"Faint-hearted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Gauls and threw them into great disorder. As Pyrrhus, however, marched in by the street called Kylarabis, his soldiers raised a warlike shout: and he, noticing that the shout was echoed by the Gauls in the market-place in an undecided, faint-hearted fashion, at once guessed that they were being hard pressed. He instantly pressed the horsemen with him to charge, which they did with great difficulty, as the horses kept falling into the water-courses with which the whole city is intersected. The night was spent in wild tumult and skirmishing ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... Tanis, many had been faint-hearted and rebellious, and others had endeavored to separate their lot from the rest and remain behind; but here, too, they were carried away by the majority. Eleasar, the son of Aaron, and the distinguished heads of the tribe of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... quoted at from 31s. to 33s.; whilst Egyptian and Turkish are marked from 24s. to 26s. per quarter; and fine American flour is quoted at a price considerably under 'English Households.' These are not signs of decrepit or faint-hearted farming. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... They had covered eighteen miles that morning, and had still seven more to go. They were ordered to do the twenty-five miles in eight hours. Nobody had fallen out yet, but some of the boys looked pretty well wilted. Nifty Jones said he was done for. Sergeant Hicks was expostulating with the faint-hearted. He knew that if one man fell out, a ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... "Come, don't be faint-hearted, Mr. Charles. 'Faint heart,'—you know the proverb. You must stay and dine with us. We return to-morrow to town. I should tell you, that I received this morning a letter from my son Arthur, announcing his return from Baden, so we must give him the meeting—a very joyful one you may guess. We have ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... frail[161] vessel, unfaithful and faint-hearted, Doest thou think that God is so merciless, That when the sinner doth repent, and is converted, That he will ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... which, however, arises between them on every kind of subject rather than myself. Therefore I don't see what good it is to me. However, as long as you all will have me hope, I shall obey you. For as to your scoldings so frequent and so severe, and your saying that I am faint-hearted, I would ask you what misery is there so heavy as not to be included in my disfranchisement? Did anyone ever fall from such a high position, in so good a cause, with such endowments of genius, wisdom and popularity, with such powerful supports ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... know!" he exclaimed, in faint-hearted irony. Then, remembering his advantage, he stepped ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... "'Now, out on thee, faint-hearted knight! Thou shouldst not say me nay; For the eve is sweet, and when lovers meet, Is ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... the gates!" This cry of terror seemed to cure the sick and feeble, and give courage and strength to the wavering. The old national hatred of the German toward the Russian broke out in its entire vigor; and vehemence made even the faint-hearted fly to arms, and caused words of imprecation to rise to the lips of those who were in the habit of uttering prayers and ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... killed at Yotsuya. With the dead body of the wakato[u] Kohei she is fastened to a door, and from the rear the scoundrel sets them adrift. Fishing at Ombo[u]bori, Iemon sees them float by. From Yotsuya to Sunamura is a very great distance. It would occupy a woman's legs for the space of a day; or faint-hearted fellows, water drinkers, such of the kind as would try it. Winding along what rivers, by what intersecting canals had they floated here? In no way does one conceive. All the more the reasons influencing the author's design ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... am a faint-hearted girl? You are making a mistake. I am a woman with a woman's mind, and a thousand years would not alter my utter contempt of you. Force me to marry you, and as there is a God above us to witness, every moment of suffering you now inflict upon me ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... more adventurous ones, followed by the women and children, who, like angels, tread where men fear to go. The great mass of the crowd is composed of the workmen of the town. The faint-hearted and the cowardly bring up the rear. When the marble steps that lead up to the mansion are reached, the vanguard halts. The impetus of the entire line is arrested as if by magic. An unheard, invisible signal is obeyed, the signal of fear. Then the ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... grow faint-hearted, the army fights on with cheerfulness. It would be a cure for pessimism of the deepest black to go to the trenches for a while. There all is cheery optimism, no doubt at all about the final outcome, and no talk of peace. I have never heard one man in the ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... incited me, my hands gave me aid, and my keen sword. Rarely a man is bold, when of mature age, if in childhood he was faint-hearted. ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... deary,' said the Captain. 'Don't be took aback, pretty creetur! Don't, for the sake of Wal'r, as was dear to all on us! That there lad,' said the Captain, 'arter working with the best, and standing by the faint-hearted, and never making no complaint nor sign of fear, and keeping up a spirit in all hands that made 'em honour him as if he'd been a admiral—that lad, along with the second-mate and one seaman, was left, of all the beatin' hearts that ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... told, thou sullen and yet faint-hearted slave," answered Varney, with bitterness, "that no MURDER as thou callest it, with that staring look and stammering tone, is designed in the matter? Wert thou not told that a brief illness, such as woman puts ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... theatrical experience, which left me rather in the position of one of the public than one of the players, and there was much grave head-shaking over it, especially on the part of our excellent stage-manager, Mr. Bartley, who was exceedingly faint-hearted about the experiment. ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... usurping oppressor, for independence. Fidelity to our principles and institutions demands that we PREVENT such interference by solemnly proclaiming that the laws of nations and humanity SHALL BE PRESERVED inviolate and sacred. In the performance of this duty the faint-hearted may falter; the domestic despot and cold diplomatist may linger behind; the man of world-extended and fearful traffic may hesitate; but the warm and great heart of the American masses will feel ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... love. Send him to us; and if he bears the test, And if we find him worthy to be blest With love like yours, be sure we will befriend him; And may a life-long happiness attend him! But if he prove a traitor, or faint-hearted, Or if his love and he are lightly parted, In the deep willow-woods he shall remain, And never look upon your face again!" The maiden, fancy-free, was well content, And with light laughter gave her full consent; For when maids think of love (as maidens do) It seems ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... behind which ladies, like all people who are only clever, usually hide their inward contempt for the foolishness of mere men! I was prepared for abuse, and even a good fight—I was not prepared for an extremely faint-hearted criticism; I did not expect that some of my opponents would be so utterly inexperienced in that most necessary work of literary execution. No, no: give me the Germans or the Jews for executioners: they can do the hanging properly, while the English hangman is like the ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... her own kitchen, under the impression that my aunt was mad. My aunt being supremely indifferent to Mrs. Crupp's opinion and everybody else's, and rather favouring than discouraging the idea, Mrs. Crupp, of late the bold, became within a few days so faint-hearted, that rather than encounter my aunt upon the staircase, she would endeavour to hide her portly form behind doors—leaving visible, however, a wide margin of flannel petticoat—or would shrink into dark corners. This gave my aunt such unspeakable satisfaction, that I believe she took a delight in ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... the smirched. Queen Honor is the spotless. We slept thro' wars where Honor could not sleep. We were faint-hearted. Honor was full-valiant. We kept a silence Honor ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... "Thou faint-hearted fool!" said Stagman, "knowest thou not thy wares were well worth a hundred crowns, which, I warrant thee, Plausible will make of them before the market is over. Out upon thee for a crazed coxcomb! get thee gone, and trouble us no ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... faint-hearted doubtings tease him; Death comes, wi' fearless eye he sees him; Wi' bluidy han' a welcome gies him; An' when he fa's, His latest draught o' breathin' lea'es ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... had failed to do, Snyman could hardly be expected to accomplish with a considerably reduced force, and the attack became more faint-hearted. He carried out the Cronje policy of comfortable, lethargic squatting, doubting not that the place must fall into his hands sooner or later. Friends and relations tripped over from Johannesburg to admire and encourage his brave burghers at their posts, and some were even allowed as a ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... commencement of October. On the 8th of that month Balbi wrote to Casanova that a whole night devoted to labour had resulted merely in the displacing of a single brick, which so discouraged the faint-hearted monk that he was for abandoning an attempt whose only result must be to increase in the future the ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... Henderson defiantly says: "Whether Lord Dunmore and Colonel Byrd have interfered with the Indians or not, Richard Henderson is equally ignorant and indifferent. The utmost result of their efforts can only serve to convince them of the futility of their schemes and possibly frighten some few faint-hearted persons, naturally prone to reverence great names and fancy everything must shrink at the magic ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... voluntarily go along with me was that I might be certain of your affection and resolution, and since you are they whom I ought only to rely upon in my present circumstances and danger, I shall now tell you that I was never so faint-hearted as to quit my inheritance without attempting what is possible for any man in my capacity. In order to this I feigned this design for Ireland for three reasons; first, to put my uncle in security, whom I have found ever hitherto very circumspect and well guarded; ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... blind girl, weak and weary! A voice seemed crying from that grave so dreary, "What wouldst thou do, my daughter?"—and she started, And quick recoiled, aghast, faint-hearted; But Paul, impatient, urges evermore Her steps towards the open door; And when, beneath her feet, the unhappy maid Crushes the laurel near the house immortal, And with her head, as Paul talks on again, Touches the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... said Thorhall, 'that it is not good for any faint-hearted man to live at my place, on account of the hauntings that have been of late, and I do not wish to deceive ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... exactly—a sense of joyful abasement in the presence of something great and infinitely beautiful. I do wish that were more clearly stated and understood and believed. Religion, as we know it in its technical sense, is so faint-hearted about it all! It has limited worship to things beautiful enough, arches and music and ceremony: and it is so afraid of vagueness, so considerate of man's feeble grasp and small outlook, that it is afraid of recognising all the channels by which that sense is communicated, for ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... alone a prayer, but a sermon as well. It is a prayer which comprises in itself all other prayers. It is a prayer of praise, of thanksgiving and supplication. It is, therefore, appropriate for all occasions. Are you discouraged and faint-hearted, go and say the "Our Father." The thought that you have an all-merciful Father in heaven will lift you up, inspire you with confidence and comfort you. Do self-love and pride strive for the mastery within you, go and say, "Hallowed be Thy name." Is anger ...
— The Excellence of the Rosary - Conferences for Devotions in Honor of the Blessed Virgin • M. J. Frings
... when he gave himself up for lost, and when God seemed to have forsaken him, and forgotten his promise. He was a man of like passions with ourselves; and therefore he was, as we should have been, terrified and faint-hearted at times. But exactly what God was teaching and training him to be, was not to be fainthearted— not to be terrified. He began in his youth by trusting God. That made him the man after God's own heart, just as it was the ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... since Adam. This little isthmus that we are now standing on is the point to which martyrs in their triumphant pain, prophets in their fervor, and poets in their ecstasy, looked forward as the golden future, as the land too good for them to behold with mortal eyes; it is the point toward which the faint-hearted and desponding hereafter will look back as the priceless past when there was still some good and virtue and opportunity left ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... awake before, the doctor's raillery so increased his impatience and worry that for a time he paced up and down before the fire. Was he faint-hearted in wooing Ella? Suppose some bold Southerner should forestall him? The thought was torture; yet it seemed ungenerous and unkind to seek her openly while she was in a sense his guest and dependent upon him. "Well," he growled at ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... the queen, "you are faint-hearted enough to deny him. You have not the courage to be proud of his love; ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... seen flocks of faint-hearted temples, of big, sulky, beautiful, absent-minded colleges, looking afraid. Every now and then perhaps one sees a professor run out, throw a book at the machines, and run back again. Oxford still looks at science, at matter itself, tremulously, with that ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... behind, they proceed in good spirits. They have a prejudice against the flesh of deer, which the men may not eat, but which is allowed to women and children. The reason given for this is, that if the warriors eat the flesh of deer, they become as faint-hearted as that animal. These may be called their superstitions, but religion they have none; and though they know a name for God, and entertain some faint notion of a future state, yet it is only in the abstract, for practically the ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... masterful climb. But at last he halted; and then, a moment later, he climbed desperately. The girl on the ground saw him falter, and knew that he was becoming faint-hearted. To encourage him, she lifted a voice broken by ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... if thrown into disorder to recover form; whereas, it is difficult to keep horses in line, and impossible if once they be thrown into disorder to reform them. Moreover we find that with horses as with men, some have little courage and some much; and that often a spirited horse is ridden by a faint-hearted rider, or a dull horse by a courageous rider, and that in whatever way such disparity is caused, confusion and disorder result. Again, infantry, when drawn up in column, can easily break and is ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... apiece, Mrs. Wriothesley, was, I give you my word, the first faint-hearted conception of myself and three companions," said Beauchamp, laughing, as he welcomed that lady and Miss Chipchase; "but you see people have been kind to us, and that we are more popular in society than ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... people began to fall sick and faint-hearted—whereupon, very orderly, with good discretion, they entreated me to regard the safety of mine own life, as well as the preservation of theirs; and that I should not, through overbouldness, leave their widows and fatherless children to ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... trouble of her life was the death of her son. She got over it, as she got over everything; but when several years afterwards his widow, with whom, it is hardly necessary to say, she was not on speaking terms, suddenly died (being a faint-hearted, feeble creature), Lady Deyncourt immediately took possession of her grandchildren—a boy and two girls—and proceeded as far as in her lay to ruin the boy ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... prove, by mathematical demonstration, that a mold of delicious blanc-mange or Spanish cream or simpler junket costs less and can be made in one-tenth of the time required for the leathery-skinned, sour or faint-hearted pie, without which "father'n the boys wouldn't relish their dinner;" that an egg and lettuce salad, with mayonnaise dressing, is so much more toothsome and digestible than chipped beef as a "tea relish," as to repay her for the few additional ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... I stay here and urge on the faint-hearted ones, or get up into the turret-stair by that gateway, and pop at the invaders through the loophole, I shouldn't be so ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... favorable to independence, though it may prolong the war. It is thought there will certainly be revolution or civil war in the North, if the Democrats be beaten; and that will relieve us of the vast armies precipitated on our soil. Many of the faint-hearted croakers are anxious ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... my fair proffer," said the prince, "the provost of the lists shall cut thy bowstring, break thy bow and arrows, and expel thee from the presence as a faint-hearted craven." ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... little Billy here, we was trying to find our way to school—mother would have us go, was the weather ever so—and of course we lost ourselves, sir, and Billy he got frightened and took and cried, being young and faint-hearted. And at last we happened up against Mr. Badger's back door, and made so bold as to knock, sir, for Mr. Badger he's a kind-hearted gentleman, ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... where Roscoe's secret was to be found. Ruth Devlin was a tall girl of sensitive features, beautiful eyes, and rare personality. Her life, as I came to know, had been one of great devotion and self-denial. Before her father had made his fortune, she had nursed a frail-bodied, faint-hearted mother, and had cared for, and been a mother to, her younger sisters. With wealth and ease came a brighter bloom to her cheek, but it had a touch of care which would never quite disappear, though it became ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... faint-hearted instrument of lust; That falselie hath betrayde our equale trust. Hence-forth no more will I implore thine ayde, Or thee, or man ...
— The Choise of Valentines - Or the Merie Ballad of Nash His Dildo • Thomas Nash
... no land, for all the signs and eager watching. Leagues of undulating weeds, but no land! And the faint-hearted sailors grumble again. They fear that they never shall "meet in these seas with a fair wind to return to Spain." A head-wind heartens them, but it quickly flits off laden with kisses for Andalusian sweethearts; and again the east wind fills the sails and ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... did I flee? Assuredly I cannot tell, but of one thing I am sure, the fear of death was not the chief cause of my fleeing," he wrote to Mrs. Bowes from Dieppe. "Albeit that I have, in the beginning of this battle, appeared to play the faint-hearted and feeble soldier (the cause I remit to God), yet my prayer is that I may be restored to the battle again." {40a} Knox was, in fact, most valiant when he had armed men at his back; he had no enthusiasm for taking part in the battle when unaided by the arm of flesh. On later occasions this ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... frightened of the darkness, of the snow which was falling in heavy flakes on the ground, and seemed as though it would cover up the whole world; he felt frightened of the street lamps shining with pale light through the clouds of snow. His soul was possessed by an unaccountable, faint-hearted terror. Passers-by came towards him from time to time, but he timidly moved to one side; it seemed to him that women, none but women, were coming from all sides and ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Bartle, "it's wondherful, it's wondherful! you couldn't believe what a fool I am—fool! no, but a faint-hearted, ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... home that evening to be delivered into the hands of his new master. In putting into execution his bold resolve, he secreted himself, and so remained for three weeks. In the meantime his mother, who was a slave, resolved to escape also, but after one week's gloomy foreboding, she became "faint-hearted and gave the struggle over." But Joseph did not know what surrender meant. His sole thought was to procure a ticket on the U.G.R.R. for Canada, which by persistent effort he succeeded in doing. He hid ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... and demonstrations of applause, somewhat tempered by the gravity of the occasion; nay, a few faint-hearted churls said, "Let us hear what he has to ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... fight this thing like men," he cries, in that deep, din- conquering voice that has served the Ingerfields in good stead on many a steel-swept field, on many a storm-struck sea; "there must be no cowardly selfishness, no faint-hearted despair. If we've got to die we'll die; but please God we'll live. Anyhow, we will stick together, and help each other. I mean to stop here with you, and do what I can for you. None ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... boldness, and is full of objections and precautions. The temper of the two, as they front each other in Saul's tent, shows that the one has lost, and the other received, the Spirit which strengthens. David has become the encourager, and his cheery words bring some hopefulness to the gloomy, faint-hearted king. The Septuagint has a variant reading in verse 32, which brings this out and suits the context, 'Let not my lord's heart fail.' But, whether this be adopted or no, David appears as quite unaffected by the terror which had unmanned the army, and as bringing ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... your having forebodings, after my assurance to you before I left. I have none. My opinion is that, to be happy, it is best to think that, as we are the product of events, events will continue to produce that which is in harmony with us.... You are too faint-hearted, and that's the truth of it. I advise you not to abandon yourself to idolatry too readily; you know what I mean. It fills me with remorse when I think how very far below such a position my actual ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... the greatness of Sparta, was admiral of the Greek fleet, but yet was faint-hearted in time of danger, and willing to weigh anchor and set sail for the isthmus of Corinth, near which the land army lay encamped; which Themistocles resisted; and this was the occasion of the well-known words, when Eurybiades, to check his impatience, told him that at the Olympic ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... older and face the world you will find it looks like a great, fierce giant. But really its fierce look is caused by a false-face that it wears to frighten faint-hearted people. You go boldly up and take hold of his beard, as David faced the giant, and you will be surprised to find that not only the beard but the whole mask comes off in your hands, and there is a kindly countenance behind. For the world would rather see you ...
— Fifty-Two Story Talks To Boys And Girls • Howard J. Chidley
... enemy, since, as we have already seen, it was the Greek belief that the spirits of the dead found no rest till their obsequies had been performed. Such preparations did not daunt the spirits of Leonidas and his men, and his wife, Gorgo, not a woman to be faint-hearted or hold him back. Long before, when she was a very little girl, a word of hers had saved her father from listening to a traitorous message from the King of Persia; and every Spartan lady was bred up to be able to ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... true, we are but faint-hearted crusaders, even the walkers, nowadays, who undertake no persevering, never-ending enterprises. Our expeditions are but tours, and come round again at evening to the old hearth-side from which we set out. ...
— Walking • Henry David Thoreau
... the public vote was taken; one or two faint-hearted members sought a craven's refuge and slunk quietly from the chamber. As each name was called, the deputy rose in his place and gave his vote, there was no secret ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... Bell, and Altamont thought of their return, they were afraid of their loneliness and remoteness. They felt the need of Hatteras's bold soul. Still, like energetic men they made ready for a new struggle with the elements, and with themselves, in case they should feel themselves growing faint-hearted. ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... bathed in Revelation, but upon our ears the music of the Word has not yet fallen. Until that time when the meaning of it all shall flash out upon the world, the race will be hidebound in callousness and in faint-hearted melancholy. As yet we do not know what to do with all which we know, and we are afflicted with the pessimism of inertia and the pessimism of dyspepsia. Intellectually, we have been living too high the last hundred years or so. In this is the secret ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... by an ex-judge, who had written a book on the rules of evidence, would have quieted almost any one else, and the members' faces expressed a sense of relief as they thought that Mr. Jodderel was not one of the faint-hearted, and in his opinion faint-heartedness and quietness were one ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... who are now caught plotting the crushing of the Soviets with the adventurer Kerensky-is there any reason to handle them with gloves? After July 16th and 18th they didn't use much ceremony with us!" With a triumphant ring in his voice he cried, "Now that the oborontsi and the faint-hearted have gone, and the whole task of defending and saving the Revolution rests on our shoulders, it is particularly necessary to work-work-work! We have decided to die rather than ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... faint-hearted, but lifted her little feet as well as she could and followed him. He led her on in the white, bright, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... storms." That is brave sailing, I thought, though I would not have gone if I could have helped it. We struggled on in this way for a day and a night, and then he said we were beyond the region of storms from land. I am afraid I should, if left to myself, linger always with the faint-hearted mariners who hug the shore, notwithstanding this great experience of finding our safety by steering boldly off from every thing wherein we had before considered our only security lay. After this, I performed every day the great exploit of climbing to the deck, and looking out at the waste ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... broke three commandments to get a little piece of land. And yet Elijah fled from wicked Jezebel and would have despaired but for the Voice that assured him of the thousands who were still true to Israel's God—the obscure hosts who remained loyal even when the conspicuous became faint-hearted. ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... natures as these will remain for a long while in the position that I have described. This was my own case. I became the plaything of two contending impulses; the desires of youth were always held in check by a faint-hearted sentimentality. Life in Paris is a cruel ordeal for impressionable natures, the great inequalities of fortune or of position inflame their souls and stir up bitter feelings. In that world of magnificence and pettiness envy is more apt to be ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... arms! Let the battle-cry rise, Like the raven's hoarse croak, through their ranks let it sound; Set their knell on the wing of each arrow that flies, Till the shouts of the free shake the mountains around; Let the cold-blooded, faint-hearted changeling now tremble, For the war-shock shall reach to his dark-centered cave, While the laurels that twine round the brows of the victors Shall with rev'rence be strew'd o'er ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... De Foe, writing one hundred and twenty years after, paid a passing tribute to Queen Elizabeth, and said "that the faint-hearted economists of 1689 would show something worthy of themselves if they employed the poor to the same glorious advantage as did ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... mud and rain of the front line trenches than in the comparative comfort of billets or 'cushy jobs.'" Tommy gave Mr. Punch his cue, and his high example was not thrown away on those at home, where, when all allowance is made for shirkers and slackers and scaremongers, callous pleasure-seekers, faint-hearted pacificists, rebels and traitors, the great majority so bore themselves as to convince Mr. Punch that it was not only a privilege but a duty to minister to mirth even at times when one hastened to laugh for fear of being obliged to weep. In this resolve he was fortified and ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... by all sound laws of evidence, the testimony of the statement was as flimsy as all the rest of the proofs. To attach importance to it was a burlesque of justice. It was treated as demonstrative by a packed Bench, a Bar hungering for place, and a faint-hearted jury, anxious above all things to vindicate authority, and not caring to discriminate among the prisoners on the charges against them. To the whole court it came like a godsend. The author of the fullest report, that which is preserved ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... to the Wyandot Indians, ordering them to join him in his war against the British or prepare to be wiped off the face of the earth. By this stroke Pontiac turned threatened loss into gain. The support of the warlike Wyandots renewed the courage of the faint-hearted, and for a time ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... struck their ears. The sound cheered them greatly; but halting to make out by listening from what quarter it came they heard unseasonably another noise which spoiled the satisfaction the sound of the water gave them, especially for Sancho, who was by nature timid and faint-hearted. They heard, I say, strokes falling with a measured beat, and a certain rattling of iron and chains that, together with the furious din of the water, would have struck terror into any heart but Don Quixote's. The night ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... indeed," replied Shaggy. "This Nome King is really a powerful fellow and has a legion of nomes to assist him, whereas our bold Queen commands a Clockwork Man and a band of faint-hearted officers." ...
— Tik-Tok of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... sunshine breaks but seldom with its rays Of heavenly hope, towards which the spirit sighs Its aspirations, and is lost again 'Mid doubts: to grasp the wisdom of the skies Too feeble, tho' convinced earth's bonds are vain, Cowering faint-hearted in the festering ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... you'll scarce know one from t'other; We are as like, as Brother is to Brother. To judge against me then wou'd be Ill-Nature, For Men are kind to those they're like in Feature. For Judges therefore I accept you all; By you, Sir Timothy will stand or fall. He's too faint-hearted that his Sentence fears, Who has the Honour ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... purchased by a loss of men which would have completely crippled the British general, and would have rendered it absolutely necessary for him to fall back again at once. A defeat or even a heavy loss of men, would have so dispirited the faint-hearted Government at home that they would undoubtedly have recalled the whole expedition, and resigned Portugal to its fate. Thus Wellington decided not to risk the whole fate of the British army and of ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... blood flowed warm in my veins once more. How sad and mournful was that solitary cry and slow, hopeless flapping of the wings! Who was it said that the evil spirits of dead men dwell imprisoned in those sad-crying birds? It was very, very human, that cry. Bah! was I getting superstitious and faint-hearted before my task was begun? I set my teeth and stepped boldly onwards. For a while I had ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... And say unto him: Take heed, and be quiet; fear not, neither be faint-hearted for the two tails of these smoking firebrands, for the fierce anger of Rezin with Syria, and of the son ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... enough he were one of them fellows as is always after some lass or another, and, as often as not, two or three at a time. Now look at Philip, what a different one he is! He's niver thought on a woman but our Sylvie, I'll be bound. I wish he wern't so old-fashioned and faint-hearted.' ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... to draw rents and revenues from the immense patrimony of the old and recent ages. Goethe teaches courage, and the equivalence of all times: that the disadvantages of any epoch exist only to the faint-hearted. Genius hovers with his sunshine and music close by the darkest and deafest eras. No mortgage, no attainder, will hold on men or hours. The world is young; the former great men call to us affectionately. We too must write Bibles, to unite again the heavens ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... revealed by statistics may be reversed when resolute men and women, possessed of higher ideals, unite to resist it. Jacob A. Riis holds that these evils are not by a decree of fate, but are the result of positive wrong, and he dedicates his "Ten Years' War" as follows—"to the faint-hearted and ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards
... women on the progress of this reform during a quarter of a century, we urge them not to grow discouraged or faint-hearted when obstacles arise in their attack upon hoary wrongs. We remind them that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, and that the nearer we come to victory the stronger will be the effort against ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... have but offered myself: you have your choice. I can pass on. Yes, I know well I speak to Nevil Beauchamp; you have drilled me to trust you and your word as a soldier trusts to his officer—once a faint-hearted soldier! I need not remind you: fronting the enemy now, in hard truth. But I want your whole heart to decide. Give me no silly, compassion! Would it have been better to me to have written to you? If I had written I should have clipped my glorious impulse, brought myself ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the sun; Whose nobility comes to thee, stamp'd with a seal Far, far more ennobling than monarch e'er set; With the blood of thy race offer'd up for the weal Of a nation that swears by that martyrdom yet! Shalt thou be faint-hearted, and turn from the strife, From the mighty arena, where all that is grand, And devoted, and pure, and adorning in life Is for high-thoughted spirits like thine to command? Oh no! never dream it; while good men despair Between tyrants and traitors, and timid men bow, ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... rumpus, came running up to see the fun, and they laughed and danced over poor Little Moccasin's distress. Often afterward they called him "coffee-cooler"; which meant that he was cowardly and faint-hearted, and that he preferred staying in camp around the fire, drinking coffee, to taking part in the manly sports ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... floated like this, I expect, on the day when you wished to die. And it must have been its splendour that would not suffer such a catastrophe. I wonder, dear, that you should have wished that, you who are so faint-hearted ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... was but a sham victory for the enemy. A number of officials of the Government remained behind there and surrendered, together with a number of burghers, amongst these faint-hearted brethren being even members of the Volksraad and men who had played a prominent part in the Republic's history; while to the everlasting shame of them and their race, a number of other Boers entered at once into the English service and henceforth ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... in a small dungeon and held up his candle. This was the last resting-place of a good man, a warm-hearted, unselfish man; a man whose whole life was given to succoring the poor, encouraging the faint-hearted, visiting the sick; in relieving distress, whenever and wherever he found it. His heart, his hand, and his purse were always open. With his story in one's mind he can almost see his benignant countenance moving calmly ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... side of a few faint-hearted citizens who had already, since the morning, modified their political opinions, a great figure rises before my eyes—Fontan. I remember that night, already long ago, when a chance glimpse through ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... be faint-hearted and turn from the strife, From the mighty arena, where all that is grand And devoted and pure and adorning in life, 'Tis for high-thoughted spirits ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... is not the weak who are the least guilty. The apathy of the majority, the timorousness of the well-meaning, the selfishness and scepticism of listless rulers, the ignorance or cynicism of the press, the rapacity of profiteers, the faint-hearted servility of the thinkers who make themselves the apostles of devastating prejudices which it should be their mission to uproot; the ruthless pride of intellectuals who value their own ideas more than they value the lives of their fellow-men, and who will send millions to ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... without effect on those elements of the population whose American citizenship was not yet deeply rooted. However indignant the better elements may have felt at first over this cowardly desertion of the flag, the continual repetition of such arguments evoked faint-hearted considerations of the desirability of peace ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... philanthropic schemes. Of these plans the most important was that for the abolition of slavery in the British colonies. Buxton devoted his life to this object, and through defeat and opposition, despite the attacks of enemies and the remonstrances of faint-hearted friends, he remained true to it. Not till 1833 was he successful, and even then only partially, for he was compelled to admit into the bill some clauses against which his better judgment had decided. In 1837 he ceased to [v.04 p.0893] sit in the House of Commons. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... juries, will rise with indignation at this evidence of a jury prepared to exercise a vindictive power, and actually make the law the agent of reprisal. I have failed in all—utterly failed. Some reproach me as faint-hearted and craven; some condescend to treat me as merely mistaken and misguided; and some are bold enough to hint that, though as a military authority I stand without rivalry, as a purely political adviser, my ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... gave up, and ringing for the cook, directed her to broil a couple of thin slices of ham very nicely, make a good cup of tea, and a slice or two of toast. When this was ready, it was sent in to Mrs. Warburton. It came just in time, and met the excited appetite of the faint-hearted invalid. It was like manna in the wilderness, and revived ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... can pray and trust, and you are exaggerating to yourself Harry's danger, I think. What has happened to make you so faint-hearted, dear?" ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... has discovered on his gun barrel. If there is time, he will scrape the mud from his shoes, and from his pants, which are stiff with it, almost to the knees. A few are nervous and anxious, but most of the really faint-hearted took advantage of the hard march last night to secure absence to-day. Dunn is on hand,—he that took himself from the field yesterday with such agility, at the beginning of the fight, and gave such comical reasons for ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... a distant kinship," / spake Hagen, dauntless knight, "That Etzel unto Siegfried / ever did unite, And husband he to Kriemhild / was ere thee she knew. Wherefore, O king faint-hearted, / seek'st thou such ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... of his way to visit our village. We promised to conduct him to the Mandans, and to bring him safely back to his fort. And now you talk of {58} abandoning him, because you fear the Sioux. This must never be. Let those of you who are faint-hearted remain here in camp with the women; but let those who are without fear follow our father.' After this scornful eloquence there was no further talk ...
— Pathfinders of the Great Plains - A Chronicle of La Verendrye and his Sons • Lawrence J. Burpee
... word! Who is faint-hearted? Julia, I have brought you flowers. You would have to kiss rue for them if he were not here. Don't glower at me. Every one kisses me. Great ladies would if I asked them to. That's the best of being a genius. Lord, ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... saw the hall of the White Wolf filled with the armed men of the Duke's body-guard, boisterously laughing, with their hands on their sides, or kicking over the mock throne covered with white cloth, the coils of rope, the axes of painted wood, and the other properties of this very faint-hearted Fehmgericht. ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... out his thought. There was the usual demand for explanations of difficulties from Blyenbergh, the Dort merchant and dignitary, accompanied this time by a frightened yearning to fly back from Reason to Revelation. And the letter with the seal of the Royal Society proved equally faint-hearted, Oldenburg exhorting him not to say anything in his next book to loosen the practice of virtue. "Dear Heinrich!" thought Spinoza. "How curious are men! All these years since first we met at Rijnburg he has been goading and spurring me on to give my deepest thought to the world. ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... of freshly baked bread, or a basket of graham gems; or Geoff with a creel of trout and an urgent invitation to lunch or dinner or both. New books made their appearance from below, newspapers and magazines; and if ever the day came when Imogen felt hopelessly faint-hearted, lonely, and over-worked, she was sure to see the flutter of skirts, and her pretty, cordial neighbors would come riding up the trail to cheer her, and to propose something pleasant or helpful. Sometimes Elsie would have her baby on her knee, trusting to "Summer Savory's" ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... peculiarities have been lost, while others have stood forth in greater relief. The strongest feature in the character of the European-American is the greed for gold; this often becomes a passion, and transforms the most faint-hearted white into a hero, for it certainly requires the courage of one to live alone, as planter, on a plantation with perhaps some hundred slaves, far removed from all assistance, and with the prospect of being irrevocably lost in ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... Stephen was alive among them, but Mother Marshall never said anything about it; she just kept it there, and it comforted her to feel it; one of those little homely, tangible things that our poor souls have to tether to sometimes when we lose the vision and get faint-hearted. Mother Marshall wasn't morbid one bit. She always looked on the bright side of everything; and she had had much joy in her son as he was growing up. She had seen him strong of body, strong of soul, keen of mind. He had won ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... be murdered, as their mates on shore had been. Captain Barber himself would, I am certain, have stopped to defend his ship, but probably fearing that it would be of no use to make the attempt while his crew were so faint-hearted, he ordered the boat to be lowered with such provisions and water as could be hastily thrown into her. They had scarcely left the side of the ship before the savages were up to her. They pursued the ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... and protect Prussia: but if such should not be Thy will, teach us how to fall and die with her in an honorable manner! Preserve us from disgrace and despondency; teach us how to bear great disasters with dignified resignation, and grant that we may never be so faint-hearted as to ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... existing for the sake of its songs, nor the later form in which the songs exist for the sake of the drama, but an attempt to combine the songs with the continuous working out of a dramatic impulse in the modern manner. But the attempt is far less successful than in "Romeo"; and indeed it is a faint-hearted one. Whenever a song occurs, the action is suspended, and all the actors save the lucky vocalist of the minute are at their wits' end to know where to look, and what to do with their hands, feet—their whole persons in fact—and the parts ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... A trench during an attack is no place for the faint-hearted. An unsympathetic Tommy kicked ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... and uses us as His servants in the work. Our prophecy was given to encourage faint-hearted toilers, not to supply an excuse for indolence. Underlying all our poor labours, and blessing them all, is the power of Christ. We may well work diligently who work in the line of His purposes, after the pattern of His labours, in the strength of His ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... patter of tiny feet, before, behind, and on all sides, the great brown rat sniffing dubiously as it passed, the jostling, the chattering, the squeaking. He had been a proud mouse when he had returned, and told his faint-hearted brothers what the great world outside ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... particular prize, sir, by your gracious leave," said Joe Hawkridge, addressing Captain Wellsby. "This is Mr. Peter Tobey, a poor, faint-hearted pirate like me. May I have him ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... leather-worker of yesterday, one of thousands experiencing in their own persons the appalling discomforts, the turn over and revaluation of all established values that revolution, even without death and civil war, means to the ordinary man; and, being perhaps a little faint-hearted, I finished my tea in silence. Bucharin, after carelessly opening these colossal perspectives, drank his tea in one gulp, prodigiously sweetened with my saccharin, reminded me of his illness in the summer, when Radek scoured the town for sweets for him, curing him with no ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... as a faint-hearted, dubious-couraged counter-jumper from the East; he saw now that there was something of him, ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... early became parts of more comprehensive organizations officered by women of untiring energy, and the most exalted patriotic devotion; and that the events of the war constantly kept alive the zeal of a few in each society, who spurred on the laggards, and encouraged the faint-hearted. These Soldiers' Aid Societies, Ladies' Aid Associations, Alert Clubs, Soldiers' Relief Societies, or by whatever other name they were called, were usually auxiliary to some Society in the larger ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... monks were very much ashamed, and went back to Fronto to beg his forgiveness, promising never again to be faint-hearted nor to ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown
... no man should profit by his own fault. But it is a man's fault if he be timid or faint-hearted: since this is contrary to the virtue of fortitude. Therefore the timid and faint-hearted are unfittingly excused from the toil ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... strength failed him and he made sure of death, saying inwardly, "I wonder what was the cause of their capture? Did they fail of respect to the holy man or disobey him, or what?" Then they rushed upon the unbelievers and slew great plenty of them. The valiant, that day, was known from the faint-hearted, and the swords and spears were dyed with blood; for the infidels flocked on them from all sides, as flies flock to wine; but Sherkan and his men ceased not to wage the fight of those who fear not death nor let it hinder them from the pursuit of victory, ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... another as you might heap as many toppling oranges, with a crazy wooden verandah impending over the water; indeed the whole house, inclusive of the complaining flag-staff on the roof, impended over the water, but seemed to have got into the condition of a faint-hearted diver who has paused so long on the brink that he will ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... she had made that even this shock did not set her to express any more faint-hearted doubts, and, when Lord Northmoor arrived the next day, the involuntary radiance on both their faces was token enough that they were all the world to each other. Mary allowed herself to venture on getting Lady ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... child, the home, the church, the great mass of the common thinking, feeling, suffering, praying, hoping people of America. If these fail, all fails. If these lose faith and courage and hope, all lose faith and courage and hope. If these grow faint-hearted, all before them lose heart. These are they who furnish the real sinews of war. These are they who must furnish the morale, the love, the letters, the prayers, the support to both government and soldier. Yes, the common ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... severe process may reduce the enrollment, yet it mightily strengthens the ranks. The Lord Jesus would rather have one of ten if true, than all the ten yea, ten times ten if untrue. Christ Jesus prefers 300 who can wield the sword of the Lord and of Gideon, to 30,000 who are indifferent or faint-hearted. ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... caught her breath, the doctor viewing her with amazement. "What!" said he, "you who have displayed such fortitude and endurance, are you about to become faint-hearted?" ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... in spirit and did not really pull together. There were rampant Tories, who declared boldly for the King; there were more faint-hearted ones who had much business at stake and cared only for making money, and many of the Friends who counseled peace at any price. But events marched on rapidly and in June Congress declared for a Continental Army, and the host of patriots ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... had been in France a short time, nothing seemed falser to me than the pessimistic assertions of certain German-Americans and faint-hearted other Americans, that whatever the outcome of the world war France was "done for," "exhausted," "ruined," must sink to the level of a third-rate power, and so forth. Nor can I believe the words of those saddened sympathizers and helpers in the ambulances and hospitals, that "France is proudly ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... the letter telling her when to come. She was shaken by it; she broke the seal and read it in this room. I suspected then that she'd begun to get faint-hearted, waiting; though she'd ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... perilous adventure, the chief of the Mahas had recalled his braves from the pursuit, and was listening to the history of the pair, as far as the returned warriors were acquainted with it, when his daughter and her lover made their appearance. With a bold and fearless step the once faint-hearted Karkapaha walked up to the offended father, and, folding his arms upon his breast, stood erect as a pine, and motionless as that tree when the winds of the earth are chained. It was the first time that Karkapaha had ever looked on angry men ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous
... The designing but faint-hearted women fled when the white men charged for the boat, which now was seen to be endowed with an incredible, uncanny rocking movement of its own. Looking beneath, they saw a huge cripple straining himself, Atlas-like, to heave it over. In spite of inferior legs, his ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... "Don't be faint-hearted, old chap! I'll haul you up. It won't be so tough presently. You're through the worst already. Hold on, Luke, ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... some of them for stealing—if I was, God forgive me!), and could not, forsooth, keep themselves alive for twelve months; so that Drake, coming back from his last West Indian voyage, after giving them all the help he could, had to bring the whole party home. And if you will believe it, the faint-hearted fellows had not been gone a fortnight, before I was back again with three ships and all that they could want. And never was I more wroth in my life, when all I found was the ruins of their huts, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... he who is of my type among men not bind his heart; in those spring-times and many-hued meadows shall he not believe, who knoweth the fickly faint-hearted human species! ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... The faint-hearted Spaniards, who never could meet any trouble without grumbling, were now in the depths of despair and angry discontent; and it had not pleased them to be put on a short allowance of even the unwholesome provisions that remained from the original ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... strike his breast, and say 'I am brave and fearless,' yet shew that he is a mocking-bird? No, men's actions should be of a piece with their words, whether good or bad; good cannot come out of evil, neither can the brave man feel faint-hearted, or the fawn become a tiger. The Mengwe were brave: they would not abase themselves in the eyes of the Lenape by admitting that they were vanquished, or proposing peace. They made use of their women to soften ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... pusillanimous, dastard, dastardly, poltroon, recreant, timorous, white-livered, chicken-hearted faint-hearted, spiritless. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... sportiveness. It lacks courage and force, and the rare delicacy of the thought is not entirely able to compensate for this defect. In its fear of one-sidedness it takes refuge in the arms of an often faint-hearted policy ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... corner she grew faint-hearted. It must have been the gorge below that made her breath come in catching sobs. But on and on she went until through the window she could see Bobbie with Happy Pete asleep in his arms. The child was still muttering over his ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... yards before Lindsey on a sudden stood still and cry'd out, by all that's good he was seized with such unaccountable terrours & astonishment that it was impossible for him to stir one step further. Upon which Cromwell call'd him faint-hearted fool, & bid him stand there & observe or be witness: and then advancing to some distance from him, he met with a grave elderly man, with a roll of parchment in his hand, who deliver'd it to Cromwell, who eagerly perused it. Lindsey, a little recover'd from his ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various
... in August, 1869, leaving his task in an extremely unfinished state, and Marshal Le Boeuf, who succeeded him, persevered with it in a very faint-hearted way. The regular army, however, was kept in fair condition, though it was never so strong as it appeared to be on paper. There was a system in vogue by which a conscript of means could avoid service by supplying ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... "Don't be so faint-hearted, Quinnox!" cried Lorry, stimulated by the desire to be with her, recognizing no obstacle that might thwart him in the effort. "We'll get through, safe and sound, and we'll untangle a few complications before we reach ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... from the gutters of Montmartre into the later control of Madame Louison's pretty little pied d' terre in Paris, hard by Auteuil, in that dreamy little impasse, the Rue de Berlioz. Neither of these attendants were faint-hearted, for their young hearts had been attuned early to the wolfish precocity of the Parisian waif. And they had followed their resolute mistress in her weary quest ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... them for two whole months, now fighting in one place, and perhaps the next day some twenty miles across the mountains in another, with almost invariable success, seems little short of a miracle. But flesh and blood could not endure such toil and privations much longer. No wonder that the faint-hearted began to despair. Turrel, the military commander, seeing no chance of a prosperous issue, withdrew across the French frontier, followed by the greater number of the Vaudois from Dauphiny;[110] and there remained only the ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... the cheerful courage that laughs at sickness and pain! Stevenson writing in a sickbed stories and essays that help one to endure the blows of fate is a spectacle such as this world has few to offer. So the man's life and work have come to be a constant inspiration to those who are faint-hearted, a call to arms of all one's courage ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... church, and in harmony with the wishes of the great majority of the Mexican people. Such policy, if only followed in time, would have so strengthened the hands of Maximilian that, in all probability, he would have been able to hold his ground when most unchivalrously abandoned by his faint-hearted ally. No doubt the anti-president claimed that he was a reformer of the church. And surely, indeed, he was, if it was reform to suppress all religious societies whatsoever, to rob the clergy of their property, and that so completely as to reduce them to mendicancy. ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... that proud house of Plantagenet who never own that a hurt grieves them. While they have themselves been bleeding to death, under a mortal wound, they have been known to bind up the scratches sustained by their more faint-hearted comrades. Florise, we have done frightfully wrong, and, for my own part, I would buy with every jewel I have that our fatal jest had ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... only thing is to keep out of the way," said Ben. "Now listen, James, a faint-hearted fellow is sure to peach, and out of the way you must keep. I say ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... of his symphony, he forced himself into a quiet frame of mind at night, made room for faint-hearted hopes, and lulled his ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... "Don't you be faint-hearted," said George. "We are not caught yet. I wonder whether Susan would say it was a sin to try ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... John clearly how to get over the great difficulty of keeping a wife upon nine, or at the best ten, shillings a week. Seeing that her lover was unwilling to do the one thing she wanted, Elizabeth Newton at last jilted him openly, telling him, before a number of other girls, that he was but a faint-hearted fool. After this, she refused to see him again, although John Clare would have been willing to renew the acquaintance, and even, if necessary, to marry her. He felt, now she had parted from him, and, probably, because she had parted from him, a strong ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... Garland and Roderick might do or might not do together. Nevertheless, some three days afterward, the opportunity presenting itself, he deliberately broached the subject with Roderick. He knew this was inconsistent and faint-hearted; it was indulgence to the fingers that itched to handle forbidden fruit. But he said to himself that it was really more logical to be inconsistent than the reverse; for they had formerly discussed ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... in great haste to dismiss whoever had knocked, so that she might hear the rest of Marilla's story. She opened the door wide to whoever might have come on some country errand, and looked the tired and faint-hearted Mr. Laneway full ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... soldiers, but thrilled by the desperate need of service, hard and ugly and terrible, among those poor bloody men, agonizing through the night, helpless in their pain, moaning before the rescue of death. The faint-hearted among these women fled panic-stricken, with blanched faces, to Nice and Monte Carlo and provincial chateaux, where they played with less unpleasant work. But there were not many like that. Most of them stayed, nerving themselves to the endurance of those tragedies, ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... it had never been so bad, they said, while Mr. Polly wondered if "De-juiced" was a permissible epithet. There were men with an overweening sense of their importance, manifestly annoyed and angry to find themselves still disengaged, and inclined to suspect a plot, and men so faint-hearted one was terrified to imagine their behaviour when it came to an interview. There was a fresh-faced young man with an unintelligent face who seemed to think himself equipped against the world beyond all misadventure by a ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... incumbered march, without breakfast, after a long, inactive sea-voyage, had wearied us sadly; and we threw our luggage upon, the ground, lay down upon it, and ruminated on a scene of little comfort to the faint-hearted, if there were any such in our little crowd of world-battered and battering ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... the dark cloud is lowering, The sun, though obscured, never ceases to shine; Above the black tempest his radiance is pouring While faithless and faint-hearted mortals repine. The journey of life has its lights and its shadows, And Heaven in its wisdom to each sends a share; Though rough be the road, yet with reason to guide us, And courage to conquer, we'll ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... fatal news that Mars was undoubtedly preparing to deal us a death blow. The sudden revulsion of feeling flitted like the shadow of an eclipse over the earth. The scenes that followed were indescribable. Men lost their reason. The faint-hearted ended the suspense with self-destruction, the stout-hearted remained steadfast, but without hope and knowing not ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... the least of his offences: for had he not offered his own son as a holocaust at the moment he felt himself most menaced by the league of Israel and Damascus? Among the people themselves there were many faint-hearted and faithless, who, doubting the power of the God of their forefathers, turned aside to the gods of the neighbouring nations, and besought from them the succour they despaired of receiving from any other source; the worship of Jahveh was ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... torn mantle had said that help would certainly come, and many of the faint-hearted were clinging more to their faith in the Frate's word, than to their faith in the virtues of the unseen Image. But there were not a few of the fierce-hearted who thought with secret rejoicing that the Frate's word might be ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... at this point. Both the young men went away immediately after supper. They were pursued by a nervously malicious, but somewhat faint-hearted laugh from Madame Kukshin; her vanity had been deeply wounded by neither of them having paid any attention to her. She stayed later than any one at the ball, and at four o'clock in the morning she was dancing a polka-mazurka with Sitnikov in the Parisian style. This edifying ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... Leyden was sublime in its despair. A few murmurs were, however, occasionally heard at the steadfastness of the magistrates, and a dead body was placed at the door of the burgomaster, as a silent witness against his inflexibility. A party of the more faint-hearted even assailed the heroic Adrian Van der Werf with threats and reproaches as he passed through the streets. A crowd had gathered around him, as he reached a triangular place in the centre of the town, into which many of the principal ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... did!—then, as she retreated towards the open room-door, came the last outburst of her invectives, high-pitched in their voluble utterance, against him, against them both, against everybody, including Mr. Raddle in the kitchen—"a base, faint-hearted, timorous wretch, that's afraid to come upstairs and face the ruffinly creaturs—that's afraid to come—that's afraid!" Ending with her screaming descent of the stairs in the midst of a loud double-knock, upon the arrival just then of the Pickwickians, when, "in an uncontrollable burst ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... mischief—the books of their demented friend. The curate asked the niece for the keys to the library, and she was only too willing to let him have them. They all went in, followed by the housekeeper, who grew faint-hearted as soon as she caught sight of all the beautifully bound books in the room. She ran out as if beset, returning immediately with a bowl of holy water and a sprinkler, with which she implored the curate to ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra |
