"Pusillanimity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the great diary of man's conquest over the planet, on which our fathers wrote two words of epic grandeur,—Plymouth and Bunker Hill,—is to bear for its colophon the record of men who inherited greatness and left it pusillanimity,—a republic, and made it anarchy,—freedom, and were content as serfs,—of men who, born to the noblest estate of grand ideas and fair expectancies the world had ever seen, bequeathed the sordid price of them in gold. The change is sad 'twixt Now and Then: the Great Republic is without influence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... owned that he had meditated rebellion, professed deep repentance for his offence, implored the intercession of the Judges, and vowed that, if the royal clemency were extended to him, his whole life should be passed in evincing his gratitude for such goodness. The Whigs were furious at his pusillanimity, and loudly declared him to be far more deserving of blame than Grey, who, even in turning King's evidence, had preserved a certain decorum. Hampden's life was spared; but his family paid several thousand ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Burgundy, some say with the Regent Bedford himself. They cared not to save France. They cared only to keep out of harm's way—to avoid all peril and danger, and to thwart the Maid, whose patriotism and lofty courage was such a foil to their pusillanimity and cowardice. ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... cou'd they, after the Disgrace they had suffer'd, and which they deservedly had brought on themselves, hope ever to be admitted into the Company of brave Men, were they exempted from the Slavery to which their Pusillanimity had condemn'd 'em. After this they were sold to the best Bidder. I remember, he who was sold at the greatest Price, brought no more than Two Dozen of Fowls and a Kid, to be paid the next publick Festival. The ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... abandoned to despair, surrounded De Gama, entreating him not to devote himself and them to inevitable destruction, as the gale could no longer be weathered, and they must all be buried in the waves if he persisted in the present course. The firmness of the general was not to be shaken by the pusillanimity and remonstrances of the crew, on which a formidable conspiracy was entered into against him, of which he received timely information from his brother Paulo. With his assistance, and that of a few who remained stedfast ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... is the enemy of our country, and we must resist him with all the means at our command. Cease your howling and shrieking, for it will be but in vain. War is upon us, and we can not as cowards retreat before it. Shame upon you for your pusillanimity and cowardice, since your men are still capable ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... French pride. Loud were the murmurs of the throngs of soldiers that came from the fortresses of Germany, or the prisons of Spain, Russia, and England—70,000 crossed over from our shores alone—at the harshness of the allies and the pusillanimity of the Bourbons. The return from war to peace is always hard; and now these gaunt warriors came back to a little France that perforce discharged them or placed them on half-pay. Perhaps they might have been won over ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... his self-control, nerve, and manliness,—who never flinched at hard fare or rough weather,—a downright slave to a bad habit; unnerved and actually unfit for business for lack of a cigar. It made me angry at myself; I despised myself for my pusillanimity. ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... alternative proposals which placed Joubert in the position of a potential conqueror—dictating terms, and our acceptance of these cannot be read by the Boers in any other light than as an admission of weakness or pusillanimity. Of course we know that it means nothing of the kind, but simply that Sir George White would not expose sick and wounded, with helpless women, children, and non-combatants generally, to the possible horrors of a prolonged bombardment. So long as they remained in town he ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... infirmity, that runs into a disposition to strike the helpless. This is the bravery of ruffianism. There is apt to be a shrinking away from duty, when the contest involves a conflict with arrogant power. This is the cowardice of pusillanimity. The American citizen has been noted for his superior bravery. He has certainly shown himself brave in the battle-field, and more brave and determined than any other nation in the vindication and maintenance of the natural rights of the white man; but he is not done with the business of disenthrallment. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... believe, he indignantly asked, that the Court of Spain "would have presumed to trifle in such a manner with any ministry but one which they thought wanted either courage or inclination to resent such treatment?" He accused the Ministry of "a scandalous breach of duty" and "the most infamous pusillanimity." Later in the same day Sir John Barnard moved an Address to the Crown, asking for papers to be laid before the House. Walpole did not actually oppose {155} the motion, and only suggested a modification ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... destruction would inure to the South. Under the circumstances his course was taken: he dared not consult or trust Mr. Clay with the real motives which influenced him to yield, and made a virtue of patriotism and magnanimity which cloaked his pusillanimity, and shielded from public view his ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... men to whom life is not a lascivious farce; whose god is not gold; who do not worship at the shrine of the Pandemian Venus nor devote their lives to the service of Mammon, "the least erect of all the angelic host that fell from heaven." I want to see men who scorn the pusillanimity of the policy-prayer, who, —like Caesar, dare tell greybeards the truth e'en though it cost a crown; men of leonine courage, men of iron mould, men strong of hand and heart, who defiantly throw down the gage to destiny—who can trample hell itself beneath their ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... proper accommodation in my nursery my literary labours are carried on under the greatest difficulties and hampered by constant interruptions from my nurse, a vulgar woman with a limited vocabulary and no aspirates. I say nothing, though I might say much, of the jealousy of adult authors, the pusillanimity of unenterprising publishers, the senile indifference of Parliament. But I warn them that, unless the just claims of youth to economic and intellectual independence are speedily acknowledged, the children of England will enforce them by direct action of the most ruthless kind. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various
... there is necessity in the use of this rod. "Every child," says Dr. South, "has some brute in it, and some man in it, and just in proportion to the brute we must whip it." When thus necessary we should not shrink from this kind of correction. "It is pusillanimity, as well as folly, to shrink from the crushing of the egg, but to wait composedly for the hatching of the viper." Yet, on the other hand, in the language of Dr. Bell, "a maximum of attainment can be made only by a minimum ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... might be present at the greatest secret of danger; but withal alleged seriously, that it concerned him to be more active in enterprises of hazard than other men, that all might see that his impatiency for peace proceeded not from pusillanimity or fear to ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... to be concealed, that occasional instances of insubordination and pusillanimity have occurred in the British navy. Some such appear in this narrative, and they invariably have produced their own punishment, by leading always to disaster, and often to death; and they serve as beacons to point out the fatal consequences of misconduct, under circumstances either ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... whose mental condition I was well aware, that I could not bring myself to make any loud noise within his hearing. Yet I had not the courage to retreat. All my hope of relief from the many difficulties that menaced me lay in the generosity of this great-hearted woman, and if out of pusillanimity I let this hour go by without making my appeal, nothing but shame and disaster awaited me. Yet how could I hope to lure her down-stairs without noise? I could not, and so, yielding to the impulse of the moment, without any realisation, I here swear, of the effect which ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... trade, and therefore acted in this manner with a view of forcing the commodore to Batavia: But it might be as natural in this light to suppose, that they would have been eager to have got him dispatched. I, therefore, rather impute their behaviour to the unparalleled pusillanimity of the nation, and to the awe they are under of the government; for as such a ship as the Centurion, fitted for war only, had never been seen in those parts before, she was the horror of these dastards, and the merchants were in some ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... Book-keeping in Twenty Lessons, and Botany for Young Ladies. Two or three times already he had allowed a good book to slip through his fingers; the authors had come and gone a score of times while he hesitated, and could not make up his mind to buy the manuscript. When reproached for his pusillanimity, he was wont to produce the account of a notorious trial taken from the newspapers; it cost him nothing, and had brought him in two ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... any moment might arrive. Rebellion threatened in the city itself. If he went out boldly to attack the oncoming rebels his own troops might go over to the enemy, or deliver him into their hands; if he stayed in the city the people would naturally attribute it to pusillanimity, and probably open the gates ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... men of the Convention were always brave in the extreme; but before the threats of the rioters who invaded the Assembly they constantly exhibited an excessive pusillanimity, obeying the most absurd injunctions, as we shall see if we re-read the history of the ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... you advice; but if you take it for a good counsel to relent towards this tyrant, you will repent it when it shall be too late. His malice is fixed, and will not evaporate by any your mild courses. For he will ascribe the alteration to her Majesty's pusillanimity, and not to your good nature: knowing that you work but upon her humour, and not out of any love towards him. The less you make him, the less he shall be able to harm you and yours. And if her Majesty's favour fail him, he will again decline to a common person. ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... with more warmth than breeding, "Since you are not true to your own honor, at a time like this, I shall live to see you the most degraded monarch in Spain; when you will repent too late this unseasonable pusillanimity." [15] ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... gentleness of temper which scarcely anything could exasperate, he possessed the firmest courage and a degree of bodily strength which rendered that courage invincible. He affected, indeed, to despise the virtuous moderation of his friend, and ridiculed it with some of his looser comrades as an abject pusillanimity; but he felt himself humbled whenever he was in his company as before a superior being, and therefore gradually estranged himself from ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... and speak to their members on religion; what do they know of it? In 19 out of 20 cases their members, when awakened, seek Christ in other churches. We have held back too long with our testimony. I fear that by our negligence souls have gone to hell. And what have we won by our pusillanimity? The advocates of symbolism have grown and become more impudent by their success." (L. u. W. 1867, 88.) In a subsequent issue the same paper, after boldly defending the baldest Zwinglianism, remarked with respect to the symbolists that, in a way, their success involved ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... departure, and fully aware of the risk such a move entailed, he fortified his purely strategical reasons with moral considerations of the highest moment. But the Government was unconvinced, not as is usually assumed out of sheer pusillanimity and lack of strategical insight, but because the chances of Drake's missing contact were too great if the Armada should sail before our own fleet could ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... incursions of the Normands, who in the ninth century entered Paris, burnt some of the churches, and meeting with scarcely any resistance, made themselves masters of all they could find, whilst the Emperor Charles the Bald, at the head of an army, had the pusillanimity to treat with them, and finally to give them seven thousand pounds of silver to quit Paris, which was only an encouragement for them to return, which they did in a few years after, carrying devastation wherever they appeared, the poor ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... do him more good than a pusillanimous demeanour; and, as for flight, he despised it, as well as disapproved of it, on grounds of fancied prudence, seeing that he would thereby admit his guilt, and prove his pusillanimity, while it might ultimately turn out that the king's intentions were not hostile, whereby he would be exposed to the ridicule and scorn of both king and subjects. Having beat off Scott's retainers, and secured in this way, as he thought, a fancied victory, he marched direct on to his own Tower; ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... prince," she repeated tenderly, extending her hand towards her lover once more, while throwing a look of proud defiance to Mistress de Chavasse. He could not help but return to the foot of the steps; any pusillanimity on his part at this juncture, any reluctance to meet Editha face to face or to bear the brunt of her reproaches and of her sneers, might jeopardize the romance of his personality in the eyes of Sue. Therefore he boldly took her hand and ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... This must not be confounded with an involuntary perturbation, a mere instinctive dread, a phantasmagoric illusion that involves no part of the will. It is not even an excessive fear that goes by the name of pusillanimity. It is a cool judgment like that of Cain: "My sin is too great that I should ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... the subject of our debates, nothing was heard amongst us but threats of vengeance, demands of reparation, assertions of sovereignty, and resolutions to obtain security: the importance of our commerce, the necessity of rigorous measures, the danger of pusillanimity, the meanness of negotiation, and the disadvantages of delay, were thundered from every part of the house. Every man seemed to imagine that there was no mean between victory and ruin, and that not to humble Spain was to betray our country ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... Fabius contended that a successor should be sent in his place, alleging for it only the old reason of the mutability of fortune, as if she would be weary of long favoring the same person. With this language many did begin to feel offended; it seemed to be morosity and ill-will, the pusillanimity of old age, or a fear, that had now become exaggerated, of the skill of Hannibal. Nay, when Hannibal had put his army on shipboard, and taken his leave of Italy, Fabius still could not forbear to oppose and disturb the universal joy of Rome, expressing his fears and apprehensions, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... and they have not the moral courage to stop. They cannot resist the temptation of living high, though it may be at the expense of others; and they gradually become reckless of debt, until it enthrals them. In all this there is great moral cowardice, pusillanimity, and want of manly independence ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... Convention, the Committee had demanded the heads of as many Deputies as they had occasion for by name, I am persuaded they would have met no resistance.—This single example of opposition only renders the convention still more an object of abhorrence, because it marks that they could subdue their pusillanimity when their own safety was menaced, and that ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... individual, dropping society clean out of his theories, while standing friendly in his strict sense of friendship, there is in him an integrity and sense of justice that make possible and actual the virtues of Sparta and the Stoics, and all the more welcome to us in these times of shuffling and of pusillanimity. Plutarch would have made him immortal in his pages, had he lived before his day. Nor have we any so modern as be,—his own and ours; too purely so to be appreciated at once. A scholar by birthright, and an author, his fame has not yet travelled ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... is neither to be discussed nor thought of. I refer to it but to denounce it—a denunciation which will find a response in every American bosom. Nothing is ever gained by national pusillanimity. The country which seeks to purchase temporary security by yielding to unjust pretensions, buys present ease at the expense of permanent honour and safety. It sows the wind to reap the whirlwind. I have said elsewhere what I repeat here, that it is better to fight ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... spleen, midriff, or all the misaffected parts together, it boots not, they keep the mind in a perpetual dungeon, and oppress it with continual fears, anxieties, sorrows, &c. It is an ordinary thing for such as are sound to laugh at this dejected pusillanimity, and those other symptoms of melancholy, to make themselves merry with them, and to wonder at such, as toys and trifles, which may be resisted and withstood, if they will themselves: but let him that so wonders, consider with himself, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... precaution to be taken for the safety of his army. Hence the real marvel to posterity is, not that the battle of the Boyne should have been lost by the Irish, but that they should ever have attempted to fight at all. Perhaps nothing but the inherent loyalty of the Irish, which neither treachery nor pusillanimity could destroy, and the vivid remembrance of the cruel wrongs always inflicted by Protestants when in power, prevented them from rushing over en masse to William's side of the Boyne. Perhaps, in the history of nations, there never ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... he witnessed the striking of the tents, which he thought too like a prelude to a shameful flight from the enemy. While he was standing by the busy people, and musing on the nice line which divides prudence from pusillanimity, his grandfather came up, and bade him mount his horse, telling him that, owing to the unhealed state of his wound, he was removed from the vanguard, and ordered to march in the centre, along with the prince. Thaddeus remonstrated against this arrangement, and almost reproached ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... favour of tyranny. In setting out for France she had broken the commandment to honour father and mother, she had given an occasion for scandal, she had committed blasphemy and had fallen from the faith. In the leap from Beaurevoir, she had displayed a pusillanimity bordering on despair and homicide; and, moreover, it had caused her to utter rash statements touching the remission of her sin and erroneous pronouncements concerning free will. By proclaiming her confidence in her salvation, she uttered ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... grow like weeds upon the battle-field. The fighters recognize these virtues in each other, and the front lines, for all their mud and slaughter, are breathed on by the airs of heaven. Hate and pusillanimity have little there to nourish them. To find the meaner passions you must seek further back. Johnson, speaking in the Idler of the calamities produced by war, admits that he does not know 'whether more is to be dreaded from streets filled with soldiers accustomed to plunder, or from garrets ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... neglected those of dietetics, to which the former are a farce. They thought of no exercises but Latin; they gave him a Gradus instead of a cricket-bat, until his mind became too keen for its mortal coil, and the foundation was laid for ill health, derangement of stomach, moral pusillanimity, irresolution, lowness of spirits, and all the Protean miseries of nervous disorders, by which his after life was haunted, and which are sadly depicted in almost ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... of all fear, observed that it was a sign that things went well with him; then, turning to Simier, who stood trembling with fear, he jeered him upon his pusillanimity. L'Archant removed them both, and set a guard over them; and, in the next place, proceeded to arrest M. de la Chastre, whom he took to ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... the objection, but the work was done. A dramatic contrast had been drawn, and the jury perceived the pusillanimity of Slocum's story. This was the position of the defense. Harold was a boy, the hostler had insulted him, had indeed struck him with a whip. Mad with rage, and realizing the greater strength of his assailant, the prisoner ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... ever seen. But that army had sustained a long succession of defeats and disgraces, unredeemed by a single brilliant achievement. It was the fashion, both in England and on the Continent, to ascribe those defeats and disgraces to the pusillanimity of the Irish race, [433] That this was a great error is sufficiently proved by the history of every war which has been carried on in any part of Christendom during five generations. The raw material out of which a good army may be formed existed in great abundance among the Irish. Avaux informed ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... human nature led him to believe that even Annie would use him as a dark background for her heroism; and he well knew that when such a story is once started, society's strongest tendency is to exaggerate man's pusillanimity and woman's courage. He shuddered as he saw himself growing blacker and meaner in every fireside and street corner narration of the strange tale, till at last his infamy should pass into one of the traditions of the place. A man like Gregory ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... pusillanimity, such time-serving, he—Reginald Sawyer—scorned to be guilty. The higher placed the sinner, the more heinous the sin.—He would deal faithfully with all, since not only was the salvation of each one in jeopardy, but his own salvation was in peril ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... could write well, the only thing he could do which was worth doing, always supposing that there is any merit in being able to write. He was of a mean appearance, and, like his father, pusillanimous to a degree. The meanness of his appearance disgusted, and his pusillanimity discouraged the Scotch when he made his appearance amongst them in the year 1715, some time after the standard of rebellion had been hoisted by Mar. He only stayed a short time in Scotland, and then, seized ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... extended—as to stop a runaway horse—her clear eyes aglow as though a lamp burned behind them, her pale, delicately cut face eloquent of very militant charity. A spice of contempt, moreover, for his display of pusillanimity was quite perceptible to Shotover in the expression of this charming, modern angel, clad in a ball-dress, bearing a fan instead of the traditional fiery-sword, who, so determinedly, barred the entrance of that comfortably conventional, worldly paradise ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... the night's fear one great part is the fault of pusillanimity; that is, of faint and feeble stomach, by which a man for faint heart is afraid where he needeth not. By reason of this, he flieth oftentime for fear of something of which, if he fled not, he should take ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... natural Te Deums to heaven; and it was felt by the thoughtful that such victories, at such a crisis of general prostration, were not more beneficial to ourselves than finally to France, our enemy, and to the nations of all western or central Europe, through whose pusillanimity it was that the French ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... furnishes a simple explanation of what seemed to his associates to be his unnatural recklessness and audacity. Being himself out of danger, he always gave his vote for the most violent and perilous course, and sneered very complacently at the pusillanimity of men who, not having taken the infamous precautions on which he relied, were disposed to think twice before they placed life, and objects dearer than life, on a ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Billy—physical weakness; and he hated physical weakness. His idea of indicating strength and manliness lay in displaying as much of brutality and uncouthness as possible. To assist a woman over a mud hole would have seemed to Billy an acknowledgement of pusillanimity—to stick out his foot and trip her so that she sprawled full length in it, the hall mark of bluff manliness. And so he hated, with all the strength of a strong nature, the immaculate, courteous, well-bred man who paced the deck each day smoking ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... occasion, as well as on others, the memory of M. Cuvier has been unjustly treated. He has been accused of pusillanimity and servile ambition. The charge indicates little knowledge of human nature, and insults a man of genius on very slight grounds. I lived much with M. Cuvier. Firmness in mind and action was not his most prominent quality; but he was neither servile, nor governed by fear in opposition ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... appeal. It had been an effort to him to break the rule. It was no effort now to decide to keep it. So he jumped into his flannels and took his beloved bat, and made a long score that morning against Wake's bowling, and was happy. Felgate mentally abused him for his pusillanimity, but saw no reason, for all that, for not turning the incident to account. He proclaimed poor Sherriffs wrongs to a few of the ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... resist both the counsels of philosophy and the injunctions of religion, than those which are complicated with an opinion of dignity; and which we cannot dismiss without leaving in the hands of opposition some advantage iniquitously obtained, or suffering from our own prejudices some imputation of pusillanimity. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... could be taken where they came but for a dream. Now for our travelling from hence into parts abroad, our lawgiver thought fit altogether to restrain it. So is it not in China. For the Chinese sail where they will, or can; which showeth, that their law of keeping out strangers is a law of pusillanimity and fear. But this restraint of ours hath one only exception, which is admirable; preserving the good which cometh by communicating with strangers, and avoiding the hurt: and I will now open it to you. And here I shall seem a little to digress, but you will by-and-by find it pertinent. Ye shall ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... concern us in the least. We approve of the project and will see that it is carried out. We have spent a good deal of money arming ourselves; and we are not going to have that money thrown away through the pusillanimity of a Cabinet ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... gazed around him, and beheld these trophies of victories won by Turkish viziers and pachas in their wars against Austria and Venice, his martial and fearless spirit rose high, and he reproached himself with weakness and pusillanimity for having abandoned the pursuit of her he loved. Bitterly did he now regret his precipitation in leaving Venice the morning after the Battle of the Bridge, and while under the influence of the shock he had received, in beholding ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... his Age, and that a Secretary in warr might be present at the greatest secrett of daunger, but withall alleadged seriously that it concerned him to be more active in enterpryzes of hazarde, then other men, that all might see that his impatiency for peace, proceeded not from pusillanimity, or feare to adventure his owne person. In the morninge before the battell, as alwayes upon Action, he was very cheerefull, and putt himselfe into the first ranke of the L'd Byrons Regiment, who was then advancinge upon the enimy, who had lyned the Hedges on both sydes with ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... of my riches without any outrages of sorrow, or pusillanimity of dejection. Indeed I did not know how much I had lost, for having always heard and thought more of my wit and beauty, than of my fortune, it did not suddenly enter my imagination, that Melissa could sink beneath ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... own distress, of which this prudent and necessary reserve of the banks was, no doubt, the immediate occasion, they called the distress of the country; and this distress of the country, they said, was altogether owing to the ignorance, pusillanimity, and bad conduct of the banks, which did not give a sufficiently liberal aid to the spirited undertakings of those who exerted themselves in order to beautify, improve, and enrich the country. It was the duty of the banks, they seemed ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... Carpenter. The pair in the malthouse might have eluded all search but for the steward's pusillanimity. Incontinently, he betrayed ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... Harding was at his daughter's, followed him to Mrs Bold's house, and there he found him. The archdeacon was fuming with rage when he got into the drawing-room, and had by this time nearly forgotten the pusillanimity of the bishop in ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... so apprehended, to be brought before the next magistrate for examination. The warrant being formal, and the fact such as he could not deny, Bertram threw down his weapon and submitted himself to the officers, who, flying on him with eagerness corresponding to their former pusillanimity, were about to load him with irons, alleging the strength and activity which he had displayed as a justification of this severity. But Glossin was ashamed or afraid to permit this unnecessary insult, and directed the prisoner to be treated with all the decency, ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... wind driveth them, they are carried away headlong in error; at another time, coming again to themselves, they are beaten back like contrary waves; sometime with rash presumption they allow such things as seem uncertain, at another time of pusillanimity they are in fear even about those things which are certain; doubtful which way to take, which way to return, what to desire, what to avoid, what to hold, what to let go; which misery and affliction of a wavering and unsettled heart, were they wise, is as a medicine of God's mercy ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... permission to go abroad. It was refused. Then he took his son with him, and for three whole years he roamed over Russia, from one doctor to another, incessantly journeying from town to town and driving the physicians, his son, his servants, to despair by his pusillanimity and impatience. He returned to Lavriki a perfect rag, a tearful and capricious child. Bitter days ensued, every one endured much at his hands. Ivan Petrovitch calmed down only while he was eating his dinner; he had never eaten so greedily, ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... instinctive behavior that is harmless to the onlooker. Similarly, frowns, hoots, and sneers seem bound as original responses to the observation of empty-handedness, deformity, physical meanness, pusillanimity, and defect. As in the case of all original tendencies, such behavior is early complicated and in the end much distorted, by training; but the resulting total cannot be explained ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... Pusillanimity, blush to give you this Anxiety, did not I opine you were as gracious as communicative and eminent; and though you have no Cognisance of me, your humble Servant,—yet I have of you,—you being so gravely fam'd for your admirable Skill both in ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... believe in his own. He was much more timid than his jocular, easy-going manners led people to suppose. He would never have dared to refuse certain importunate borrowers, or to let his doubts of their solvency appear. That arose from a mixture of kindness and pusillanimity. He did not wish to offend anybody, and he was afraid of being insulted. So he was always giving way. And, by way of carrying it off, he would lend with alacrity, as though his debtors were doing him a service by borrowing his money. And he was not far from believing it; his vanity and optimism ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... was at an end, and that a just settlement would be made between the two new fragments for all the property stored in the arsenal. Of course it was Haskins's duty to have defended his post to the death; but up to that time the national authorities in Washington had shown such pusillanimity, that the officers of the army knew not what to do. The result, anyhow, was that Haskins surrendered his post, and at once embarked for St. Louis. The arms and munitions stored in the arsenal were scattered—some to Mississippi, some ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... benefiting—'the most noble and profitable contention possible, wherein the victor is pleased with his victory, and the other revenged by confessing it.' He passes under review other dispositions, such as fear of oppression, vain-glory, ambition, pusillanimity, frugality, &c., with reference to the course of conduct they prompt to. Then he comes to a favourite subject, the mistaken courses whereinto men fall that are ignorant of natural causes and the proper signification ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... responses of approval and cause as a result of "relief from hunger, rescue from fear, gorgeous display, instinctive acts of strength, daring and victory," and responses of scorn "to the observation of empty-handedness, deformity, physical meanness, pusillanimity, and defect." The desire for approval is never outgrown—it is one of the governing forces in society. If it is to be shown or desired on any but this crude level of instinctive response, it can only come ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... castles and towns which had given the first example of disaffection from him, he hardly inflicted the least punishment on the authors; which unseasonable mercy, that in another prince and another age would have been called greatness of spirit, passed in him for pusillanimity and fear, and is reckoned, by the writers of those times to have been the cause of many succeeding revolts. The third circumstance was of a different kind: for, observing how little good effect he ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... again resumed, was fiercely prosecuted. Henry III. remained most of the time in the gilded saloons of the Louvre, irritable and wretched, and yet incapable of any continued efficient exertion. Many of the zealous Leaguers, indignant at the pusillanimity he displayed, urged the Duke of Guise to dethrone Henry III. by violence, and openly to declare himself King of France. They assured him that the nation would sustain him by their arms. But the duke was not prepared to enter upon so bold a measure, as he hoped that the death ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... fear.] Cowardice. — N. cowardice, pusillanimity; cowardliness &c. adj.; timidity, effeminacy. poltroonery, baseness; dastardness[obs3], dastardy[obs3]; abject fear, funk; Dutch courage; fear &c. 860; white feather, faint heart; cold feet * [U. S.], yellow streak*. coward, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... a place called Paccari-tampu, there were four men with their four sisters, of fierce courage and evil intentions, although with lofty aims. These, being more able than the others, understood the pusillanimity of the natives of those districts and the ease with which they could be made to believe anything that was propounded with authority or with any force. So they conceived among themselves the idea of being able to subjugate many lands by ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... must be sure that no doubts, no pusillanimity on the part of any official would be allowed to stand in the way of the consummation of all his most cherished dreams. Papers or no papers, testimony or no testimony, the incarcerated Paul Mole was the Scarlet Pimpernel—of this Chauvelin ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... ramble, I stayed a single day in town, to witness the exit of the ci-devant Jacobin, Mr. Watt. It was a very solemn scene, but the pusillanimity of the unfortunate victim was astonishing, considering the boldness of his nefarious plans. It is matter of general regret that his associate Downie should have received a reprieve, which, I understand, is now prolonged for a second month, I suppose to wait ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... Paine published a pamphlet in which he charged Washington with "encouraging and swallowing the greatest adulation," with being "the patron of fraud," with a "mean and servile submission to the insults of one nation, treachery and ingratitude to another," with "falsehood," "ingratitude," and "pusillanimity;" and finally, after alleging that the General had not "served America with more disinterestedness or greater zeal, than myself, and I know not if with better effect," Paine closed his attack by the assertion, "and as to you, sir, treacherous ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... Directorate of Five and the Council of Ministers, and were continuing to play the same double game which had brought ruin on the first National Assembly and disaster upon the Russian people. They were members of the same futile crowd of useless charlatans who by their pusillanimity had made their country a byword and the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk possible. I was in a position to judge. I was certain that this young man was the wrong sort to allow the execution of his chief to ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... sharp reprehension of their cowardice, telling them, "If you had been as loyal to your king in hindering the entry of these pirates, as I shall do their going out, you had never caused these troubles, neither to yourselves nor to our whole nation, which hath suffered so much through your pusillanimity. In a word, I shall never grant your request, but shall endeavour to maintain that respect which is due to my king, according to ...
— The Pirates of Panama • A. O. (Alexandre Olivier) Exquemelin
... disdained to listen to the whispers of a party, who murmured defeat with victory before their eyes; who conjured up visions of ruin, only to be rebuked by realities of triumph; and to whom the national scorn of pusillanimity, and the national rejoicing in the proudest success, could not unteach the language of despair. Perceval, the overthrower of the Foxite ministry, perished; but the political system of the cabinet remained unchanged. Castlereaghperished—Liverpool ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... defeated at Kolin, by the Austrians, on the 18th of June, and a Russian army was in possession of East Prussia. A German army in British pay, and commanded by the "Butcher" hero of Culloden, was beaten in July, and capitulated in September. In America, the pusillanimity of the English commanders led to terrible disasters, among which the loss of Fort William Henry, and the massacre of its garrison, were conspicuous events. In India, the English were engaged in a doubtful contest with the viceroy of Bengal, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... Yet that is not the question." Whereupon I related to him in detail the incident of two days ago. I spoke of Polina's outburst, of my encounter with the Baron, of my dismissal, of the General's extraordinary pusillanimity, and of the call which De Griers had that morning paid me. In conclusion, I showed Astley the note ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... darts, tridents, and swords on the arena, embraced and encouraged one another to endurance in view of torture and death. At this deep indignation and resentment seized the hearts of the multitude. Some reproached the Christians with cowardice and pusillanimity; others asserted that they refused to fight through hatred of the people, so as to deprive them of that pleasure which the sight of bravery produces. Finally, at command of Caesar, real gladiators were let out, who ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... have been honoured (may it be no offence to suppose it) with such grave and right reverend auditors. In the ludicrous distresses, which by the laws of comedy, Folly is often involved in; he sunk into such a mixture of piteous pusillanimity, and a consternation so ruefully ridiculous and inconsolable, that when he had shook you, to a fatigue of laughter, it became a moot point, whether you ought not to have pitied him. When he debated any matter by himself, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... would commence an Intrigue with some Court Beauty. This unbecoming Wish was pretended to proceed from a Regard for the Welfare and Glory of the Nation. What, says they, shall our King always be tutor'd by Mollaks? What signifies this Peace, which is only owing to the Weakness and Pusillanimity of this set of Men, for we are oppressed with Taxes as much as if we were engaged in a War with all the Powers of Africa? Why does not our King shew some Spirit, and give into an Intrigue? An ambitious Mistress would break these scandalous Fetters, and when he is once his own Master, ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... and politic, though they may sometimes illustrate arguments, furnish no argument of themselves. They are but too often used, under the color of a specious philosophy, to find apologies for the despair of laziness and pusillanimity, and to excuse the want of all manly efforts, when the exigencies of our country call for them ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Northumberland, severely rebuking the former for his supineness, and ordering him to march in all haste to attack Edward in the rear. The earl's activity, promptitude, all-provident generalship, form a mournful contrast to the errors, the pusillanimity, and the treachery of others, which hitherto, as we have seen, made all his wisest schemes abortive. Despite Clarence's sullenness, Warwick had discovered no reason, as yet, to doubt his good faith. The oath he had taken—not only to Henry in London, but to Warwick at Amboise—had been the strongest ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... disciples? Think of them in their by-past history, tossed on Gennesaret, cowering with dread in their vessel! Think of them in the Judgment-Hall of Pilate; think of them at the cross! Nothing there but pusillanimity and cowardice. Nay, when our Lord had spoken to them on a former occasion of this same departure, we read that "sorrow had filled their hearts." They could not bear the thought of so cruel a severance from all they held dear: But see them now—when the sad ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... this, and such as this, to be devoted to forgetfulness, and all be sacrificed, lest some friend, disdaining utility, should prefer flattery to truth? A concession to such advice would be treachery and pusillanimity combined, at which none would so exult ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... enveloped in my own misery, that I was absolutely blind to all external objects. I could think of nothing but my dead hopes. So onward I went, stumbling and splashing through the mud, cursing Mannering, cursing the Motor Pirate, above all cursing myself for my own pusillanimity. Why had I listened to Winter? Why should I have allowed myself to be persuaded to play the part of coward, merely that Winter's car should have ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... honorable laws, was in those days a mere necessity of school-boy life at public schools; and hence the superior manliness, generosity, and self-control, of those generally who benefited by such discipline—so systematically hostile to all meanness, pusillanimity, or indirectness. Cowper, in his poem on that subject, is far from doing justice to our great public schools. Himself disqualified, by delicacy of temperament, for reaping the benefits from such a warfare, and having suffered too much in his own Westminster ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... and caution, not to say the pusillanimity of Philip, prevented him from seizing the golden fruits of his triumph. Ferdinand Gonzaga wished the blow to be followed up by an immediate march upon Paris.—Such was also the feeling of all the distinguished soldiers of the age. It was unquestionably the opinion, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to embark unmolested. It would seem that the sagacious chieftain, impressed by the wonderful martial prowess displayed by the Spaniards, and by the reiterated proffers of peace and friendship which had been made to him, and despising the pusillanimity of the troops of Casquin, whom he had always been in the habit of conquering, thought that by detaching the Spaniards from them he could convert De Soto and his band into friends and allies. Then he could fall upon the Indian army, and glut his vengeance, by repaying ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... raising the financial wind was to employ her pen. It was true that her "memoirs," strung together in Paris, had fallen flat—owing to the pusillanimity of the editor of Le Pays—but a full length "autobiography" would, she thought, stand a better prospect. Apart, too, from other considerations, there was now more material on which to draw. An embarrassing amount of it. She could say something—a lot—about ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... have been a hundred-fold more frequent had it not been for the persistent opposition interposed by the Huguenot ministers—many of them with Calvin carrying the doctrine of passive submission to constituted authority almost to the very verge of apparent pusillanimity. ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... Nobles, artisans, peasants, even priests, enrolled their names; and to decline this meritorious service was branded with the reproach of impiety, or, what perhaps was esteemed still more disgraceful, of cowardice and pusillanimity. The infirm and aged contributed to the expedition by presents and money; and many of them, not satisfied with the merit of this atonement, attended it in person, and were determined, if possible, to breathe their last in sight of that city where their Saviour had ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... cloak to the King in the morning; and as it had been pouring all day, the ground could not have afforded very luxurious quarters. The same extraordinary luck which had attended the French in their whole expedition, now favoured their retreat; and the same pusillanimity which the allies had shown at Fornovo, prevented them from re-forming and engaging with the army of Charles upon the plain. One hour before daybreak on Tuesday morning, the French broke up their camp and succeeded in clearing the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... as so entirely within the range of ordinary proceedings, that the boy, stupid and ignorant, and accustomed, from the state of the country, to hear of bloodshed and murders little less atrocious committed by the soldiery, and neither punished nor severely condemned, felt ashamed of his own pusillanimity—for such his instinctive ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... to the ultimate institution of a General Congress of nations for the adjustment of their controversies. But he was no visionary and no enthusiast. He knew that as yet war was often inevitable—that pusillanimity provoked it, and that national honor was national property of the highest value; because it was the best national defence. He admitted only defensive war—but he did not narrowly define it. He held that to be a defensive war, which was waged to sustain what could ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... peace establishment of the Roman army numbered some 375,000 men, divided into thirty legions, who were confined, not within the walls of fortified cities, which the Romans considered as the refuge of pusillanimity, but upon the confines of the empire; while 20,000 chosen soldiers, distinguished by the titles of City Cohorts and Praetorian Guards, watched over the safety of the monarch ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... when recall orders reached him. Joyous that the situation entitled him to disobey them, he gave instead the word to charge. As the Afghans came down at no great pace, they fired occasionally; either because of the bullets, or because of an access of pusillanimity, Fraser's troopers broke and fled ignominiously. The British gentlemen charged home unsupported. Broadfoot, Crispin and Lord were slain; Ponsonby, severely wounded and his reins cut, was carried out of the melee by his charger; ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... He was an Aufklaerer in so far as he brought reason itself to the bar of reason and sat in judgment upon its claims, and, likewise, in so far as he insisted on the objective validity of physics and mathematics. But he was as much opposed to the pretentiousness of dogmatic metaphysics as to the pusillanimity of scepticism and the Schwaermerei of mysticism. He repudiated the shallow proofs of the existence of God, freedom, and immortality no less emphatically than he rejected materialism with its atheism, fatalism, and hedonism. He tried to save everything worth saving—rational ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... and the duke of Orleans, which, in the sequel, brought these great personages to the scaffold—Their improper example imitated by the nobility of both sexes—The projects of each defeated—The duke's pusillanimity was a bar to his ambition—He exhausted his immense fortune to gain partisans, and secure the attachment of the people—His imprisonment, trial, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... her sex, would occasion only indifference or laughter. On that very morning, for instance, she had not recovered from her painful apprehensions of the thunder-storm which had occurred on the preceding night. Of thunder, but especially of lightning, she was afraid even to pusillanimity; indeed so much so, that on such occurrences she would bind her eyes, fly down stairs, and take refuge in the cellar until the I hurly-burly in the clouds was over. This, however, was not so much to be wondered at by those who live in our present and more enlightened days; as our readers ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... with his own. Doubtless they all were solicitous about the general good, but their love for it was so general and so diluted with attachment to others' goods as to be hardly discernible. The reproach that can hardly be spared to Mr. Wilson, however, is that of pusillanimity. If his faith in the principles he had laid down for the guidance of nations were as intense as his eloquent words suggested, he would have spurned the offer of a sequence of high-sounding phrases in lieu of a resettlement of the world. ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... mistake the likeness between the Greek and the Northern conceptions of a dignified and reasonable way of life. The magnificence of the Homeric great man is like the magnificence of the Northern lord, in so far as both are equally marked off from the pusillanimity and cheapness of popular morality on the one hand, and from the ostentation of Oriental or chivalrous society on the other. The likeness here is not purely in the historical details, but much more in the ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... Estevan, smiling inwardly at the contrast exhibited between the spirit of the haciendado and the pusillanimity of the Senator. "Be calm! the enemy I speak of is no longer under your roof— he has fled beyond the reach of your ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... Great Britain against their will. Hesitation to make use of this dictatorial authority, should he ever obtain it, will to himself mean political ruin; to his English supporters it will seem political pusillanimity; by his Irish confederates it will be denounced as breach of faith and treachery. As certainly as night follows day the passing of the Parliament Act will be succeeded by the attempted passing of a ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... to victory, gazed out straight before him, as if through the bare, white-washed walls of this humble hotel room he saw the vision of the brilliant halls of the Tuileries, the imperial throne, the Empress beside him, all her faithlessness and pusillanimity forgiven, his son whom he worshipped, his marshals grouped around him; and with a gesture of proud defiance he threw back ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... from head to foot like Indian Faqueers, after having been for nearly four hours wandering in the bowels of the earth. Our followers soon regained their courage now that the danger was past, and each in turn began to boast of his own valour and sneer at the pusillanimity of his comrade; but all agreed that nothing on earth or in heaven should ever tempt them again to visit ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... were delighted at the idea of escaping the horror of an eighteen miles drive, on one of the bitterest nights of the season, supperless, and at the moment of issuing from a comfortable hall room, their annoyance at (what they termed) the pusillanimity of Raymond, who had come thus unnecessarily in, to the utter annihilation of their evening's amusement, was in equal proportion. For this, on their way home, they revenged themselves by every sort of persiflage their humour could adapt to the occasion, until in the end, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... takes place, the father of the lady appears on the scene, sometimes as a supplicant, and at others as a consenting party to the inevitable marriage, but never is he depicted as resorting to force to rescue his daughter. This pusillanimity can only be reasonably accounted for by supposing that the "little man" was physically incapable of encountering and overcoming by brute force the aspirant to the hand of his daughter. From this conduct we must, I think, infer that the Fairy race were a weak people bodily, unaccustomed ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... is quite unnecessary, except the observation that they betoken a callousness of feeling and a depth of cruelty and destructiveness to which, so far as known, no savages ever yet have sunk. As an exhibit of the groveling pusillanimity of the human soul, the roccolo of northern Italy reveals minus qualities which can not be expressed either in words or ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... off quietly, and with the spring the two armies again took the field. The campaign of 1803 was, like its predecessor, marred by the pusillanimity and indecision of the Dutch deputies, who thwarted all Marlborough's schemes for bringing the French to a general engagement, and so ruined the English general's most skillful plans, that the earl, worn out by disappointment and disgust, wrote to the Queen, praying to be relieved of ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... general ruin,—to be compensated by the final suppression of the common foe. To have endured this, and even to have submitted, for a time, to the searching of ships, so that not one Englishman should be allowed to skulk from such a fight, had not been pusillanimity, but magnanimity. But if, as English Whigs and American Democrats contended, Napoleon Bonaparte was the armed soldier of democracy, the rightful heir of the Revolution, the sole alternative to anarchy, the legitimate ruler of France; if the ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... increasing experience of the complexity of human struggle, Catherine clung to her aim until the end. There was no touch of pusillanimity in her heroic spirit. As with deep respect we follow the Letters of the last two years, and note their unflagging alertness and vigour, their steady tone of devotion and self-control, we realise that to tragedy her spirit was dedicate. Her energy of mind was constantly on the increase. ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... Pass remained open until faith was broken with the hillmen; Jellalabad held out until the "Retribution Column" camped under its walls. But for the awful catastrophe which befell in the passes the hapless brigade which under the influence of deplorable pusillanimity and gross mismanagement had evacuated Cabul, no serious military calamity marked our occupation of Afghanistan and certainly stubborn resistance had not confronted our arms. From 1878 to 1880 we were in Afghanistan again, this time ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes |
