"Pusillanimity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with benevolent hope to the ultimate institution of a General Congress of nations for the adjustment of their controversies. But he was no visionary and no enthusiast. He knew that as yet war was often inevitable—that pusillanimity provoked it, and that national honor was national property of the highest value; because it was the best national defence. He admitted only defensive war—but he did not narrowly define it. He held that to be a defensive war, which was waged to sustain what could not be surrendered ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... raising the financial wind was to employ her pen. It was true that her "memoirs," strung together in Paris, had fallen flat—owing to the pusillanimity of the editor of Le Pays—but a full length "autobiography" would, she thought, stand a better prospect. Apart, too, from other considerations, there was now more material on which to draw. An embarrassing amount of it. She ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... came from Zwolle, where he was born of very honest parents, and he loved our patroness St. Agnes the Virgin with a special devotion. In the beginning he suffered many weaknesses and temptations, but afterward, by the help of God, he was changed into another man, mightily uplifted from pusillanimity of spirit, and endowed with much grace of devotion. He died happily after a good struggle, and on the next day his body was buried next to Brother Nicholas Kreyenschot on the eastern side of the cloister, and Mass and ...
— The Chronicle of the Canons Regular of Mount St. Agnes • Thomas a Kempis
... the Directory, which he accused of weakness, indecision, pusillanimity, wasteful expenditure, of many errors, and perseverance in a system degrading ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... Pusillanimity— Desire of things that conduce but a little to our ends; And fear of things that are but of little ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... but taken means, consistent with his character, to insure the delay which his brother had possibly planned to gain in some more reprehensible manner. And I had yielded to my fears and let his will have its way. I hated myself as I considered my own weakness. I could find no excuse either for my pusillanimity or for that procrastination of my duty into which it had betrayed me. I found I could not face my own scorn; and, rising from my study- chair, I took my hat and went out. I had determined to make amends for my fault by going at ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... successors was composed of no less than thirty of these formidable brigades; and most probably formed a standing force of three hundred and seventy-five thousand men. Instead of being confined within the walls of fortified cities, which the Romans considered as the refuge of weakness or pusillanimity, the legions were encamped on the banks of the great rivers, and along the frontiers of the barbarians. As their stations, for the most part, remained fixed and permanent, we may venture to describe the distribution of the troops. Three legions were sufficient for ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... Southampton, and took passage in the Trent, which was destined subsequently to play a prominent part in the tangled role of Diplomacy, and to furnish the most utterly humiliating of many chapters of the pusillanimity, sycophancy, and degradation ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... nerve, and manliness,—who never flinched at hard fare or rough weather,—a downright slave to a bad habit; unnerved and actually unfit for business for lack of a cigar. It made me angry at myself; I despised myself for my pusillanimity. ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... possessed the firmest courage and a degree of bodily strength which rendered that courage invincible. He affected, indeed, to despise the virtuous moderation of his friend, and ridiculed it with some of his looser comrades as an abject pusillanimity; but he felt himself humbled whenever he was in his company as before a superior being, and therefore gradually ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... it may be said of him that he could write well, the only thing he could do which was worth doing, always supposing that there is any merit in being able to write. He was of a mean appearance, and, like his father, pusillanimous to a degree. The meanness of his appearance disgusted, and his pusillanimity discouraged the Scotch when he made his appearance amongst them in the year 1715, some time after the standard of rebellion had been hoisted by Mar. He only stayed a short time in Scotland, and then, seized ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... opposed to the discussion of the subject; but, be it said to the honor of American Christians, the very large minority resisted to the end; the latter was sustained by outside opinion, and many friends of the Gospel joined with it in deploring the pusillanimity which yielded to the menaces of the South. A crisis thence arose, which has not yet reached its height, and the first fruits of which have been the foundation of a rival society in Boston, to which adherents ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... ludicrous distresses, which, by the laws of comedy, folly is often involved in, he sunk into such a mixture of piteous pusillanimity, and a consternation so ruefully ridiculous and inconsolable, that when he had shook you to a fatigue of laughter, it became a moot point, whether you ought not to have pity'd him. When he debated any matter by himself, he would shut up his mouth ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... they find the government will not protect them, they will attempt at least to protect themselves;" and he concluded, "I cannot be thankful to that gentleman for coming all the way from Geneva to give Americans a character for pusillanimity." He held it madness to suppose that if the treaty were defeated war could be avoided. Called to order, he said that he might have been too personal, and asked pardon of the gentleman ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... paternal friend, and behold your wishes, your prognostications fulfilled; come and behold happiness and inexpressible gratitude living in the bosom which so long was closed even to hope. Come, and receive my contrition for my pusillanimity, for my murmurings; come and help me to be thankful! I long to tell you orally how much is changed within me; how a thousand germs of life and gladness, which I believed to be dead, now spring up in ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... claiming no talent, no power to interest, and in refusing to appear as an author from motives of pusillanimity, idleness, or self-love, is one less excusable for hiding the truth when ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... it is neither to be discussed nor thought of. I refer to it but to denounce it—a denunciation which will find a response in every American bosom. Nothing is ever gained by national pusillanimity. The country which seeks to purchase temporary security by yielding to unjust pretensions, buys present ease at the expense of permanent honour and safety. It sows the wind to reap the whirlwind. I have said elsewhere what I repeat here, that it is ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... The clouds were dissipated. The light of innumerable stars gave grandeur to the scene. And the silver moon communicated a milder lustre, and created a softer shade. Roderic and his train, full of pusillanimity and consternation, had fled from the direful scene, and vanished like shadows at ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... held it up before me, exhorting me to take courage, and inviting me with more than exhortation to accomplish my deliverance. She came nearer, more tenderly, more earnestly; she held the dewy globe with both hands, leaning forward, and sighed and shook her head, drooping at my pusillanimity. It was only when a ringlet had touched the rim, and perhaps the water (for a sunbeam on the surface could never have given it such a golden hue), that I took courage, clasped it, and exhausted it. Sweet as was the water, sweet as was the serenity it gave me ... ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... they came but for a dream. Now for our travelling from hence into parts abroad, our lawgiver thought fit altogether to restrain it. So is it not in China. For the Chinese sail where they will, or can; which showeth, that their law of keeping out strangers is a law of pusillanimity and fear. But this restraint of ours hath one only exception, which is admirable; preserving the good which cometh by communicating with strangers, and avoiding the hurt: and I will now open it to you. And here I shall seem a little to digress, but you will by-and-by find it pertinent. Ye shall ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... is a terrible misfortune—despair. This must not be confounded with an involuntary perturbation, a mere instinctive dread, a phantasmagoric illusion that involves no part of the will. It is not even an excessive fear that goes by the name of pusillanimity. It is a cool judgment like that of Cain: "My sin is too great ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... are original tendencies which cause responses of approval and cause as a result of "relief from hunger, rescue from fear, gorgeous display, instinctive acts of strength, daring and victory," and responses of scorn "to the observation of empty-handedness, deformity, physical meanness, pusillanimity, and defect." The desire for approval is never outgrown—it is one of the governing forces in society. If it is to be shown or desired on any but this crude level of instinctive response, it can ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... some Court Beauty. This unbecoming Wish was pretended to proceed from a Regard for the Welfare and Glory of the Nation. What, says they, shall our King always be tutor'd by Mollaks? What signifies this Peace, which is only owing to the Weakness and Pusillanimity of this set of Men, for we are oppressed with Taxes as much as if we were engaged in a War with all the Powers of Africa? Why does not our King shew some Spirit, and give into an Intrigue? An ambitious Mistress would break these scandalous Fetters, and when he is once ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... on deck about an hour, and had been talking with Hillebrant upon the danger of the evening, and the selfishness and pusillanimity of Mynheer Von Stroom, when a loud noise was ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... empire, of which they had been a province during so many ages, had not yet acquired any union among themselves, and were destitute of all affection to their new liberties and of all national attachments and regards [i]. The vices and pusillanimity of Vortigern, the British leader, were a new ground of hope; and the Saxons in Germany, following such agreeable prospects, soon reinforced Hengist and Horsa with 5000 men, who came over in seventeen vessels. ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... deformed man of low stature; the projection on his back might be styled a hump—it was so prominent. His physiognomy denoted pusillanimity; but there was, at the same time, a malicious sparkle in his eye, and it was with a mocking smile that he contemplated the man with the ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... reprehension of their cowardice, telling them, "If you had been as loyal to your king in hindering the entry of these pirates, as I shall do their going out, you had never caused these troubles, neither to yourselves nor to our whole nation, which hath suffered so much through your pusillanimity. In a word, I shall never grant your request, but shall endeavour to maintain that respect which is due to my king, according to ...
— The Pirates of Panama • A. O. (Alexandre Olivier) Exquemelin
... become a really cruel man. It was from mere pusillanimity that he had perpetrated his first great crimes. But the whole history of our race proves that the taste for the misery of others is a taste which minds not naturally ferocious may too easily acquire, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... misrepresentation. Militant patriotism rejects it with scorn. It is said to involve an ignoble degree of truckling to foreign nations. It involves nothing of the kind. I should certainly be the last to recommend anything approaching to pusillanimity in the conduct of the foreign affairs of my country. If I thought that the introduction of a policy of Protection was really demanded in the interests of the inhabitants of the United Kingdom, I should ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... own account this is, did not mention that he raised any objection to the wording of the proclamation at the time, though a few months later he referred to it in his private correspondence as a piece of "pusillanimity," because it omitted any expression of the affection of America for France. The proclamation was issued on April 22, two weeks after the arrival of Genet at Charleston. The procedure that had been adopted at Jefferson's instance avoided none of the difficulties that a declaration ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... deserve to be handed down to posterity as poltroons and cowards. He would, he said, go still further; they would not only deserve to be thus branded with infamy, but they would actually be so; and their pusillanimity would be a taint in the blood of their children's children. He begged, he prayed, he intreated, he implored that they would not disgrace the name of man by conduct at once so cowardly and so foolish. But he begged, prayed, intreated and implored in vain—his venerable character protected ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... meantime, sat all night: the irresolution of that body, towards morning, was disclosed to the impatient soldiery: the indignation of the brave men, and more especially of the Highlanders, burst forth upon the disclosure of what had passed in the council. The gentlemen volunteers resented the pusillanimity of their leaders: and one of them was heard to propose that the clans should take the Chevalier out of the hands of those who counselled him to retreat, and added that he would find ten thousand gentlemen in Scotland that would risk their lives for him. A friend of Mar, after ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... the hopes of reward. The peace establishment of the Roman army numbered some 375,000 men, divided into thirty legions, who were confined, not within the walls of fortified cities, which the Romans considered as the refuge of pusillanimity, but upon the confines of the empire; while 20,000 chosen soldiers, distinguished by the titles of City Cohorts and Praetorian Guards, watched over the safety of the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... dust from head to foot like Indian Faqueers, after having been for nearly four hours wandering in the bowels of the earth. Our followers soon regained their courage now that the danger was past, and each in turn began to boast of his own valour and sneer at the pusillanimity of his comrade; but all agreed that nothing on earth or in heaven should ever tempt them again to visit the ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... pouring all day, the ground could not have afforded very luxurious quarters. The same extraordinary luck which had attended the French in their whole expedition, now favoured their retreat; and the same pusillanimity which the allies had shown at Fornovo, prevented them from re-forming and engaging with the army of Charles upon the plain. One hour before daybreak on Tuesday morning, the French broke up their camp and ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... us delirious—and we have rushed headlong into the water, till we are almost drowned, out of simple or phrensical fear of it. Believe me, the character of this country has suffered more in Britain, by the pusillanimity with which we have borne many insults and indignities from the creatures of power at home, and the creatures of those creatures here, than it ever did, or ever will by the freedom and spirit that has ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... the night's fear one great part is the fault of pusillanimity; that is, of faint and feeble stomach, by which a man for faint heart is afraid where he needeth not. By reason of this, he flieth oftentime for fear of something of which, if he fled not, he should take no harm. And a man doth ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... something of defiance both in her eyes and in the tone of her voice. She had almost said, "Anton Trendellsohn, the Jew;" and when her speech was finished, and admitted of no addition, she reproached herself with pusillanimity in that she had omitted the word which had always been so odious, and would now be doubly odious—odious to her aunt in ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... abroad. It was refused. Then he took his son with him, and for three whole years he roamed over Russia, from one doctor to another, incessantly journeying from town to town and driving the physicians, his son, his servants, to despair by his pusillanimity and impatience. He returned to Lavriki a perfect rag, a tearful and capricious child. Bitter days ensued, every one endured much at his hands. Ivan Petrovitch calmed down only while he was eating his dinner; ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... towards town came renewed courage; and when I reached Ned's lodgings, I felt ashamed of my pusillanimity. ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... practices recorded above is quite unnecessary, except the observation that they betoken a callousness of feeling and a depth of cruelty and destructiveness to which, so far as known, no savages ever yet have sunk. As an exhibit of the groveling pusillanimity of the human soul, the roccolo of northern Italy reveals minus qualities which can not be expressed either in words ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... fragments for all the property stored in the arsenal. Of course it was Haskins's duty to have defended his post to the death; but up to that time the national authorities in Washington had shown such pusillanimity, that the officers of the army knew not what to do. The result, anyhow, was that Haskins surrendered his post, and at once embarked for St. Louis. The arms and munitions stored in the arsenal were scattered—some to Mississippi, some to New Orleans, some to Shreveport; and ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... authority, could not prevail on the Indians to penetrate farther into the cavern. As the vault grew lower, the cries of the Guacharos became more shrill. We were obliged to yield to the pusillanimity of our guides, and trace back our steps. The appearance of the cavern was indeed very uniform. We find that a bishop of St. Thomas of Guiana had gone farther than ourselves. He had measured nearly two ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... the fatal operation of longevity and time. These analogies between bodies natural and politic, though they may sometimes illustrate arguments, furnish no argument of themselves. They are but too often used, under the color of a specious philosophy, to find apologies for the despair of laziness and pusillanimity, and to excuse the want of all manly efforts, when the exigencies of our country call ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Council of Ministers, and were continuing to play the same double game which had brought ruin on the first National Assembly and disaster upon the Russian people. They were members of the same futile crowd of useless charlatans who by their pusillanimity had made their country a byword and the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk possible. I was in a position to judge. I was certain that this young man was the wrong sort to allow the execution of his chief ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... William, when he landed in England. The Earl of Mar was at the head of ten thousand men; but the chevalier was no general, and was unequal to his circumstances. When he landed in Scotland, he surrendered himself to melancholy and inaction. His sadness and pusillanimity dispirited his devoted band of followers. He retreated before inferior forces, and finally fled from the country which he had invaded. The French king was obliged to desert his cause, and the Pretender retreated to Italy, and died at the advanced age of seventy-nine, after witnessing the ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... occasion, as well as on others, the memory of M. Cuvier has been unjustly treated. He has been accused of pusillanimity and servile ambition. The charge indicates little knowledge of human nature, and insults a man of genius on very slight grounds. I lived much with M. Cuvier. Firmness in mind and action was not his most prominent quality; but he ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... without getting any satisfaction, she thought to appeal to the King for redress, but was told that she would lose her pains, for that he was of so abject a composition and so little of worth that, far from justifying others of their wrongs, he endured with shameful pusillanimity innumerable affronts offered to himself, insomuch that whose had any grudge [against him] was wont to vent his despite by doing him ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... of Edward, or of his representatives, were crowded by the humbled Scots, the spirit of one brave man remained unsubdued. Disgusted alike at the facility with which the sovereign of a warlike nation could resign his people and his crown into the hands of a treacherous invader, and at the pusillanimity of the nobles who had ratified the sacrifice, William Wallace retired to the glen of Ellerslie. Withdrawn from the world, he hoped to avoid the sight of oppressions he could not redress, and the endurance of injuries beyond his power ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... judgment upon its claims, and, likewise, in so far as he insisted on the objective validity of physics and mathematics. But he was as much opposed to the pretentiousness of dogmatic metaphysics as to the pusillanimity of scepticism and the Schwaermerei of mysticism. He repudiated the shallow proofs of the existence of God, freedom, and immortality no less emphatically than he rejected materialism with its atheism, fatalism, and hedonism. He tried to save everything ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... to mistake the likeness between the Greek and the Northern conceptions of a dignified and reasonable way of life. The magnificence of the Homeric great man is like the magnificence of the Northern lord, in so far as both are equally marked off from the pusillanimity and cheapness of popular morality on the one hand, and from the ostentation of Oriental or chivalrous society on the other. The likeness here is not purely in the historical details, but much more in the spirit that ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... Harding was at his daughter's, followed him to Mrs. Bold's house, and there found him. The archdeacon was fuming with rage when he got into the drawing-room, and had by this time nearly forgotten the pusillanimity of the bishop in the villainy ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... does not concern us in the least. We approve of the project and will see that it is carried out. We have spent a good deal of money arming ourselves; and we are not going to have that money thrown away through the pusillanimity of a Cabinet ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... that. Yet that is not the question." Whereupon I related to him in detail the incident of two days ago. I spoke of Polina's outburst, of my encounter with the Baron, of my dismissal, of the General's extraordinary pusillanimity, and of the call which De Griers had that morning paid me. In conclusion, I showed Astley the note which I had ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... display, instinctive acts of strength and daring, victory, and other impressive instinctive behavior that is harmless to the onlooker. Similarly, frowns, hoots, and sneers seem bound as original responses to the observation of empty-handedness, deformity, physical meanness, pusillanimity, and defect. As in the case of all original tendencies, such behavior is early complicated and in the end much distorted, by training; but the resulting total cannot be explained ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... population from which it was taken, the largest that Europe had ever seen. But that army had sustained a long succession of defeats and disgraces, unredeemed by a single brilliant achievement. It was the fashion, both in England and on the Continent, to ascribe those defeats and disgraces to the pusillanimity of the Irish race, [433] That this was a great error is sufficiently proved by the history of every war which has been carried on in any part of Christendom during five generations. The raw material out of which a good army may be formed ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... however, been too cautious to carry out any such strategy as this, without direct authority from the Commander-in-Chief. "Master thinks a deal too much on 'em," he had said to the groom, almost in disgust at the Vicar's pusillanimity. ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... as if through the bare, white-washed walls of this humble hotel room he saw the vision of the brilliant halls of the Tuileries, the imperial throne, the Empress beside him, all her faithlessness and pusillanimity forgiven, his son whom he worshipped, his marshals grouped around him; and with a gesture of proud defiance he threw back his ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... in sight of Peking, and at any moment might arrive. Rebellion threatened in the city itself. If he went out boldly to attack the oncoming rebels his own troops might go over to the enemy, or deliver him into their hands; if he stayed in the city the people would naturally attribute it to pusillanimity, and probably open the gates ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... devoid of all fear, observed that it was a sign that things went well with him; then, turning to Simier, who stood trembling with fear, he jeered him upon his pusillanimity. L'Archant removed them both, and set a guard over them; and, in the next place, proceeded to arrest M. de la Chastre, whom he took ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... no exercises but Latin; they gave him a Gradus instead of a cricket-bat, until his mind became too keen for its mortal coil, and the foundation was laid for ill health, derangement of stomach, moral pusillanimity, irresolution, lowness of spirits, and all the Protean miseries of nervous disorders, by which his after life was haunted, and which are sadly depicted in ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... greatest secret of danger; but withal alleged seriously, that it concerned him to be more active in enterprises of hazard than other men, that all might see that his impatiency for peace proceeded not from pusillanimity or fear to ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... pretended the Sheikh had hundreds of people not far off. Zaleâ, and his Arabs, certainly behaved the best. Zaleâ, in fact, was now the only man of the caravan. He told me afterwards, the Ghadamsee people had proposed to him, that I should run away on to Ghat, but he would not sanction such pusillanimity. I confess, however, when the people described to me the character of Ouweek, I myself felt considerable alarm. During the succeeding night, I slept scarcely a wink. I made the messenger of Jabour sleep close by my mattress, and unsheathing Said's ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... filled with rose-water; while the Tories have acknowledged such holiday missiles with showers of brickbats, and eggs not filled with aromatic dew. What was the result? The Tories increased in confidence and strength with every new assault; whilst the battered Whigs, from their sheer pusillanimity, became noisome in the nostrils of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... the outward show went. One or two who knew her, especially Mrs. Finn, were aware that her hatred and her ideas of revenge were not laid aside; but she went on from day to day anathematizing her special enemies and abstained from reproaching her husband for his pusillanimity. Then came the question as to the autumn. "Let's have everybody down at Gatherum, just as we had ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... that it has been observed, that the inhabitants of towns which have undergone a cruel siege, and experienced all the horrors of storm and pillage, have retained for ages the traces of the effects of their sufferings, in a detestation of war, indications of pusillanimity, and decline of trade. If there be any truth in this observation, what caitiffs must the inhabitants of Berwick be! No town in the world has been so often exposed to the "ills that wait on the red chariot of war;" for Picts, Romans, Danes, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... the men of the Convention were always brave in the extreme; but before the threats of the rioters who invaded the Assembly they constantly exhibited an excessive pusillanimity, obeying the most absurd injunctions, as we shall see if we re-read the history ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... to force the Home Rule Bill on the people of Great Britain against their will. Hesitation to make use of this dictatorial authority, should he ever obtain it, will to himself mean political ruin; to his English supporters it will seem political pusillanimity; by his Irish confederates it will be denounced as breach of faith and treachery. As certainly as night follows day the passing of the Parliament Act will be succeeded by the attempted passing of a Home ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... the room, with his handkerchief to his face. The marquis was really sorry for the blow, chiefly because Malcolm, without a shadow of pusillanimity, had taken it so quietly. Malcolm would, however, have had very much more the worse of it had he defended himself, for his master had been a bruiser in his youth, and neither his left hand nor his right arm had yet forgot their ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... pusillanimity of the Carthaginians, it is necessary to observe, that they had suffered repeated defeats in their war with Massinis'sa; and that fifty thousand of their troops, after having been blocked up in their camp till from want they were obliged to submit to the most ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... Moors when they contemplated the cowardly being who had held them so long in dread. They were not moved by his entreaties; for the supplications of a despot, instead of awakening sympathy, serve only to augment the rage of mankind, by placing in a more striking light his pusillanimity and unworthiness, and the shame of having suffered so despicable a thing to tyrannize ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... spend the rest of his days in misery and horror, and never see the light of God's sun, nor the face of a friend; but perish in a foreign land, far removed from his family and connexions. Pickle d—d him for his pusillanimity; and the exempt hearing a lady bemoan herself so piteously, expressed his mortification at being the instrument of giving her such pain, and endeavoured to console them by representing the lenity of the French ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett |
