"Livered" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... roared, "Jarnac, dismount six of thy archers, and shoot me this white-livered cur dead where he ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... "White-livered varlets! Pigeon-hearted rogues! Unmanned by a motley fool! A witling the lords beat with their slippers! Because of a chance blow against an imbecile, or a disabled man, you hesitate. A fig for them! What if they ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... he felt his misdeed. For he was always most Irish when most moved. "I reckon," he went on, and the rolling intonation fell from his tongue like a faint breath from the green isle itself, "I reckon I did it just to show my friends what a measly, coyote, white-livered, tackey, ornery, spavined, colicky, mangy, blitherin' sort of a beast I am. Sure, now, Judge, I just wanted everybody to know what a gee-whillikined damn fool I can be if I try. And they know, now. Oh, yes, they know. ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... "to get all this lot on the way, you've not got to be a lot of turnip-heads nor a lot of custards—Bon Dieu, look where you're putting your damned boots, you black-livered beast!" ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... acorn drappin'. You fellers is afeerd o' yore shadders; what does the gang mean by sendin' out sech white-livered chaps?" The only sound for a moment was the gurgling of the whiskey as it ran into the jug. "How's Toot like his isolation?" concluded Dill, grunting as he lifted the jug ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... thee I have seen thee pass on without a word, not so much as a momentary knitting of thy fist When ignorance has waxed proud, and put thee to the mock, thou hast sat meek, and uttered never a word. It must needs be thou art pigeon-livered and lack gall! There is not in thee the swagger, the rustle, the braggadocio of a true swashbuckler manhood. ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... Compromise was quickly rekindled when the South approved the murderous methods intended to make it a slave State. A journal published in the pro-slavery interest threatened "to lynch and hang, tar and feather, and drown every white-livered Abolitionist who dares to pollute our soil," and secret societies, organised for the purpose of keeping out Northern immigrants, resolved "that we recognise the institution of slavery as already existing in this territory, and advise slave-holders ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... but what could I do? They was too many for me, and I couldn't coerce the white livered aristocratic mob, for quicker'n scat they could have hollored into a little cupboard they had there in the corner, and in less'n two minits they'd of had the whole police department and the hook and ladder company down there after me with a ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... began, "has talked to ye as though ye was white men 'cause he's young and clean an' doesn't know the likes of ye. He hain't had so much to do with a bunch of white-livered, swill-tub jail birds as I have. But don't you go further an' make th' mistake thet 'cause he's young he ain't a man yet. 'Cause if ye do, ye'll wake up sudden with a jolt. Even if he did mistake a pack of yaller dogs fer men, don't ye ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... this short," interposed Kansas Kimball, with an oath. "Daylight will catch us and nothing done, if we listen to that white-livered spy. We don't believe in that wagon he talks about, and as for this kid, he brought her along just ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... of honour, we are bound to stick to our word; and, hark ye, you dirty one-eyed scoundrel, if you don't immadiately make way for these leedies, and this lily-livered young jontleman who's crying so, the Meejor here and I will lug out and force you." And so saying, he drew his great sword and made a pass at Mr. Sicklop; which that gentleman avoided, and which caused ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... white-livered," I said with a species of laugh. "I never crowd and stare when somebody is hurt in the street. I ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... repeated until they became conventionalized. There is always a very bad and a very good woman, a very generous and noble man and one so bad as to seem a monster. There is the type of the "love-lorn maiden," of "the lily-livered" hero, of the faithful friend, of the poltroon. It is supposed by many that such types repeated in play after play do not mark the highest original power, but rather poverty of invention, weak and shadowy conception, indistinctness of coloring. Professor Thorndike, however, cannot ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... I am, I have observed these three swashers. I am boy to them all three: but all they three, though they would serve me, could not be man to me; for, indeed, three such antics do not amount to a man. For Bardolph,—he is white-livered, and red-faced; by the means whereof 'a faces it out, but fights not. For Pistol,—he hath a killing tongue, and a quiet sword; by the means whereof 'a breaks words, and keeps whole weapons. For Nym,—he hath heard, that men of a few words ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... though they were scared of the Mountain even at Nettleton; and then a queer thing happened. The fellow sent for me to go and see him in gaol. I went, and this is what he says: 'The fool that defended me is a chicken-livered son of a—and all the rest of it,' he says. 'I've got a job to be done for me up on the Mountain, and you're the only man I seen in court that looks as if he'd do it.' He told me he had a child up there—or thought he had—a little girl; and he ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... he interrupted, slapping his knee with delight. "Sneak-livered poltroon, eh? Well, well, well. Go on. ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... 'A damned hot-livered roundhead coxcomb!' said lord Worcester to himself, pacing his room. 'These pelting cockerel squires and yeomen nowadays go strutting and crowing as if all the yard were theirs! We shall see how far this heat will carry the rogue! I doubt not the boy would tell everything than see ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... Lennox. If there's one mean thing I nachally despises as a stunnin' insult, it's being named white-livered; and my Confederate record is jest as good as if I wore three gilt stars on my coat collar. You might say I was a liar and a thief, and maybe I would take it as a joke; but don't call Bedney Darrington no coward! ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... thought," exclaimed Dolphin. "You're a cock-tail. In your old age you've grown white-livered. I guess, Garstang, you'd better retire, and leave those to carry out the work who don't know ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... still hesitated. An anxiety, such as he had never known before, had crept over him; and, what had never before happened to him, his heart beat with fear. "That was just wanting to me," he murmured. "I have become a white-livered coward, whose legs are trembling, and whose heart is throbbing! What am I afraid of, then? Is that wrong which I am about to do? My heart has never acted thus even in the storm of battle. What does it mean? Bah! it is folly; no attention ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... white-livered cowards have their way," the old sailor said, contemptuously. "Put their captain on the top of them. Now which ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... honest crowd in the Vose line management to tip over that sale that was made, and when the right time comes I'll have that white-livered clerk in the witness-box if I have to lug him there by the ears. Now, Mayo, that girl didn't say what was in this packet." He pulled out a small parcel which had been carefully tied with cords. "She is in love with you, because she must be in love to go to so much trouble in ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... Nicolson! Stand back, you white-livered hounds! First one of you lays a hand on me or Daddy Nep gets his head blown off! Damn you, Mosely! don't make me tell you again to ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... is whiter than paper; it's as Pastiri says. Brave enough when it comes to exploiting boobs like you and the other tramps and low lives,... but when he bucks up against a chap that's all there, hey? Bah! He's a white-livered wretch, that's what." ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... for lily-livered, goose-fleshed lawyers to hold their tongues when men and soldiers talk," I retorted. "We are not making indentures to the devil, and so have no need of ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... they drew him into their company. Once there, they thought him within their power. When they could not induce him to violate his pledge by taking rum, they called him a "cold-water man;" "a white-livered coward;" "priest-ridden;" "afraid of his minister," and many other titles of reproach. They then told him he had not promised to drink no wine; and, after much persuasion, they induced him to take a glass. But in this glass they had mingled the poison. Once stimulated, he ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... bellowed, slamming his cane across the table. "He won't fight! And I stigmatized him to his face as a white-livered hound!" ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... agin', which let 'em use their canvas. As for the cutter, she ran before it for New Britain, and brought up at Matupi in Blanche Bay, two hundred miles away, where old Horn knew there was a white settlement of Germans—his own kidney. He was a white-livered old swine, but a good sailor-man—as far as any man who ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... and come to the point," urged the junior member of the firm impatiently. "It is no news to me that your brain is diseased and your heart rotten. What is it you want me to do? Calm yourself, you white-livered maniac. I gather that I am in some way to meddle with this mine. If I but had your head for my very own along with the sand in my craw, I'd tell you to go to hell. Having only brains enough to know what I am, I'm cursed by having to depend ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... crime Booth found on whom he could rely. John Surratt was sent northward by his mother on Thursday. Sam Arnold and McLaughlin, each of whom was to kill a cabinet officer, grew pigeon-livered and ran away. Harold true to his partiality, lingered around Booth to the end; Atzerott went so far as to take his knife and pistol to Kirkwood's, where President Johnson was stopping, and hid them under the bed. But either his ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... spokeswoman of the mob, a street drab of uncommon stature and powers of expression and command of expletive. Winding up a three-minute speech with the remark, "I could pick ye up and ate ye, only the taste would turn me stomach, you white-livered, blue-bellied son of a scut," the lady had to pause for breath, and the soldier looked up from under his hat-brim and mildly remarked, "Madam, you're prejudiced," whereat even some of her sympathizers forgot their rancor and roared with laughter, and the idolatrous rank of his soldiery doubled ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... and the whistling and the stink He'd lived in fourteen days and nights. 'T was luck That he still lived.... And queer how little then He seemed to care that Dick.... perhaps 't was pluck That hardened him—a man among the men— Perhaps.... Yet, only think things out a bit, And he was rabbit-livered, blue with funk! And he'd liked Dick ... and yet when Dick was hit He hadn't turned a hair. The meanest skunk He should have thought would feel it when his mate Was blown to smithereens—Dick, proud as punch, Grinning like sin, and holding up the plate— But ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... from the first. Harry Glen was one of them Wide-Awakes that marched around on pleasant evenings last Fall with oil-cloth capes and kerosene lamps. I told you that those fellows'd be no where when the war they were trying to bring on came. I'm not at all astonished that he showed himself lily-livered when he found the people that he was willing to rob of their property standing ready to fight for their homes ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... ejecting a wad of tobacco from his mouth and swearing in an undertone about "white-livered Greasers." He cocked his red ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... mixed was so goldinged black you couldn't tell 'em from niggers. You know how kind o' lily-livered Lawyer Ransom is? Wal, he looked like ol' black Joe; he was the maddest man of the hull bi'lin'. He throwed the book in the fire, and tromped ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... won laughed. Those who had lost cursed him again; he had disgraced his branca. They would flay him, and put him in the cauldron over the wood fire, and would curse him even whilst they picked his bones for a white-livered spawn of cowards; a ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... the man who split upon me. That's my maxim, and pass me the liquor—You wouldn't turn on a man. I know you. You're an honest feller, and will stand by a feller, and have looked death in the face like a man. But as for that lily-livered sneak—that poor lyin', swindlin', cringin' cur of a Clavering—who stands in my shoes—stands in my shoes, hang him! I'll make him pull my boots off and clean 'em, I will. Ha, ha!" Here he burst out into a wild laugh, at which Strong got up and put away the brandy-bottle. ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to have become quite white-livered," she exclaimed to him with a harsh, derisive laugh. "You were not so a ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... flabby, bony, white-livered, or'nary suckers. Niggers and Injuns won't touch 'em, ony in the ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... his companion. 'By my father's blessing, he was the man for a charge. They may say what they like, but compared with him, Alp Arslan is a white-livered Giaour.' ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... dazed and white-livered, out of bed, I opened the door, and met one of the warders on the threshold. The man looked scared, and his lips, I noticed, were set in a ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... yourself for those words, you white-livered frog-spawn, with a speck in the middle for the black heart of you! You're going? Well, here's the bones of my fist and the toe of ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... damned rooibaatje," he broke out. "You used not to be like this before. Curse him, the white-livered Englishman! I will be even with him yet; and I tell you what it is, Bessie: you shall marry me, whether you like or no. Look here, do you think I am the sort of man to play with? You go to Wakkerstroom and ask what sort of a man Frank Muller is. See! I want you—I must have you. I could not live ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... The tyrant was lily-livered; seldom he witnessed what others died under; he intended nothing further then;—many men who faint at sight of blood can probe a soul to its utmost gasp. Now he motioned, and they paused. Then others lifted the woman and held her beside him, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... tell, but we are to be partners once and for all. See, my beauty. He was a kite-livered captain. There was gold on board. We mutinied and put him and four others—their livers were like his own— in a boat with provisions plenty. Then we sailed for Boston. We never thought the crew of skulkers would ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... wine: and the dinner looked very good. The courses appeared in portions, one for each apostle: and these being presented to the Pope, by Cardinals upon their knees, were by him handed to the Thirteen. The manner in which Judas grew more white-livered over his victuals, and languished, with his head on one side, as if he had no appetite, defies all description. Peter was a good, sound, old man, and went in, as the saying is, 'to win;' eating everything ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... death; the ghost of that brave fellow—once my dear friend, my rival now, by no fault of his—will rise between her and me, and reproach me with my bloody inheritance. The heart never deceives; I feel it now whispering in my ear: 'Skulking captain, white-livered soldier, that stand behind a parapet while a better man does your work! you assassinate the husband, but the rival conquers you.' There, he puts his hand to his eyes. What shall ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... long, helpless agony. Slightly wounded soldiers went limping to the rear, seeking surgical aid; while badly wounded men were eagerly caught up and borne off the field by their "comrades in battle" or by white-livered recreants, anxious to desert their braver companions and place themselves in safety. A certain percentage of such craven-hearted libels on humanity—let it be said here—are always to be found in every army and on every battle-field, dusky backgrounds against which brave ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... my part, such a white-livered, baby-faced chap as you are would have been better off at your mother's apron strings, than coming so far from home to ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... too well on in years to begin. Next day there was quite a meeting of our folks here. My back gate kept a-clicking till sundown. All but Paterson came, Miss Jenkins, and he's less than half a Roscoe, and no Collamer at all. His mother was one of them white-livered Lulls, from Pomfret. He's bound, anyway, to stand by you, because he's getting wages from your uncle. Well, I settled it all then and there, this fair business, I mean, but I told them to wait, for I some expected ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... "If you've been in tow of Butsey, I'll bet you've been paying out all day. Butsey White's a low-down, white-livered cuss, who'd take advantage of a ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... to rue this day,' roared he, nearly choking in his wrath; 'you dog, you white-livered cur!' but Amys only smiled, and bade him ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... sergeant, in a whisper, "you're right about the chaplain's sermon. It's the duty of every man who can carry a gun to fight for his country. I saw the chaplain looking straight at you, and he was as mad as fire. A white-livered coward stands a mighty poor chanst of salvation, ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... as a fool," he said afterwards in the bosom of his family; "a white-livered fool who hasn't the nerve to look at ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... don't!" I ejaculated. "I'm not chicken-livered, Raffles, but I'm mighty glad my lines are cast in less strenuous scenes. When a book-agent comes in here, for instance, and holds me up for nineteen dollars a volume for a set of Kipling in words of one syllable, illustrated by his aunt, and every volume autographed by his ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... began to twist his head towel around his nose. With feeblest protest Isuke saw him take the torch and disappear into the passage. Soon his voice was heard. "Isuke! Isuke! Is he milk livered? How about the gold and silver? Would Isuke abandon it?" Isuke would not. In a trice he was on hands and knees, to rejoin his master who was roaring with laughter. "Gold and silver may be here," Shu[u]zen explained. "Otherwise Isuke would have backed out of the undertaking, ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... alive! Connor, have you your seven sinsis about you? Faith, that's good; as if it was a sin to knock such a white-livered Judas upon the head! Sin!—oh hell resave the morsel o' sin in that but the contrairy. Sure its only sarvin' honest people right, to knock such a desaiver on the head. If he had parjured himself for sake of the truth, or to assist a brother in trouble—or to help ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... well-considered series of commercial transactions, conducted by men specially acquainted with the articles required and regularly trained to office routine. English Home Rulers, unable to see a yard in front of them, whose training and instincts are of the goody-goody, milk and water type,—the lily-livered weaklings, who measure the courage of others by their own,—may be excused their inability to conceive the situation. They cannot understand the dour, unyielding spirit of the Ulsterman in a matter which affects his property, his religion, his freedom. ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... interest, were the world to buy him, Shall make a brave man smile, and do a murder? Therefore I hate the memory of Brutus, I mean the latter, so cried up in story. Caesar did ill, but did it in the sun, And foremost in the field; but sneaking Brutus, Whom none but cowards and white-livered knaves Would dare commend, lagging behind his fellows, His dagger in his bosom, stabbed his father. This is a blot, which Tully's eloquence Could ne'er wipe off, though the mistaken man Makes bold to call ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... the stranger. "Are your senses playing bo-peep with the ghost of some pigeon-livered coast captain, eh? Come, take another pull at the keg, to clear your head-lights, and tell us ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 286, December 8, 1827 • Various
... the outer gate when Belden came clattering up and reined his horse across the path and called out: "See here, you young skunk, you're a poor, white-livered tenderfoot, and I can't bust you as I would a full-grown man, but I reckon you better not ride this trail ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... class has become the senior class, and a new junior class has been set on foot which begins its recreational exercises in the service of William II., Got and Allah, at the age of eight. It is all great fun, but those pigeon-livered little boys who are not diverted by it have to go on with their fun all the same, for, needless to say, the Izji is compulsory on all boys. Of course they wear a uniform which is made in Germany and is of ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... you up to him. I'll tell him to come in and get you. I'll show him the way in, you white-livered cur!" bullied the cattleman, giving way ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... engaging in hand-to-hand combats. And Hamlet, who does not dream of apologizing for the three murders he commits, is always apologizing because he has not yet committed a fourth, and finds, to his great bewilderment, that he does not want to commit it. "It cannot be," he says, "but I am pigeon-livered, and lack gall to make oppression bitter; else, ere this, I should have fatted all the region kites with this slave's offal." Really one is tempted to suspect that when Shylock asks "Hates any man the thing he ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... he said tonelessly. "Better do a clean job, you white-livered coward, or I'll see you hang yet ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... you dare tell, Sir Jasper Kingsland!" cried a high, ringing voice, as a young woman rushed impetuously into the church and up the aisle. "Coward and liar! False, perjured wretch! You are too white-livered a hound even to tell the truth! What should you know of such a wretch as that, forsooth! Double-dyed traitor and dastard! Look me in the face and tell me you ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... imported last fall for three thousand dollars," he went on, turning back to the foreman. "They shot him up and drove off his twenty-five cows from the Coyote Bluff pastures. Dirty spite an' meanness. The white-livered scum!" Then with a fierce oath the usually even-tempered Bud hurled his wrath upon the waiting man. "Gorl darn it, you're standin' around like a barbed wire fence post. What in hell's brought you around now? What they done ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... go," exclaimed the Professor as he polished his blue spectacles and mopped his face. "They are a white-livered lot of sneaks. Look! There she is, creeping off to the left. If we run round that ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... fist on the table and exploded. "Then sit here, damn ye! But why the hell should any one want to make friends with a white-livered pup like you? I thought you was Jack Beaudry's son, but I'll niver believe it. Jack didn't sit on a padded chair and talk about law and order. By God, no! He went out with a six-gun and made them. No gamer, whiter man ever strapped a forty-four to his hip. ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... said Mr. Screw, which was not fair to himself, for he was an honest man, acting very properly according to his lights. It was not his fault if Barker deceived him, and if that hot-livered ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... a-going to cash in. Savvy? You're a-going to hop off. An' first you gotta hear why. 'Tain't for the stuff. Naw! I hooked it off'n you; you hooked it off'n me; now I got it again. That's all square.... No, 'tain't that grudge, you green-livered whelp of a cross-bred, still-born slut! No! It's becuz you laid the heft o' your dirty little finger onto my girlie. 'N' ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... dismay and the rage of those who had a few hours before fancied themselves masters of all the wealth of both Indies may easily be imagined. The Directors, in their fury, lost all self command, and, in their official letters, railed at the betrayers of Scotland, the white-livered deserters. The truth is that those who used these hard words were far more deserving of blame than the wretches whom they had sent to destruction, and whom they now reviled for not staying to be utterly ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... "...dirty-livered Jew..." striking in the breast, and, as Frankl fell, he gave him one other in the temple, with "Down, down to hell, and sye I sent thee thither"; and to dead O'Hara near he gave one in the cheek, with "Go up, thou bald-head, it is": all ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... find out. You white livered Abolitionist, come out, damn you! we are going to give you a coat of tar and feathers, and your black wench nine-and-thirty. Yes, come down—come down!" shouted several, "or we ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... found herself in the grip of the pirate king, who hissed in her ear, "Ha, ha, fair damsel! Thou art mine at last. 'Twas for love of thee I committed this deed. Thy lily-livered husband lies at my mercy, and once in Davy Jones's locker will be out of my path. Then the wedding bells shall ring and we will sail together over the bounding main. Gently, gently, pretty dove! Do not struggle. I will not ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... help; what shall we say of them? And you young chaps, healthy, strong, unmarried, without home ties, what if you refuse to respond to the call of your country? I will tell you what I think of you: you are white-livered cowards." ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... not," snarled Alf. "You're just doing this whole thing to be cussed. You know you've got me where I can't stir hand or foot. I was a fool ever to have got mixed up with such a white-livered, puling baby. I might have known you hadn't an ounce ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... the miscreant cry and idiot laugh, withdrew to sigh his last breath in foreign climes. The public is as envious and ungrateful as it is ignorant, stupid, and pigeon-livered— ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... cried Tim Sullivan. "Well, they will thot! If there's a divil inside there's a worse one outside, an' thot's me! Git in there now, ye black-livered spalapeens!" and catching up a big club the Irishman made a rush for the hesitating laborers. With a howl they rushed into the tunnel, and were soon loading rock ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton
... old woman, but I reckon we ain't so durn far apart when it comes to getting what we go after. Come, honest now, where is the little white-livered cur that runs ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... good, I tell you, you snuffling, whimpering, white-livered cur!' he said. 'Those men have got ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... cook I informed him that Scotty was a damned liar; that it was I who had been with him; that he ran like a white-livered cur under fire from his cookhouse and didn't stop until he had reached the wagon lines; that he was there without being relieved and that he would shortly have another ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... had taken all Ernest's money and run away with it. She hated Pryer. "I never knew anyone," she exclaimed, "as white-livered in the face as that Pryer; he hasn't got an upright vein in his whole body. Why, all that time when he used to come breakfasting with Mr Pontifex morning after morning, it took me to a perfect shadow the way he carried ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... saying the same this morning, that we'd better stamp out any upraisings in the start, now that it's likely to be a staying on, 'stead of a visit. When I select a teacher," Jude was following his guest to the outer door, "I ain't going to take up with no white-livered infant. See you to-morrow, ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... themselves for the adventure, Aigres undertakes it very readily, and is accompanied by a knight named Acars, who has charge of a casket of jewels destined for the princess as a wedding-gift. Young Aigres encounters and kills the lions singlehanded, and the lily-livered and faithless Acars envies him the glory of his exploit. On their way back to Loquiferne with the Princess Melia, as they pass near a deep well Acars purposely allows the casket of jewels to fall into it and pretends to be distracted at the misfortune. But the gallant Aigres ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... "Is there another white-livered town in the whole realm where the operatives are all working half-time, and thanking the Capitalists for keeping the mills going, and only starving them by inches?" said Devilsdust in a ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... their wives bring them, and every expression of affection, and every service, and every yearning sympathy, and trample them under feet without tasting them, and without a look of gratitude in their eyes. Hard, cold, thin-blooded, white-livered, contemptible curmudgeons—they think their wives weak and foolish, and themselves wise and dignified! I beg my readers to assist me in despising them. I do not feel adequate to the task ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... guess you know, all right," and Curly grinned. "She's pretty, isn't she? But she has no use for me. She prefers a white-livered sucker like you." ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... foot he will plant. Can fear strike a CAESAR—a Russian to boot? Can a ROMANOFF stoop to mere cowardly cant? Forbid it traditions of Muscovite pride! An Autocrat's place is the Conqueror's car, But he who that chariot in triumph would ride, Must not earn a name as the White-livered CZAR! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, 13 June 1891 • Various
... from under his eyebrows. "He's all in, but he's got to make it," he said. "I've been that way myself—and made it. What I can do, a horse can do. Come on, you yella-livered bonehead!" ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... white-livered Greasers better than any of you, don't mistake me," replied Belding. He was pale with rage, but kept command ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... goin' back,' burst out Young Bill, in his thick, savage tones; 'ye can clear out yerself as soon as ye like, Smiley. Yer wor' allus a white-livered un. I'm gooin' to net yon pool to-night if I ha' to ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... her badness and the manner of it. "That kinder thing no man can let pass by in his wife. I found her"—again the rude details of his discovery—"an' I found him, an' I let him go fer the white-livered coward he was, but her I killed. I shot her dead after she'd said her prayers an' asked God's mercy on her soul. Then I walked off, but they kotched me an' I was tried. They didn't swing me. Out in them parts they knowed I was in my rights; so the boys held, but ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, superserviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, ...
— The Tragedy of King Lear • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... yo' comin' back," the darky blurted out. "I'm gwineter do de cookin' and de chamber-wo'k. Dere ain't 'nough to eat fo' mo'n two. When dem white-livered, no-count, onery gemmens dat stole Marse George's money git in de chain-gang, whar dey b'longs, den may be we'll hab sumpin' to go to market on, but dat ain't yit; an' don't ye tell Marse George I tol' yer or I'll ha'nt ye like dat witch I done heared ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... no, there's nothing strange in him. Any low hound will sell out to save his hide. No, Dan, I mean the other. I mean the old man. He's the one who used to run the blockade off Mobile, and a whiter-livered, more contemptible old grandmother I never hope to see anywhere, no, never! Yet not a month ago, the day of that Cimatario scrimmage, I found him on the battlefield, and he had been wounded. But he didn't seem to know it. He didn't even seem ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... "You white-livered clod!" he cried. "Who is running this scheme? You or I? Who delivers the whiskey to the Indians? And who pays you your money? I do the thinking for this outfit. I didn't come down here to ask you to run this consignment. I came here to tell you to do it. This thing of playing safe is all ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... let us hear it!" cried St. Maur, and half a dozen young bloods without vests, and with shirt-bosoms falling over their waistbands nearly to the knee. "Do let us hear, by all means, what the white-livered fellow has to say ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... did not meddle with your secrets—did not touch your plunder. I owed you nothing. Offal that you are! to me you owed drink, and meat, and good fellowship. I gave you mirth, and I gave you Law; and in return ye laid a plot amongst you to get rid of me;—how, ye white-livered scoundrels? Oho! not by those fists, and knives, and bludgeons. All your pigeon breasts clubbed together had not manhood for that. But to palm off upon me some dastardly deed of your own; by snares and scraps ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... death would not save me!" Count Hannibal answered coolly. "If it would, he would die! But it will not; and we must even do again as we have done. I have spared him—he's a white-livered hound!—both once and twice, and we must go to the end with it since no better can be! I have thought it out, and it must be. Only see you, old dog, that I have the dagger hid in the splint where I can reach it. And then, when the exchange has been made, and ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... word to say for yersilf, ye white-livered coward? Is there niver anudder lie on yer tongue like thim ye found so handy this twelvemonth back? Git out uv me sight, ye spalpeen, and out uv me doors! Go find them as'll kape yees to stale rich folks' children, an' thin lie to the mother as bore yees, and the kind ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... horrid imprecations. 'You noisy slut,' he growled, shoving his face, hideous in its crape mask, into the coach, and speaking in a voice husky with liquor, 'will you stop your whining? Or must I blow you to pieces with my Toby? For you, you white-livered sneak,' he continued, addressing the tutor, 'give me any more of your piping and I'll cut out your tongue! Who is hurting you, I'd like to know! As for you, my fine lady, have a care of your skin, for if I pull you out into the road it will be the worse for you! D'ye hear me? he continued, ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... a spell! Merlin, forsooth! That cheap old humbug, that maundering old ass? Bosh, pure bosh, the silliest bosh in the world! Why, it does seem to me that of all the childish, idiotic, chuckle-headed, chicken-livered superstitions that ev —oh, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... up Mrs. Crull. She left the old gentleman's side, and advanced to within a yard of the profligate. "Old as I am," said she, "I'm strong enough to spank such a white-livered, broken-down puppy as you are. But I'll leave you to the hands of the law. It's a long lane that hasn't any turning, remember; and you'll pull up at the gallows ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... not so goshalmighty. You're jes' June Tolliver. I'm the same Jake Houck you once promised to marry. Don't forget that, girl. I took you from that white-livered fellow you married—" ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... ain't wondering why you ain't done it before," he said. "Mebbe it was because you're too white livered. Mebbe you thought you didn't see your chance. I ain't worrying none about why you didn't do it. But you ain't going to get another chance." The weapon came ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... second was Dorcas Doolittle, aunt to Jabe Slocum; she didn't know enough to make soap, Dorcas didn't.... Then there was Delia Weeks, from the lower corner.... She didn't live long.... There was some thin' wrong with Delia.... She was one o' the thin-blooded, white-livered kind.... You couldn't get her warm, no matter how hard you tried. ... She'd set over a roarin' fire in the cook-stove even in the prickliest o' the dog-days. ... The mill-folks used to say the Whittens burnt more ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... good speech, and one which should have put heart into the veriest white-livered militiaman that ever pretended to be a soldier; but, to my surprise, I could see on the faces of those who had talked surrender the loudest, an expression telling that the words passed by them as ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... Delesse. "He drove another man away—no, not a man, but a yellow-livered coward who had no more fight in him than a porcupine without quills! And yet she says he was not a coward. She has always said, even to Dupont, that it was the way le Bon Dieu made him, and that because he was made that way he was greater than all other men in the North Country. How do I know? ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... to the will of the majority meant nothing; his voice raised in opposition meant much. For very soon the avowed pacifists and the secret protagonists of Kultur, the blood-eyed anarchists and the lily-livered dissenters, the conscientious objectors and the conscienceless I.W.W. group, saw in him a buttress upon which to stay their cause. The lone wolf wasn't a lone wolf any longer—he had a pack to rally about him, yelping approval of his every word. Day by day he grew ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... "You are a white-livered wretch!" the scold again yelled. At this moment she went soaring off into the air. A piercing shriek came from her lips as she found herself swinging out over the pond. "I'll scratch your ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... property, with which I shall do as I like; but there are one or two pieces of information which I carry under my doublet, and which you may not be sorry to hear. As for you. Sir George Barkley, the secret I have to reveal to you is, that you are a white-livered coward. This I shall tell to nobody but yourself—Ha, ha, ha!—because your friends know it already, and to your enemies you will never do any harm. Fenwick, you are just sufficient of a fool to get yourself into a scrape, and sufficient of a knave to drag your friends ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... If they've done anything to Mr. Reade, then break the necks of every white-livered rascal you ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... chairman to get the witnesses to the point, were unsuccessful. A mob is not an orderly body, and a drunken mob is hard to manage. General charges were freely made without much point. One cried out, because I refused to drink with them: "This should hang him; he is too white-livered to take a dram with gentlemen, let him swing." "Yes," shouted another; "he is a cursed Yankee teetotaler, hang him." In a quiet way I showed them that this was not the indictment, and that hanging would be a severe punishment for such a sin of omission. To this ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... Count," said his companion, "there ain't time for all that perliteness. You leave him to me; I'll talk to him! Now then, you white-livered little airy-sneak, do you know who ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... "You white-livered card-sharp! I've a notion to bore you.... They told me you had a deal of your own, an' ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... and black. You should have known it before we started. I'm a marked man in this coast country. It's Orloff's work, the renegade. 'Father,' he calls himself. Father to these devils he rules and robs for himself in the name of the Church. His hate is bitter, and he'd have my life if these watery-livered curs didn't dread the sound of my voice. God ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach |
