"Cower" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... black-haired, pert girl of about eighteen, who under ordinary circumstances would have found herself able to answer, with a due degree of smartness, any question which might have been addressed to her. But fright will sometimes cower the stoutest heart, and Molly, standing before the coroner at this juncture, presented anything but a reckless appearance, her naturally rosy cheeks blanching at the first word addressed to her, and her head falling forward on her breast in a confusion too genuine ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... another creature, and resented the spoliation. With an angry snarl he snatched the life-buoy and backed away, while the girl, surprised and a little indignant, followed with extended hands. He raised it threateningly, and though she did not cower, she knew intuitively that he was angry, and feeling the injustice, burst into tears; then, turning from him, she covered her eyes with her hands and crouched ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... cried death to the Prophet, John of Leyden calmly, with great impressiveness, made them cower before ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... dying man. A fitful storm was brewing, and between the plashes of rain on the windows there was the silence of death. All nature suffers in such moments, the trees writhe in pain and hide their heads; the birds of the fields cower under the bushes; the streets of cities are deserted. I was suffering from my wound. But a short time before I had a mistress and a friend. The mistress had deceived me and the friend had stretched me on a bed of pain. I could not clearly distinguish ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... heard Unto those lords, who wrote it word by word, And back unto the King its threatenings bore, Whereof there came that grief and mourning sore, Of which ye wot; thereby is Psyche laid Upon the mountain-top; thereby, afraid Of some ill yet, within the city fair Cower down the people that ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... instinctive apprehension that all was not right—a feeling in the human mind, allied, perhaps, to that sense of danger which animals exhibit when placed in the vicinity of the natural enemies of their race, and which makes birds cower when the hawk is in the air, and beasts tremble when the tiger is abroad in the desert. There was a heaviness at her heart which she could not dispel; and the few hours which she had already spent at Chiffinch's were like those passed in prison by one unconscious of the cause or event of his ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... always felt sure that there was a reserve of force in the timid nature of our Coach which seemed to peep forth at times and then retire again. It was curious to mark on these rare occasions how the more boisterous self-assertion of Mrs. Porkington seemed for a time to cower before the gentler but finer will. Natures are not changed in a day, but the effect of the singular scene which had been enacted at that time was never effaced, and a gradual and mutual approach was made between husband and wife towards ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... of this climax is wonderful. There is perhaps nothing, of its own kind, to equal it upon the present stage. Well may the king's haughty parasites cower, and shrink aghast from the ominous voice, the finger of doom, the arrows of those lurid, unbearable eyes! But it is in certain intellectual elements and pathetic undertones that the part of Richelieu, as conceived by Bulwer, assimilates to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... trumpets. No longer do the men of great muscle lord it over the weak and the puny; as a rule they toil and they lift, doing unpleasant, menial duties for hollow-chested, big-domed men with eye-glasses. But among those very spindle-shanked, terra-cotta dwellers who cower at draughts and eat soda mints, the ancient struggle for supremacy wages fiercer than ever. Single combats are fought now as then, and the flavor of victory is quite as sweet to the pallid man back of a roll-top desk as to the swart, bristling ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... 'stitched a book of broad leaves, arrow-shaped, Wrote thereon, he knows what, prodigious words; Has peeled a wand and called it by a name; Weareth at whiles for an enchanter's robe The eyed skin of a supple oncelot; And hath an ounce sleeker than youngling mole, A four-legged serpent he makes cower and couch, Now snarl, now hold its breath and mind his eye, And saith she is Miranda and my wife: 'Keeps for his Ariel a tall pouch-bill crane He bids go wade for fish and straight disgorge; Also a sea-beast, lumpish, which he snared, Blinded ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... tea for them, and they soon began to play with our own younger children, in blythe forgetfulness of the storm; every now and then, however, the eldest of them, when the shutters rattled and the lum-head roared, would pause in his innocent daffing, and cower in towards Mrs Pawkie, as if he was daunted and dismayed by something ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... out a grumbler, all sulky and sour, But for Christopher's temper such trash was too much; And it soon made the malecontent quiver and cower, When he saw preparations for handling the Crutch. "Lay your croaking aside," The old gentleman cried, "Or I'll make you eat up each ungenerous word: Not our deadliest foe, Such injustice should know, And far less shall a friend ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... when Fritz was to make his trial trip with the cajack. Completely equipped in swimming costume—trousers, jacket and cap—it was most ludicrous to see him cower down in the canoe and puff and blow till he began to swell like the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... why then should man fear any more The voice of Pytho's dome, or cower before These birds that shriek above us? They foretold Me for my father's murderer; and behold, He lies in Corinth dead, and here am I And never touched the sword.... Or did he die In grief for me who left him? In that way I may have wrought his death.... But come what may, ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles
... sky. Under that colossal threatened impact he crouched down to the deck. Above him, falling upon him like a bolt from the blue, was a winged hawk unthinkably vaster than the one he had encountered. But in his crouch was no hint of cower. His crouch was a gathering together, an assembling of all the parts of him under the rule of the spirit of him, for the spring upward to meet in mid career this ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... how to dress for the occasion and how to sit, what to avoid and how to avoid it. As it is, we go in a state of nervous agitation, obsequiously costumed; our last vestige of self-assertion vanishes before the unwinking Cyclops eye of the instrument, and we cower at the mercy of the thing and its attendant. They make what they will of us, and the retoucher simply edits the review with an eye to the market. So history is falsified before our faces, and we prepare a ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... clear, when the mind is so sane, as when death has come very near to us. There is a light which he brings with him, which he holds before the eyes of the dying, the stern light, seldom seen, of reality, before which self-deception and meanness, and that which maketh a lie, cower in their ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... massive altar. Overhead, With drooping boughs, a venerable bay Its shadowy foliage o'er the home-gods spread. Here, with her hundred daughters, pale with dread, Poor Hecuba and all her female train, As doves, that from the low'ring storm have fled, And cower for shelter from the pelting rain, Crouch round the silent gods, and cling ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... successful. The boy had been told so much of murderers that he had been made to fear. Peter,—and other Peters about the country,—had filled his mind with sad foreboding. And there had always been something timid, something almost unmanly in his nature. He had seemed to prefer to shrink and cower and be mysterious with the Carrolls to coming forward boldly with such a man as Yorke Clayton. The girls had seen this, and had declared that he was no more than a boy; but his father had seen it and had made no such allowance. And now he saw that he trembled. But Florian got ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... which was very gentle, and yet he could see that Bulstrode seemed to cower under that gentleness, his face looking dried and his eyes swerving away from the glance which rested on him. Caleb felt a deep pity for him, but he could have used no pretexts to account for his resolve, even if they would have been ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... exertion and active movement on Toby's part to enable him to get hold of that paw, in order to discover what it was which Mr. Stubbs had captured; but the instant he did succeed, there went up from his heart such a cry of sorrow as caused Old Ben to start up in alarm and the monkey to cower and whimper ...
— Toby Tyler • James Otis
... looked to see her cower and shrink as men had often done under the glare of his angry gaze; but she stood before him tall, straight and calm—so near that he might have felled her to the ground; there was no fear in her deep eyes while ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... win? Therein I seek not to enter, but only to have Nicolete, my sweet lady that I love so well. For into Paradise go none but such folk as I shall tell thee now: Thither go these same old priests, and halt old men and maimed, who all day and night cower continually before the altars, and in the crypts; and such folk as wear old amices and old clouted frocks, and naked folk and shoeless, and covered with sores, perishing of hunger and thirst, and of cold, and of little ease. These be they that go into Paradise, with them have I naught to make. But ...
— Aucassin and Nicolete • Andrew Lang
... ashamed. God had preserved me from deadly perils, but not that I might cower in some shelter. I had a mission as clear as Laputa's. For the first time I became conscious to what a little thing I owed my salvation. That matter of the broken halter was like the finger of Divine Providence. ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... not the Christ of power, Thou need'st not before me cower; An unknown knight thou see'st in me, Sent forth by three maids of ...
— Ulf Van Yern - and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise
... sure. Father has no weapon, and that man did have one. It was the sight of your pistol that made him cower. You couldn't have chosen a more lucky ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... her. For some time she had foreboded trouble. The foreboding grew upon her till its dark shadow cast a gloom upon all her feelings; it thrilled her at times with fear. She would start at the veriest trifles, as if affrighted. Particularly at night did she cower under the feeling, and of late it had been hard for her to sleep; and when she slept, it was wakefully: often would she start up, and look around to see that all was right, then fall asleep again. And ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... fill it with life, to move at ease in it, to press it into soft and rounded lines. Her linked companions also were beauties of their day—that sleek and sleepy Nicoletta, that ruddy Guglielmotta; but they seemed to cower in their rigid clothes, and they were as ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... her son cried to her with the yearning cry of a little child. At such times the old woman would shrink within herself, and moan and cower over the fire, and smoke a little ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... its pleasures under the pale sun, might read one morning of an affray in Yorkshire, of a magistrate assaulted, or undergardener in arms, and forget it in half-an-hour; but to Sanchia, unaccustomed to cower, some such chance paragraph seemed one spot the more upon her vesture, which contact with the Fulham Road had smirched already. She had never taken cover before—and how could one be in such a place but to ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... boyhood I have lived in terror of the just God—the just God—who visits the sins of the fathers upon the children even to the third and fourth generation. I—Baird—" his voice dropping, his face pallid, "I have hated Him. I keep His laws, it is my fate to preach His word—and I cower before Him as a slave before a tyrant, with hatred ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... may take you with your irons! Shall we, men who followed Red Jabez through a sea of blood, cower to a woman of such soft mettle? Dolores, queen or woman or wench, it is for you, not us, to explain. Lads—" he shrieked, flashing about and haranguing his companions—"back me in this. We will know why the sloop lacked powder; why to-day's ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... effort to obtain legal counsel or to communicate his situation to his mother. Indeed, he dreaded to see her, and he felt that he could not look his sisters in the face again. The prison cell seemed a refuge from the terrible scorn of the world, and his present impulse was to cower behind its thick walls for ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... the hermit, roused to an unexpected burst of wrath. His eyes kindled with rage, and he darted a glance at the intruders which made them cower and shrink from his rebuke. In a moment he grew calm, relapsing into his usual moody and thoughtful attitude. Taking courage, they ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... In the crowd before him he saw scores of frightened faces. He saw men pointing and heard women cry out in terror. He saw children cower and scamper for ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... joined her, it was no matter. She made a movement forward, when Edrnonson's voice with a ring that she had never heard in it came to her ears. Yet it was not his tones, but his words, that made her cower and stand motionless with startled eyes and parted lips, until, slowly, as wonder grew into disgust, her face crimsoned from brow to throat and drooped, as if to hide from itself. Was this the way that men spoke of women, with sneers, with scoffing? In all her innocent life she ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... for the sycophants of Louis XIV. to flatter more dexterously. For my part, I am persuaded that in all governments, whatever their nature may be, servility will cower to force, and adulation will cling to power. The only means of preventing men from degrading themselves, is to invest no one with that unlimited authority which is the surest method of ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... a slender, awkward grace. Her eyes were fixed on Maisie, thrown open, expecting pain; but she didn't shrink or cower. ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... speaking, he pipes a falsetto such as no woman outside a reciter's brain ever possessed. If it is a rustic, he affects a dialect from no known district. In emotional passages one does not dare to look at him at all, but we all cower with our heads in our hands, as though we were convicted but penitent criminals. So much for dramatic or dialogue pieces. When it comes to lyric poetry—his favourite form of literature—Leeson sings, or rather cantillates, swaying his body to the rhythm of the lines. If any of the poets could ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... true daughter of Alfred, and the traditions of the Alfred of Hungary were fresh upon her, and, instead of sitting down to cower alarmed amid the turmoils round her, she set herself to conquer the evils in her own feminine way, by her performance of her queenly duties. She was happy in her husband: Malcolm revered her saintly purity even more than he loved ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... gentle, I strike not thee, I will not hold thee in dungeon tower. Though the king chain me, I will not cower, Though my sire banish me ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... learned to expect the blows and to cower from them and sometimes even whimper, when his master was unusually harsh; but in his heart, which was that of a wild beast, he was storing ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... Thou wilt not cower in the duet, Maryland! Thy beaming sword shall never rust Maryland! Remember Carroll's sacred trust, Remember Howard's warlike thrust— And all thy slumberers with the just, ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... be cast down. You, I trust, are not the man to cower at such a moment. Do not be afraid to stand up your whole length in defence of your ...
— The American Prejudice Against Color - An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily The Nation Got - Into An Uproar. • William G. Allen
... congregated nightcaps; with horror of the nocturnal prowesses of clerks and students, of hot theatres and pass-keys and close rooms. I have not often enjoyed a more serene possession of myself, nor felt more independent of material aids. The outer world, from which we cower into our houses, seemed after all a gentle habitable place; and night after night a man's bed, it seemed, was laid and waiting for him in the fields, where God keeps an open house. I thought I had rediscovered one of those truths ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the haill queentry he wadna sell her till, sae be he was o' an auld eneuch faimily, and had rowth o' siller. Haith! noo a days the last 'ill come first, an' a fish cadger wi' siller 'ill be coontit a better bargain nor a lord wantin 't: only he maun hae a heap o' 't, to cower the ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... a rumor spread abroad that a volume was to be published exposing the whole black history, and then the priest began to cower. His Diary is full of his prayers and lamentations. "The book is printed, and the impression is this week arrived here.... I set myself to humble myself before the Lord under these humbling and wondrous dispensations, and obtain the pardon of my sins, that have rendered ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... moving with you; For, ever some new head and heart of them Thrusts into view To observe the intruder; you see it If quickly you turn And, before they escape you surprise them. They grudge you should learn How the soft plains they look on, lean over And love (they pretend)— Cower beneath them. ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... trembled on the wheel, and his eyes were misty. Eben never saw him look at him in such a way before. Had he stormed and raged it would have but increased his defiance. But that look of silent reproach smote his very soul, causing him to cower conscience stricken. Without a word, he left his father's side and went forward. And there he stood with his hands behind his back, staring straight before him. The captain watched him anxiously. His mind was ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... own natural senses; But driven stark mad by the devil's drugged stuff, Storming all aboard from his run-ashore late, Challenging to battle, vouchsafing no pretenses, A reeling King Ogg, delirious in power, The quarter-deck carronades he seemed to make cower. "Put him in brig there!" said Lieutenant Marrot. "Put him in brig!" back he mocked like a parrot; "Try it, then!" swaying a fist like Thor's sledge, And making the pigmy constables hedge— Ship's corporals and the master-at-arms. ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... would you keep your sons? From what? for what? From the doing of the grandest duty that ever ennobled man, to the grief of the greatest infamy that ever crushed him down. You would hold him back from prizes before which Olympian laurels fade, for a fate before which a Helot slave might cower. His country in the agony of her death-struggle calls to him for succor. All the blood in all the ages, poured out for liberty, poured out for him, cries unto him from the ground. All that life has of noble, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... your capital, do I defy you. Have I not conquered your armies, fired your towns, and dragged your generals at my chariot wheels, since first my youthful arms could wield a spear? And do you think to see me crouch and cower before a tamed and shattered senate? The tearing of flesh and rending of sinews is but pastime compared with the mental ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... being, floating in it like some sea flower which spreads its filmy beauty and waves its long tresses in the depths of mid-ocean. The sound of its waters is ever in our ears, and above, beneath, around us, its mighty currents run evermore. We need not cower before the fixed gaze of some stony god, looking on us unmoved like those Egyptian deities that sit pitiless with idle hands on their laps, and wide-open lidless eyes gazing out across the sands. We need not fear the Omnipresence of Love, nor the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... butchered picturesquely and terribly amidst strange and grotesque rituals; he would survey long and elaborate processions and ceremonials in which the most remarkable symbols were borne high in the sight of all men; he would cower before a gigantic and threatening Heaven. These green-tea dreams and visions were not so much phases of sleep as an intensification and vivid furnishing forth of insomnia. It added greatly to his disturbance that—exceeding the instructions ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... wouldst thou be made to stay in thy hiding-places until thy bleached bones would tell that Rome findeth starvation oft cheaper than the sword. From Dan to Beersheba doth the heathen purple fly over tower and wall, and under the dark shadow of her mighty eagle do the nations of the earth cower. Whence then could come thy succor? To lift the sword is but to bring it down on thine own neck. If he whom our hearts love escape, by the wit of man's mind must the thing be accomplished. Go thou, Lazarus, ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... cakes, and sojourn amongst the wild beauties of Switzerland in order to be convenient to goat's milk.... Like other carnivorous animals, an Englishman is always surly over his meals. Morose at all times, he becomes unbearably so at that interesting period of the day, when his soul appears to cower among plates and dishes; ... though he gorges his food with the silent deliberation of the anaconda, yet, in descanting upon the delicacies of the last capital dinner, he makes an approach to animation altogether unusual to him; ... when, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... a time thine eagles tower'd Resistless o'er the humbled world; There was a time the empires cower'd Before the bolt thy hand had hurl'd: The standards, thy proud will obeying, Flapp'd wrath and woe on every wind— A few short years, and thou wert laying Thine iron yoke on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... most of us have some interest in arguing the contrary. And it is of the nature of vanity and arrogance, if unchecked, to become cruel and self-justifying. There are fierce beasts within: chain them, chain them, and let them learn to cower before the creature with wider reason. This is what one wishes for Mordax—that his heart and brain should restrain the outleap of ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... ashamed of me before those you knew to be my inferiors,—really common and coarse-minded people, but regularly educated, and used to money and fashion. I should cower before them, and I never could ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... Tour, scornfully; "you stoop to insult a prisoner, who is powerless in your hands, but from whose indignation you would cower, like the guilty thing you are, had I liberty and my good sword to revenge your baseness! Go, use me as you will, use me as you dare, M. d'Aulney, but remember the day of vengeance may ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... is the same as to cower over the coals, as a gipsy over a fire. Thus Hodge says of Gammer Gurton and Tib, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various
... conscious of his power: Or, if he was, knew not its full extent. He knew his glance would make a wild beast cower, And yet he knew not that his large eyes sent Into the heart of woman the same thrill That made the lion servant of his will. And even strong ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... glide And I shall know the secret things." The old man answered: "Woe betide!" Said I "The world was made for kings: To him who works and working sings Come joy and majesty and power And steadfast love with royal wings." "O watch these fools that blink and cower," Said that wise man: "and every hour A score is born, a dozen dies." Said I: —"In London fades the flower; But far away the bright blue skies Shall watch my solemn walls arise, And all the glory, all the grace Of earth shall gather there, and eyes Will shine like stars in that ...
— Forty-Two Poems • James Elroy Flecker
... look of sadness from her brow. She had, from the first, exhibited great signs of fear of the chief, and did she catch his eye resting on her she would hurriedly gather her child in her arms, and with a wild look of terror cower away into the corner of the room farthest from him she could get, and there sit murmuring in wailing tones to the babe nestling ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... night in one of the music halls and gave the Mohammedans a piece of my mind. The poor Christians!—they feared the Government in the old regime; they cower before the boatmen in this. For the boatmen of Beirut have not lost their prestige and power. They are a sort of commune and are yet supreme. Yes, they are always riding the whirlwind and directing the storm. And who dares say a word against them? ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... Carolinians are attempting to govern the Union as they govern their slaves, and there are too many indications that, abetted as they are by all the slave-driving interest of the Union, the free portion will cower before them, and truckle to their insolence. This is ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... ranks advancing, See upon the free winds dancing Pennon proud and gaudy plume. The strangers come in evil hour, In pomp, and panoply, and power! But, while upon our tribes they lower, Think they our manly hearts will cower To meet a ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... like;—and having given it well forth, shall depart by the death they call Roman. Sieyes old-Constituent comes; to make new Constitutions as many as wanted: for the rest, peering out of his clear cautious eyes, he will cower low in many an emergency, and find silence safest. Young Saint-Just is coming, deputed by Aisne in the North; more like a Student than a Senator: not four-and-twenty yet; who has written Books; a youth of slight stature, with mild mellow voice, enthusiast olive-complexion, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... rabbits[010] bow before thee. And cower in the straw; The chickens[011] are submissive, And own thy will for law; Bullfinches and canary Thy bidding do obey; And e'en the tortoise in its shell Doth ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... which the London atmosphere renders; her air is of such a helpless sincerity that nothing in it shows larger than it is; no mist clothes the sky-scraper in gigantic vagueness, the hideous tops soar into the clear heaven distinct in their naked ugliness; and the low buildings cower unrelieved about their bases. Nothing could be done in palliation of the comparative want of antiquity in New York, for the present, at least; but it is altogether probable that in the fulfilment of her destiny she will be one day as ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... lie. The first pillaged a few ships, towns and castles; the latter plunders hundreds of thousands every year of the world, and then has the sublime audacity to come into court and plead that his business is both legitimate and necessary. And so rotten is society,—so prostrate does it cower before the golden calf— that the buccaneer, instead of being bastinadoed or beheaded, is crowned with bays! How can we harmonize these stubborn facts with Sir Edwin's view that "the course of mankind is constantly toward perfection?" Of ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... worse than other dissipated women then and since. She did not realise that it was the system to which she had stubbornly committed herself, that drove the people of the fields to cut their crops green to be baked in the oven, because their hunger could not wait; or made them cower whole days in their beds, because misery seemed to gnaw them there with a duller fang. That she was unconscious of its effect, makes no difference in the real drift of her policy; makes no difference in ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... mingling cutlery, pickles, and broken glass and china, in one chaotic heap on the floor. As darkness came on, the gale rose higher, the moon was obscured, the rack in heavy masses was driving across the stormy sky, and scuds of sleet and spray made the few venturous persons on deck cower under the nearest shelter ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... the immemorial fallacy of economical souls to throw good money after bad; though when I saw the patience with which she bore his querulous complaints and the solicitude with which she attended to his wants, I sometimes imagined he had some secret hold over her. Often I saw her cower and flush piteously, as with terror, before his insolent gaze. But I decided finally his was merely the ascendency of the strong over the weak—of the bully over his victims, who serve him more loyally because he kicks them. The bad-tempered ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... here. Right Reverend Firmian has to hold his hand; finds both that there shall be Emigration, and that it must go forward on human terms, not inhuman; and that in fact the Treaty of Westphalia will have to guide it, not he henceforth. Those poor ousted Salzburgers cower into the Bavarian cities, till the weather mend, and his Prussian Majesty's arrangements be complete for their brethren ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... into ourselves, in that deep place Where good and evil meet, we bode our hour. For not inexorable is our power. And we are hunted of the prey we chase, Soonest gain ground on them that flee apace, And draw temerity from hearts that cower. ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... hours, when everything was black; perhaps they would hear it yelling outside, or perhaps there would be deathlike stillness—and that would be worse yet. They could feel the cold as it crept in through the cracks, reaching out for them with its icy, death-dealing fingers; and they would crouch and cower, and try to hide from it, all in vain. It would come, and it would come; a grisly thing, a specter born in the black caverns of terror; a power primeval, cosmic, shadowing the tortures of the lost souls flung out to chaos and destruction. It was cruel iron-hard; and hour after hour they would ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... out that this conception has its roots deep in primitive human nature: The Birth of Humility, Oxford, 1910, p. 17. 'It would, perhaps, be fanciful to say that man tends to run away from the sacred as uncanny, to cower before it as secret, and to prostrate himself before it as tabu. On the other hand, it seems plain that to these three negative qualities of the sacred taken together there corresponds on the part of man a certain negative attitude of mind. Psychologists ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... her heart shall shrink and wither, Custom-straitened like her waist, All her thought to cower together, Huddling sheep-like with the rest, With the flock of soulless bodies on a ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... she stood straight up again with the majesty of a queen. "Do you think I feared for me—for myself? Oh! no, my own lover, never that! They can kill me when they choose, but they won't; it is you for whom I fear. Only your danger could make me cower, no ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... fat oxen waiting for the butcher's knife; if ye are men, follow me! strike down yon sentinel, and gain the mountain passes, and there do bloody work as did your sires at old Thermopyl! Is Sparta dead? Is the old Grecian spirit frozen in your veins, that ye do crouch and cower like base-born slaves, beneath your master's lash? O! comrades! warriors! Thracians! if we must fight, let us fight for ourselves; if we must slaughter, let us slaughter our oppressors; if we must die, let us die under the open sky, by the bright waters, in noble, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... walk, sir?" She turned into a narrow path in the shadow of arches, clothed by a great Austrian brier, on which here and there a yellow flame still glowed. "Mr. Boyce—when I meet you in company you shrink and cower detestably; when I meet you alone, you fence with me impudently enough and shrewdly; and always you avoid me while you can. I suppose there's in all this something more than the freaks of a fool. Then it's fear. Prithee, sir, why in God's name ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... bedside, he had been fighting off the conviction that he was a brute. He would not, he could not believe it. What! Tom Helmer, the fine, indubitable fellow! such as he had always known himself!—he to cower before his own consciousness as a man unworthy, and greatly to be despised! The chaos was come again! And, verily, chaos was there, but not by any means newly come. And, moreover, when chaos begins to be conscious of itself, then is the dawn of an ordered world at hand. Nay, the ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... same jeering band Will bite the dust—will lick the Mohawk's hand; Will kneel and cower at the Mohawk's feet; Will shrink when ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... expiation and release, And prophesied that Slavery's power, Grown great apace with crime's increase, Before the front of Right should cower, And bid God's ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... people have a fire all night. In the morning they cower over it like inhabitants of the poles. Of course we as well as they, having been baked in the summer's sun, now feel the cold ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... garden of the cottage, which, low-roofed, seemed to submit to the majesty of nature, and cower amidst the venerable remains of forgotten time. Flowers, the children of the spring, adorned her garden and casements; in the midst of lowliness there was an air of elegance which spoke the graceful taste ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... Judge Hildreth repeated the words in an awestruck tone. Did she see him cower in his chair? It must have been an optical illusion. The storm outside was making the house ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... instant opened on the world. There are two houses separated by but an inch or two of wall. In one, there are quiet minds at rest; in the other, a waking conscience that one might think would trouble the very air. In that close corner where the roofs shrink down and cower together as if to hide their secrets from the handsome street hard by, there are such dark crimes, such miseries and horrors, as could be hardly told in whispers. In the handsome street, there are folks asleep who have dwelt there all their lives, ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... by a thunderbolt, released his hold, and, staggering back a few paces, seemed to cower, abashed and humbled, before the eye of the priest, as it glared upon him ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... crossed the hillside in doubt whether it were foe or friend, to be roused from sleep by the slogan of the Highlander or the cry of the borderer as they swept sheep and kye from every homestead in the valley, to bear hunger and thirst and cold and nakedness, to cower within the peel-tower or lurk in the moorland while barn and byre went up in pitiless flame, to mount and ride at a lord's call on forays as pitiless, this was the rough school in which the Scotch peasant was trained through two hundred years. But it was ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... she has ower mony bairns to hap them a'; her wings winna cower them, and she drives this ane awa', and winna lat it come ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... a little flower 'Neath a great oak tree: When the tempest 'gan to lower Little heeded she: No need had she to cower, For she dreaded not its power - She was happy in the bower Of her great oak tree! Sing hey, Lackaday! Let the tears fall free For the pretty little flower and the great ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... are under excellent discipline. They are tall, dark, and heavily bearded men, presenting quite a striking appearance in their semi-military uniforms. Of course they have no sympathy with the Chinese, who cower under the police batons, which are ruthlessly used when deemed necessary. Society in the city is entirely English, and, to use an expressive word, is "fast." Balls, races, regattas, and fetes of all kinds ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... have before, Why should I fear to view the storm-cloud's form? I answered to the Voice. In One I trust, Upon whose blazing path the clouds are dust, Why should I cower 'neath the whirlwind's roar? God's chariot is the ...
— Across the Sea and Other Poems. • Thomas S. Chard
... like a dream! wealth, pomp and power! And Learning's toils, so nobly urged! Doomed 'neath a tyrant's lash to cower, She gnaws the chain ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... that explains the foreign language—and I do not know Spanish." Then facing him again with an air and look that made him cower, in spite of his bravado, she sternly asked: ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... ravined up his flesh, And earth had veiled his bones, the Trojans then Tarried in Priam's city, sore afraid Before the might of stout-heart Aeacus' son: As kine they were, that midst the copses shrink From faring forth to meet a lion grim, But in dense thickets terror-huddled cower; So in their fortress shivered these to see That mighty man. Of those already dead They thought of all whose lives he reft away As by Scamander's outfall on he rushed, And all that in mid-flight to that high wall He slew, how he quelled Hector, ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... pass, high-crowned with snow, Where Afghans cower with eyes of gleaming hate. He hurls himself against the hidden foe. They try to rally — ah, too late, too late! Again, defenseless, with fierce eyes that wait For death, he stands, like baited bull at bay, And flouts the Boers, that ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... pathway—in short, to urge us on more or less. To those envious minds who affect to regard BROWN as a mere amateur, an undertaker of more than he has the ability to execute, we would deign but one reply, and that would be, "Look at his trees in the picture called the 'Ruins of the Mill,' and then cower back into ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various
... of spray over him. He was perfectly enchanted, and fluttered, turned about, and frisked, like a bird possessed. As he became accustomed to it, I began to throw handfuls of water over him, and that he did enjoy. He would cower down, and lie with his wings expanded and beak open, receiving charge after charge of water till quite out of breath; then he would run a few paces away on his island till he recovered himself, and then would go back and place himself ready for a renewed douche. I never saw such ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... the forest. The very earth trembled and seemed terrified at the dreadful conflict going on above. It seemed to the two friends as if the end of the world were come; and they could do nothing but cower among the branches of the tree and watch the storm in silence; while they felt, in a way they had never before experienced, how utterly helpless they were, and unable to foresee, or avert, the many dangers by which ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... point of the line, but the cold was no better at the present terminus, Henchir Souatir, whither he was bound on some business connected with the big phosphate company. On such occasions the natives barricade their doors and cower within over a warming-pan filled with the glowing embers of desert shrubs; as for Europeans—a dog's life, he said; in winter we are shrivelled to mummies, in ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... tasked to the utmost by trial and misfortune. Such an one was Frank Sheldon. Disposed to ease and quiet in the hour of prosperity, when adversity came, it aroused him at once to vigorous, decisive action. Though bereft of love and fortune at a blow, as it were, his manly spirit did not cower and sink beneath the strokes; that he suffered is true, but he bore up bravely under the adverse fortune. He was proud, as all great minds are, and the blight so publicly cast on Annie Evalyn's good repute, cut him ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... of Hell, little the wonder. But we cannot yet believe. There is a sparing strain in nature, and through the world, as a thread, is spun a silence which smiles, and on the end of events we find placarded large the words: "Why were ye afraid?" A dignified Hope, therefore—even now, when we cower beneath this worldwide shadow of the wings of the Condor of Death—becomes us: and, indeed, we see such an attitude among some of the humblest of our people, from whose heart ascends the cry: "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." Here, therefore, ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... worldly gear we may be bare, We may hae mony a dreary hour; But never, never nurse despair, For ilka ane maun taste the sour: Even kings themsels, wi' a' their power, Wi' a' their pomp and honours high, 'Neath adverse blasts are forced to cower, And jouk to ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... and crept in under a ledge of rock that did be in that place; and she did seem utter worn, and gone of the spirit, and desperate. And I perceived in the same instant why that she did go stealthy and swift in that fashion, and to cower, as for her very life; for there came a squat, haired man, so broad as a bullock, who did come silent down into the hollow, looking this way and that, even as a wild beast doth ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... such an approach betraying the family to some strong enemy on watch. She circles around a little, scrutinizes the landscape, studies the tracks and the wind, then comes to the door by more or less devious hidden ways. The sound of a foot outside is enough to make the little ones cower in absolute silence, but mother reassures them with a whining call much like that of a dog mother. They rush out, tumbling over each other in their glee, six or seven in number usually, but sometimes as high as ten or twelve. Eagerly ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... tremble and even scream. And all through life an unexpected and loud noise is likely to startle us. An investigation has shown that thunder is feared much more than lightning. Children will laugh at the flashes of lightning, but will cower before the roaring thunder. ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... we think upon the fearful possibilities hidden away in the womb of the future. Any day may snatch from our life its light. One moment we were happy in the possession of some dear object, about which to twine the tendrils of the heart; the next, we cower and shiver in the chill gloom of a bereavement that withers the soul and makes existence an intolerable burden! To-day all nature smiles with a sunny warmth, and life spreads before us a wilderness of sweets; ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... teaching of His works that spread So silently around. His snows descend And make the green Earth hoary. Chains of frost Straighten her breadth of waters. Dropping rains Refresh her summer thirst, or rending clouds Roll in wild deluge o'er her. Roaming beasts Cower in their dens affrighted, while she quakes Convuls'd with inward agony, or reels Dizzied with flashing fires. Again she smiles In her recovered beauty, at His will, Maker of all things. So, He rules the world, With wrath commingling mercy. Who may hope With finite mind to understand His ways, So ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... Belle impatiently. "We can't hide like bears that go into hollow trees and suck their paws for half a dozen years, more or less"—Belle's zoological ideas were startling rather than accurate—"I don't want to hide and cower. Why should we? We've done nothing we need be ashamed of. Father's been unfortunate; so have hundreds and thousands of other men in these hard times. Roger showed me an estimate, cut from a newspaper, of how many had failed during the last two ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... with a fury which appalled the strong hearts of the settlers. Most of them were from the wooded lands of the East, and the sweep of the wind across this level sod had a terror which made them quake and cower. The month of ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... him my soul, and swore an oath that I would stand up for him in this world and stand by him in the next. (Solemnly) That promise and that oath made a man of me. From this day this house is his home; and no child shall cry in it: this hearth is his altar; and no soul shall ever cower over it in the dark evenings and be afraid. Now (turning forcibly on the rest) which of you good men will take this child and rescue her from the house ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... a fresh shivering fit came on. At such times I would cover my head with the bedclothes and cower, and see the Picture even so floating visibly in mid-air ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... time in genteel dissipations, For cutting their garments, and—poorer relations. Controlled by thy will, they select their society; Thou art their instructor in manners and piety. And thus they obey the decrees of a power, To which, in a servile allegiance, they cower— A power that binds them in thraldom, and then Makes puppets of women and puppies ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various |
