"Timorous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... health; but their procedures are not generally known; they probably include poisoning, but, like the practices of our European witches in recent times, they probably have but little existence outside the timorous imaginations of the people. Such persons are disliked and shunned, though not killed as they would be among Kayans or Kenyahs. They are not professional sorcerers, I.E. their help is not called in by other persons who wish to work evil on their enemies, for others do ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... canon. The wind was strong and stinging cold. Over the high peaks the gray-black vapor was rushing, and farther away a huge dome of cloud was advancing like an army in action. It was all in the day's work of the ranger, but the plainsman behind him turned timorous eyes toward the sky. "It looks owly," he repeated. "I didn't know I was going so high—Gregg didn't say the camp ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... Still Cellini knew that personal violence was not in the line of Michelangelo's character; for Michelangelo, according to his friend and best biographer, Condivi, was by nature, "as is usual with men of sedentary and contemplative habits, rather timorous than otherwise, except when he is roused by righteous anger to resent unjust injuries or wrongs done to himself or others, in which case he plucks up more spirit than those who are esteemed brave; but, for the rest, he is most patient and enduring." Cellini, then, knowing the quality ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... and verdant, covered with herbage, but with few trees. The port was infested with alligators, which basked in the sunshine on the beach, filling the air with a powerful and musky odor. They were timorous, and fled on being attacked, but the Indians affirmed that if they found a man sleeping on shore they would seize and drag him into the water. These alligators Columbus pronounced to be the same ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... the point above, where he had evidently been watching the battle, the first young bull stole out, and came halting and listening along the shore to the scene of the conflict. "To the discreet belong the spoils" was written in every timorous step and stealthy movement. A low grunt from my horn reassured him; he grew confident. Now he would find the phantom mate that had occasioned so much trouble, and run away with her before the conqueror should return from his chase. He swung along rapidly, rumbling the ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... trepidation for the support of things established, and have it not in them to be able to recognize the unsanctioned. Good women, unworldly of the world, they were perforce harder than the world, from being narrower and more timorous. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... foregoing qualifications must needs be lacking, nevertheless this timorous pen, with more trepidation than courage it must be confessed, begs to call attention to a few obvious details in masculine attire that caricature, more or less, peculiarities in the forms and features ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... desires to meet, and it is old, rich, and unwarlike nations which take the lead in laboriously protecting themselves against enemies of whom there is no sign in any quarter. Within the last half-century only have the nations of the world begun to compete with each other in this timorous and costly rivalry. In the warlike days of old, armaments in time of peace consisted in little more than solid walls for defence, a supply of weapons stored away here and there, sometimes in a room attached to the parish church, and occasional martial exercises with the sword ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... same hymn-book. Jenny joined her voice with Susannah, Mary Magdalene with Mary Mother, so near together in one thing, so far apart in another—alike in this, that both were singing. And in that choir—celestial and infernal—sang the jealous woman with grey cheeks and haggard eyes, and the timorous woman, and she of the fearless face, and the woman who could scale the stars for the creature she worshipped, and the woman who could lie down in the mud and let the world see her there, and the woman who had sold her soul for ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... exhibited an intense astonishment blended with entire submission, as though in the face of a scientific truth which contradicted everything that he had previously believed, but was supported by an irresistible weight of evidence; with timorous emotion he bowed his head over his plate, and merely replied: "Oh—oh—oh—oh—oh!" traversing, in an orderly retirement of his forces, into the depths of his being, along a descending scale, the whole compass of his voice. After which there was no more talk ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... white as he saw what Dick had attempted to do. Had he been made of more timorous stuff the high school teacher would have closed his eyes for ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock
... the breast, from which it is licked by the young. The Anteater develops her eggs in a pouch. They illustrate a very early stage in the development of a mammal from a reptile; and one is almost tempted to see in their timorous burrowing habits a reminiscence of the impotence of the early mammals after their ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... had losses in life, losses not so bad as to cause absolute want, or inflict upon him or her the bodily injury of starvation, let him confess that the evils of this poverty are by no means so great as his timorous fancy depicted. Say your money has been invested in West Diddlesex bonds, or other luckless speculations—the news of the smash comes; you pay your outlying bills with the balance at the banker's; you assemble your ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a very timorous fish, utterly worthless as food except during the winter months. He frequents deep water, and loves shady places, where he can shelter under the roots of trees, &c. The Chub spawns in May and June. He is a leather-mouthed fish, so that once hooked you are sure of him; he struggles fiercely for ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland
... quietly trying to persuade the "Dictator"—that is, the would-be "Dictator"—to allow him to burn up the wrecked houses wholesale without the tedious bother of pulling them down and handling the debris. The timorous committees would not countenance such an idea. Nothing but piecemeal tearing down of the wrecked houses tossed together by the mighty force of the water and destruction by never-dying bonfires would satisfy them. Yet all of them must come down. Most of the buildings reached by the flood have been ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... dark night, moonless, starless, skyless, on the trembling whiteness of a vast ledge of snow, slowly a long rope unrolled itself, to which were attached in file certain timorous and very small shades, preceded, at the distance of a hundred feet, by a lantern casting a red light along the way. Blows of an ice-axe ringing on the hard snow, the roll of the ice blocks thus detached, alone broke the silence of the neve on which the steps of the ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... virtues o'er the mountain's breast May sit, like falcons, cow'ring on the nest; But all the gentler morals, such as play 235 Thro' life's more cultured walks, and charm the way, These, far dispersed, on timorous pinions fly, To sport and ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... thee for thy treachery, Inconstant dotard, timorous old ass, That shakes with cowardice, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... performer, one is really at a loss to say in what line of character he has excelled the most. The Titanic grandeur of Lear, the human debasement of Werner, the frank vivacity of Henry V, the gloomy and timorous guilt of King John, or that—his last—personation of Macbeth, in which it seemed to me that he conveyed a more correct notion of what Shakespeare designed than I can recollect to have read in the most profound of ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... figure of his unknown guest rolled over, picked itself up, and stood revealed, a woman, not a child, as he had at first thought. And then a feeling of sick, shrinking fear came over Sherston, for there fell on his ears the once horribly familiar accents—plaintive, wheedling, falsely timorous—of ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... sustained by all nations during the prevalence of the black plague is without parallel and beyond description. In the eyes of the timorous, danger was the certain harbinger of death; many fell victims to fear on the first appearance of the distemper, and the most stout-hearted lost their confidence. The pious closed their accounts with the world; their only ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... man against the inclemency of the weather, but had also furnished him with places of secure refuge against the violence of his fellow-man. As sure as the rabbit runs to its hole on the sight of the sportsman, so did the oppressed and timorous when the ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... manly strength A gathered flower. God grant us peace at length! I heard no more, and turned to leave their town Before the chill came, and the sun went down. Then rose a whisper, and I seemed to know A timorous man, buried long years ago. "On Earth I used to shape the Thing that seems. Master of all men, give me back my dreams. Give me that world that never failed me then, The hills I made and peopled with tall men, ...
— Forty-Two Poems • James Elroy Flecker
... had been unable to make him acquire even that exterior bearing which confers the necessary dignity upon him who exercises great power, to say nothing of the firmness, precision, and force of will required in governing men. Credulous, timorous, impressionable, and at the same time obstinate, gluttonous, and sensual, this erudite, overgrown boy had become in the imperial palace a kind of plaything for everybody, especially for his slaves, who, knowing his defects and his weaknesses, did ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... on that day. In the words with which the President, the Earl of Rosse, accompanied the presentation of the medal, "it is not difficult," writes Sir M. Foster, "reading between the lines, to recognise the appreciation of a new spirit of anatomical inquiry, not wholly free from a timorous apprehension as to its complete validity." ("In these papers (on the Medusae) you have for the first time fully developed their structure, and laid the foundation of a rational theory for their classification." "In your second paper 'On the Anatomy of ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... had the privilege myself, damsel," said Guarine; "but for these fellows, they are not so timorous as you suppose them, being even too ready to avouch their roguery when it hath less excuse—Besides, I promised them impunity.—Have you any ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... and rhetoricians are timorous creatures together. You may generally see them carrying sticks on their walks; well, of course they would not go armed if they were not afraid. And they bar their doors elaborately, for fear of night attacks. ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... the same spot; but I was perhaps in the act to move, for before they had gone three yards they saw me and rushed back to the drain. After a few minutes the larger of these two, probably the male, ventured forth again and reached the middle of the road, when he discovered that his more timorous companion had not followed but was only just peeping out. He stopped and elevated his neck some five or six inches, planting the fore-feet so as to lift him up high to see round, while his hindquarters ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... no crowd could get together in which they didn't kick up a row, nor a bit of stray fighting couldn't be, but they'd pick it up first; and if a man would venture to give them a contrary answer, he was sure to get the crame of a good welting for his pains. The very landlord was timorous of them; for when they'd get behind in their rint, hard fortune to the bailiff, or proctor, or steward, he could find, that would have anything to say to them. And the more wise they; for maybe, a month would hardly pass till all belonging to them in the world would be in a heap of ashes: ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... came a confused, terrifying noise of panting breaths and trampling feet. It came sweeping down the broad trail. There were grunting cries, also; and Grom understood at once that a herd of pig-tapirs—heavy-footed, timorous beasts, as tall as heifers—were sweeping down upon them in mad flight before ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... of literature are coy and haughty, they must be long courted, and at last are not always gained; but criticism is a goddess easy of access and forward of advance, she will meet the slow and encourage the timorous. The want of meaning she supplies with words, and the want of ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... always to be had in plenty, and as cheap as usual, as I said above; and provisions were never wanting in the markets, even to such a degree that I often wondered at it, and reproached myself with being so timorous and cautious in stirring abroad, when the country people came freely and boldly to market, as if there had been no manner of infection in the city, or ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... beg you!" interrupted the king. "Womankind are but frail flesh, sir; easily molded; easily won. She is a woman; therefore, soft, yielding; yours for the asking. You are over valorous at a distance; too timorous near her. Approach her boldly, and, though she were Diana's self, I'll answer for your victory! Eh, Triboulet, are our ladies ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... Uli begged his bride to go with him to the pastor, to get the certificate. Abashed, Freneli tried to decline, under the pretext that she did not know him, that it was unnecessary, and so on. But she went none the less, and no longer timorous, like a thief in the night, but as well becomes a happy woman at the side of an honest man. Freneli knew how to take herself ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... Whatever goes to the tilth of me it shall be you! You my rich blood! your milky stream pale strippings of my life! Breast that presses against other breasts it shall be you! My brain it shall be your occult convolutions! Root of wash'd sweet-flag! timorous pond-snipe! nest of guarded duplicate eggs! it shall be you! Mix'd tussled hay of head, beard, brawn, it shall be you! Trickling sap of maple, fibre of manly wheat, it shall be you! Sun so generous it shall be you! Vapors lighting and shading my face it shall be you! You sweaty brooks and dews it ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... timorous, and vagrant people, and of a disposition so selfish as sometimes to have excited suspicions of their integrity. Their complexion is swarthy; their features are coarse, and their hair is lank, but not always of a ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... there is nothing to remind us of our own Bush-hawk; and that there is no great protective resemblance is sufficiently manifested, from the fact that our cuckoo is persecuted on every possible occasion by the tits, which are timorous enough in the ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... lost my power over Farrell, although there were times when I mistrusted it. His eyes had given me the first warning, when I returned that morning and found myself tricked. They were half-timorous but also half-defiant, and wholly sly. It disconcerted him that I made no comment on his silence ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... from this journey, which her love and duty towards her dead friend rendered necessary. She had scarcely left East Chester since she first arrived there, sixteen or seventeen years ago, and she was timorous about the very mode of travelling; and then to go back to Hamley, which she thought never to have seen again! She never spoke much about any feelings of her own, but Miss Monro could always read her ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... little Juliet, but evidently much interested in Romeo's serenade. When he sang she put her head to one side and moved as if uncertain whether to descend from her balcony. When he stopped, which he did at frequent intervals, being as it were timorous and tongue-tied, she took her foot from the ladder and waited, at first patiently and then with an obvious air of boredom. Messer Romeo made a hop forward and vibrated; Juliet grew tremulous. Alarmed at his boldness he halted and made a hop back; Juliet looked disappointed. At last ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... snipes and jack bailiffs of the big mercantile houses, warmed into drunken courage by gallons of cheap wine, yelped in unison. This auriferous insect, who was for four years comptroller of the currency, is remembered in Washington chiefly for a remarkable burst of speed displayed one night when his timorous mind conceived the idea that a somnolent hackman was going to rob him. He had his dress suit case in one hand and his plug hat in the other, and he covered three blocks in ten seconds. The cabby, whom ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... come away early from the Home Office, met her in that dark hall, to which he had paid no attention since his young wife died, fifteen years ago. Embracing him, with a smile of love almost timorous from intensity, Frances Freeland looked him up and down, and, catching what light there was gleaming on his temples, determined that she had in her bag, as soon as she could get it open, the very thing for dear John's hair. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... thus relates his experience on similar subjects. He had been appointed also by Lord Clannaboy to the parish of Killinchy; and, "because it was needful that he should be ordained to the ministry, and the Bishop of Down, in whose diocese Killinchy was, being a corrupt and timorous man, and would require some engagement, therefore my Lord Clannaboy sent some with me, and wrote to Mr. Andrew Knox, Bishop of Raphoe, who told me he knew my errand, and that I came to him because ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... would be real in its method as well as in its substance. We have fairly entered upon the era in which education must be, and, spite of any temporary recoil of timorous despotisms, must continue to be, popular and universal. But many are too apt to forget that, upon our planet, this thing of popular and universal education is comparatively a new and untried experience; that, so far as its mode and substance are concerned, it is, in truth, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... sobriety of demeanour, were the only persons who shared the house with him. Mrs. Roots could not compare in grace and skill with the little Frenchwoman who had sweetened his existence at Peckham Rye, but her zeal made amends for natural deficiency, and the timorous respect with which she waited upon him was by no means disagreeable to Godwin. Her reply to a request or suggestion was always, 'If you please, sir.' Throughout the day she went so tranquilly about her domestic duties, that Godwin seldom heard anything except ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... such multitudes, that we cannot exaggerate in saying that at a single glance we saw three thousand of them before us. Of all the animals we had seen the antelope seems to possess the most wonderful fleetness: shy and timorous they generally repose only on the ridges, which command a view of all the approaches of an enemy: the acuteness of their sight distinguishes the most distant danger, the delicate sensibility of their smell defeats the precautions of concealment, and ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... time upon his head—for he is one of them who are puffed up with conceit of worldly knowledge, and who, in contradiction of Holy Scripture, assert, with Galileo Galilei, that this world is a ball which daily turns round. His company has not arrived, and never may arrive. Not on the timorous and doubting English Catholics, but on my own brave countrymen and the faithful Spaniards, must we rely for the accomplishment of the heaven-inspired thought of our great founder, ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... war begins at dawn—and the thickets around a certain little gray stone fort alive with slouch hat, blue blouse, and Krag-Jorgensen, slipping through the brush, building no fires, and talking in low tones for fear the timorous enemy would see, or hear, and run before the American sharpshooter could get a chance to try his marksmanship; wondering, eight hours later, if the timorous enemy were ever going to run. Eastward and on a high knoll ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... understood at once that the man had come in his turn to take leave. Kakusuke alone had remained with him. He was chu[u]gen, stable boy, cook, maid; and did the work of all four without complaint. The change in his master was too marked. Kibei, in his turn, had become irritable, timorous as a girl, subject to outbreaks of almost insane rage. To Kakusuke the young man seemed to have lost all nerve. Kakusuke wanted to serve a man. As long as the Wakadono gave promise of redemption, of rising above ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... which he, young as he was, could possibly help her, was to withdraw her from the dangerous scene and make her his wife; and on that step he had been for some days resolving. The emotion she had shown, the timorous joy, the sweet confidence in his love and honor, had given a rapturous feeling of happiness to him quite new. He had intended benevolently and kindly; he had met with all the blessings of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... looking for a place where I might spend the night—towns are inhospitable places, and one is timorous of sleeping in a tavern full of armed drunkards—when I was hailed by a queer old man, who noticed that I was a stranger. He kept one of the two hundred wine-cellars of the town, and was able to give me a good supper and a glass of wine with it. He was an aged Mingrelian, ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... if thou are not over timorous even for a love-sick youth," she sighed. "And must thou go when my heart inclineth to hours spent with thee? And yet at night the stars come out so 'tis said, and can be seen from the roof of my dwelling; and when the wind sweeps ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... hysterical. But Frank and Della, with a few sharp-spoken words, shamed the women and brought them to their senses. However, it was not to be wondered at that hysteria prevailed, as there were few men about to give protection in case of an attack on the house, the butler being an oldish and timorous man ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... change a sword-rush of the river into a steel sabre for combat. Masaniello, Rienzi, Garibaldi, had roused the peasantry and led them against their foes; but the people they dealt with must, he thought, have been made of different stuff than these timorous villagers, who could not even be make to comprehend the magnitude of the wrong ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... so full of childish wonder at its own sadness. She was obviously waiting for some one; something made a faint crackling in the wood; she raised her head at once, and looked round; in the transparent shade I caught a rapid glimpse of her eyes, large, clear, and timorous, like a fawn's. For a few instants she listened, not moving her wide open eyes from the spot whence the faint sound had come; she sighed, turned her head slowly, bent still lower, and began sorting her flowers. Her eyelids turned red, her lips ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... too, but it does not follow that they are, and, as you say, time will weed them out if you are trying to do right." She wondered if he would resent her ifs. She stood looking down the bank in the short silence that followed, feeling somewhat timorous. The steep ground was covered with the feathery sprays of asters, seen through a velvety host of gray teasles which grew to greater height. Through the teasles the white and purple flowers showed as colours reflected in rippled water—rich, soft, vague in outline. At one side, by an old stump, ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... But timorous mortals start and shrink To cross this narrow sea, And linger shivering on the brink, And fear ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... a devout brother, whom he trusted, and by a simple wife, who had a devotion of marrying, dozens of her poor cousins at his expense: you know she was the Fair Circassian.(201) Mr. Poyntz was called a very great man, but few knew any thing of his talents, for he was timorous to childishness. The Duke has done greatly for his family, and secured his places for his children, and sends his two sons abroad, allowing them eight hundred pounds a year. The little Marquis of Rockingham has drowned himself in claret; and old Lord Dartmouth is dead of ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... said, "this small instrument is sufficient to save me! Should the worst ensue, I know where to find the carotid artery, and even such a slight puncture as my timorous hand could make would set my spirit free! Oh, my father! oh, my father! you little thought when you taught your Clara the mysteries of anatomy to what a fearful use she would put your lessons! And would it be right? Oh, would it be right? One may desire death, but can anything justify ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... then in the town. Their entertainment consisted of two parts, the first entitled: "The Death of Agolante and the Madness of Count Orlando"; the second: "A Delightful Comedy, the Devil's Castle with Pulcinella as the Timorous Soldier." In addition were promised "new duets and Neapolitan songs." The theatre would comfortably seat three hundred persons, and the performance would be given twice, at half-past eighteen and half-past twenty-one o'clock. It was unpardonable ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... I do know your thought; You'll say, your guests here will except at this: Pish! you are too timorous, and full of doubt. Then he, a patient, shall reject all physic, 'Cause the physician tells him, you are sick: Or, if I say, that he is vicious, You will not hear of virtue. Come, you are fond. Shall I be so extravagant, to think, That happy ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... grown timorous in their judgments since the all-pervading currency of criticism. They fear to express a revised, frank opinion about any new work, and to relish it honestly and heartily, lest it should be condemned in the next review, and they stand convicted of bad taste. Hence they hedge their opinions, ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... early period the rude hunters, though masters of the woods, while they attracted the attention of the stranger, must also have convinced him how little human nature uncultivated is exalted above the brute creation. Numbers of deer, timorous and wild, ranged through the trees, and herds of buffaloes were found grazing in the savanna. Above his head the feathered tribes, more remarkable for the splendour of their plumage than the harmony of their ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... in our natural Capacities themselves, a Fitness for some Things, and Unfitness for others. Thus whatever great Capacities a Man may have, if he is naturally timorous, or a Coward, he never can have a Warlike Genius. If a Man has not a good Judgment, how great soever his Wit may be, or polite his Manners, he never will have the Genius of a Statesman. Just as strong Sounds and brisk Measures can never touch the softer ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... open room-door, came the last outburst of her invectives, high-pitched in their voluble utterance, against him, against them both, against everybody, including Mr. Raddle in the kitchen—"a base, faint-hearted, timorous wretch, that's afraid to come upstairs and face the ruffinly creaturs—that's afraid to come—that's afraid!" Ending with her screaming descent of the stairs in the midst of a loud double-knock, upon the arrival just then of the ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... twined in their locks of gold The strange cold forest-fairies dance in glee, Sylphs over-timorous and over-bold Haunt the dark hollows where the dwarf may be, The wild red dwarf, the nixies' enemy; Then 'mid their mirth, and laughter, and affright, The sudden Goddess enters, tall and white, With one long sigh for summers pass'd away; The ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... merely at the head of a reconnoitring party. If the story were true, it would be chiefly important as indicating that the Prince of Orange was one of the many historical characters, originally of an excitable and even timorous physical organization, whom moral courage and a strong will have afterwards converted into dauntless heroes. Certain it is that he was destined to confront open danger in every form, that his path was to lead through perpetual ambush, yet that his cheerful confidence and tranquil ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... knowing (conscientia). The relation between the known and the knower is threefold. Cognition is incomplete and lacks the free co-operation of the knower when God merely pervades (durchwohnt) the creature, as is the case with the devil's timorous and reluctant knowledge of God. A higher stage is reached when the known is present to the knower and dwells with him (beiwohnt). Cognition becomes really free and perfect when God dwells in (inwohnt) the creature, in which case the finite reason ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... Thomas Cranmer, a learned and amiable divine with marked leanings towards the New Learning; who in his early graduate days had fallen under the influence of the teaching at Cambridge of Erasmus; in scholarship subtle and erudite, in affairs guileless and easily swayed; timorous by nature, but capable of outbreaks of audacity as timid persons often are: a gentle and lovable man, but lacking in that robust self-confidence needed by one who would take a resolutely independent line; a man intended to be a student and forced by an unkind fate to assume the role of a man of ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... it was, Counting of many unseen stars In an intangible sky Making new milky ways— Silver-shadow-paths that lead From sapphire abysses Into deeper abysses still. The deeps of our souls Lit by passion's burning flowers Tremulous, timorous flames of silver, That with thousand hands Our hearts sought to pluck and scatter, Or make barbed garlands For love's nuptial hour. Nuptial hour, briefer than a moment, Longer than Heaven's Eternal summer, When each ...
— Sandhya - Songs of Twilight • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... rest, that pause of preparation, as though night hesitated to awaken her countless myrmidons. With the lisping of invisible leaves the Great Master's music-book unfolded. That low, orchestral "F"—the dominant note of all nature's melodies—sounded in timorous unison—an experimental murmuring. Repeated in higher octaves, it swelled to shrill confidence, then a hundred, then myriad invisibles chanted to their beloved night or gossiped of the ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... I guess I can't let him stay all bolted and barred into no jail, when it don't need anythin' but my say-so to get him out. Ye see, gentlemen,"—Solomon paused, moistened his dry mouth, and cast a timorous look over the puzzled faces of the jurymen,—"ye see, 't was me ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... satisfaction for having one's head broken with a brickbat, were beginning to question their consciences very closely as to whether it was not a duty they owed to their families to stay at home on Sunday evening. These timorous persons, however, were in a small minority, and the generality of Mr. Tryan's friends and hearers rather exulted in an opportunity of braving insult for the sake of a preacher to whom they were attached on personal as ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... "Those timorous fools are playing the vestals, because they are stripped naked to be shown to the customers," said the "horse-dealer," who had kept near me. Presently he took me to the rear of the booth. On the way I counted nine captives, ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... talked, though at the same time he was casting timorous and suspicious looks at Solomon. The latter was standing in the same attitude and still smiling. To judge from his eyes and his smile, his contempt and hatred were genuine, but that was so out of keeping with his plucked-looking figure that it seemed to Yegorushka ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... seem to have been the evil influence of this travestied maxim which had much to do with the cramped and timorous strategy of the Americans in their late war with Spain. They had ample naval force to secure such a local and temporary command of the Gulf of Mexico as to have justified them at once in throwing all the troops ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... of sixteen followed her, ugly and misshapen as a gargoyle; he carried the baby in a sling on his back. Two timorous little girls came last. ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... his guest, this far-away son of Great India. So, presently, he was taken to view the horses and the cattle. Whoever hath seen lions brought to a court for show hath seen some shrinking from too-close and heard timorous asking if the bars be really strong. And the old, wild beasts at Rome for the games. If one came by chance upon them in a narrow quarter there might be terror. And the bull that we goad to madness for a game in Spain—were barriers down would come a-scrambling! This cacique had never seen an animal ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... overarching such an eye, and contrasting itself with the burning gold of the hair, and a skin of Parian white and purity. Then contemplate a softness beside which the velvet upon the petal of a pansy would seem rigid; and this eye large and timorous, and ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... each petty step was pleasing to the superstitious mind, as productive of comfort, and innocent of sin. But in the beginning of the eighth century, in the full magnitude of the abuse, the more timorous Greeks were awakened by an apprehension, that under the mask of Christianity, they had restored the religion of their fathers: they heard, with grief and impatience, the name of idolaters; the incessant charge of the Jews and Mahometans, [15] who derived from the Law and the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... most insignificant episodes of his nightly career. Nor do I dare relate other adventures of a more intimate character, from which, as the writers of an earlier day would say in noble style, a pen the least timorous ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... conversation, and it was a proof of his liking them, if his behaviour was tolerably agreeable. He was a great dissembler of his natural temper, which was fallen, morose, and peevish, where he durst shew it; but he was of a timorous disposition and the least slight or neglect offered to him, would throw him into a melancholy despondency. He was apt to say a great many ill-natur'd things, but was never known to do one: He was made up of tenderness, pity, and compassion; and ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... of death on his own account; it was for the weak timorous girl by his side that all his sympathies were aroused. Doubtless she too possessed a faith firm enough to enable her to meet her fate undismayed—he believed she did; but what terrible bodily suffering must she pass through before ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... They believed that she was dead, so pale was her beautiful face; and the coils of her soft hair were trailing in the surging water. But she was not dead, and, placed in the warm cabin of the delivered ship, soon opened her great, timorous eyes. ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... protests were too timorous to check her, and Flora's ceased in the delight of hearing that last wail confess the thought of Hilary. Constance strove with tender energy for place and voice: "Nan, dearie, Nan! But listen to Flora, Nan. ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... round the horizon we could see sunshine and clear air upon the hills. What with the guns and the thunder, the herds were all frightened in the Golden Valley. We could see them tossing their heads, and running to and fro in timorous indecision; and when they had made up their minds, and the donkey followed the horse, and the cow was after the donkey, we could hear their hooves thundering abroad over the meadows. It had a martial sound, like cavalry charges. And altogether, as far as the ears ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Had they caught the robbers? Was there actually no possibility of Jim's getting shot or stabbed or hurt? These and similar questions did the girl put to the two men, who, true to their trust, assured the timorous creature in well-assumed tones of confidence that her brother could n't get hurt, no matter how hard he ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... laid him on the ground grievously wounded; then turning about to the rest, it was worth seeing with what agility he attacked and defeated them; and it seemed as if wings at that instant had sprung on Rozinante—so lightly and swiftly he moved! All the white-robed people, being timorous and unarmed, soon quitted the skirmish and ran over the plain with their lighted torches, looking like so many masqueraders on a carnival or festival night. The mourners were so wrapped up and muffled ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... cleverly dried her eyes, poured all their bright beauty upon him, and the heart of the youth was enlarged with a new, very sweet, and most timorous feeling. Then his dark eyes dropped, and he touched her gently, and ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... an independent beast, Unlick'd to form, in groans her hate express'd. Among the timorous kind the quaking Hare[94] Profess'd neutrality, but would not swear. Next her the buffoon Ape[95], as Atheists use, Mimick'd all sects, and had his own to choose: 40 Still when the Lion look'd, his knees he bent, And paid at church a courtier's compliment. The bristled ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... nothing in the place calculated to alarm the most timorous of mortals; and as the boy glanced round he saw simply just what he had seen there many times before—the grindstone, Uncle Roger's box, some gardening tools, and sticks for rose-trees and other plants, a quantity of matting stuff which had been wrapped ...
— Under Padlock and Seal • Charles Harold Avery
... from mysterious shares in "miracle" health resorts, and a smile of satisfaction playing on the firm, well-shaped curve of his intellectual but hard mouth, he looked an imposing personage enough, of the very type to awe the weak and timorous. He was much entertained on this particular morning,—one might almost say he was greatly amused. Quite a humorous little comedy was being played at the Vatican,—a mock- solemn farce, which had the possibility ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... the late Nawab Safdar Jang, it was for his majesty to judge how useful might be the friendship of a potentate whose predecessor's hostility had been so formidable. "But," added the prudent Rohilla, "it must be remembered that the recollection of the past will make the Vazir timorous and suspicious. The negotiation will be as delicate as important. It should not be entrusted to ordinary agency, or to the ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... the manner of government into which the covetous, and the arrogant, to satiate their unhappy desires, would hurry their fellow creatures: it is a manner of government to which the timorous and the servile submit at discretion; and when these characters of the rapacious and the timid divide mankind, even the virtues of Antoninus or Trajan can do no more than apply, with candour and with vigour, the whip ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... commercial entente—not a political or military one, but a pacific laissez-faire for the purposes of trade. France envisages the complete ruin of German industry and commerce, and believes that Foch is the man to do it. At this the Italians smile quietly and counsel the timorous Germans not to despair. Rome chooses to hold to the thesis that a prosperous Italy depends on a prosperous Germany, and no outsider is qualified to dispute such a point of view. Somehow Italy manages to suggest a similar thought ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... disappoint that good fellow, Jack, all the same. Did he want me to sleep one night at his house on purpose to rob me and murder me? Girl as I was, and rendered timorous in some ways by the terrible shocks I had received, I couldn't for one moment believe it. I KNEW he was good: I KNEW he was honourable, gentle, ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... leaves; the chief looked up full in their faces, kneeling on the ground; light seemed to flash from his dark rolling eyes; his body was convulsed all over, as though he was enduring the utmost torture, and with a timorous, yet indefinable expression of countenance, in which all the passions of human nature were strangely blended, he drooped his head, eagerly grasped their proffered hands, and burst into tears. This was a sign of ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... must now be used; If we have Numbers, they must be united; If we have Strength, it must be all exerted; If we have Courage it must be inflamed, And every Art and Stratagem be practis'd: We've more to do than fright a Pigeon Roost, Or start a timorous Flock of running Deer; Yes, we've a strong, a warlike stubborn Foe, Unus'd to be repuls'd and quit the Field, Nay, flush'd with Victories and long Success, Their Numbers, Strength, and Courage all renown'd, 'Tis little of them that you see or know. I've seen their Capital, their Troops and ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers
... of Germany, he saw nothing but his own danger; and this anxiety was greatly stimulated by his minister Von Schwartzenburgh, who was secretly in the pay of Austria. In the mean time, the Swedish troops approached Berlin, and the king took up his residence with the Elector. When he witnessed the timorous hesitation of that prince, he could not restrain his indignation: "My road is to Magdeburg," said he; "not for my own advantage, but for that of the Protestant religion. If no one will stand by me, I shall immediately ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... a power of seeing things vividly inside your mind," said a voice, timorous and wheezy, away down ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... place in Fred Langdon's barn, where I was submitted to a series of trials not calculated to soothe the nerves of a timorous boy. Before being led to the Grotto of Enchantment—such was the modest title given to the loft over my friend's wood-house—my hands were securely pinioned, and my eyes covered with a thick silk handkerchief. ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... shoulders, only to catch sight of a nocturnal "bill-sniper" placarding vulnerable areas with his lithographed laudations of a vaudeville dancing woman. A child murderer burdened with the body of his victim could not have been more ill at ease, more timorous, ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... the Alban Mount, and its wild garden climbs away behind it and extends its melancholy influence. Before it is a small stiff avenue of trimmed live-oaks which conducts you to a grotesque little shrine beneath the staircase ascending to the church. Just here, if you are apt to grow timorous at twilight, you may take a very pretty fright; for as you draw near you catch behind the grating of the shrine the startling semblance of a gaunt and livid monk. A sickly lamplight plays down upon his face, and he stares at you from cavernous eyes ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... with the little Tessa. He came upon her in the thronged streets during carnival time, and seeing her, a timorous, tearful little contadin, terrified by the burlesque threats of a boisterous conjurer, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... situation then created would really constitute a menace for us or not, this much would be certain—that the more timid and timorous among us would believe it to be a menace, and it would furnish an irresistible plea for a very greatly enlarged naval and military establishment. We too, in that case would probably be led to organize our nation on the lines on which the European military nations ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... escapades, was to wade breast-high into one of the huge pools, and examine the worm-eaten surface of the rock above and below the brim. In such remote places—spots where I could never venture being left, a slightly timorous Andromeda, chained to a safer level of the cliff—in these extreme basins, there used often to lurk a marvellous profusion of animal and vegetable forms. My Father would search for the roughest and most corroded points of rock, those offering the best refuge for a variety of creatures, ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... considerable space in the fellow's head. Sometimes the desire of seeing his companions, and above all things his wife, made him eager to undertake it; at others, the fear of running upon inevitable death in case of a discovery, and the consideration of the felicity he now had in his power made him timorous, at least, ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... the desert I love to ride, With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side, O'er the brown karroo, where the bleating cry Of the springbok's fawn sounds plaintively; And the timorous quagga's shrill whistling neigh Is heard by the fountain at twilight gray; Where the zebra wantonly tosses his mane. With wild hoof scouring the desolate plain; And the fleet-footed ostrich over the waste ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... After a couple of weeks or so it would be different. Who could tell he had not returned overland from some port beyond the limits of the Republic? The existence of the treasure confused his thoughts with a peculiar sort of anxiety, as though his life had become bound up with it. It rendered him timorous for a moment before that enigmatic, lighted door. Devil take the fellow! He did not want to see him. There would be nothing to learn from his face, known or unknown. He was a fool to waste ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... and shaking her invincible locks: methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at {29} the full midday beam; purging and unsealing her long abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and in their envious gabble would prognosticate a year of sects ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... heart, a high ideal of what boys might be and abundant tolerance of what they generally were. If he had a quick temper, he had also a quick wit, and a quick appreciation of talent and sympathy with timorous aspirations. ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... liked gray hairs," he responded, with a sigh. "She is as beautiful as ever, I hear; but I have not caught a glimpse of her. Tell me, Barby,—for I have grown timorous with sorrow,—will she hate the sight of ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... of prey. The barge is known for its watchfulness, and it easily becomes the leader of more placid birds. The turnstone, when surrounded by comrades belonging to more energetic species, is a rather timorous bird; but it undertakes to keep watch for the security of the commonwealth when surrounded by smaller birds. Here you have the dominative swans; there, the extremely sociable kittiwake-gulls, among whom quarrels are rare and short; the prepossessing polar guillemots, which ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... willed a life's thread should be cut? With them the will is changeless as the deed. O men! ye have not learned in all the past, Desires are barren and tears yield no fruit. How long will ye besiege the thrones of gods With lamentations? When lagged Death for all Your timorous shirking? We work not like you, Delaying and relenting, purposeless, With unenduring issues; but our deeds, Forever interchained and interlocked, Complete each other and explain themselves." "Ye will a life: then why not any life?" "What care we for the king? He is not worth These many words; ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... husband were by no means the only members of the congregation of St. Chrysostom who discussed Vane's sermon on their way home. In fact, whether people walked or rode home, it was the universal topic. Some discussed it with timorous sympathy; others, perhaps with more worldly wisdom, talked of it quietly and cynically as the outburst of a half-fledged clerical enthusiast who would very soon find out that his superiors, on whom he depended for preferment, regarded the doctrines of Christianity as ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... thou sure that the hirelings of the priests haven't been told to kill thee? Nicodemus asked. Pilate's friendship for me is notorious, Joseph replied. I'm not afraid, Nicodemus, and it is well for me that I'm not, for assassination comes to the timorous. That is true, Nicodemus rejoined, our fears often bring about our destiny, but thou shouldst avoid returning by the valley; return by the eastern gate and on horseback. But that way, Joseph answered, is a lonely and long one, and thinking it better to put a bold face on ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... with dust and noise and alarms the credulous. Perhaps it may be wise to counteract this with a little quiet promotion of ideas of safety and prosperity, based on order and law. It may be well to calm the nerves of the timorous and it can do no harm to set in motion a counter wave of horror and repulsion against those who are planning to lead the world back to conditions of tribal savagery. Educational work is always beneficent. Let us have much of that but no panic. The power of truth ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... property of this prayer of the heart is to give a strong faith. Mine was without limits, as was also my resignation to God, and my confidence in Him—my love of His will, and of the order of His providence over me. I was very timorous before, but now feared nothing. It is in such a case that one feels the efficacy of these words, "My yoke is easy, and my burden is light" ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... least symptom of heat, much less of inflammation. By the way, I never had that complaint, in consequence of having drank these waters; for I have had it but four times, and always in the middle of summer. Mr. Hawkins is timorous, even to minutia, and my sister delights ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... with joy and lifted her face to his; as he bent to it he saw that her eyes were full of happy tears. But in another moment she seemed to have descended from her womanly eminence to helpless and timorous girlhood; and he understood that her courage and initiative were all for others, and that she had none for herself. It was evident that the effort of speaking had been much greater than her studied composure betrayed, and that at his first word ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... do not wander far from their burrows; if frightened, they rush to them with a most awkward gait. Except when running down hill, they cannot move very fast, apparently from the lateral position of their legs. They are not at all timorous: when attentively watching any one, they curl their tails, and, raising themselves on their front legs, nod their heads vertically, with a quick movement, and try to look very fierce; but in reality ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... still continuing, all the wild animals began to perceive the effects, and, compelled by hunger, approached nearer to the habitations of man and the places they had been accustomed to avoid. A multitude of hares—the most timorous of all animals—were frequently seen scudding about the garden in search of the scanty vegetables which the severity of the season had spared. In a short time they had devoured all the green herbs which could be found, and, hunger still oppressing ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... overhead and violets underfoot, was the only traveler to be seen on the deserted road. And the pensive dusk was wont to deepen into the serene vernal night, sweet with the scent of the budding wild cherry, and astir with timorous tentative rustlings as of half-fledged breezes, and illumined only with the gentle lustre of the white stars; for never again was the darkness emblazoned with that haggard incandescence so long ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... animate a brute. Thus the doctrine of metempsychosis was emphatically one of rewards and punishments, for the condition of the soul after death depended on its training during life. A savage and bloodthirsty man was exiled, as in the case of Lycaon, into the body of a wild beast: the soul of a timorous man entered a hare, and drunkards or ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... Her heart was as a white sheet of paper, on which no profane hand had ventured to write a mortal name. She loved nothing beyond her mother, her brother, the fine arts, and flowers. She entertained a profound but speechless veneration for her young step-father. His burning gaze made her uneasy and timorous; his commanding voice made her heart throb anxiously; in fine, she reverenced him with adoring but too agitated an impression of awe to find it possible to love him. He was for her at all times ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... there was an opening here for a timorous attempt to cry quits. "If it comes to the question of suffering, Claude, it isn't all on one side. You may be scratched and bleeding, as you say, and yet you can get over it; whereas ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... intimidate, cow, daunt, overawe, abash, deter, discourage; browbeat, bully; threaten &c. 909. Adj. fearing &c. v.; frightened &c. v.; in fear, in a fright &c. n.; haunted with the fear of &c. n.; afeard[obs3]. afraid, fearful; timid, timorous; nervous, diffident, coy, faint- hearted, tremulous, shaky, afraid of one's shadow, apprehensive, restless, fidgety; more frightened than hurt. aghast; awe-stricken, horror-stricken, terror-stricken, panic- stricken, awestruck, awe-stricken, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... is of a very timorous nature, is never more secure of continuance than when it can keep men asunder; and all is influence is commonly exerted for that purpose. No vice of the human heart is so acceptable to it as egotism: a despot ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... I fear, to Mr. Casaubon's uneasiness. Doubtless some ancient Greek has observed that behind the big mask and the speaking-trumpet, there must always be our poor little eyes peeping as usual and our timorous lips more or ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... Pendleton's timorous and inferior mind was incapable of translating the command into action. He could only ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... all of which I believe as a Delphian oracle, and am resolved to burn in that faith." "He," says Lodovico, in "May-Day,"—he "that holds religious and sacred thought of a woman, he that holds so reverend a respect to her that he will not touch her but with a kist hand and a timorous heart, he that adores her like his goddess, let him be sure she will shun him like her slave.... Whereas nature made" women "but half fools, we make 'em all fool: and this is our palpable flattery of them, where they had rather have plain dealing." In all Chapman's comic writing there ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... "editors are a mean, timorous lot, always saying they want something original, but deadly afraid of ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... was got to the top of the hill, there came two men running to meet him. The name of the one was Timorous, and the ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... sings, though its field be but a withered sod, and the sky above it a square foot of green baize. Nor was his commonplace book neglected; and in August we come upon an entry which shows that poetical aspirations were again possessing him; this time not to be cast forth, either at the timorous voice of Prudence or the importunate bidding of Poverty. Burns has calmly and critically taken stock—so to speak—of his literary aptitudes and abilities, and recognised his fitness for a place in the ranks of Scotland's poets. 'However I am pleased with the works of our Scotch poets, ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... some hogs the next day; but I had much ado to obtain a promise from him to visit me on board. He said he was, mataou no to poupoue, that is, afraid of the guns. Indeed all his actions shewed him to be a timorous prince. He was about thirty years of age, six feet high, and a fine, personable, well-made man as one can see. All his subjects appeared uncovered before him, his father not excepted. What is meant by uncovering, is the making bare the head and shoulders, or wearing no sort ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... successor; that by an opposite conduct she showed herself the step-mother, not the natural parent of her people, and would seem desirous that England should no longer subsist than she should enjoy the glory and satisfaction of governing it; that none but timorous princes, or tyrants, or faint-hearted women, ever stood in fear of their successors; and that the affections of the people were a firm and impregnable rampart to every sovereign, who, laying aside all artifice ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... King of the islands, to that degree that he delighted to call me and look on me as his brother. And should they fall out with these people, neither he nor his subjects know anything of weapons, and go naked, as I have said, and they are the most timorous people in the world. The few people left there are sufficient to conquer the country, and the island would thus remain without danger to them, they keeping order ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... recourse to the harsh, ill-sounding names of oppression and avarice. Oppression is often the CONSEQUENCE, but seldom or never the MEANS of riches; and though avarice will preserve a man from being necessitously poor, it generally makes him too timorous to be wealthy. ...
— Common Sense • Thomas Paine
... was not the strongest of characters. She was very sweet and amiable, intensely true and affectionate to those to whom she gave her heart, but she was somewhat timorous and ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... in the hands of the King and his adherents. Every day's delay enabled them to grow stronger. Every day's delay beyond a certain time discouraged and weakened the invaders. Mar might, at one critical moment, have swept Argyll's exhausted troops before him, but he was feeble and timorous; he dallied; he let the time pass; he allowed Argyll to get away without making an effort to attack him. It was then that one of the Gordon clan broke into that memorable exclamation, "Oh for one hour of Dundee!"—the exclamation which Byron ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... students. When the play was over, Lucien went home with downcast eyes, through streets lined with living attractions, and perhaps fell in with one of those commonplace adventures which loom so large in a young and timorous imagination. ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... a wondrous display—this carnival pageant, or "Triumph," of the Medici. Great golden cars, richly decorated, and drawn by curious beasts; horses dressed in the skins of lions and tigers and elephants; shaggy buffaloes and timorous giraffes from the Medicean villa at Careggi; fantastic monsters made up of mingled men and boys and horses, with other surprising figures as riders; dragons and dwarfs, giants and genii; beautiful young girls and boys dressed in antique costumes to represent goddesses ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... who lived near the centre of the village, heard frequently a strange noise behind his house, like that of a person in extreme agony. Soon after, it caught the attention of his wife who was then confined to her bed. She was a timorous woman, and being greatly alarmed, her husband endeavoured to persuade her that the noise she heard was only the bellowing of the stags in the forest. By degrees, however, the neighbours on all sides heard it, and the circumstance began to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 554, Saturday, June 30, 1832 • Various
... He had the timorous, or let us say, the imaginative temperament, which lends to adventure its very salt. He wished to have done dangerous or heroic things, if not to have to do them. He had so little to boast about; his brothers, and so many other ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... companies did follow; boisterous fellows resisting, and swearing they would not leave their county.... What a finesse of popularity was this?... As soon as the regiments were gone, this great man found an interest with the council of state, perhaps timorous as himself, to issue orders for the militia of twenty-six counties, and five companies of a minute battalion, to march to Williamsburg, to protect him only against his own fears; and to make this the more popular, ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... Oh, sir! doubt not but that Angling is an art. Is it not an art to deceive a Trout with an artificial fly?—a Trout that is more sharp-sighted than any Hawk you have named, and more watchful and timorous than your high-mettled Merlin is bold. And yet I doubt not to catch a brace or two to-morrow for a friend's breakfast." ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... favor; and if some unusual phenomenon presented itself, it was considered to be without doubt a warning from Heaven. If these illusions had had no other result than the amelioration of the more timorous of the community one would regret these ages of ignorance; but not only were these fancied warnings of no use, seeing that once the danger passed, man returned to his former state; but they also kept up among people imaginary terrors, ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... is, that as she wended thicket or glade or wood-lawn, she would at whiles grow timorous, and tread light and heedfully, lest rustling leaves or crackling stick should arouse some strange creature in human shape, devil, or god now damned, or woman of the faery. But if such were there, either they were wise and would not be seen, or kind and had no will to scare the ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... dressed as a man, in evening clothes, preferably a Tuxedo. In her hand is a card, and under her arm a paper-wrapped parcel. She peeps about curiously and advances to table. She is timorous and excited, elated and at the same time frightened. Her ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... vigorous King Cotton was killed by starvation, Confederate finance treated him as Jewish myth declares dead King Solomon was treated. In his million-acred temple, he stood—cold, white and useless—leaning upon his broken staff; while timorous leadership gaped at his ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... mouldering in their humble graves—their way thither cheered and smoothed by Mrs. Aubrey's Christian charity and benevolence! 'Twas a touching sight to see her two beautiful grandchildren, in whose company she delighted, brought, with a timorous and half-reluctant air, into her presence. How strange must have seemed to them the cheerfulness of the motionless figure always lying in the bed; a cheerfulness which, though gentle as gentle could be, yet sufficed not to assure the little things, or ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... of the difference of rig between an English craft and a Spaniard. I abode with them for two years, and aided them in their fights whenever the Spaniards sent out parties, which they did many times, to capture them. They were poor, timorous creatures, their spirits being altogether broken by the tyranny of the Dons; but when they saw that I feared them not, and was ready at any time to match myself against two or, if need be, three of the Spaniards, ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... precipitancy of the timorous, she said, 'Mr. Julian!' and touched him on the shoulder—murmuring then, 'O, I beg pardon, ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... the Danes were not invincible, the whole country rose, took the scattered castles, and put their defenders to the sword. Gustav bore the rising on his shoulders from first to last. He was everywhere, ordering and leading. His fiery eloquence won over the timorous; his irresistible advance swept every obstacle aside. In May he took Upsala; by midsummer he was besieging Stockholm itself. Most of the other cities were in his hands. The Hanse towns had found out what this Gustav could do at home. They sang his praise, but as for backing ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... employments, his abilities and behaviour were such, as procured him both love and reverence from the whole Society; there being no exception against him for any faults, but a sorrow for the infirmities of his being too timorous and bashful; both which were, God knows, so connatural as they never left him. And I know not whether his lovers ought to wish they had; for they proved so like the radical moisture in man's body, that they preserved ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... however, lamentable enough that authors must participate in that courage which faces the cannon's mouth, or cease to be authors; for military enterprise is not the taste of modest, retired, and timorous characters. The late Mr. Cumberland used to say that authors must not be thin-skinned, but shelled like the rhinoceros; there are, however, more delicately tempered animals among them, new-born lambs, who shudder at a touch, and die ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... addressed a farewell to the burghers, assuring them that God's aid could confidently be implored for their just cause; he also quoted part of the Verse, "Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it," intending it as an exhortation for the timorous, warning them of the greater danger incurred by retreat or flight than when maintaining a manful stand. (The reader will know that the above quotation does not complete the verse, the rest being, "But whosoever shall lose his life ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... kangaroo, the 'old man,' as he is called, timorous of every unwonted sound that enters his large, erected ears, has been chased far from every ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... Lucia Orestilla?" exclaimed Catiline, "this puling love-sick girl, this timorous, repentant—I had nearly called thee—maiden! Why, thou fool, what would'st thou with the man farther? Dost think to be ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert |
