"Milksop" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... whom ye are to cope withal, A sort of vagabonds, of rascals, runaways— And who doth lead them but a paltry fellow, Long kept in Britaine at our Mother's cost, A milksop, &c.— ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... regular exchange of courtesy, took care to miss no occasion of condolence or congratulation, and sent presents at stated times, but had in their hearts not much esteem for one another. The seaman looked with contempt upon the squire as a milksop and a landman, who had lived without knowing the points of the compass, or seeing any part of the world beyond the county-town; and whenever they met, would talk of longitude and latitude, and circles and tropicks, would scarcely ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... Isn't there some proverb about a reformed rake? I was not a rake, but I assure you I have reformed. It is better to have amused oneself for a while and have done with it. Your daughter would never care for a milksop; and I will take the liberty of saying that you would like one quite as little. Besides, between my money and hers there is a great difference. I spent my own; it was because it was my own that I spent it. And I made no debts; ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... occasion, was apparently a mere youth. He had probably seen twenty summers—scarcely more. Yet his person was tall and well developed; symmetrical and manly; rather slight, perhaps, as was proper to his immaturity; but not wanting in what the backwoodsmen call heft. He was evidently no milksop, though slight; carried himself with ease and grace; and was certainly not only well endowed with bone and muscle, but bore the appearance, somehow, of a person not unpractised in the use of it. His face was manly like his person; not so round as full, it presented a perfect ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... Fielding's must have entertained. He couldn't do otherwise than laugh at the puny Cockney bookseller, pouring out endless volumes of sentimental twaddle, and hold him up to scorn as a moll-coddle and a milksop. His genius had been nursed on sack-posset, and not on dishes of tea. His muse had sung the loudest in tavern choruses, had seen the daylight streaming in over thousands of emptied bowls, and reeled home to chambers on the shoulders of the watchman. Richardson's goddess was attended ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... cried. 'Hasn't that man been lashing at you like a dog, and I didn't rush at him, and if I couldn't fight, being a milksop, then bite and kick and scratch, and take my share of it? O God!' he cried, in agony, 'if I had but a chance again! But nobody ever has more than one chance in this world. He may damn me now when he ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... sympathised with his tastes, his pleasures, his friendships; devoted every hour of her life, every thought of her mind to his welfare, his interests, walked with him, rode with him, travelled half over Europe, yachted with him. Her friends all declared that the lad would grow up an odious milksop; but I am told that there never was a manlier man than Lord Hartfield. From his boyhood he was his mother's protector, helped to administer her affairs, acquired a premature sense of responsibility, and escaped almost all those vices which ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... say," returned Anne. "We shall be glad to be away from Winchester, for while Peregrine Oakshott torments slyly, Sedley Archfield loves to frighten us openly, and to hurt us to see how much we can bear, and if Charley tries to stand up for us, Sedley calls him a puny wench, and a milksop, and knocks him down. But, dear madam, pray do not tell what I have said to her ladyship, for there is no knowing what Sedley ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he, speaking unconsciously aloud, "is this the affection which she professed to bear me? Is this the proof she gives of the preference which she often expressed for her favorite son? To leave her property to that miserable milksop, my half-brother! What devil could have tempted her to this? Not Lindsay, certainly, for I know he would scorn to exercise any control over her in the disposition of her property, and as for Maria, I know she would not. It must then have been the milksop himself in some ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Herhor, forget all this? And if Thou remember, dost Thou not understand the dangers which threaten us from this milksop? Still he has under his hand the rudder of the ship of state, which he pushes in among rocks and eddies. Who will assure me that this madman, who yesterday summoned to his presence the Phoenicians, but quarreled with them today, will not do something ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... books, and he and his little sister Judith had lived in a pleasant atmosphere of refinement, playing happily together until the boy had grown almost to dread anything common or low. His mother knew he had moral courage, and would face any issue pluckily, but his father feared he would grow up a milksop, and ...
— Kalitan, Our Little Alaskan Cousin • Mary F. Nixon-Roulet
... sneered, and burst out laughing while the tears still lingered on her cheek. "He was a milksop, not a man. I thought he was a man, or I never would have offered him pleasure. And you want me to make ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... lips that touch liquor don't hanker to touch The lips of a maiden like you—not much! If a man—not a milksop—should happened to wed A creature like you, he had better be dead; For never a moment of peace would he see Unless he would bow to your every decree, If he smoked a cigar, or drank beer, you would make A hell of his home, and perhaps you would break Into court and denounce ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... "Dick is no milksop," she would say approvingly, when told of any of his escapades; "faith, he has my spirit exactly! I have a great deal more temper than any one would believe me capable of"—which was not the truth, for there were few people who really ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... sea-room give me, And it ain't to a little I'll strike. Though the tempest topgallant-mast smack smooth should smite And shiver each splinter of wood, Clear the deck, stow the yards, and house everything tight, And under reef foresail we'll scud: Avast! nor don't think me a milksop so soft, To be taken for trifles aback; For they say there's a Providence sits up aloft, To keep watch for the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... back in his chair, with a softened expression in his society beaten face. "It's no use of nonsense, Jack. I'm an average old sinner, and I'm not old enough yet to like a milksop. But I've known you since you were so high, and I knew your father; he used to stay weeks on my plantation when we were both younger. And your mother—that was a woman!—did me a kindness once when I was in a d—-d tight place, and I never forgot it. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... one to discover things all over the world. I suppose that's the class we're in now—we're the first navigators, so far as help from any one else is concerned. In Alaska a fellow has to take care of himself, and he has to learn to take his medicine. Now none of us is a milksop ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... And suddenly Lucy was really sorry. She had done this, she had degraded her happy brother to a mere milksop, just because he had happened to plant her out, and leave her planted. Remorse suddenly gripped her with ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... such an infernal villain as to sell the reversion of the living, and that Methodist milksop of an eldest son looks to Parliament,' continued Mr. Crawley, after ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... of those sleepless nights spent long ago, and rolled out his sonorous record of suffering, his watering eye gleamed with pleasure, and I can well imagine how sorely he bored his friends when he was young and his grief was at its most enjoyable height. But he was no milksop, and he resolved that Mr. Billiter should not baulk him. Where is the actor who does not delight in stratagems and mysteries? Bless their honest hearts, they could not endure life without an occasional plot or mystification! Two months after Letty's incarceration, a decently-dressed man ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... revolting insensibility in Tom that he felt any new anger toward Maggie for this uncalled-for and, to him, inexplicable caress, I must tell you that he had his glass of cowslip wine in his hand, and that she jerked him so as to make him spill half of it. He must have been an extreme milksop not to say angrily, "Look there, now!" especially when his resentment was sanctioned, as it was, by general disapprobation ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... not been asked to sing (or somebody else had), he would assure me in good round English that I was the most infernal lout that ever disgraced a drawing-room, or ate a man out of house and home, and that he was sick and ashamed of me. "Why can't you sing, you d—d French milksop? The d—d roulade-monger of a father of yours could sing fast enough, if he could do nothing else, confound him! Why can't you talk French, you infernal British booby? Why can't you hand round the tea and muffins, confound you! Why, twice Mrs. Glyn dropped her pocket-handkerchief and ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... love Dounia in his own way; he already possessed her in his dreams—and all at once! No! The next day, the very next day, it must all be set right, smoothed over, settled. Above all he must crush that conceited milksop who was the cause of it all. With a sick feeling he could not help recalling Razumihin too, but, he soon reassured himself on that score; as though a fellow like that could be put on a level with him! The man he really dreaded ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Had there been in Tom's face the faintest glimmer of regret, or the faintest trace of the old affection, he would have stayed and braved all consequences. But there was neither. The spell that bound Tom Drift, his fear of being thought a milksop, had changed him utterly, and as Charlie's eyes turned with pleading look to his they met only with ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... Malachi Mulligan. Fertiliser and Incubator. Lambay Island. His project, as he went on to expound, was to withdraw from the round of idle pleasures such as form the chief business of sir Fopling Popinjay and sir Milksop Quidnunc in town and to devote himself to the noblest task for which our bodily organism has been framed. Well, let us hear of it, good my friend, said Mr Dixon. I make no doubt it smacks of wenching. Come, be seated, both. 'Tis as cheap ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... the partisan rancour and the literary prudishness of Jeffrey; it made the disturbed dowagers of the Critical Review, who thought, with Rymer, that 'a hero ought to be virtuous,' mingle applause with their fie-fies; it has been the delight of every reader, not a milksop, or a faddist, or a poetical man-of-one-idea, ever since. The last canto of Marmion and the last few 'Aventiuren' of the Nibelungen Lied are perhaps the only things in all poetry where a set continuous battle (not a series of duels ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... of a milksop about him," he said; "and is, for his age, full of spirit and courage. How so strange an idea could have occurred to him is more than I can imagine. I should as soon expect to see an owlet, in a sparrow hawk's nest, as a monk ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... not fear the water—on land," said the king. "I am no such milksop as to need to dry off before a kitchen fire. See, this is the better way;" and catching up a stout hazel-stick, he bade Arvid stand on his guard. Nothing loth, Arvid Horn accepted the kingly challenge, and picking up a similar hazel-stick, he rapped King Charles' weapon smartly, and the two boys ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... Joseph Sedley, greedy, vain, and cowardly, would not be brought up to the sticking point. Young George Osborne, Captain of the —th, old Sedley's godson, and the accepted lover of Amelia, thought Joseph was a milksop. He turned over in his mind, as the Sedleys did, the possibility of marriage between Joseph and Rebecca, and was not over well pleased that a member of a family into which he, George Osborne, was going ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... milksop, my Lord! I marvel what he means to do. His brains are but addled eggs—all ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... made the greatest fuss about my little wound, mother, or Annie, or Lorna. I was heartily ashamed to be so treated like a milksop; but most unluckily it had been impossible to hide it. For the ball had cut along my temple, just above the eyebrow; and being fired so near at hand, the powder too had scarred me. Therefore it seemed a great deal worse than ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... enough to eat, I am well dressed and booted. Also, I have my diversions. You see, I am not of noble blood. My father himself was not a gentleman; he and his family had to live even more plainly than I do. Nor am I a milksop. Nevertheless, to speak frankly, I do not like my present abode so much as I used to like my old one. Somehow the latter seemed more cosy, dearest. Of course, this room is a good one enough; in fact, in SOME respects it is the more cheerful and interesting ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... school at the corner of his street; but what are the duke and the coster to do? Neither of them has any effective choice in the matter: their children must either go to the schools that are, or to no school at all. And as the duke thinks with reason that his son will be a lout or a milksop or a prig if he does not go to school, and the coster knows that his son will become an illiterate hooligan if he is left to the streets, there is no real alternative for either of them. Child life must be socially organized: no parent, rich or poor, can choose institutions that do not exist; ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... yet, cry-baby!" cried Kuzmitchov. "You are blubbering again, little milksop! If you don't want to go, stay behind; no one is taking you ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... word usually means a milksop, but here it is equivalent to 'a butterfly', 'a weathercock'—a man of changeable disposition. A ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... excited to think of anything rationally. Besides, that last remark about the flannel vests had greatly disturbed him. The carriage was full of people, who must have heard it, and would be sure to set him down as no end of a milksop and mollycoddle. ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... knew you'd think so," he said, "and it's what I tell him all the time. He's got no business meddling with me so much, and I won't stand it." "He ought to get a dog," suggested Christopher indifferently. "Well, I'm not a dog, and I'll make him understand it yet. Oh, you think I'm an awful milksop, of course, but I'll show you otherwise some day. I'd like to know if you could have done any better in my place?" "Done! Why, I shouldn't have been in your place long, that's all." "I shan't, either, for that matter; but I've got to humour him a little, ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... care for such a milksop, Such a milksop, such a humbug; 180 I must have a graceful husband, I myself am also graceful; I must have a shapely husband, I myself am also shapely; And a well-proportioned husband, ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... dark boy stopped in his violent attacks on the steward's legs and said, breathlessly: "Well, you ain't such a milksop after ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... no means a milksop, and, although a Christian man, did not understand Christianity to teach the absolute giving up of all one's possessions to the first scoundrel who shall demand them. The moment, therefore, that the robbers showed ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne |
