"Cowardly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from your captors, beautiful steeds! The life you are entering upon may be full of hardship for you, but it will be free and wild, and you will be tended with all care and gentleness. These men are brave and strong, and it is only the cowardly and weak who would inflict on you one ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... done you any harm here?... Has anyone played cowardly tricks on you?... Set traps to catch you in?... Have you ever been cheated out of your fair share of the spoil?... Is there anything you can bring up against us?... No?... Well, here's what we have against you ... it's not worth while lying about it either!... You are the one who has taken the wind ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... consolatory in the extreme, but reflection comes with tobacco, not less surely than warmth comes with fire; and soon he began to see the crowd of fresh difficulties which the events of to-night would bring swarming round his devoted head. How he cursed his foolish calculations, his ill-judged caution, his cowardly scruples, thus to have postponed the ceremony of marriage till too late. How impossible it would be now, to throw dust in the eyes of society as to dates and circumstances! how fruitless the reparation which should ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... are few field-hands living in the south but have, at some time or other, witnessed the barbarities used at a negro execution, sudden death by pistol or bowie knife being far preferable to the brutal sneers and indignities heaped upon the victim by the cowardly assassins who ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... crowd which surrounded her; it was she, it was those lips so many times pressed to mine, it was that body, that soul of my life, my flesh and my blood, it was from that source the injury came; yes, the last of all, the most cowardly and the most bitter, the pitiless laugh that spits in the ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... Major Browne remarked as the door closed behind him. "I don't quite know what to make of him, but I don't think he could have committed that murder. It was a cowardly business, and although I believe he might have a hand in any desperate affair, as indeed this story he has just told us shows, I would lay my life he would not do ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... tried to rend with their own hands the veil that only the lost or the desperate suffer to be torn. He had noted before that it was generally men like Guion of a high strung temperament, perhaps with a feminine streak in it, who reached this pass, and because of his own reserve—his rather cowardly reserve, he called it—he was always impelled to run away from them. As there was no possibility of running away now, he could only dodge, by pretending to misunderstand, what he feared ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... introductory note to poem for explanation. Tyntagel. A village in Cornwall near the sea. Near it is the ruined Tyntagel Castle, the reputed birthplace of Arthur. In the romance of Sir Tristram it is the castle of King Marc, the cowardly and treacherous king of Cornwall, the southwest county of England. teen. See note, l. 147, The Scholar-Gipsy. (Grief, sorrow; from the old ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... and having betrayed his country for money, the devil considered him as his own, and this Mr Vanslyperken did not approve of; for, like many others in this world, he wished to commit every crime, and go to heaven after all. Mr Vanslyperken was superstitious and cowardly, and he did believe that such a thing was possible; and when he canvassed it in his mind he trembled, ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... silks a year, a few muslins, and there I am. Lace lasts forever, and nothing is lost on trimmings. Lack of sense, lack of sense—" she waved her beaded bag in the air—"is what's the matter with the world. Women are slaves of custom; their most despairing quality is their cowardly devotion to the usual and their sheepy following of silly fashions. Woman's vanity and man's pampering of it are the cause of more trouble in most homes than fires and pestilence. Man is to blame for it. Through the ages he's been woman's dictator, and being too sensible ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... blame me! It's not enough that you have brought this misery upon me, but now you must begin to abuse me to my face! It is cruel and cowardly to ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... paths. And even if marriage was but one weed-field of temptations, as these miserable pedants say, who have either never tried it, or misused it to their own shame, it would be a greater deed to conquer its temptations than to flee from them in cowardly longings ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... the best—for I'm not strong enough to dispute with mother. I dare say it is very cowardly of me, but I would avoid scenes; I've had enough of them.... We'll go away together. Where shall ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... to him for the first time since he had claimed the falcon, and said that from me, at least, he was safe. And I spoke roughly, so that I think he believed me, so plain did I make it that I thought one who was surely cowardly in word and deed was not worth harming, ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... "cement question" has been may be judged from the fact that, at the time of writing, riots are reported from Kalgoorlie, during which the Premier was hooted and stoned. This cowardly act could hardly be the work of genuine diggers, and could doubtless be traced to the army of blackguards and riffraff who have, of late years, found ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... had killed. He was callous. Five years in the Lgion des Etrangers and fourteen more of war and preparation for war had rendered him proof against squeamishness. The man was a loathly thing who had slain in cold blood, cowardly, evil, and unclean. Possibly he had murdered within the past few days, and, at any rate he had attempted ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... He knew the meaning of those cowardly words. His face turned suddenly pale, and his eyes dropped, as with a half-groan he started to walk ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... and entwined with hanging lianas and curiously hung with air plants dropping from the branches. Gay-colored birds flashed in the patches of sunlight that filtered through the trees. The Cuban boa-constrictor or Maja, big and cowardly, wound its great length away, and the air was full of the rich—and not always pleasant—insect life characteristic ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... she suffer so dark a cloud of suspicion to rest upon Clinton. It was unjust to suspect him, when he was surrounded by so many young, and doubtless, evil companions. She regretted Clinton's sojourn among them, since it had had so unhappy an influence on Mittie, but it was cowardly to plunge a dagger into the back of one on whose face their hospitable smiles had so lately beamed. We have said that she had a small property of her own. She insisted upon drawing on this for the amount necessary to settle the ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... birds, dark, quick-winged, low-flying, shot in among the white companies of sea-gulls, stretching their long necks, and turning their swift, cowardly eyes here and there, the cruel beak extended, the body gorged with carrion. Black marauders among blithe birds of peace and joy, they watched like sable spirits near the nests, or on some near sea rocks, sombre and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... A COWARDLY fellow having spoken impertinently to a gentleman, received a violent box of the ear. He demanded whether that was meant in earnest. "Yes, sir," replied the other, without hesitation. The coward turned away, saying, "I am glad ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... character in which I had first made his acquaintance. The rascals had counted on the duke's preoccupation with Marie Delhasse for their opportunity. The duke smiled to hear it. Pierre listened to the whole story without a word of protest or denial; his accomplice's cowardly attempt to present him as the only culprit gained no more notice than another shrug and a softly muttered oath. "Destiny," the little man seemed to say in the eloquent movement of his shoulders; while the growing light showed his beady eyes fixed, full ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... cowardly hound!" he roared. "Not one cent shall you have; do you hear? I thank God that I am here to stop you robbing these, your mother and sister." Mrs. Malling tried to interfere, but he waved her back. "I've come at the right time, and I tell you that you shall not take one cent of the money. ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... be an evil attempt for the cowardly murderer!" cried Hadrian. "Eh! Argus, what do ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... was cowardly, and the unexpected resistance and the pain of the blow quite overcame his fortitude, and ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... between the two forces with Macdonald. She did not know whether he was dead. She dropped to her knees in the dust and began to tear frantically at his shirt to come to the wound. Tom Lassiter came hurrying up with others, denouncing the treacherous shot, swearing vengeance on the cowardly head that had conceived so ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... ignominious supplication. But Hillsborough undoubtedly did think so, and he always acted consistently in support of his strong conviction that the independent colonists were nothing more than a mob of cowardly malcontents. He acted on this conviction to such good purpose that his name has earned its place of honor with that of Grenville, of Townshend, and of Wedderburn, in the illustrious junta who were successfully busy about the sorry business of ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Hamlin, or even the Master himself in The Master of Ballantrae, one can feel a sincere affection or at least have a grudging sort of admiration, but it is not possible to even faintly like or hesitatingly pity a cowardly Robert Herrick, whose self-pity is so strong, and who from first to last is, as his creator intended him to be, a thorough inefficient. Half-hearted in his wickedness, self-saving in his repentance, he somehow ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... steadily and quietly did the 11th, considered to be the crack regiment of the brigade, swing round; and as calmly and firmly did the Egyptian battalion—composed of the peasants who, but twenty years before, had been considered among the most cowardly of people, a host of whom would have fled before a dozen of the dreaded Dervishes—march into the gap between the two black regiments, and manfully hold ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... The cowardly assault aroused the indignation of Merritt, who was a manly boy at all times. He remonstrated with the assailants, and when they continued to pelt the old man, he proceeded to attack them. Whether he could have won out alone and unaided will always be an open question. Fortunately ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... served the rations in the army, and in that capacity went to Madrid during the last war. This is the only service he has ever seen, and he was discharged from that for dishonesty. He has never fought a duel for, to begin with, he is too cowardly, and then he knows well that a gentleman would receive a challenge from him with contempt; and if driven to extremities by his insolence, he would simply teach him ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... to these questions that brought any relief to her vexed heart. She had no courage to make inquiries of others, lest the character of her interest might be discovered. Guilt made her cowardly. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... the Commune, M. Maxime du Camp draws the following unflattering picture: "They were wicked and cowardly. Utilized by the police of the Rigaults and the Ferres, they were pitiless in the search for refractory citizens who hid themselves that they might not have the shame of serving the Commune.... From the heights ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... any time harm befalls Monsieur Dampierre I will stab you with my own hand. If you ever dare to speak to me again I will hold you up to the scorn of the women of the quarter. As it is, your comrades have heard how mean and cowardly a scoundrel you are. You had best move from Montmartre at once, for when this is known no honest man will give you his hand, no man who respects himself will work beside you. Hide yourself elsewhere, ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... no! How can you think of such a thing? But it would be so much better if you could wait here until I—Oh, what a wretched thing to have to seem so cowardly to you! But the difficulties are so great, darling. I shall be a perfect stranger in Bordeaux. I don't even speak the language at all well. When I reach there I shall be met at the station by one of our people, and—just ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... like the Union-saver. The sickly Louisianian, following her son from Pickens to Richmond, besieging God for vengeance with the mad impatience of her blood, or the Puritan mother praying beside her dead hero-boy, would have called Dode cowardly and dull. So would those blue-eyed, gushing girls who lift the cup of blood to their lips with as fervid an abandon as ever did French bacchante. Palmer despised them. Their sleazy lives had wanted color and substance, and they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... very trying one to unbelievers: hardly anything pleases them; and nothing pleases them long. Rulers do not please them: they are despots and tyrants. Their fellow subjects do not please them: they are cowardly slaves. Their masters do not please them: they are extortioners. Their men do not please them: they are knaves. The rich do not please them: they are leeches, caterpillars, cormorants. The poor do not please them: they are mean, deceitful and dishonest. Religion ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... who was too proud to show her anguish: "I could have borne aught else, but this I am too cowardly to bear without complaint. I am a very contemptible person. I ought to love this Melusine, who no doubt loves her husband quite as much as I love him—how could a woman do less?—and yet I cannot ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... the operators were faithful and intelligent men, but there were some who were not; and an incident occurred in the Nashville campaign in the next year which showed what mischiefs were likely to happen when a telegraph operator was cowardly or untrustworthy. [Footnote: See "The Battle of Franklin," by the present writer, pp. ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... extremely awkward that Miss Muffet was so afraid of spiders, and of the Spider in particular, because, you see, the one thing a fairy cannot be is a coward. If a fairy once does a cowardly act, unless he or she immediately makes it right by doing a brave one, he or she will become a mortal at once. And think how dull it would be to become a mere mortal, when you have been used to flying, or dancing, or appearing in dreams, or granting wishes, ...
— More Tales in the Land of Nursery Rhyme • Ada M. Marzials
... afternoon crested blue jays and chipmunks had them all to themselves. Here, in the early morning, deer, bighorn, and the stately elk, come down to feed, and there, in the night, prowl and growl the Rocky Mountain lion, the grizzly bear, and the cowardly wolf. There were chasms of immense depth, dark with the indigo gloom of pines, and mountains with snow gleaming on their splintered crests, loveliness to bewilder and grandeur to awe, and still streams and shady ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... reproves, She replies in innocence. Softly he behind her moves, Right behind the girl he loves, In cowardly pretence. ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... remembering my sea-cuny's patience of forty years' waiting ere I got my hands on Chong Mong-ju's gullet, I added: "You prison curs, you don't know what a man is. You think a man is made in your own cowardly images. Behold, I am a man. You are feeblings. I am your master. You can't bring a squeal out of me. You think it remarkable, for you know how ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... and Amelot, feeling all his efforts baffled, threw his sword from him, and weeping in pride and indignation, hastened back to tell the Lady Eveline of his bad success. "All," he said, "is lost—the cowardly villains have mutinied, and will not move; and the blame of their sloth and faintheartedness will be laid on my ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... It makes no difference how many friends I have and what content I can find in conversing with each, if there be one to whom I am not equal. If I have shrunk unequal from one contest, the joy I find in all the rest becomes mean and cowardly. I should hate myself, if then I made my ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... on, half of the men who sent the news of it out to the civilised world found the Turk anathema maranatha, and the other half were persuaded that the Bulgarian was a beast altogether despicable and cowardly. Since the Bulgarians have had a chance to govern themselves they have amply disproved that unfavourable theory, and 'the unspeakable Turk,' of whom we heard so much in those days, was in the main as good a sort of fellow as ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... himself had received, for at that fashion of conversation Mr. Harley was Storri's superior. Mr. Harley rendered Storri such shameful accounts of himself that the latter was well-nigh consumed with what inward fires were ignited. Storri burned the more because his own cowardly alarms tied his hands and gagged retort upon his tongue. Mr. Harley, who had been frightened to the brink of collapse in the only manner that Storri might have frightened him, now refreshed himself unchecked and fed ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... in his eye and an earnestness in his voice, which awed the cowardly overseer; but at the same time they increased his hatred. He resolved to be revenged, and reported to Hull that the slave was rebellious. Hull permitted George Waters to be tied to a tree by four stout negroes, whose barbarous natures delighted in such work, and the overseer laid a whip a dozen times ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... Her scorn for the wretch before her was tempered with the knowledge that his cowardly plan was doomed to defeat. It was she who had checkmated him, and she was glad. Now and again her eyes sought the clock, while she silently calculated the time to elapse before Arthur Weldon arrived. There ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... have asked this question, but Dirty Dick was the last man to waive an advantage. Now, the Caterpillar had quietly left No. 15, as soon as Rutford entered it. Not from any cowardly motive, but—as he put it afterwards—"because one makes a point of retiring whenever a rank outsider appears. One ought to be particular about the company one keeps." It says something for the boy's character, that this statement was accepted ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... which give your father and me great pain; and though you are not cowardly about being hurt in your body, you sadly want courage of a better kind,—courage to mend the weakness of your mind. You are so young that we are sorry for you, and mean to send you where the example of other boys may give you the resolution you ...
— The Crofton Boys • Harriet Martineau
... she replied, quickly. "I could not be so cowardly as to 'cry off' now. You must run, and you will win, I feel. Nobody here believes it but me; but I know it." Then, leaning towards him, she said, with a light laugh, and in tones so low that the others could not overhear her words, "Lose if ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... castle where they were prisoners was the falsest knight alive, a treacherous, cowardly man, named Sir Damas. He had a younger brother, Sir Ontzlake, a good knight of prowess, well beloved of all people, from whom he was keeping back unjustly a full fair manor. Great war had been ...
— Stories of King Arthur and His Knights - Retold from Malory's "Morte dArthur" • U. Waldo Cutler
... which climbs "the imminent deadly breach" and faces the deadly hail of battle, which defies the tyranny of custom and the hatred of the world. One may have compassion for age, which is naturally timid and sees fears in the way, but youth which is cowardly is contemptible. ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... mournful imaginings of rainy days. When the sun reappears, the soul grows clear like the sky, and there succeeds to my brief discouragement a state of mind in which it appears to me so foolish and so cowardly to fret because I see a change in my face, to mourn the careless light-heartedness of my youth, to rebel against the laws of nature in a burst of angry regret, that I am overcome with shame. I rouse myself, I scramble ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... not attack a human being." Kendric sought to speak as though merely contemptuous of Zoraida's entertainment. "They are cowardly brutes." ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... my boy will always be noble and high in thought and deed. But, as papa said, to be a hero one does not need to fight, at least, not to fight men. We can fight bad tempers and bad thoughts and cowardly impulses. They who fight these things successfully are the truest ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... features grievously blended with others fearfully distorted by evil. There are blots black as pitch in that picture. There are forms, more fiend-like than human, photographed on those sheets of paper. Crimes of worse than brutal violence, savage cruelty, crimes of treachery and cowardly cunning and conspiracy, breach of trust, tyrannical extortion, groveling intemperance, sensuality gross and shameless—the heart sickens at the record of a week's crime! It is a record from which the ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... as possible. My gun was upon my camel, and I had just turned leisurely round an angle of the valley, when I heard Ayd cry out with all his might, "Get your arms! Here they are!" I immediately ran up to the camels, to take my gun, but the cowardly Szaleh, instead of stopping to assist his companions, made the camels gallop off at full speed up the valley. I, however, overtook them, and seized my gun, but before I could return to Hamd, I heard two shots fired, and Ayd's war-hoop, "Have at him! are we not Towara?" Immediately afterwards ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... cowboy, in answer to a question Bluff had put, "sometimes I've knowed 'em to jump into a camp and snatch the meat right from under the nose of a feller. Let a painter git good an' hungry, an' he ain't afraid of anythin' but fire. Then, ag'in, I've knowed 'em to act as cowardly as coyotes. I kinder reckon the season has considerable ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... all into a "Party of Order." The next thing to do was to remove the bourgeois republicans who still held the seats in the National Assembly. As brutally as these pure republicans had abused their own physical power against the people, so cowardly, low-spirited, disheartened, broken, powerless did they yield, now when the issue was the maintenance of their own republicanism and their own legislative rights against the Executive power and the royalists ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... usefulness, however, in this Department lies in prevention, The knowledge that the oppressed poor have in us a friend able to speak for them will often prevent the injustice which cowardly and avaricious persons might otherwise inflict, and the same considerations may induce them to accord without compulsion the right of the weak ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... licentious opinions on some relations of life (730,231)[29]; but one cannot excuse his thoroughly pagan views on death, for a man must renounce piety altogether, if he does not at least wish to die like a Christian. Now, through the whole of his book his only conception of death is a cowardly and ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... Euan. He has no more knowledge in Hibocrates and Galen , and hee is a knaue besides: a cowardly knaue, as you would desires to be ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... tell them so yet. They have murdered her—cowardly murdered her! Ah, God, I have spent my life and my fortune in my endeavours to benefit them, and there's not one of them—not one—honest enough to tell me to defend my wife's ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... flourishing about a revolver and threatening to fire, I hold it utter idiocy. I have never tried it, however, so I speak from prejudice which arises from the feeling that there is something cowardly in it. Always have your revolver ready loaded in good order, and have your hand on it when things are getting warm, and in addition have an exceedingly good bowie knife, not a hinge knife, because with a hinge knife you have got to get ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... Southey and his 'pious preface'" in many words; but when it comes to the point, ignores the charge of having "published a lascivious book," and endeavours by counter-charges to divert the odium and to cover his adversary with shame and confusion. "Mr. S.," he says, "with a cowardly ferocity, exults over the anticipated 'death-bed repentance' of the objects of his dislike; and indulges himself in a pleasant 'Vision of Judgment,' in prose as well as verse, full of impious impudence.... I am not ignorant," ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... debate upon Kansas affairs in 1856 that Preston S. Brooks, a member of the House from South Carolina, made his cowardly attack upon Charles Sumner. Sumner had delivered a powerful speech upon the crime against Kansas, worded and delivered, naturally but unfortunately, with some asperity. In this speech he animadverted severely upon South ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... crowds obey may be, according to their exciting causes, generous or cruel, heroic or cowardly, but they will always be so imperious that the interest of the individual, even the interest of self-preservation, will not dominate them. The exciting causes that may act on crowds being so varied, and ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... cowardly of men—betrayed and betrayer! If I dealt justice, the whole world's destruction could not pay for ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... occasion, so far from gaining any advantage by it, he was likely to give high offence to the king. If then, as appears most probable, the confession by which Anne Boleyn disinherited and illegitimatised her daughter was false; a perjury so wicked and cowardly must brand her memory with everlasting infamy:—even should the contrary have been the fact, the transaction does her little honor; in either case it affords ample justification to that daughter in leaving, as she did, her remains without ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... over with you, Tom!' I said to myself; for as we rose to the surface after our plunge he got one arm free, his knife was lifted, and I looked him full in the face as I felt, though I didn't say it—'You cowardly beggar! why can't you fight like a man with ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... and I have found out what a scoundrel he is, that's what! We've learned of the lies he wrote about father. We know that he was responsible for all that cowardly, lying stuff in the Planet—all that about the Trolley Combine. And we don't intend that he shall sneak into this house again. If he was the least part of a man, he would never ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Father will be surrounded! See how our men and the enemy are intermingled in their flight. They will reach the castle gates together; it will be impossible to let them in. Maria, run to the gatemen and tell them to close the gates and let no one in till father comes. That cowardly mass if they entered, would be no protection but surrender the castle. But wait; we will go together ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... to let her betray her father, and then run away! Besides, we don't know enough, and they mightn't believe us. It's a cowardly course, ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... afraid of almost everything. I would be foolish not to be. It is because I am afraid that I am alive and happy right now. I hope I shall never be less timid than I am now, for it would mean that sooner or later I would fail to run in time and would be gobbled up. It isn't cowardly to be timid when there is danger all around. Nor is it bravery to take a foolish and needless risk. So I seldom go far from home. It isn't safe for ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... returned, he slew the noblest of the men of Ithaka and the Islands in his own hall. He called upon them to slay Odysseus saying, 'If we avenge not ourselves on the slayer of our kin we will be scorned for all time as weak and cowardly men. As for me, life will be no more sweet to me. I would rather die straightway and be with the departed. Up now, and let us attack Odysseus and his followers before they take ship ...
— The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy • Padriac Colum
... aside, out of the path of the flying wheel. It sounds a cowardly thing to have done, and doubtless the knights of old would have contrived a way of rescue. To the latter-day knight, however, there was something inevitable in the on-coming of the wheel, with its rider's feet kicking in a futile ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... a misgiving that her expedition to Dr. Nash had really been a cowardly undertaking, because she had flinched from her task at the critical moment. Well—suppose she had! It might turn out a fortunate piece of poltroonery, if Dr. Nash contrived to break the ice for her with the other old sister. But the cowardice ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... were what you had heard of the enemy, I as you, once again, you who are now so fearful what would you have done? You who turn pale when told that Croesus has been chosen commander-in-chief, Croesus who proved himself so much more cowardly than the Syrians, that when they were worsted in battle and fled, instead of helping them, his own allies, he took to his heels himself. [20] We are told, moreover, that the enemy himself does not feel equal to facing you alone, he is hiring others to fight for him better ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... banteringly; "this is a pleasant surprise!" while West's eyes flashed as he literally glared in the cowardly scoundrel's face, which underwent a curious change as he glanced from one to the other, his fat heavy features lending themselves to the dissimulation, as he ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... and Tommy fought," she said constrainedly. "I didn't know until this morning. It was cowardly of me to run away. But it was foolish to fight. It didn't occur to me that you two would. I suppose you wonder what brought me here. I was worried for fear you had been hurt. I saw ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... reason that there is nothing more inconsistent with the dignity of man than to suffer violence, for violence effaces him. He who does violence to us disputes nothing less than our humanity; he who submits in a cowardly spirit to the violence abdicates his quality of man. But this pretension to remain absolutely free from all that is violence seems to imply a being in possession of a force sufficiently great to keep off all other forces. But if this pretension is found in a being who, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... American official to certain Germans: "We don't want the Philippines; why don't you take them?" That this attitude was foolishly Quixotic is obvious, but more effective in the molding of public opinion was the feeling that it was cowardly. ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... remember that you did not spare me when, a year ago, I told you that this was my plan. I realize that you—more active, younger, more interested in life, less burdened with your past—feel that it is cowardly on my part to seek a quiet refuge and settle myself into it, to turn my face peacefully to the exit, feeling that the end is the most interesting event ahead of me—the one truly interesting experience left ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich
... Bishop of Durham. He is branded by Macaulay (c. 6) as "mean, vain, and cowardly." He accepted a seat on James's Ecclesiastical Commission, and when "some of his friends represented to him the risk which he ran by sitting on an illegal tribunal, he was not ashamed to answer that he could not live out of the ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... not want to leave you," he cried eagerly. "It would be cowardly. Marlanx would understand that you gave aid and sanction. You would be left to face the charges he would make. Don't you see, Beverly? You would be implicated—you would be accused. Why did you not let me kill him? No; I will not go!" Neither noticed ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... "The worthless and cowardly heart shall perish, and shall not parry the thrust of death by flight, though it bury itself in a valley, or crouch in ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... dog had been left in his charge the only manly thing to do, he argued, was to go directly to Mr. Crowninshield and himself acquaint him with the direful tidings. It would be cowardly to shunt this wretched task off on somebody else. It was his duty and his alone. Nevertheless, as he stood for a moment summoning his courage, he would have given all he possessed to escape the interview ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... get them to strike!" said Rybin, coming up to Pavel. "Greedy as these people are for a penny, they are too cowardly. You may, perhaps, induce about three hundred of them to follow you, no more. It's a heap of dung you won't lift with one toss of the pitchfork, I ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... He therefore sued for an armistice. It was refused; and the request drew from Napoleon a letter to his brother Joseph full of contempt for the allies (February 18th). "It is difficult," he writes, "to be so cowardly as that! He [Schwarzenberg] had constantly, and in the most insulting terms, refused a suspension of arms of any kind, ... and yet these wretches at the first check fall on their knees. I will grant no armistice till my territory is clear of them." He adds that he now expected to gain the "natural ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... friend of his Majesty, and of many here present, and an honored member of this order. For his death you, and you alone, are responsible, and, we suspect, under circumstances of no credit to your sword. Many of our people have been cut off from their comrades and slain by cowardly stealth, have been led into ambush and cruelly cut to pieces by an overwhelming number, have been shut in prison and done to death by starvation or by stabs of a knife there in your country. Not content with the weapons of a soldier, you have even resorted to the barbarity of ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... is clear, but the night very dark. I do not contemplate my ride to the picket posts with any great degree of pleasure. A cowardly sentinel is more likely to shoot at you than a brave one. The fears of the former do not give him time to consider whether the person advancing is friend ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... devoted Devorgilla who built the Abbey of Dolce Cor to be a big sacred box for the heart of her husband had had a worthier object of worship than the king, John Balliol. All the history I have ever read makes him out to be a weak and cowardly and rather treacherous person; but, as Sir S. said, "Mirabeau judged by the people and Mirabeau judged by his friends were two men"; and I suppose John must have put himself out to be charming to Devorgilla, ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... done harm to the lad and was sorry," she said. "You defend me now, Paul, but you did not hesitate to make a tool of me in your cowardly schemes." ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... time he came she said: "I have been thinking over what you said, monsieur, and I feel that it would be cowardly indeed if I were to shrink from incurring some little danger for the sake of Lucien. I know that he would give his life for me. We were to have been married in a fortnight, when they came and carried ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... that finally a delegation of prominent citizens was obliged to wait upon Cortright and ask him if he wouldn't take that thing away somewhere and bury it. Jim pointed out to them that it was his hat, and that he would regard it as a cowardly concession if he submitted to their dictation in the matter of his headgear. He added that he purposed to continue to wear his top-hat on every occasion when he happened to feel that the wearing of a top-hat was a joy and ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... slain by the foe, causing a great carnage in your ranks? Alas, ye have no manliness, nor have ye any prowess, since in the very sight of you all was Abhimanyu slain. Or, I should chide my own self, since knowing that ye all are weak, cowardly, and irresolute, I went away! Alas, are your coats of mail and weapons of all kinds only ornaments for decking your persons, and were words given to you only for speaking in assemblies, that ye failed to protect ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... condition for which familiarity had bred contempt. He hated the shams and the hypocrisies of it and with the clear vision of an unspoiled mind he had penetrated to the rotten core of the heart of the thing—the cowardly greed for peace and ease and the safe-guarding of property rights. That the fine things of life—art, music and literature—had thriven upon such enervating ideals he strenuously denied, insisting, rather, that they had ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... In the shabby-genteel creature, with sandy disordered hair and dirty moustache, who had turned quickly round with a defiant stare at our entrance, looking at once mean and fierce, and quite capable of the cowardly murders he had committed, Macready had been horrified to recognize a man familiarly known to him in former years, and at whose table he had dined. Between the completion of Oliver and its publication, Dickens went to see something of North ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... them, the wheels that move the meanest perversion of virtuous Political Machinery that the worst tools ever wrought. Despicable trickery at elections; under-handed tamperings with public officers; cowardly attacks upon opponents, with scurrilous newspapers for shields, and hired pens for daggers; shameful trucklings to mercenary knaves, whose claim to be considered, is, that every day and week they sow new crops of ruin with their venal types, ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... any one," answered Brenton; "I merely know that man. He is a thoroughly despicable, cowardly character. The only thing that makes me think he would not commit a murder, is that he is too craven to stand the consequences if he were caught. He is a cool villain, but he is a coward. I do not believe he has the courage to commit ...
— From Whose Bourne • Robert Barr
... a moment's rest, on the springing moss that covered the whole mountain side. A hum of comment and conversation arose. Jake Alspaugh began to think that there was not likely to be any fight after all, and his spirits rose proportionately. Abe Bolton growled that the cowardly officers had no doubt deliberately misled the regiment, that a fight might be avoided. Kent Edwards saw a nodding May-apple flower—as fair as a calla and as odorous as a pink—at a little distance, and hastened to pick it. He came ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... secret has been lost along with the other mysteries of those distant times, that the mode of controlling the temper is now as undiscoverable as the manner of preparing the Tyrian dye and other forgotten arts? It is surely a disgrace to those cowardly Christians who, having in addition to all the natural powers of the heathen moralist the freely-offered grace of God to work with them and in them, should still walk so unworthy of the high vocation wherewith they are called, as to shrink hopelessly ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... promised, and lied, and invented fresh excuses for delay, like a cowardly gambler and roue as he was, fearing to break with her, and half the time unwilling to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... will release us, curse you, and then I'll make you sorry you ever lived," hissed Crosby. "You are a black-hearted cur, a cowardly dog—" ...
— The Day of the Dog • George Barr McCutcheon
... forgave the damsel; but David, when he had escaped this danger, came to the prophet Samuel to Ramah, and told him what snares the king had laid for him, and how he was very near to death by Saul's throwing a spear at him, although he had been no way guilty with relation to him, nor had he been cowardly in his battles with his enemies, but had succeeded well in them all, by God's assistance; which thing was indeed the cause of Saul's hatred ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... scoundrel!" muttered the captain, as he scanned the boat. "Everything in style, eh, and a black slave to hold a white umbrella over his head for fear the sun should burn his cheeks. Well, things are going to alter a good deal for him. The cowardly dog! This is showing the white feather, and no mistake. Well, Mr Anderson, I did ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... her track! Clemenceau, in concord with the bravest who had smothered her gallant in the mud! she had scorned him too much! He was capable even of cowardly acts, of being revenged for this renewed ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... is being dressed, a mole detected on his {335} arm proclaims him the stolen child of Countess Wildenstein. All now ends in joy and happiness; the Baron is willing enough to give his daughter to the brave young nobleman and very glad to be rid of the cowardly Damian. ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... feeling of anxiety. I was afraid that he meant at last to use that "pull" he had hinted at on the hill; and I had an intuitive shrinking from the idea of his doing that. This open defiance was fine and upright. The other attitude suggested to my mind the conception of something cowardly, a little base and underhand. He looked, I admit, the picture of sturdy virtue as he stood there challenging his late master to permit this test of old Jervaise's attitude, but the prize at stake was so inestimably precious to Banks, that it must have ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... the earl insisted that he had done nothing but what he would readily justify, and that his intentions were to have divided the spoil among the whole army. But this being of no avail, and very much displeased at being deprived in so cowardly a manner of what he had so adventurously gained, he made his complaint to the king; and being successfully opposed there by the pride of the Count of Artois, the kings brother, who thwarted his claims with disdainful spite, he declared that he would serve no longer ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... all that duelling is wrong. But then Mr Scott only half disapproves of it.—And it is almost a pity it is wrong," remarked Malcolm with a laugh; "it is such an easy way of settling some difficult things. Yet I hate it. It's so cowardly. I may be a better shot than the other, and know it all the time. He may know it too, and have twice my courage. And I may think him in the wrong, when he knows himself in the right.—There is one man I have felt ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... with their names, must congregate before us in sublime and touching similitude. "Alas, poor country!"—On those shores the monuments of science and of art, which drew admirers from the remotest corners of the earth, are now demolished by the savage and cowardly slaves of a despot, who is himself a slave; the eloquence which swayed the passions of applauding multitudes is dumb; the pencil of Appelles that breathed over the canvass, and the chisel of Praxiteles that gave life and animation to shapeless blocks, are now no more; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various
... second it wavered; then before the smoke had lifted it broke, and shrieking in terror, it fled for cover, leaving the valorous Souvestre alone, to revile them for a swarm of cowardly rats. ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini |
