heaven—the very last of my retainers lies dead at my feet—the craven nobles have deserted their cause; already they kneel before the victor, and sue and howl for mercy! (Looking in every direction around him.) There still is time; as yet the enemy are not upon me! I will ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... for, though no craven, he was very prudent, and had no romance in his composition. After deliberating some time, much to the detriment of Pat's patience, he replied ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... Only this may some deliver From the scalping-knife and lance. Through the throng of wailing women Frantic men in terror burst;— "Back, ye cowards!" thundered Mauley,— "I will take the women first!" Then with brawny arms and lever Back the craven men he smote. Brave and ready—grim and steady, Mauley mans ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... avenge their dead, and strike him where His pride was highest, and his fame most fair. Their hearts grew weak as women at his name: They dared no war-path since my Mohawk came With ashen bow, and flinten arrow-head To pierce their craven bodies; but their dead Must be avenged. Avenged? They dared not walk In day and meet his deadly tomahawk; They dared not face his fearless scalping knife; So—Niyoh![1]—then they thought ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... send you a line last week in the cover of a letter to Lady Craven,[1] which I knew would sufficiently tell your quickness how much I shall be obliged to you for any attentions to her. I thought her at Paris, and was surprised to hear of her at Florence. She has, I fear, been infinitamente ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... beauty of a woman in the same impersonal way that another man would regard a picture. And a son. A straight, tall young fellow, doubtless, with eyes like his father's—eyes that a woman would trust, not dreaming of the false heart and craven soul. Why had she been brought here to suffer this last insult, this last humiliation? Weakly, as many a woman before her, Miss Evelina groped in the maze of Life, searching for some clue to ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... shall be larger manhood, saved for those That walk unblenching through the trial-fires; Not suffering, but faint heart, is worst of woes, And he no base-born son of craven sires, Whose eye need ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... the worst; though Nasmyth had always taken the personal courage of his friends for granted. He was not a clever man and he had his faults, but he shaped his life in accordance with a few simple but inflexible rules. It was difficult for him to understand how one could yield to a fit of craven fear; but there was a fact which made Gladwyne's ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... wife for Shakspeare's self! No head, save some world-genius, ought to rest Above the treasures of that perfect breast, Or nightly draw fresh light from those keen stars Through which thy soul awes ours: yet thou art bound— O waste of nature!—to a craven hound; To shameless lust, and childish greed of pelf; Athene to a Satyr: was that link Forged by The Father's hand? Man's reason bars The bans which God allowed.—Ay, so we think: Forgetting, thou hadst weaker been, full blest, Than thus made strong by suffering; ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... trumpet blew; Thro' the long tormented air Heaven flashed a sudden jubilant ray, And down we swept and charged and overthrew. So great a soldier taught us there What long-enduring hearts could do In that world-earthquake, Waterloo! Mighty seaman, tender and true, And pure as he from taint of craven guile, O savior of the silver-coasted isle, O shaker of the Baltic and the Nile, If aught of things that here befall Touch a spirit among things divine, If love of country move thee there at all, Be glad because ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... flushed beneath the tone. "You think perhaps that I play but a craven part in this game. I do not. God knows I run a tremendous risk as it is, without madly pledging life and honor ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... consent; but it is pretty safe to assume that the Tarshish crew made it so hot for the poor man that he was glad to say to them, "Take me up and cast me forth into the sea!" Thus it comes to pass that the race of seamen cling to a tradition which originated in craven ignorance. ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... whatever I had to meet had met me in the round space among the candle-wood roots. The hair on my wrists stirred, a cry came to my throat and was over the edge of it and into the dark night like a man's heart scurrying craven to ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... the letter. I mastered its contents. I still have it," continued Master Freake, every sentence, like the crash of a sledge-hammer, making these craven bystanders shake at the knees. "It is deposited, sealed up again, with a sure friend, who has instructions, unless I claim it in person on or before the last day of this year, to deliver it in person to the King. At present no one knows its contents except ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... was a hammering on the floor, and a voice called, "Attention, please!" And then—"Duet for violin and piano: Miss Olive Craven and ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... my turn to look away. "I know something of a man's heart," I answered deliberately. "If I loved you, mademoiselle, and lost you—lost you, and played the craven,—I should find you. The wilderness would not matter. I should find you. I should find you, and retrieve myself—some way. Lord Starling has wit and daring, else he would not be an exile, else you would not have promised ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... of the deeds on the football field of Mike Johnson, Trench, Pearson, McCormack, Cavanaugh, Reeves, McCauley, Craven, Kimball and Bookwalter. I have played against the great Navy guard Halligan. I saw developed the Navy players, Long, Chambers, Reed, Nichols and Chip Smith, who later was in charge of the Navy athletics. He was one of the best quarterbacks the Navy ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... on France condemned monarchy in the eyes of patriotic Frenchmen. Only amidst the exhaustion following on the Napoleonic wars could an intensely patriotic people accept a king at the sword's point. In the first glow of democratic ardour absolute destruction seemed preferable to so craven a surrender. While, then, we join Burke in censuring the procedure of the Allies, we must pronounce his advice fatal to the cause which he wished to commend. Further, his was a counsel of perfection to Austria, England, and the Dutch Republic. Deeming themselves attacked ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... his life. He afterwards returned to England, and designed the triumphal arch for the reception of Charles the Second. He died at Hempsted-marshal, in 1667, whilst engaged in superintending the mansion of Lord Craven, and was buried in the chancel ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 78, April 26, 1851 • Various
... Did he die like a craven, Begging those torturing fiends for his life? Was there a soldier who carried the Seven Flinched like a coward or fled from the strife? No, by the blood of our Custer, no quailing! There in the midst of the devils they close, Hemmed in by thousands, but ever assailing, Fighting ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... have claimed to be able to atone for, to loose, to set free the ailing soul. Face to face with the terror of darkness, there is hardly anything of which mankind will not repent; and I have sometimes thought that the darkest and heaviest temptation in the whole world is the temptation to yield to a craven fear, when the ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... by this craven compliance with French behests. The officers of the Berlin garrison serenaded the patriotic statesman, while Haugwitz twice had his windows smashed. Public opinion, it is true, counted for little in Prussia. The rigorous separation of classes, the absence of popular education, the ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... Something attracted his attention. He looked. He saw something. The beast in him became human—the madness changed to rationality—the devil to a craven! His ashen lips uttered a ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... own. It has been maintained that Browning's interpretation of the spiritual significance of the drama is a beautiful perversion of the purpose of the Greek poet; that Admetos needs no purification; that in accepting his wife's offer to be his substitute in dying, the king was no craven but a king who recognised duty to the state as his highest duty. The general feeling of readers of the play does not fall in with this ingenious plea. Browning, as appears from his imagined recast of the theme, which follows the transcript, had ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... tells truth, and I will not harm him. He shall bide here till Halfden comes home, for he tells a plain story, and wears those rings. And he has spoken the ill of himself and little of this craven, who maybe knows more than he will say. I have a mind to find out what he does know," and he looked savagely at Beorn, who was sitting up and rocking himself to and fro, with his eyes looking ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... parish; Saxon Ald old, and Wych a village, a name to be preserved in the new Crescent. It is difficult to understand, looking down Drury Lane to-day from Holborn, that this most mean and unlovely street was once a place of aristocratic resort—of gardens, great houses, and orchards. Here was Craven House, here was Clare House; here lived the Earl of Stirling, the Marquis of Argyll, and the Earl of Anglesey. Here lived for a ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... in company with all the other great men of the year, for the admiration of posterity. Finally, he swore to them, on the word of a governor (and they knew him too well to doubt it for a moment), that if he caught any mother's son of them looking pale or playing craven, he would curry his hide till he made him run out of it like a snake in spring-time. Then, lugging out his trusty saber, he branished it three times over his head, ordered Van Corlear to sound the charge, and, shouting ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... blush to own it, but I was frightened, downright frightened. I quailed and I quaked. The sight of Sir Charles stepping out of the study window filled me with abject rapture. Metaphorically speaking, my craven soul squirmed at his heels. He was to me as a strong tower and house of defence.—But look here, Damaris, joking apart, tell me weren't you disturbed, didn't you hear ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet |
