"Audacity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... regarded Jane, but, although she tried to meet him half-way by elevating her chin a little, his audacity failed him and the words died away on his tongue. A long silence followed, broken only by the ill-suppressed giggles of Annie, who had retired ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... boisterous, masked by a point-blank disregard of all forbearance towards each other or their teachers; an eager pursuit by each individual of her own interest and convenience; and a coarse indifference to the interest and convenience of every one else. Most of them could lie with audacity when it appeared advantageous to do so. All understood the art of speaking fair when a point was to be gained, and could with consummate skill and at a moment's notice turn the cold shoulder the instant ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... and then a painter, under the influence of this poem, paints another picture, thus lineally descended from the first. This is fiction, but not what we have been used to call fable. We miss the incredible element, the point of audacity with which the fabulist was wont to mock at his readers. And still more so is this the case with others. 'The Horse and the Fly' states one of the unanswerable problems of life in quite a realistic and straightforward way. A fly startles a cab-horse, the coach is overset; a newly-married pair within ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Washington disappears in a cloud of commonplaces; in the rhodomontade of boiling patriots, he expires in the agonies of rant. Now, the sooner this bundle of mediocre talents and moral qualities, which its contrivers have the audacity to call George Washington, is hissed out of existence, the better it will be for the cause of talent and the cause of morals; contempt of that is the condition of insight. He had no genius, it seems. O no! genius, we must ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... Agamemnon—which so many have tried to translate—would be fatiguing and a great bore to read. It may not be amiss to quote three lines from George Peel's David and Bethsabe, which have been often called Aeschylean in audacity:— ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... assigned to their unmistakable author; in other words, to acknowledge his ignorance of the first elements of the subject on which it pleased him to write in a tone of critical and spiritual authority. Not even when his unwary and unscrupulous audacity of self-confidence impelled Charles Kingsley to challenge John Henry Newman to the duel of which the upshot left him gasping so piteously on the ground selected for their tournament—not even then did the author of Hypatia display such ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... countenance. 'Sire,' said one of the most distinguished guests, turning to the king, 'can you contemplate the breaking of your solemn pledge upon the word of a toad like that? This scum of the marshes has the audacity to come and lie to the entire Court, just for the ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... set in a turmoil over Prue's latest audacity. Half the church members declared it an outrage; the other half decided that it gave them an opportunity to see her dance under ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... yer rale mad with me?" There was no mistaking the earnestness of this appeal. He made no answer, but chuckled inwardly at the audacity of ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... are no conjurors more subtle in taking us in at every available opportunity with or without reason, often for the sole pleasure of playing tricks on us. And they play these tricks with incredible simplicity, astonishing audacity, unparalleled ingenuity. They play tricks from morning till night, and they all do it—the most virtuous, the most upright, the most sensible of them. You may add that sometimes they are to some extent driven to do these things. Man has always idiotic fits of obstinacy and tyrannical desires. A husband ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... withstanding the erection of this fort, and the appointment of this ugly little man of war as commander, the Yankees continued the interlopings hinted at in my last chapter, and at length had the audacity to squat themselves down within the ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... shrunk, into the most distant corner of the room. What if he should recognize her, and should call upon her by name, not knowing her changed position, or recollecting his own debasement into slavery? What explanation other than the true one could she give to account for his audacity, and save him from the chastisement which the offended centurion would prepare to bestow upon him? This was but a momentary fear, however, since she felt that the increasing glow of evening, added to her own alteration by dress, and the certainty that he would not ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... curved upwards in a delighted smile. In bed by herself: adorable condition. She had not been in a bed without Mellersh once now for five whole years; and the cool roominess of it, the freedom of one's movements, the sense of recklessness, of audacity, in giving the blankets a pull if one wanted to, or twitching the pillows more comfortably! It was like the discovery of an ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... "rocks the boat" of happiness at least once during a love affair—usually by trying to leap out of it before it lands in the port of Matrimony. All a man needs in order to win any woman is a little audacity, a little mendacity and ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland
... against the Arabs. Some of the desert tribes had, as already mentioned, lent assistance to Saul-Mugina during his revolt against his suzerain, and it was to punish this audacity that Asshur-bani-pal undertook his expedition. His principal enemy was a certain Vaiteha, who had for allies Natun, or Nathan, king of the Nabathivans, and Ammu-ladin, king of Kedar. The fighting seems to have extended along the whole country bordering the Euphrates valley from ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... postmaster, should decline to be its tool; all these things and more were needed, and they were found in the slave power of our Republic. There, sir, stands the criminal, all unmasked before you—heartless, grasping, and tyrannical—with an audacity beyond that of Verres, a subtlety beyond that of Machiavel, a meanness beyond that of Bacon, and an ability beyond that of Hastings. Justice to Kansas can be secured only by the prostration of this ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... to be taken for granted that England would do something more than scold about the audacity of the American navy. Even after the declaration of war her most influential men hoped that the repeal of the obnoxious Orders-in-Council might yet avert a solution of the American problem by means of the sword. There was hesitation to apply ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... innocent, idiotic faces were seen gazing, fascinated, into Woolridge's windows. Woolridge's artist had a wild humor that gave the show away by exaggerating the innocence and idiocy of Woolridge's victims. It appealed to Ransome by the audacity with which it had defied Woolridge's to see its point. Woolridge's itself was a perpetual tempting and solicitation. Ranny wondered how in those days he ever resisted its appeal to him to be a man and risk it and make ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... occasions, but always in the name of State Rights. When it was supposed that Fremont was about to be chosen President, the menace became louder, and mingling with it was the hoarse mutter of war; and all this audacity was in the name ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... as he chose to make the words sound, they were an audacity he would have known better than to allow himself with any one but a timid early-Victorian spinster whose politeness was hypersensitive ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Wet realised his position, and with characteristic audacity and promptness he took means to clear the formidable toils which had been woven round him. The greater part of his command scattered, with orders to make their way as best they might out of the danger. Working in their own country, where every ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... one, was watching them carefully, and fully approved their spirit and courage under such trying conditions. Major Doyle, Patsy's father, when the first copy of the Millville Tribune was laid on his desk in the city, was astounded at the audacity of this rash venture. When he could command his temper to write calmly he sent a letter to Mr. Merrick which read: "Taken altogether, John, you're the craziest bunch of irresponsibles outside an asylum. No wonder you kept this folly a secret from me until you had accomplished your nefarious designs. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... dream, had come from Surya kunda, and had taken up his residence in a hut near the place of worship, where he was assiduous in prayer. The Sannyasi having been insolent to the Raja, a circumstance not at all improbable, the prince had the audacity to kick him down the hill, and to burn his hut. The god then appeared to the saint in a human form, and gave him authority of speech, (Bakya Siddhi,) by which all men would obey his command. Bharati then went to the poor chief of Makwanpur, who, ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... listen with the ears of these first hearers of Peter's words, we shall better appreciate his daring paradox. Think of the tremendous audacity of the claim which they make, that Jesus should be the 'Prince of Life,' and of the strange contradiction to it which the fact that they 'killed' Him seems to give. How could death have power over ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... a little attention at the Hub for their audacity in kicking over the classic styles and violating all the established dogmas of dignity and lofty intellectuality. They are a reaction from the strain and intensity of ordinary Boston life, and thus supply a clearly defined want. This explains their ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... and the Incas has been told many hundreds of times, yet owing to the sheer audacity of which its elements are composed it would seem to retain its interest almost unimpaired. That a mere handful of men should have banded themselves together to conquer a nation which counted its subjects by the hundred thousand, ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... lurched on in its haste to reach the lake with its prey. But now Omega was close to his beloved, and he reached out to grasp her as once more he screamed right into the ears of his enemy. Then perhaps in sheer terror at the audacity of man, the great jaws of the monster relaxed and Thalma fell limp and ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow
... to the very edge of the crater. To come so far without offering hogs and fish to the fiery goddess was in itself enough to bring a fiery river of molten lava upon her. Kapiolani offered nothing save defiance. Audacity, they thought, could go ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... In the Den, despite the blushes his tennis had caused, he did his best to keep up his swagger and restore confidence by a few acts of special audacity; and the Den was forgiving on the whole. They did feel sore for a day, and showed it; but gradually they came back to their allegiance, and made excuses for their hero of their ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... tempest and general disaster. He scarcely alluded to the corruption and peculation prevalent in all high places, diluted in its downward percolation till sutlers and horse-thieves would strive in vain to emulate the fraudulent audacity of their superiors. It was well he spared me then, for soon after landing, my eyes and ears grew weary with the repetition of all these ignoble details. To illustrate how heavily the taxes were already beginning to weigh on the non-militant part of the population, my informant ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... Armfelt gasped at the audacity of the proposal, but Gustavus gave no sign that he had heard. He continued standing in that tense attitude, his eyes vague and dreamy. And as if to show along what roads of thought his mind was travelling, he uttered a single word a name—in ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... broken English, for such in excitement it always became, seeming only to act as fresh incitement and justification, that at length he was compelled in self-defence to draw a dagger. This checked them a little, and ere audacity had had time to recover itself, a young man came shoving through the crowd, pushing them all right and left until he reached Caspar, and stood by his side. Now there was that about Richard Heywood to give him influence ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... not. I have walked up and down here with a humbled and broken spirit, and had nearly forsworn the audacity of painting anything beyond a beech stem, or a ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... wholesale drive of rustled cattle was being made across the line into Sonora, and it was being done in such a way as to fasten the suspicion of it upon the nester who had not appeared at the dance and had not been seen since that time. The irony of the thing was superb in its audacity. Healy and his friends would get the profit from the stolen cattle, and they would visit the punishment for the crime upon him. Evidence would be cooked up of course, and the retribution would be so swift that his friends would not be able to save him. This time his enemy would ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... while hemmed in by trackless snows. One of these journeys had led him to the Pacific coast when our war with Mexico let loose the spirit of revolution in the Mexican province of California. With his characteristic restless audacity Fremont joined his little company of explorers to a local insurrectionary faction of American settlers, and raised a battalion of mounted volunteers. Though acting without Government orders, he cooperated with the United States naval forces sent to take possession ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... enjoying himself. A cold terror constricted his heart. Was he slipping a noose over his own head? Was he telling more than he should? He wished his wife were here to give him a hint. She had the brains as well as the courage and audacity of the family. ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... was soon in confusion and astonishment at the audacity of the act. Some of the braves may have suspected that I had had a hand in the business, for I observed that they cast angry glances at me as they passed. So great was their excitement, too, that for the moment they ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... players, while the latter replied by inquiring when they meant to "come over and take another licking." At other times these Horace House Cossacks swooped down on single members of the rival establishment, harrying them in the very streets of Chatford, and on one occasion had the audacity to lay violent hands on Jacobs, beat his bowler hat down over his eyes, and push him through the folding doors of a drapery establishment, where he upset an umbrella-stand and three chairs, had his ears boxed by the shop-walker, and was ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... was a mode of flattery too pleasing to encounter rebuke or censure; and the opportunity which it afforded the youth to form, as it were, a party of his own within the limits of the ancient barony of Avenel, added not a little to the audacity and decisive tone of a character, which was by ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... or affected to listen, to the gradually increasing uproar in the stables of Berlifitzing—or perhaps pondered upon some more novel, some more decided act of audacity—his eyes became unwittingly rivetted to the figure of an enormous, and unnaturally colored horse, represented in the tapestry as belonging to a Saracen ancestor of the family of his rival. The horse itself, in the foreground of the design, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... planet, who had set his body to carry on his appointed duties, while his spirit roamed the blue infinite spaces between the day-stars and the sun. Early in the afternoon she left the house, without asking whether she might go, or saying when she would be back. She even had the audacity to leave the luncheon dishes piled in the ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... so little audacity—so little daring. He only believed in Christ, in Antichrist, in his love, in her indifference—he only believed! He only sought for the truth, and could not create it—he could evoke neither a god from nonentity, ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... at once to all but the bitter end. The crow, the muskrat, the fox have more than held their own, by reason of cunning, hiding or quickness of sight; but they cannot hope for this to last. The English sparrow has won by sheer audacity; but most to be admired are those creatures which have so changed their habits that some product of man's invention serves them as well as did their former wilderness home. The eave swallow and barn swallow and the chimney swift all ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... rank amongst the connexions of his great house. These may have done something; but it is due to Sylla, who had a sympathy with everything truly noble, to suppose him struck with powerful admiration for the audacity of the young patrician, standing out in such severe solitude among so many examples of timid concession; and that to this magnanimous feeling in the Dictator much of the indulgence which he showed may have been really due. In fact, according to some accounts, it was not Sylla, but the creatures ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... the alarming announcement, came in during this harangue, immediately from the porch of the senate-house, he says with a loud voice, "What means this, Tarquin? by what audacity hast thou dared to summon the fathers, while I am still alive? or to sit on my throne?" To this, when he fiercely replied "that he, the son of a king, occupied the throne of his father, a much fitter successor to the throne ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... the discussion suggests a post-exilic date. Jeremiah is also very bold, xii. 1, but it is a different type of audacity that expresses itself in the book of Job. Unlike Ecclesiastes in practically everything else, Job is like it in being a sustained and fearless challenge of the phenomena of the moral world. A post-exilic date, and perhaps not a very early ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... it still better than tears," she exclaimed, not without audacity,—and her beautiful eyes, still sparkling with tears, laughed boldly ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... the picture had a poetic audacity that defied the criticism it provoked. If you looked long enough, you saw that a youth and a maiden were lying in a trance that was half sleep, half death; while their souls, diaphanous forms with indefinite legs, hovered above them ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... surprised at his own audacity, but determined to see the matter through—"but, Mick, you can't do it. He's ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... he dropped in for a moment, her manner told all. He just took her in his arms, and kissing her very tenderly whispered, "My dear, together we will win," and went his way. When he wished to be, Napoleon was the ideal lover; he was master of that fine forbearance, flavored with a dash of audacity, that women so appreciate. He never wore love to a frazzle, nor caressed the object of his affections into fidgets; neither did he let her starve, although at times she might ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... be astonished at any thing in you, madam, I should be at your audacity," rejoined Nowell, "but I am glad that you have presented yourself before me; for it was my fixed intention, on my return to Whalley, to cause your arrest, and your unexpected appearance here enables me to put my design into execution ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... followed by the crashing force of Tolstoi's organ harmonies, and by the thrilling, heart-piercing discords struck by Dostoevski. Still more sensational sounds come from the younger Russian men of to-day, and all this bewildering audacity of composition has in certain places drowned for a time the less pretentious beauty of Turgenev's method. During the early years of the twentieth century, there has been a visible reaction against him, an attempt ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... assist himself when in the schools by any contrivance that his ingenuity could suggest, or his audacity ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... The spectators seemed to know that something was wrong, though they could not tell just what it was. Kahn's colleagues whispered among themselves. He made his points, but they lacked the fire and dash and audacity that once had caused the epigram that Kahn's appearance in court indicated two things—the guilt of the accused and ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... to derive new firmness from the public hatred. The only effect which reproaches appeared to produce on him was to sour, in some degree, his naturally sweet temper. The last acts of his public life were marked, not only by that audacity which he had derived from nature, not only by that immorality which he had learned in the school of Walpole, but by a harshness which almost amounted to cruelty, and which had never been supposed to belong to his character. His severity increased the unpopularity ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... unfortunately, that these islands well deserved their name. The islanders tried even to drag the nails out of the ship, and carried off everything upon which they could lay their hands. One of them, having succeeded in climbing along a part of the rigging, had the audacity to enter a cabin and seize upon a sword, with which he threw ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... Fixa corona of the poem—shines in Titian's sky with a sublime radiance which corresponds perfectly to the description, so august in its very conciseness, of Catullus. The splendour of the colour in this piece—hardly equalled in its happy audacity, save by the Madonna del Coniglio or Vierge au Lapin of the Louvre,[41] would be a theme delightful to dwell upon, did the prescribed limits of space admit of such an indulgence. Even here, however, where in sympathy with ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... selling, but in buying; and they, on their side, know how to do nothing else. To get something in a shop that they can put on their backs—that is their one idea; they haven't another in their heads. Of course they spend no end of money, and they do it with an implacable persistence, with a mixture of audacity and of cunning. They do it in his teeth and they do it behind his back; the mother protects the daughter, and the daughter eggs on the mother. Between them they ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James
... the man, and yet his heart was in touch with hers to feel its stirring for him. The one told him he was not respectable; the other that he was romantic. His career was shadowy, like his hair. In those days still a mustache bore with it some audacity, and gave a man who frankly lived outside the reputable callings something of the buccaneer. St. Clair called himself a gentleman, but did not pretend to be a clerk, and frankly avowed that he was not in trade. Jamie could not make him out at all. He hoped, indeed, he was a gentleman. ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... superstitious peasantry. They had shrunk from penetrating the secrets of that haunted room, and were not altogether surprised, though entirely frightened, that "something" had "appeared" to rebuke and check their leader's audacity. ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... artificial spirit of honor which encourages duels, but there was "a lady in the case,"—a lady whom he fondly loved. He felt that the insult which she had received was not sufficiently punished. Besides, there was an audacity about the man which deserved to be punished, and he resolved to punish it. Poor human nature! Henry never reflected that he might be shot himself, and the persecutor of innocence escape unharmed. No, he felt that ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... woods was barricaded, and no fewer than eight hundred men were under arms to resist a small pirate force, exhausted by debauch, and having its retreat cut off by the forts at the mouth of the great salt-water loch. But L'Olonnois did not blench: he told the men that audacity was their one hope, also that he would pistol the first who gave ground. The men cheered enthusiastically, and a party of three hundred and fifty landed. The barricaded way they could not force, and in a newly cut path they ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... who has gained a wide appreciation is Frederick MacMonnies, who for sheer audacity and dexterity of manipulation is almost without a rival. He was born in Brooklyn in 1863, his father a Scotchman who had come to New York at the age of eighteen, and his mother a niece of Benjamin West. The boy's talent ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... stuff, and gave little heed to a string of unsavoury invectives compounded out of such epithets as "ugly," "splay-footed," and "shapeless;" such phrases as "stuff and nonsense," "malignant trash," "impertinent puppy," and "audacity of impudence;" and other samples from the polemical vocabulary of the personage who, by the irony of fate, filled the Chair of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh. The substance of Professor Wilson's attacks ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... buccaneers, becoming stronger and stronger every day, extended their designs, and pushed their operations with a degree of audacity and success that rendered them the terror of the seas. As yet their marine consisted only of boats and canoes, but these were, as before stated, of a size to carry from fifty to a hundred men each. They attacked not only merchantmen, but vessels of war, with a degree of intrepidity unexampled ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... all men should run after its productions, as if urged by an appetite, or constrained by a spell!—The qualities of writing best fitted for eager reception are either such as startle the world into attention by their audacity and extravagance; or they are chiefly of a superficial kind, lying upon the surfaces of manners; or arising out of a selection and arrangement of incidents, by which the mind is kept upon the stretch of curiosity, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... in the metropolis, and which must be so delightful to the professed raconteur. Only once or twice during the telling of the anecdote Mr. Bloundell's face wore a look of scorn, or betrayed by its expression that he was acquainted with the tales narrated. Once he had the audacity to question the accuracy of one of the particulars of a tale as given by Major Pendennis, and gave his own version of the anecdote, about which he knew he was right, for he heard it openly talked of at the Club by So-and-so and ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... half- amused, while her mother read aloud to them. Or she was a child in a black silk apron going up Black's Lane. Little audacious thing. She had a fondness and admiration for this child and her audacity. And always she saw her mother, with her sweet face between the long, hanging curls, coming down the garden path, in a wide silver-gray gown trimmed with narrow bands of black velvet. And she would wake up, surprised to find herself sitting in a strange room, dressed in a gown with strange ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
... planned it without asking Drew's support. But it called for enough audacity, luck, and nerve to be appealing. During the war the Kentuckian had seen such schemes win out time and ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... Samoans; and yet I never met any one, white or native, who did not respect his memory. All felt it was a gallant battle, and the man a great fighter; and now when he is dead, and the war seems to have gone against him, many can scarce remember, without a kind of regret, how much devotion and audacity have been spent in vain. His name still lives in the songs of Samoa. One, that I have heard, tells of Misi Ueba and a biscuit-box—the suggesting incident being long since forgotten. Another sings plaintively how all things, land and food and property, pass progressively, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... enough and not too much. He went abroad, but not too far abroad. He avoided a suspicious remoteness. Then he bided his time with a fine patience, and at the right moment converted it quietly into a company—with a capital subscribed by the charitable—a splendid piece of audacity. I saw the announcement in the newspaper, neatly worded, and issued at the precise moment when the public interest was beginning to wane, and before the thing was forgotten. People read it, and having found a new plaything—bicycles, ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... learned there to feel safe from hawk and cat, and knows enough of other birds to be sure that none of them will "jump" his little claim of fifty feet square whereof you are the moving centre. His individual audacity gives him the sway of that small empire, and he doubts not that you will support him in acting up to the motto of the Iron Crown of the Lombards. His cousin the robin may, and very probably does, hover on the outskirts, but an exact distance ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... of the city were torn up,' wrote the Field-Marshal in his official report; 'not hundreds, but thousands of barricades crossed the streets. Such circumspection and audacity were displayed that it was evident military leaders were at the head of the people. The character of the Milanese had become quite changed. Fanaticism had seized every rank and ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... suffering as I have never known, and my whole life is now ordered to make you forget that side of my character. I ask myself now, 'What would Helen have me do?' I don't say this humble mood will last. If Alessandra should make a 'barrel of money,' I am capable of soaring to such heights of audacity ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... because he had a distaste for talking about it further, he wrote the story to Jeff, still omitting mention of his candle-burning honorarium. To Anne, he sent a little note, the first of a long series, wondering at himself as he wrote it, but sticking madly to his audacity, for that queerly seemed the ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... The audacity and frequency with which outrages are committed, forbid us, in justice to our consciences, to omit to use the powers we possess, to bring them to the severe action of the law; and when we find our powers inadequate, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... have given me incredible self-confidence and audacity. I can dare all things now. I came back to Blois in deep dejection. Five years of study in the heart of Paris had made me look on the world as a prison. I had conceived of vast schemes, and dared not speak of them. Fame seemed to me a prize for charlatans, to which a really noble spirit should not ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... was an attraction to his chivalrous spirit. He believed in flying at the head when you are fighting with a serpent, and he knew that influence exerted in Rome would thrill through the Empire. If we would understand the magnificent audacity of these words of my text we must try to listen to them with the ears of a Roman. Here was a poor little insignificant Jew, like hundreds of his countrymen down in the Ghetto, one who had his head full of some fantastic nonsense about a young visionary whom the procurator ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... pronounce the child a demon offspring, from the indescribable charm of beauty and eccentricity that shone through her little figure, and sparkled with its activity. She ran and looked the wild Indian in the face, and he grew conscious of a nature wilder than his own. Thence, with native audacity, but still with a reserve as characteristic, she flew into the midst of a group of mariners, the swarthy-cheeked wild men of the ocean, as the Indians were of the land; and they gazed wonderingly and admiringly at Pearl, as if a flake of the sea-foam ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... only by dint of audacity that her Majesty can recover her liberty: let her Majesty read this letter, then, and punctually follow, if she deign to adopt them, the ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... As for the young adventurer I thought him more to be pitied than to be blamed, for I did not believe that he knew I loved him, and it seemed to me that the idea of my despising him was enough vengeance for his audacity. But my thoughts were different when my vanity was stronger than love, for then despair avenged itself on pride, and I fancied he would think no more of me, and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... of the people, and fit them for independent thought and self-government, has left them as ignorant and superstitious, and scarcely less savage, than before. Thus they have become the facile tools of every leader who, by greater audacity, craft, or determination, has risen ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... interest, far more than M'Wilkin's, to abstract those poor unhappy sheep, because it is avowedly his trade to fill the insatiable maw of the Southron? And in that case, who should be at the bar? Gubbins! Gubbins, I say, who this day has the unparalleled audacity to appear before an enlightened Scottish jury, and to give evidence which, in former times, might have led to the awful consequence of the execution of an innocent man! And this is what my learned friend calls evidence! Evidence to condemn ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... altogether a delicious piece of nonsense, serious neither in style nor intention, filled with puns so atrocious as to make the reader admire the author's audacity, the recklessness of which adds much to ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... began to have some bearing upon his case. That last affair of Raffles and mine, wherein we had successfully got away with the diamond stomacher of the duchess of Herringdale, was still a live matter in British detective circles, and the very audacity of the crime had definitely fastened the responsibility for it upon our shoulders. Hence it was America for me, where one could be as English as one pleased without being subject to the laws of his Majesty, King Edward VII., of Great Britain and ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... frequently heard conversations on the subject, showing that the men were expected to go down at once?-Yes; and some of the clerks had the audacity to attempt to deduct the amount at the office ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... and whispered, softly: "I have a stout pocket-knife, with a very long blade. I shall try to kill the Duke. Once he is dead his people will not dare to oppose us, but will fly in terror. It is only Il Duca's audacity and genius that enables this ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... winds impell upon the Shore must render this a very Dangerous Coast. This I am so fully sencible of, that was we once clear of it I am determined not to come so near Again, if I can possible avoid it, unless we have a very favourable wind indeed.* (* The mingled audacity and caution of Cook's navigation off this coast must awake the admiration ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... knew just exactly how she managed it, but in another moment she had confided the entire story of Polly's audacity to Mr. Hunt, Billy Webster's place in it, and his present intention of bringing retribution upon them. She knew there was but little time for her story; for Mr. Hunt might be compelled to leave them on receiving his curtain call at any moment. ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Outside World • Margaret Vandercook
... of the stone fort which the French had abandoned, and where, with reasonable vigilance, they could maintain themselves against attack. In the succeeding autumn a small Iroquois war-party had the audacity to cross over to the island, and build a fort of felled trees in the woods. The Hurons attacked them; but the invaders made so fierce a defence, that they kept their assailants at bay, and at length retreated with little or no loss. Soon after, a much larger ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... going too far. I can quite understand your being jealous of his lordship, but I cannot understand your having the audacity to bring such a foolish charge against him. I, for one, must decline to listen to it. If he had been the fraud you make him out, how would his tutor have got those letters from his Grace the Duke ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... at his man, McMurdo elbowed his way forward with his usual careless audacity, and pushed himself through the little group of courtiers who were fawning upon the powerful boss, laughing uproariously at the smallest of his jokes. The young stranger's bold gray eyes looked back fearlessly through their glasses ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... declares that in Him, in an altogether solitary and peculiar fashion, there abides the fulness of Deity. Think that there has been a Man who said, 'In this place is One greater than the Temple.' And people have believed Him, and do believe Him, and have found that the tremendous audacity of the words is simple verity, and that Christ is, in inmost reality, all which the Temple was but in the poorest symbol. In it there had dwelt, though there dwelt no longer at the time when He was speaking, a material and symbolical brightness, the expression of something ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... and stared. Then the audacity of such an assertion touched his sense of humor. He fell to laughing. "That at ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... worry the hawk as a whiffet dog will worry a bear. It is by his persistence and audacity, not by any injury he is capable of dealing his great antagonist. The kingbird seldom more than dogs the hawk, keeping above and between his wings, and making a great ado; but my correspondent says he once "saw a kingbird ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... "Head of a Young Man" in the National Gallery. She had fallen in love with it years ago, and on the wall of her room it had been ever since. That broad face, the clear eyes, the bold, clean-cut mouth, the audacity—only, the live face was English, not Italian, had more humour, more "breeding," less poetry—something "old Georgian" about it. How he would laugh if she told him he was like that peasant acolyte with fluffed-out hair, and a little ruching round his neck! And, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... all around the place, and Stonie is all the young shoots that I'm trying to prune and train up just like him," answered Rose Mary with a quick laugh. "You're my new-fashioned crimson-rambler from out over the Ridge that I'm trying to make grow in my garden," she added, with a little hint of both audacity and tenderness ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... eyes that this audacity was taken in good part, he seemed awkwardly conscious of his limbs, and addressed the Marquise d'Espard as "mademoiselle." A light far brighter than the glare of the chandeliers flashed from his eyes. At last he went ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac |
