"Foolhardy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the landing on which he stood, instinctively trying to locate the second paddle. It lay at his feet. A foolhardy thing to do, he thought, a broken paddle, out there above the rapids, would mean death and no other thing. Helpless in the current, the canoe could not be guided through those fearful gates of peril below. If by a ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... presumable, that this was a mere bravado, in the full confidence that no one would be found sufficiently foolhardy to engage to follow the example. It is needless to say, that the promise of laughing aloud could not have been performed; so that any one might have safely accepted the challenge, conditioning for the full performance ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... gentleness is a mean between irascibility and insensibility to insult; modesty is a mean between impudence and shamefacedness. People are often mistaken and regard one of the extremes as a virtue. Thus the reckless and the foolhardy is often praised as the brave; the man of no backbone is called gentle; the indolent is mistaken for the contented; the insensible for the temperate, the extravagant for the generous. This is an error. The mean ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... foolhardy speech of mine made the doctor wince, and I am not sure but he began to fear that my mind was weakening in a new direction. But I had my own excuse for my action, which I felt that I could explain to him at some future time. The fact is, I was so disturbed ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... myself, and as good in the wind—for he lived temperately; and he had had more experience. But to-day, as I soon discovered, he was flurried and made mistakes; twice in the first five minutes I could have disarmed him, and once I very nearly had his life. He was foolhardy to an extraordinary degree; his eyes were unsteady; it seemed to me that he was thinking of something else; and before we had been long engaged I discovered that he was thinking of two things, the first, his own certain death, the second, the state of mind of the Marchese Semifonte. ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... he could not quite justify the scheme. All the efforts of his imagination, as he rode home, to bring his judgment to the same side with itself, had failed, and he had been driven to confess the project a foolhardy one. But, on the other hand, had he not had a leading thitherward? Whence else the sudden conviction that Scudamore had taken her, and the burning desire to seek her in Raglan stables? And had he not heard mighty arguments ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... must wait for their attack, sir knight. It were foolhardy to attempt to seek them in their own hills, and yet they must stop us. They will attack before ...
— ...After a Few Words... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... temperament did not allow the younger brother to follow the tortuous course through which the elder wound himself to his object. A cold, calm circumspection carried the latter slowly, but surely, to his aim; and with a pliable subtlety he made all things subserve his purpose; with a foolhardy impetuosity, which overthrew all obstacles, the other at times compelled success, but oftener accelerated disaster. For this reason William was a general, and Louis never more than an adventurer; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... me steadily for a moment or two, and I fancied that there was something of that admiration in his gaze which a cautious man sometimes feels for the foolhardy. ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... aught in the hall now?" Osberne answers from where he sat: "There is but little, for I am little." Then they turn and see him hugging himself up in the sack, and something at his back, they cannot see what; and the goodman says: "What hast thou been about all day, kinsman? Thou art forever foolhardy and a truant; of right, stripes should pay the for thy straying." Said Osberne: "I have been shepherding sheep; may it not buy me off the stripes that I have found two of the lost ones, and brought back ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... slipped in attempting the most foolhardy course on earth, and there was a lot of talk about the dangers of guideless climbing. But I guessed the truth, and I am sure Dupont knew, though ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... the left of the lounge door, yawned the well of the basement stairway. And one chance was no more foolhardy than another. Like a shot down that dark hole he dropped—and brought up with a bang against a closed door at the bottom. Happily, it wasn't locked. Turning the handle, he stumbled through, reclosed the door, and intelligently ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... determined to set about it at once, and use up the hours before him as long as he could, without any further delay. If by any possibility he could stop that leak, he determined to start off at the next high tide, that very night, and run the risk. It was a daring, even a foolhardy thought; but Tom was desperate, and the only idea which he had was, to ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... sheriff, met me on Baltimore Street, and informed me he held the warrant for my arrest. I assured him it would be foolhardy to try to execute it, for one of us would certainly be injured. I recommended him to report to Judge Bond, and I assured him I would ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... who followed Roland thought him more than brave, they considered him foolhardy. But Roland, caring little whether they followed or not, retraced his own steps in default of those of the bandits. The two men, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... all would come out as the hermit foretold. So it was with a sort of confidence, and a boy's love of adventure, too, that I had run into danger thus, while now that I had come off so well, my confidence was yet stronger. However, it would not make me foolhardy, for my father was wont to tell me that one may only trust to luck after all care taken to be well ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... unsuspecting simplicity made me foolhardy; I would stuff him recklessly full of lies; rout him out o' field grandly, and stop ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... half so eager to undertake it; but I had said I would and now I must stick to my word, or acknowledge that I was a big bluffer. I went up to the office and Fred Bennett gave me the orders. But as he did so he said: "Bates, that's a foolhardy thing for you to do, and I reckon the old man must be crazy to allow you to try it, but rather than give in to that mob out there I'll see you through with it. Now don't you forget for one minute, that you have twenty-three ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... "I have just been trained and trained about fire. I know it's an awfully dangerous thing. It's just foolhardy to run any sort of risk with it, and it's wise when you make a fire in the open air like this, to stand on the same side as the wind comes from, even if you haven't any skirts ...
— Tattine • Ruth Ogden
... drawn in. The great wheels began to turn and hiss, the Barbara's passengers waved good-by to the foolhardy lunatics who had elected to go back into the jaws of destruction. Mrs. Colfax was put into a cabin; and Virginia, in a glow, climbed with Captain Lige to the hurricane deck. There they stood for a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... a thing as asking the cabin-boy to climb the rigging when the sea is rough, and before he has had a chance to prove himself a good climber in pleasant weather. Master Willy, don't obey any such foolhardy order. The Captain, I am sure, does not want you to try any ...
— The Shipwreck - A Story for the Young • Joseph Spillman
... not bad, and it has a wide compass; but what else are all these fantastic warblings and flourishes, these preposterous runs, these never-ending shakes, but delusive artifices of style, which people admire in the same way that they admire the foolhardy agility of a rope-dancer? Do you imagine that such things can make any deep impression upon us and stir the heart? The 'harmonic shake' which you spoilt I cannot tolerate; I always feel anxious and pained when she attempts it. And then this scaling ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... would be anything in such a lofty sphere for her. She almost trembled at the audacity which might have carried her on to a terrible rebuff. She could find heart only to look at the pictures which were showy and then walk out. It seemed to her as if she had made a splendid escape and that it would be foolhardy to think of applying in that ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... be possible that the garrison within the fort has been reduced to a number equal, or even less, than your force; but I should say it would be foolhardy in the extreme to make such a venture without a certain knowledge of the extent of the force behind the breastworks. But the riflemen have opened on the regiment nearest to them," added the captain, as the crack of a rifle ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... noon. Of course, under such conditions of existence, there is no great probability that much risk will be encountered by any one gifted with the ordinary instinct of self-preservation. Should any one be foolhardy enough to dare for himself the experiment, he would scarcely find a surridgi to furnish animals, or a guide willing to pilot him. And should he even make a start of it, am I not the very man to know what a lesson he would get in the course of the first six ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... this idea struck me as unfortunate. The elder Dumas had worked that vein so well and so completely, I doubted if any literary gold remained for another author. It seemed foolhardy to resuscitate the Three Guardsmen epoch—and I doubted if it were possible to carry out his idea and play an intense and pathetic rôle disguised with ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... abandon this foolhardy undertaking. How can you expect to find Weiss in all that confusion? Most likely he is no longer there by this time; he is probably making his way home through the fields. I assure you that Bazeilles ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... build or remodel?" is a question with so many facets that it would be foolhardy to try to answer it categorically. Circumstances alter cases in all phases of life and particularly so when one is endeavoring to decide whether the country home is to be a new structure, or an old one remodeled to make the best use of its desirable features and suit the ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... reckless and foolhardy, and more especially of those who were either merely hunters and not farmers, or else who were of doubtful character, lived entirely by themselves; but, as a rule, each knot of settlers was gathered together into a little ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... a soldier for the time being, and under my command. I order you not to go, for we have too much need of all our brave burghers to defend the country to let any man risk his life in a foolhardy adventure." ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... His rifle was a well-tried repeating Winchester, and he carried a light, short-handled axe in his belt besides the regulation knife; so he had no serious misgivings as he trod the crackling, moonlit snow beneath the moose-hide webbing of his snowshoes. But not being utterly foolhardy, he kept to the open stretches of meadow, or river-bed, or snow-buried lake, rather than in the close ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... believe," said the sheriff who had been listening with keen interest to the hunter's account of his bold but fruitless attempt to compel the submission of the desperado, "I cannot believe, after all, that the fellow will be so foolhardy as to persist in his refusal to surrender, when he knows there is now no longer any chance for him to escape. I will try him faithfully before resorting to ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... puberty new diseases are prone to show themselves and old ones to be outgrown, so at marriage a like change must be at least expected, and he who blindly or thoughtlessly hazards a leap in the dark is foolish, or rather foolhardy. ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... Wessex. But on St. Brice's day, the king treacherously gave orders that all Danes in the immediate English territory should be massacred. The West Saxons rose on the appointed night, and slew every one of them, including Gunhild, the sister of King Swegen, and a Christian convert. It was a foolhardy attempt. Swegen fell at once upon Wessex, and marched up and down the whole country, for two years. He burnt Wilton and Sarum, and then sailed round to Norwich, where Ulfkytel, of East Anglia, gave him "the hardest ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... down the best estimate they could make of all these things in the Northern States. The Northern States made two (or I shouldn't wonder if it were three) times as good a showing in men and resources as the Confederacy had. 'Judge,' said my father, 'this is the most foolhardy enterprise that man ever undertook.' But Yancey of Alabama was about that time making five-hour speeches to thousands of people all over the South, declaring that one Southerner could whip five Yankees, and the awful slaughter began ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... bravery. For telling of his loyalty to the Union he was insulted and hissed at on the streets of Nashville, and when he received a hoop skirt from his lady friends he reluctantly concluded to take up arms against the country he loved so well. He paid the penalty of foolhardy recklessness in the first battle ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore
... Nat must have been aboard the schooner secretly; what he told his father and his eagerness to bet with me on a proposition that seemed foolhardy on the face of it clinch the thing in my mind. The misguided fool! That, Elsa, is an example of how low a man will go who has been spoiled and brought up without the slightest idea ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... instances of a similar folly which I observed throughout the American war. I speak of military officers especially. There is something in the character of Englishmen which makes them over-confident and foolhardy, and they will require to be taught by some very severe lessons before they learn the importance of caution. This want of caution in an officer, when entrusted with the lives of brave men, is a very great fault, and shows great folly and an unfitness for command. The vice, I am happy to say, is not ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... our regimental commander, who growled, 'Well, if you will go I suppose you will; but it would be a foolhardy thing for even ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... plunged he gave the lad a parting kick, which knocked out one of his eyes, just as the Calender was deprived of his eye in the "Arabian Nights." Still worse was the fate that overtook a woman, who, at midnight on New Year's Eve, when all water is turned into wine, was foolhardy enough to go to a well. As she bent over it to draw, one came and plucked out her ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... you? But it is so, even since I myself have been in residence at Withersby Hall—something like three and a half years—there have been several mysterious disappearances, Sir Nigel, and all directly traceable to a foolhardy desire to investigate these phenomena. For myself, I leave well enough alone. I trust you are going to ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... the supernatural potency of these gimcracks? No, and yes. Not to be foolhardy, he quietly slipped down every day to the levee, had a slave-boy row him across the river in a skiff, landed, re-embarked, and in the middle of the stream surreptitiously cast a picayune over his shoulder into the river. Monsieur D'Embarras, the imp of death thus placated, must have ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... beckoned to the captain to row up beside us and deliver his papers; he stepped silently on board, and we exchanged salutes. As I saw that the two boat-loads of twenty-five men were lying off within hearing, on either side of us, I took this opportunity to admonish the captain about his foolhardy attempt to escape, and how he thereby had endangered the lives of his crew. The latter, realizing the justice of my remarks, thanked us for having saved them by respectfully lifting their caps. The captain awkwardly excused himself by saying he had ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner
... very brave general," said Hudelist, gently; "a courageous captain, and a most defiant and foolhardy enemy of France. How unwavering were the courage and intrepidity with which he met the Viceroy of Italy everywhere, and attacked him, even though he knew beforehand that he would be unable to worst the superior enemy! How great was the magnanimity with ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... Bolivar's palace was attacked by a group of conspirators whose object was to murder him. They took the guard by surprise, wounding and killing several of its members, and started towards Bolivar's room. The Liberator intended to fight, but was persuaded that it would be foolhardy; so he jumped through the window to the street and hid for a while. The conspirators, crying, "Death to the tyrant and long life to General Santander and the constitution of Cucuta," went in pursuit of him. Colonel William Ferguson, the Liberator's Irish ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... warn you! I warn you!" His hold tightened upon her with sudden brutality, quelling her effort at freedom. "There are worse things than marriage," he said. "Are you utterly ignorant, I wonder, or deliberately foolhardy? Why do you always force upon me the role of villain? I tell you again, you ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... war with England began, President Madison and his advisers thought it foolhardy to attempt to oppose Great Britain on the ocean, for she had the strongest fleet of any nation in the world, and so decided to confine the war entirely to land. It was Bainbridge who brought about a change of this unwise policy by impassioned pleading, ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... one opinion expressed when the captain finished his story, and that was that Rodney Gray was a foolhardy ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... shower. When it was running nicely and he was under it, he started to sing. But his voice didn't sound as much like the voice of Lauritz Melchior as it usually did, not even when he made a brave, if foolhardy stab at the Melchior accent. Slowly, he began to realize that ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... his army. Now, to engage in a combat wherein you risk your whole fortunes without putting forth your entire strength, is, as I observed before, when condemning the defence of a country by guarding its defiles, an utterly foolhardy course. On the other hand, it is to be said that a prudent captain, when he has to meet a new and redoubtable adversary, ought, before coming to a general engagement, to accustom his men by skirmishes and passages ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... authorities could no longer close their eyes, especially at a time when rumours of war were rife, to the rapid development of heavier-than-air craft on the Continent. So far, as we have seen, the aeroplane had been regarded in England as little more than the plaything of a few adventurous but foolhardy spirits. A certain amount of experience in piloting and handling aeroplanes had been gained by a handful of Army officers, but the machines used either belonged to the officers themselves, to civilians, or to aviation firms. I was at that time a general ...
— Aviation in Peace and War • Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes
... and retreat. Fortunate indeed is he or she who in a crisis is by chance equipped with neither too little nor too much knowledge—who knows enough to enable him to advance, but does not know enough to appreciate how perilous, how foolhardy, how harsh and cruel, advance will be. Mildred was in this instance thus fortunate—unfortunate, she was presently to think it. She knew enough about loveless marriage to shrink from it. She did not know enough ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... will go well with you, I am sure it will.—And do you really think so, Sir? Your counsel, which I have long followed, weighs much with me, I verily believe that I must write to Mr. F. B. by the first vessel.—If thee persistest in being such a foolhardy man, said my wife, for God's sake let it be kept a profound secret among us; if it were once known abroad that thee writest to a great and rich man over at London, there would be no end of the talk of the people; some ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... them for her own ends without scruple. And thou, foolish boy, blind and self willed as thou art, unheeding my warnings, hast played into her hands; and now others as well as thyself may be brought into sore peril through thine own foolhardy recklessness." ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... which appear in the market, it may safely be said that sixty are nothing but the simplest kind of wells, into which the capital of foolhardy speculators is sunk almost instantly. Out of the remaining forty, twenty-five may be looked upon as suspicious enterprises, partaking too much of gambling speculations. Among the last fifteen even, a careful choice must be made before ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... the better of his discretion, he thought to be a modern Alexander, to make Europe Protestant, subdue Rome, and carry his conquering eagles into Egypt and Turkey and Persia. How, by unwise measures and foolhardy endeavors, he lost all the fruits of his hundred victories and his nine years of conquest in the terrible defeat by the Russians at Pultowa, which sent him an exile into Turkey, kept him there a prisoner of state for over five years; and how, finally, when once again at the head of ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... passed its experimental ordeal, and stands firmly established in popular regard. It was started at a period when any new literary enterprise was deemed almost foolhardy, but the publisher believed that the time had arrived for just such a Magazine. Fearlessly advocating the doctrine of ultimate and gradual Emancipation, for the sake of the UNION and the WHITE MAN, it has found favor in quarters where censure was expected, and patronage where opposition ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... a thorough good scolding," he went on presently. "What possessed you to attempt bathing in a rough sea like that? Seriously"—speaking more earnestly. "It was a most foolhardy thing ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... room. He had telephoned to Polly Widdicombe to come down and christen the ship. Polly was delayed and Davidge was frantic. In fact, the Widdicombe motor ran off the road into a slough of despond, and Polly did not arrive until after the ship was launched from the ways and the foolhardy ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... tantrum, rolling on the ground, pawing it in frenzy, squealing in maddened rage. Then Shortie was on his feet, desperate determination showing in every line of his body. With heedless, desperate, foolhardy courage he charged ...
— The Planet with No Nightmare • Jim Harmon
... witnessed that notable event. The travelers were informed that they had been mourned as lost for many weeks past, and Government was fitting out a party to seek them as soon as possible. The general opinion was, that the globe had collapsed or exploded, and that the foolhardy explorers had all perished in the forests of Upper Canada. This was the accepted theory, and nothing could exceed the severity with which the editors of the papers politically opposed to the administration censured it for the extravagance and all-round idiocy of the whole ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... distance hewn out of the rock, winding upward along the face of the precipice. The view, as one rises, is of the break-neck description. The way is really safe enough, even on mule-back, ascending; but one would be foolhardy to ride down. We met a lady on the summit who was about to be carried down on a chair; and she seemed quite to like the mode of conveyance: she had harnessed her husband in temporarily for one of the bearers, which ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... confess that I was abjectly afraid. I declared that I would go no farther. I threatened in my terror to cut the sheet of the sail. I attacked the Professor with considerable acrimony, calling him foolhardy, mad, I know not ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... was to stay and fight. But his nerves were not strong enough to execute so foolhardy a resolution. He seemed to see a man behind every maple-trunk. Darkness was fast coming on, and he knew that his absence from supper at his boarding-place could not fail to excite suspicion. There was no time to ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... denunciations of the Johannesburg conspirators, who had bungled their side of the business and who had certainly shown no rashness. At any rate, whatever the merits of their case, no one in England accused the Johannesburgers of foolhardy courage or impassioned daring. They were so busy in trying to induce Jameson to go back that they had no time to go forward themselves. It was not that they lost their heads, their hearts were ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... though a very religious man himself, laughed at all I had suggested about its being an intimation from Heaven, and told me several stories of such foolhardy people, as he called them, as I was; that I ought indeed to submit to it as a work of Heaven if I had been any way disabled by distempers or diseases, and that then, not being able to go, I ought to acquiesce in the direction of Him, who, having ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... sufficiently. Take one of his greatest things, the "Bastion Saint-Gervais" in the Mousquetaires. If he has not made you see the heroic hopeless town, and the French leaguer and the shattered redoubt between, and the forlorn hope of the Four foolhardy yet forethoughtful and for ever delightful heroes, with their not so cheerful followers, eating, drinking, firing, consulting, and flaunting the immortal napkin-pennant in the enemy's face—you would not be made to see it, though the authors of Ines ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... truthfulness of it which is so offensive. It may be of interest to state, that the facts therein named are the recollections of old Dr. McClay, a Baptist minister of known power and veracity. The fact of Paine's miserable, and cowardly, and man-forsaken end is too true. Let no one be foolhardy enough to follow them, rejecting to do it, a fourfold cord of strong testimony; nay, we may add, a stronger cord of fivefold testimony, as Paine's nurse testifies like ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... an air of indifference at great losses, feel them none the less. I consider it my duty as a gentleman to say that his bearing through the ordeal did credit to his noble family and his personal character. The Archduchess, who is foolhardy and insolent, does not deserve such a lover, and it is grievous to think that such a termagant should have so much power over such a man. I regard her as I would some poisonous reptile. Piety—which improves most women—only seems to render her the more defiant, and love—which softens most wills—makes ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... Christmas day,—they having fixed upon Christmas eve to be married,—and Dawson promised he would; but he did assure me afterwards, as we were walking along the road to meet the stage waggon, that he would certainly feign some reason for not coming. "For," says he, "I am not so foolhardy as to jeopardise my Moll's happiness for the pleasure this feast would give me. Nay, Kit, I do think 'twould break my heart indeed, if anything of my doing should mar my Moll's happiness." And I was very well pleased ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... tempting a spot we lay in wait for them, they invariably avoided that particular place and seized their victim for the night from some other camp. Hunting them by day, moreover, in such a dense wilderness as surrounded us, was an exceedingly tiring and really foolhardy undertaking. In a thick jungle of the kind round Tsavo the hunted animal has every chance against the hunter, as however careful the latter may be, a dead twig or something of the sort is sure to crackle just at the critical moment and so give the alarm. Still I never gave up hope of some day finding ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... were in the world, have even condemned you; they have been fruitful, but you fruitless; they have been fearful of danger, but you foolhardy; they have taken the fittest opportunity for their own preservation, but thou hast both blindly, and confidently gone on ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... it seems to me that a thousand daggers have sprung from this little paper, to make my heart's blood flow. Who is the foolhardy woman that would entice my husband from his loyalty to me? Woe, woe to her when I shall have learned her name! And I will learn it!" cried the unhappy wife. "I myself will take this letter to the emperor, and he shall open it in my presence. I will ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... retreated, crying that a wise and prudent man never strives with dragons, the second advanced recklessly, without thinking of protecting himself. The third, however, set to work in a business-like way, not only to rescue his foolhardy brother, but to slay the dragon. On perceiving this, the father resumed his wonted form, and announced he would divide his realm into three parts, of which the best share, Iran or Persia, was bestowed upon Trij, the son who had shown both ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... through the meal in polite silence or in measured commonplaces, turning the happy parliament into a frigid Gothic ceremony. Why had he not kept in mind that sufficient to the hour is the pleasure of it? Famished for her companionship, a foolhardy impulse of temptation had risked its loss. The waiter set something before them and softly withdrew. Jack signaled the unspoken humility of being a disciplined soldier at attention on his side of the barrier and Mary signaled a trifle ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... that she was of defective intellect—well—Jeb would face much to be allowed to handle that $134.92. (This was the "proppity" in question. It was a "back" pension and there was to be $2.11 per month henceforth.) But Jeb was not foolhardy, and he had trudged back from town without having done what the young "'squire" had advised, and Sabriny's "proppity" was in ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... to the king's speech: "It is my duty, sire, not to be silent; and I shall give my advice, since it is desired. The resolution now adopted is contrary to my judgment; for I call it foolhardy to fight under these circumstances, although we have so many and such fine men. Supposing we make an attack on them, and row up against this river-current; then one of the three men who are in each half room must be employed ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... working himself into a little craze of foolhardy curiosity. He had dropped a piece of bark on Vix's head; he had used up his list of bad words, and he had done it all over again, without getting a sign of life. So after a couple more dashes across the glade he ventured within a few feet of the really watchful ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... other chance!" cried Blood, in broken-hearted frenzy. "If ye say it was desperate and foolhardy, why, so it was; but the occasion and the means demanded nothing less. I fail within an ace ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... you not always believed Critobulus to be a man of sound sense, not wild and self-willed? Should you not have said that he was remarkable for his prudence rather than thoughtless or foolhardy? ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... He never drank again, never cussed nor stormed, and I've laid it by as an item, that the badness and sameness of men lies in their wits—if you want a companionable, safe man, you've got to turn to sich as are bereft of their senses—and most women is that foolhardy they prefer wits and ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... seem foolhardy in a prince so little popular as Philip the Fair; but Philip in reality risked nothing, and knew it; the feudality did not possess sufficient union, the people did not have enough force to profit on this occasion against the Crown. Besides, the Pope ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... something rose in his throat. The canoe was familiar. He had seen it a few hours before on the upper bay, and now his keen sight made out the figure of Belding. Instantly he grasped the cause of this foolhardy deed. A glance at Elsie told him she was unaware who it was that thus ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... seeing him. They found his footprints the next morning in their snow-shoe tracks, and wondered how far behind them he had been. I don't know whether it was a vein of real courage that nerved him up to doing such a foolhardy thing as to follow a man with the intention of attacking him, or whether it was simply a case of recklessness. The probability is, however, that he was hungrier than usual, and that the smell of the warm blood made him forget everything else. Anyhow, he had a pretty close call, for the shanty-boy ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... who fights pluckily is said to be MAKANG, and the same word is applied to any daring or dashing feat, such as crossing the river when it is dangerously swollen. To disregard omens would be MAKANG also; it seems, therefore, to have the flavour of the word rash or foolhardy. ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... Scriven, but he adduces no authority. In 1681 Lady Slingsby performed Queen Margaret in Crowne's Henry VI, the First Part with the Murder of Gloucester, an adaption of Shakespeare's I Henry VI, suggested by the great success of his previous alteration. She also played Regan in Tate's foolhardy tinkering with King Lear; Sempronia in Lee's powerful Lucius Junitis Brutus; and in December, Marguerite in the same author's excellent The Princess of Cleves. In 1682 she acted another Roman role, Tarpeia, in an anonymous tragedy, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... half-way across and was merely struggling to keep his head above water. The two huskies went off the spring-board so close one behind the other that it looked foolhardy, and struck out rapidly for the drowning man, but he had gone down his ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... she understood one-half the truth, not even her love for her niece would have impelled her to leave her comfortable home, nor would she ever have given her consent that Warrenia should engage in any such wild, foolhardy undertaking. But Aunt Cynthia's education had been of the early fashionable kind, which furnished only the smallest modicum of knowledge. You may be sure that the younger ones, who knew a good deal more about the country and the people, ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... weakness," replied her husband, "for my own sponge. Moreover, foolhardy as it may seem, I still clean my teeth. The only question is, what to put ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... to suggest my method. One of these was Sarah's foolish notion that our silver must, every night, be brought from the dining-room and deposited under our bed. This I considered a most foolhardy tempting of fate. It coaxed any burglar who ordinarily would have quietly taken the silver from the dining-room and have then gone away peacefully, to enter our room. The knowledge that I lay in bed ready at ...
— The Water Goats and Other Troubles • Ellis Parker Butler
... actually in the river itself. His guards of honor were having a time of it to keep their feet in the face of the current, but they were still willing to go on, believing that the farther the statue went into the stream, the sooner the waters would go down. At last, however, the most foolhardy withdrew. The Saint came back. Though the procession at once went on to the next road and to the ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... crew, the effect, which came with startling suddenness, took the form of a swift and terrible retribution. Scarce had the man released the safety snaps ere a swift arm of the storm-monster encircled the ship, rolling it over and over, with the result that the foolhardy warrior went overboard at ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... that keeps people guessing. This applies to his mental as well as his physical capacity. Frankly cordial, he resents familiarity. You would never think of slapping him on the shoulder and saying, "Hello, Jan." More than one blithe and buoyant person has been frozen into respectful silence in such a foolhardy undertaking. ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... into the China seas, and there told them how the Chinamen used to slip on board his ship and steal with supernatural dexterity, and the sailors catch them by the tails, which they observing, came ever with their tails soaped like pigs at a village feast; and how some foolhardy sailors would venture into the town at the risk of their lives; and how one day they had to run for it, and when they got to the shore their boat was stolen, and they had to 'bout ship and fight it out, and one fellow who knew the natives had loaded the sailors' guns with currant ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... like foolhardy talk when it was considered that the other two men would return armed. But Harry had unlimited confidence in his friend, and so followed Tom, crouching, until they had hidden ...
— The Young Engineers in Nevada • H. Irving Hancock
... calling to the perils of war, and begging that the actual declaration of war might be averted. When this had availed nothing, and the young nation had rushed into battle with a courage that must seem to us now foolhardy, the Nantucketers adopted the doubtful expedient of seeking special favor from the enemy. An appeal for immunity from the ordinary acts of war was addressed to the British Admiral Cochrane, and a special envoy was sent to the British naval officer commanding the North American station, to ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... friends thought Katie interested in some work which she did not care to talk about. They thought it interesting, though foolhardy to let it bring those lines. Katie was not a beauty, they said among themselves, and could not afford lines. Her charm had always been her freshness, her buoyancy and her blitheness. Now ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... he gave a little twist and a wriggle and slipped out of my hands as if he had been an eel. Then, before I had quite recovered sufficiently to make a grab at the empty air, he hurled himself against the window. It was one of those foolhardy things that succeed just because of the sheer, daring recklessness of the man who carries them through. He swept through the glass with a splintering crash that must have been audible for half-a-block away, and then, while the falling pieces still tinkled on the floor, he placed his ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... there were good-byes to be said. The polar winter was near at hand, when the sea for miles beyond the barrier would freeze solid and it would have been foolhardy for the Brutus, which had discharged all her coal but that necessary to steam north with, to have remained longer. She sailed early in the morning, bearing with her letters to their friends in the north, which the boys could not help thinking might be the last they would ever ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... and angry. Knowing, as well as he did, the dangerous character of Arizona, New Mexico, Northwestern Texas and Indian Territory, he could not excuse such a foolhardy proceeding as that of a small colony settling in the very heart of that section. The nearest point where they could hope for safety was Fort Severn, fifty miles distant. There was a company of soldiers under command of an experienced ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... God; and she appeared loquacious, vain, crafty, gorgeous in her attire. She had threatened the English that if they did not quit France she would have them all slain. She commanded armies, wherefore she was a slayer of her fellow-creatures and foolhardy. She was seditious, for are not all those seditious who support the opposite party? But recently having appeared before Paris in company with Friar Richard, a heretic, and a rebel,[2035] she had threatened ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... of accomplishing an undertaking so foolhardy were, even when contemplated in the most favorable light, exactly nil. And then there flashed into my mind a number of questions which—and I trust you 'll believe me when I assert it—had never come to me before: Who was my uncle's heir? To whom, when he died, would the ruby ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... covered with snow, so that it was impossible to get either on foot or by train higher than Kaltbad—and when once an official saw us attempting to walk through a likely field for a better view, warned us sternly against any such foolhardy attempt. ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... succession, of heads set close together like a mosaic, and covering the whole surface of the great street, and by the roar which went up, cheering everything which made its appearance; whether it were the struggling activity of the crowd moving in the center of the street, the sudden fall of foolhardy boys who had climbed into trees or up lampposts, or the short and sharp fights which went on between spectators for the best ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... archbishop of Armagh, born in Yorkshire, a high-handed Churchman and imitator of Laud; was foolhardy enough once to engage, nowise to his credit, in public debate with such a dialectician as Thomas Hobbes on the questions of necessity ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... after Lester had gone, thinking deeply. What a twisted career! What an end to great possibilities? What a foolhardy persistence in evil and error! He shook his head. Robert was wiser. He was the one to control a business. He was cool and conservative. If Lester were only like that. He thought and thought. It was a long time before he stirred. And still, ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... of Francisco Pizarro to penetrate to Uiticos, his brother, Gonzalo, "undertook the pursuit of the Inca and occupied some of his passes and bridges," but was unsuccessful in penetrating the mountain labyrinth. Being less foolhardy than Captain Villadiego, he did not come into actual conflict with Manco. Unable to subdue the young Inca or prevent his raids on travelers from Cuzco to Lima, Francisco Pizarro, "with the assent of the royal officers who were with him," ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... with a change of tone. "I'm not saying this for Alf Henley's sake, for I hate him; he is the only man in this county that ever tricked me out of my rights, and I'll get even with 'im, sooner or later, but I'm thinking now about you. You may be foolhardy enough to try some slip-up game on him. I'm not afraid you'll meet him like a man, for, if it had been in you, you'd have done it before this, but you may think you can do your job in the dark, so listen to me, ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... brother. A cloud over the palace of another Emperor was interpreted as a portentous monster, half monkey and half snake, and one of the Minamoto warriors won fame for his daring in shooting an arrow at the cloud, which then vanished. Equally foolhardy and marvellous was the deed of Fujiwara Michinaga, who alone of a band of courtiers in the palace dared one dark night to go unattended and without lights from one end of the palace to ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... It would seem a foolhardy thing to do—to invite battle with such an overwhelming force, when they might quietly reach their boat and make away without detection. But their blood was up, and there was a friend and ally in peril of ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... a most extraordinary request. Damme, I'd like to get hold of Fagin all right, but I need to know more of your plan, and the reason you have for asking such a detail. It looks foolhardy to my mind." ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... hang up the keys, which are as big as the historic key of the Bastille, which you may remember to have seen at the Musee Carnavalet. Then I close and bolt all the shutters downstairs. I do it systematically every night—because I promised not to be foolhardy. I always grin, and feel as if it were a scene in a play. It impresses me so much like a tremendous piece of business—dramatic suspense—which leads up to nothing except my going quietly upstairs ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich
... with almost foolhardy bravery, sat his horse directing his dilapidated artillery fire in Cuba, and thus conspicuous, made himself even more marked by wearing a white sombrero, he was not playing the part of a fool; he was following his natural impulse to exert a moral force on his comrades who ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... enormous circular black eyes so wide open and fixed, that, having heard of its threatening demonstration against the cavalry who attacked it on the previous day, they felt certain it meant mischief, and was only waiting for some foolhardy wight to venture within its reach, to seize and devour him. They had been despatched by a despotic king to capture or kill the creature; but, whilst every man there would have emulated his neighbour in rushing to certain death against the ranks of an enemy, there seemed to be ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... quick on the trigger. A foolish and morbid publicity has cloaked men of this class with a notoriety which cheap and pernicious literature has greatly helped to disseminate. They have been made romantic when they were brutal, brave when they were foolhardy, heroes when they were only bullies and blackguards. This man, Abe Barrow, the prisoner at the bar, belongs to that class. He enjoys and has enjoyed a reputation as a 'bad man,' a desperate and brutal ruffian. ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... they did away with the expense and care of carpets. It is true that we are to have no carpets in the apartments where these hardwood floors have been laid, but these handsome floors simply emphasize and italicize a man's poverty unless they are dotted with rugs, and there is none so foolhardy as to deny that the average rug costs five times as much as the average carpet. And the care demanded by a hardwood floor is exacting, for that shining surface, upon which every spot of dust stands out so distinctly, must be gone over daily ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... the dragon had him," muttered King Aetes to himself, "and the four-footed pedant, his schoolmaster, into the bargain. Why, what a foolhardy, self-conceited coxcomb he is! We'll see what my fire-breathing bulls will do for him. Well, Prince Jason," he continued, aloud, and as complaisantly as he could, "make yourself comfortable for to-day, and to-morrow morning, ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... for the salvation of souls, and for the destruction of heresy. He should always be calm in times of trial and difficulty, and never give way to outbursts of anger or temper. He should be a brave man, ready to face death if necessary, but while never cowardly running from danger, he should never be foolhardy rushing into it. He should be unmoved by the entreaties or the bribes of those who appear before his tribunal; still he must not harden his heart to the point of refusing to delay or mitigate punishment, as circumstances may ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... Weary, foolhardy to the last, stayed longest; but even Weary could not but admit that the case was hopeless. The brush was thick and filled the gully, probably from end to end. Riding through it was impossible, and ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... bone, after thirty his skin was moist but not damp, and there was not a drop of sweat on the skin-leather of his fatigue cap. When he got to Koongat Bridge he was like a racer after practice, ready for a fight from start to finish. Yet he was not foolhardy. He knew the danger that beset him, for he could not tell, in the crisis come to Mandakan, what designs might be abroad. He now saw through Boonda Broke's friendship for him, and he only found peace for his ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... did not appeal to Duane. His curiosity was aroused; it did not, however, tempt him to any foolhardy act. He turned southwest and rode a hundred miles until he again reached the sparsely settled country. Here he heard no more of rangers. It was a barren region he had never but once ridden through, and that ride had ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... of the queen of watering-places in her palmy days was filling fast, as it had done for the last two nights. Other attractions lost their power. Ombre, basset, hazard, lansquenet, loo, spread their cards and counters in vain for crafty or foolhardy fingers. The master of the ceremonies found his services at a discount; no troops of maidens, no hosts of squires, answered to his appeal; no double sets were forming to the inspiring strains of "Nancy Dawson." The ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... foolhardy daring born of rage resolved him at that instant. He flung himself out from his saddle and raised his hand with a knife clenched in it. But the Maccabee with a composed laugh caught the hand and wrenching it about, ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... the old man phlegmatically. "It is high time you were off. You are foolhardy to match your chances with justice. Prison ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... the lake-side in a place where the rushes went down into the water, and there steeped my wrists and laved my temples. If I could have done so with any remains of self-esteem, I would now have fled from my foolhardy enterprise. But (call it courage or cowardice, and I believe it was both the one and the other) I decided I was ventured out beyond the possibility of a retreat. I had outfaced these men, I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... there must be some truth in his insistence of there having always been something childlike in their relation. In the unreserved and instant sharing of all thoughts, all impressions, all sensations, we see the naiveness of a children's foolhardy adventure. This unreserved expressed for him the whole truth of the situation. With her it may have been different. It might have been assumed; yet nobody is altogether a comedian; and even comedians themselves ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... from all foreboding! They rush into the outspread net of murder In the blind drunkenness of victory; I have no pity for their fate. This Illo, This overflowing and foolhardy villain, That would fain bathe himself ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... his peace? Calm would he pray, with his own thoughts to ward Thy thunder off, nor want the angels' guard. But Pippa—just one such mischance would spoil Her day that lightens the next twelve-month's toil 70 At wearisome silk-winding, coil on coil! And here I let time slip for naught! Aha, you foolhardy sunbeam, caught With a single splash from my ewer! You that would mock the best pursuer, 75 Was my basin over-deep? One splash of water ruins you asleep, And up, up, fleet your brilliant bits Wheeling and counterwheeling, Reeling, broken beyond ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... his plans for the future, the duke was too good a soldier to disregard any risk, however slight. In love and battle, every peril should be avoided; every vulnerable point made impregnable. Besides, the fool was audacious, foolhardy; his language of covert mockery and quick wit proved him an intelligent antagonist, who might become a ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham |
