"Pusillanimous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... undeniable instance of retributive justice. Striking, indeed, was the difference between his deportment during the trial, and the manly fortitude of Connor O'Donovan, when standing under as heavy a charge at the same bar. The moment he entered the dock, it was observed that his face expressed all the pusillanimous symptoms of the most unmanly terror. His brows fell, or rather hung over his eyes, as if all their muscular power had been lost—giving to his countenance not only the vague sullenness of irresolute ferocity, ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... life, madam, I will not do my duty!" cried the admiral furiously. "It is not the only occasion upon which a man has gained the confidence of his friends. It is not the first time I have been so cruelly deceived. I can see it plainly. Either, like a pusillanimous coward, he turned tail, or there is some disgraceful entanglement which ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... with rich presents and a message vindicating the pusillanimous Emperor from any share in the conspiracy against Cortes. Continuing their march, the allied army of Spaniards and Tlascalans proceeded till they reached the mountains which separate the table-land of Puebla from that of Mexico. To cross this range they followed the route which passes between ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... must give up my playthings, in the meanwhile, since I am not in a position to secure myself against idle jeers. At the same time, I am sure that playthings are the very pick of life; all people give them up out of the same pusillanimous respect for those who are a little older; and if they do not return to them as soon as they can, it is only because they grow stupid and forget. I shall be wiser; I shall conform for a little to the ways of their foolish world; but so soon as I have made enough money, I shall retire and shut ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of this man left me drained of all courage. Surely, on no other occasion should I have been thus pusillanimous. My state I regarded as a hopeless one. I was wholly at the mercy of this being. Whichever way I turned my eyes, I saw no avenue by which I might escape. The resources of my personal strength, my ingenuity, and my eloquence, ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... and the means thereof. An argument fit for great and mighty princes to have in their hand; to the end that neither by over-measuring their forces, they leese themselves in vain enterprises; nor on the other side, by undervaluing them, they descend to fearful and pusillanimous counsels. ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... pen and looked into the future. He could see nothing ahead of him but bitterness and cause for alarm, and, seeking consolation, he was forced to admit that only religion could heal, but religion demanded in return so arrant a desertion of common sense, so pusillanimous a willingness to be astonished at nothing, that he threw up ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... with these words, every one of which I remember: "There are some who declare that Canada's trade is declining; there are some who maintain that the rich glow of health which at present mantles o'er Canada's virgin cheek will soon be replaced by the pallid hues of the corpse. To such pusillanimous propagandists of a preposterous pessimism, I answer, Mr. Speaker with all confidence, never! never!" As a rhetorical effort this is striking, though there seems a lack of lucidity ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... should go on any expedition he would, to the best of his power, as his liege subject, promote it, by assisting him with troops, arms, horses, and money." Llywelyn the Great refused to dispute the suzerainty of England. This may appear pusillanimous to the enthusiastic patriot, but subsequent events proved the old statesman's wisdom and clearsightedness. His successors were less cautious, were carried away by the patriotism round them and the syren ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... Britain, have I congratulated thy Happiness, where Virtue is rewarded, Vice discountenanc'd and punish'd; where the Man of Merit is provided for, and not oblig'd to pay a Levee to the kept Mistress of a Statesman; and where the Ignorant, Pusillanimous, and Vicious, however distinguish'd by Birth and Fortune, are held in Contempt, and never admitted to ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... bearer from home of a letter of introduction. I say "good fortune," because I conceive it to be one of the greatest of social blessings, as well as pleasures, to be made acquainted with a truly upright and honourable man—one whose integrity never bends to wrongful or pusillanimous expediency;—one who, armed intellectually with the panoply of justice, has courage to sustain it under any and all circumstances;—one whose ambition is, in a public capacity, to serve his country, and not to serve himself;—one who waits for his ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... enervated soldiers abandoned their own, and the public defence; and their pusillanimous indolence may be considered as the immediate cause of the downfall of the empire." Gibbon's "Decline ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... from my duty in the worst times, and I will not trifle with it in those which look more prosperous. Much must be done to save the British Government from an infamous and daring combination, which might have been yielded to by a more pusillanimous minister; but could only be met by one confident in his character and conduct. Do not think this the language of vanity; the times have been, and still are much too serious for such a boyish passion: I feel that ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... England, and here there had stood in the way a more formidable obstacle than the mere reluctance of Franklin. The chevalier Luzerne and his secretary Marbois had been busy with Congress, and that body had sent well-meant but silly and pusillanimous instructions to its commissioners at Paris to be guided in all things by the wishes of the French court. To disregard such instructions required all the lofty courage for which Jay and Adams were noted, and for the moment it brought upon them something like a rebuke from Congress, ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... dying for, is unfit to live for, namely, national integrity. The South claims, little as we can understand it, the same ground for rising against the land they had sworn to protect, and whose fathers died with our fathers to create. We at the North would have been pusillanimous and weak indeed had we silently submitted to that which is in our view against every principle of national right and renown. To have acted otherwise would have been to bring down upon our heads the scorn and contempt of our enemies and of every foreign power, from the strongest ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... guillotine for attempting to do no more than has been most treacherously perpetrated by the present King of the French and the ex-Queen of Spain. How is it that LOUIS-PHILIPPE feels no touch of sympathy for that pusillanimous scoundrel—Just? He is naturally his veritable double; but then Just is only a carpenter, LOUIS-PHILIPPE is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... fell into his hands, a wreath of unfading laurel, and perhaps have saved almost countless lives of his fellow-countrymen. As it was, if he had only advanced his army a little faster, the twelve thousand Union soldiers, surrendered by the incompetent and pusillanimous Gen. Miles, would have been saved from the horrors of captivity and secured as a valuable reinforcement. To the very last, fortune appeared bent on giving him opportunity. The partial success won on the 17th of September, at the battle of Antietam, might ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... penetrating, have, thro' this neglect, sunk down to the Rank of the dull and stupid. Some Men have given very promising Specimens in their early Days, that they could think well themselves; but, whether from a pusillanimous Modesty, or a lazy Temper at first, I know not; they have by Degrees contracted such an Habit of Filching and Plagiary, as to lose their Capacity at length for one Original Thought. Some Writers indeed, as well as Practitioners in other Arts, seem only born to ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... boomed all over the place, vocal castigations falling right and left on the guilty and the innocent without distinction. He wouldn't have missed the excitement for anything in the world. He didn't mind missing the breakfast he was to have had with Barnes, but he did feel outraged over the pusillanimous trick played upon him by the remaining members of his troupe. Nothing was to have been expected of Putnam Jones and his damnation crew; they wouldn't have called him if the house was afire; they would let him roast to death; but certainly something was due him from the members of ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... living persons, who had unfortunately survived him. It is difficult to conceive in any case, how these memoirs written at Venice, when his heart was torn with grief and bitterness, could possibly have been silent as to the injustice and calumny overwhelming him, or even as to the pusillanimous behavior of so-called friends; while even writers generally hostile no longer ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... remonstrances were disregarded, and courses were pursued to which she strongly objected. The surrender after Majuba was in her opinion a pusillanimous abandonment of the English flag, and it was with extreme reluctance that she acquiesced in it. Still more vehement were her feelings about the long abandonment of General Gordon in the Soudan. She had been indefatigable in urging on the Ministry of Gladstone the duty of speedy measures for his ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... temper for adventures; and a visit to Madame Romanoff on so sentimental an errand seemed to me, the more I pondered it, to partake of this quality to be rich in distasteful possibilities. Must I write myself pusillanimous, if I confess that I never made it, that I committed my old friend's violin into the hands of the woman who had been his pupil by the ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... triumvirs whose usurpation he detested. No one was powerful enough to screen him from these combined hostilities, except the very men who aimed at the subversion of Roman liberties, and who wished him out of the way; his friend Pompey showed a mean, pusillanimous, and calculating selfishness, and neither Crassus nor Caesar liked him. But in his latter days, part of which were passed in exile, and all without political consideration, he found time to compose those ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... though it would have been better to fight ten battles than to give up one of them, still a set of flatterers harassed our pusillanimous emperor with harping on the dreaded name of Procopius, and affirmed that unless we quickly recrossed the river, that chieftain, as soon as he heard of the death of Julian, would easily bring about a revolution which ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... of the capitulation been bruited about the streets, than it was received with a sorrow and indignation almost past description. Had the unlucky and pusillanimous Mr. Forster appeared at that moment, he "would certainly," as Mr. Patten relates, "have been cut to pieces." Even in his chamber, the General was attacked by his own Secretary, Mr. Murray, and a pistol which was aimed at him only averted by Mr. Patten's ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... distinguishing excellence of this instrument, like that of Magna Charta, consists in the wise and equitable protection which it affords to all classes of the community. [43] The General Privilege, instead of being wrested, like King John's charter, from a pusillanimous prince, was conceded, reluctantly enough, it is true, in an assembly of the nation, by one of the ablest monarchs who ever sat on the throne of Aragon, at a time when his arms, crowned with repeated victory, had secured to the state the most important of her foreign acquisitions. ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... be done to him by H. Fielding and his man. Mr A. Tucker feared that the man would beat, maim, or kill him." No words could more aptly sum up this delightful story than those of Mr Austin Dobson: "a charming girl, who is also an heiress; a pusillanimous guardian, with ulterior views of his own; a handsome and high-spirited young suitor; a faithful attendant ready to 'beat, maim or kill' on his master's behalf; a frustrated elopement and a compulsory visit to the mayor—all these with the picturesque old town of Lyme for ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... cut in: "And it beats all how ye kin understand him when he talks," he laughed, too loyal to his friend to throw doubt on the old trapper's veracity, "and yet it's kind o' cur'ous how a dog as old as him and that's had as much experience as him kin git twisted julluk some pusillanimous idjit that ain't never been off the ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... the head of forty or fifty men then commenced the attack, and kept up a brisk fire. But the militia no sooner beheld the enemy advance impetuously, than they threw down their arms without firing and fled instantly. This was followed by others, acting in the same pusillanimous style, and at least two-thirds of the army never fired ...
— A sketch of the life and services of Otho Holland Williams • Osmond Tiffany
... valour in Venice, or any soundness in her military system, she might easily have renewed her armies, and again confronting fortune have stood prepared either to conquer, or, if she must fall, to fall more gloriously; and at any rate might have obtained for herself more honourable terms. But a pusillanimous spirit, occasioned by the defects of her ordinances in so far as they relate to war, caused her to lose at once her courage and her dominions. And so will it always happen with those who behave like the Venetians. For when men grow insolent ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... left, the Kralahome's half-brother; for it was he, and no other, who had committed this most cowardly act of revenge. The expression of Mr. Hunter's face, as the truth slowly dawned upon him, was rich in its blending of indignation, disgust, and contempt. "The pusillanimous rascal!" he exclaimed, as he hurried off ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... stands in our way; neither caring for allurements, nor fearing opposition, but by a pious obstinacy and frowardness, we must thrust away the one and bear down the other. This is the Christian who will carry heaven by force, when the whining pusillanimous professor, who only complains of difficulty, but never attempts to conquer it, will be for ever ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of Asben by the Kailouees. The houses we passed in ruins are said to have been once occupied by the Kilgris. If so, they evidently were in former times powerful and opulent, and have since become relaxed and pusillanimous. At any rate, they have been expelled by the fiercer and more ferocious Kailouees. The Oulimad also come here to plunder occasionally. At Gurarek we saw a phenomenon which, after so much desert, ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... its own, as Demeter, in the days of her desolation, took the child Demophoon to nurture him as her own on the food of gods, and to plunge him through the flames of a fire that would give him immortal life. As the pusillanimous and sordid fears of the mortal mother lost to the child for evermore the possession of Olympian joys and of perpetual youth, so did the craven and earthly cares of bodily needs hold the artist back from the radiance of the life of the soul, and drag him from the purifying fires. Yet ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... rage in South Carolina, a British captain by the name of Ardeisoff came up to Georgetown in an armed vessel, and filled the country with printed proclamations from lord Cornwallis, calling on the GOOD PEOPLE of South Carolina to submit and take royal protections!! Numbers of the ignorant and pusillanimous sort closed with the offer. But the nobler ones of the district, (Williamsburgh,) having no notion of selling their liberties for a 'pig in a poke', called a caucus of their own, from whom they selected captain ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... found pleasure in handling the weapons of strife; may it be longer to the time when they shall be needed in this abode of peace. These are instruments of death, resembling those used in my youth, by cavaliers that rode in the levies of the first Charles, and of his pusillanimous father. There were worldly pride and great vanity, with much and damning ungodliness, in the wars that I have seen, my children; and yet the carnal man found pleasure in the stirrings of those graceless days! Come ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... to look at,' says the Southerner, looking him over carefully. 'He won't eat like folks—he can't talk—an' he sleeps like a bat. I dunno why such a pusillanimous critter should cumber the yearth,' and with that he puts his hand to his hip and pulls out a forty-five from under the tails of his coat. Fuzzy takes one look at it, and it didn't need any prodding to make him holler, and he tries to tear off the ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... had reached the caravel, and made known the perilous state in which he had left the vessel. He was reproached with his pusillanimous desertion; the commander of the caravel manned his boat and hastened to the relief of the admiral, followed by the recreant master, covered with shame ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... "The pusillanimous cuss," the latter muttered, "he 's worse than a cur dog. Blamed if he was n't actually afraid of me. A gun-fighter—pugh!" He lifted his voice, as "Reb" paused in the light of the hall beyond and glanced back, a fist doubled and uplifted. ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... as on mistaken policy; for, by depriving able men of their natural right to official distinction, he did more than enfeeble himself,—he deprived the country of their services. Walpole's was the more daring plan, and Pelham's was palpably and abjectly pusillanimous; but the result of the one was, to reduce the government to a solitary minister, while the result of the other was always to form an effective cabinet. The former plan may subsist, during a period of national peril; but the return of public tranquillity, which, in England, is always ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... painful tragedy of low life, written under the influence of Russian evangelism, and full of reminiscences of Dostoievsky's 'Crime and Punishment.' Giovanni is a poor clerk, of a weak, pusillanimous nature, completely dominated by a coarse, brutal companion, Giulio Wanzer, who makes him an abject slave, until a detected forgery compels Wanzer to flee the country. Episcopo then marries Ginevra, the pretty but unprincipled waitress at his pension, who speedily drags ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Dr. Brandes means to imply so much; but in all of his writings there is manifested a deep sympathy with the law-breaker whose Titanic soul refuses to be bound by the obligations of morality which limit the freedom of ordinary mortals. Only petty and pusillanimous souls, according to him, submit to these restraints; the heroic soul breaks them, as did Byron and Shelley, because he has outgrown them, or because he is too great to recognize the right of any power to limit his freedom of action or restrain him in the free assertion ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... again become pious"—so do those apostates confess; and some of them are still too pusillanimous ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... abominateth all falsehood); including a treacherous breach of faith towards mankind; we being all, in order to the maintenance of society, by an implicit compact, obliged by speech to declare our mind, to inform truly, and not to impose upon our neighbour; arguing pusillanimous timorousness and impotency of mind, a distrust in God's help, and diffidence in all good means to compass our designs; begetting deception and error, a foul and ill-favoured brood: lying, I say, is upon such accounts a sinful and blamable thing; and of all lies those ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... various aspects—religious, racial, economic, and agrarian—our demands have too often and too long been met in the spirit of the Levite who passed by on the other side, until violence has forced tardy redress, acquiesced in with reluctance. If the action of Wellington and Peel was pusillanimous in granting Emancipation, for the express purpose of resisting which they were placed in power, backed as they were in their refusal by their allies in Ireland, the next great measures of reform forty years later were admitted by Mr. Gladstone himself ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... respect, and congratulations upon his present position. This was an unanswerable denial; and so he sent the letter to Baltimore. This story, fabricated out of nothing but malice, was meant to injure in two ways, by proving him a gambler, and also pusillanimous. The slanderous officer will probably cease to be one, as I believe falsehood is not ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... fertile, producing abundance of fruit, with sugar and long pepper, great quantities of cotton, which the inhabitants manufacture with much skill, and has great abundance of cattle and poultry. The natives are heathens of a pusillanimous character, yet false and treacherous; for it ally the case that cowardice ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... both her people and statesmen took a fiendish delight in referring to the Commonwealth as "the late United States!" All this, I say, will influence, and ought to influence, America in favor of the independence of Ireland, and prevent the American people from regarding the present pusillanimous blandishments of John Bull as other than simply the result of cowardice, and an attempt to propitiate a great power that had survived his infernal machinations, and now looms up a just and mighty avenger before him. So long then, as England ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... truckling and pusillanimous reptile, Crippled-Speech Trollop, has gone over to the enemy. It is contended, now, that he has been a friend to the bill, in secret, since the day it was introduced, and has had bankable reasons for being so; but he himself declares that he has ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... pusillanimous cowards, "we shall be subject to a long and bloody war, if we declare independence." On the contrary, I affirm it the only step that can bring the contest to a speedy and happy issue. By declaring independence we put ourselves on a footing for an equal negotiation. ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... 'planted' with Englishmen and Lowland Scots. In the midst of all these changes the great Queen, grown old and very lonely, died in 1603; and with her ended the glorious Tudor dynasty of England. James, pusillanimous and pedantic son of Darnley and Mary Queen of Scots, ascended the throne as the first of the sinister Stuarts, and, truckling to vindictive Spain, threw Raleigh into prison under suspended ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... have done some of our neighbours; and no attempts have been made towards communism,—as has been the case with others. We have been laborious, contented, and prosperous; and if we have been reabsorbed by the mother country, in accordance with what I cannot but call the pusillanimous conduct of certain of our elder Britannulists, it has not been from any failure on the part of the island, but from the opposition with which the Fixed Period ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... yet highly necessary to be perfectly known and considered by every man of rank or property, lest his ignorance of the points whereon it is founded should hurry him into faction and licentiousness on the one hand, or a pusillanimous indifference and criminal submission on the other. And we have seen that these rights consist, primarily, in the free enjoyment of personal security, of personal liberty, and of private property. So long as these remain inviolate, the subject is perfectly free; for every species of compulsive ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... who had hitherto been the most prominent champions of Protestantism in Germany (though both half-hearted and pusillanimous shufflers) were Gustavus's brother-in-law, the Elector of Brandenburg, and the Elector of Saxony. They were now doing their best to wriggle out of their obligations, and by a shameful neutrality avert ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... cubicle and Edwin had a dreadful moment introducing her to Darius and explaining their purpose. Why had he not prepared the ground in advance? His pusillanimous cowardice again! However, the directing finger of God sent a customer into the shop, and Edwin escaped with his Hilda through the ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... in Burgundy, drinking Granvelle's good wine. His patience under the daily insults which he received from the government made him despicable in the eyes of his own party. He was described by his friends as pusillanimous to an incredible extent, timid from excess of riches, afraid of his own shadow. He was becoming exceedingly pathetic, expressing frequently a desire to depart and end his days in peace. His faithful Hopper sustained and consoled him, but even Joachim could not soothe ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... fortunate. Neither the grandees nor the orators proved good soldiers. The Earl of Stamford, one of the greatest nobles of England, was routed by the Royalists at Stratton. Nathaniel Fiennes, inferior to none of his contemporaries in talents for civil business, disgraced himself by the pusillanimous surrender of Bristol. Indeed, of all the statesmen who at this juncture accepted high military commands, Hampden alone appears to have carried into the camp the capacity and strength of mind which had made him eminent ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... happened that a man who was both mediocre and pusillanimous, without education, without ideas, without knowledge, without force of character, and who might be expected not to succeed in the slipperiest city in the world, came by his principles of conduct, by his sense of justice, by the goodness of a heart that was truly Christian, and through his ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... been represented to me,' he said, 'by the colonies and by persons in this country who are interested in them, that the course which I am proposing is not consistent with the necessities of the case; that there is something pusillanimous in the motion which I am going to make; that in point of fact the interests connected with sugar and coffee planting are in extremis; and that while the question of their redress is being discussed in a committee above-stairs, these great interests ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... watched the little operation of "sticking up" without a word, but with revived interest in life. He noted the pusillanimous pallor of the driver and his friend, and felt personally indebted to the desperado who had put a stop to their unpleasant conversation. The inside passenger made a yet more obsequious surrender. Not ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... the discovery of my loss rendered me for a long time unable to think clearly. My mind was dejected and pusillanimous— my brain, as it were, paralysed—so that whenever I took to thinking, my thoughts only wandered, or centred on the terrible doom ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... of the house of David might protect them from the suspicions of a tyrant, the present greatness of his own family alarmed the pusillanimous temper of Domitian, which could only be appeased by the blood of those Romans whom he either feared, or hated, or esteemed. Of the two sons of his uncle Flavius Sabinus, the elder was soon convicted of treasonable intentions, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... A pusillanimous peace, always possible at any period At length the twig was becoming the tree Being the true religion, proved by so many testimonies Certainly it was worth an eighty years' war Chief seafaring nations of the world were already protestant Conceding it subsequently, after ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... Vikings had captured Prince Bentrik and were holding him for ransom. Beyond that, the Government was trying to sit on the whole story, and the Opposition was hinting darkly at corrupt deals and sinister plots. Prince Bentrik arrived in the midst of an impassioned tirade against pusillanimous traitors surrounding his Majesty who were betraying ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... son of one of the revolutionary butchers of the Reign of Terror; a furious republican, who wears a carmagnole and a red cap, inherits his father's hatred of the vile aristocrats, and prides himself on his principles, and on a truculent and immeasurable mustache. Amoudru, a pusillanimous mayor; Bobilier, a fiery old justice of the peace, and devoted vassal of the house of Chateaugiron; and Rabusson, once a sergeant in M. de Vaudrey's regiment, now his game-keeper, must not be forgotten. A festival got up by Bobilier to celebrate the marquis's arrival ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... been attacked at that Time, or consequently they would not have sent them there. (Wherefore it is evident, this Scheme facilitated the Army's becoming Masters of Boccachica, and put an End to the Dispute sooner than was expected, or could possibly have happened, had any Nation but pusillanimous Spaniards had the Defence of it; for had the Place been defended equal to its Strength and excellent Disposition, both of the Ships and Batteries, it would have been a difficult Task for the Fleet and Army both to have rendered themselves Masters ...
— An Account of the expedition to Carthagena, with explanatory notes and observations • Sir Charles Knowles
... right to that province. The Bavarians themselves long for annexation to Austria, for they know that it is their only road to prosperity. They look with hope and confidence to Maria Theresa, whose goodness and greatness may compensate them for all that they have endured at the hands of their pusillanimous little rulers. The only man in Germany who will oppose the succession of Austria to Bavaria, is Frederick, who is as ready to enlarge his own dominions as to cry 'Stop thief!' when he sees others doing likewise. But he will not raise a single voice unless he receive encouragement from ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... hag began to get angry, and show a glimpse of her diabolic nature (like a snake's head, peeping with a hiss out of her bosom,) at this pusillanimous behavior of the thing, which she had taken the trouble ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... made free talk of the undertaking to Diana and to Ruth, loving, as does the pusillanimous, to show himself engaged in daring enterprises. Emulating his friend Sir Rowland, he held forth with prolixity upon the great service he was to do the State, and Ruth, listening to him, was proud of his zeal, the sincerity of which it never entered ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... were addressing one of a totally unkindred clay, one of the drossy children of earth, with whom I have no relationship and feel I could never have any familiarity. Have you ever felt that the presence of a man without feeling made you a fool? I am always dumb, or pusillanimous or (if I speak) ridiculous, in the company of such a person. I love a reasoner, and do not by any means wish to be flashing lightning, cloud-riding, or playing with stars. But a marble-hearted companion, who, if you should by chance give way to an impetuous ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... the first message, this sounded like a retreat. It outraged the feelings of the war party. It was, to their minds, an anticlimax, a pusillanimous surrender. None was angrier than John Randolph of Virginia, hitherto the leader of the forces of the Administration in the House. He did not hesitate to express his disgust with "this double set of opinions and principles"; and his anger mounted when he learned that as Chairman ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... on as usual, descending to the plain, and when we had got half-way across it, I scoured the hills all round with my telescope to see if I could discern traces of our pusillanimous foes. ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... compassion of his captor by tears. The uncle, however, so far had pity for his vanquished nephew as to appoint him to the governorship of the city of Kolomna. This seemed perfectly to satisfy the pusillanimous young man, and, after partaking of a splendid feast with his uncle, he departed, rejoicing, from the capital where he had been enthroned, to the provincial city assigned ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... violent, threatening and haughty, although he carefully abstained from any personal allusions to myself and even avoided calling me by name. His declamation over, I stepped out, thinking it unbecoming and pusillanimous not to neutralize an address, that might do so much injury, especially because I could perceive by their smothered sighs, and read in the paleness of their faces the strong impression it had made on several priests, who shortly before had been won over to the Gospel and were not yet firm as ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... the fueros, was thereupon acknowledged as sovereign. However, it was only in 1516 that the former rulers were expelled from Navarrese territory. "Had I been Don Juan and you Donna Catherine," said the Queen to her pusillanimous husband, as they crossed the Pyrenees, "we should not have lost our kingdom." From this time forward the d'Albrets, like their successors the Bourbons, were sovereigns of Navarre in name only, for an attempt made in 1521 to reconquer the kingdom ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... be a great and unbearable disgrace to him that his cousin should go everywhere and clear the sea and land of the brigands who infested them, and he should refuse to undertake the adventures that came in his way; throwing discredit upon his reputed father by a pusillanimous flight by sea, and upon his real father by bringing him only the sandals and an unfleshed sword, and not proving his noble birth by the evidence of some brave deed accomplished by him. In this spirit he set out on his journey, with the intention of doing wrong ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... Montgomery. This braggart asserted, in the House of Commons, "amidst the loudest cheering, that he knew the Americans very well, and was certain they would not fight; 'that they were not soldiers and never could be made so, being naturally pusillanimous and incapable of discipline; that a very slight force would be more than sufficient for their complete reduction'; and he fortified his statement by repeating their peculiar expressions, and ridiculing their religious enthusiasm, manners and ways ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... say, Mozart could not convince his pusillanimous father that he did not owe an apology to the Archbishop for being kicked. But he was so deeply offended that he never returned to Salzburg. So much for those who cherish the pathetic belief that the days of patrons were of benefit to the artist ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... They are something more than secular, often little short of blasphemous. That they were tolerated proves the cynical temper of his times. When the fat old scoundrel of a Bourbon king ran away with all his court and the pusillanimous Joseph Bonaparte came upon the scene, Goya swerved and went through the motions of loyalty, a thing that rather disturbs the admirers of the supposedly sturdy republican. But he was only marking time. He left a terrific arraignment of war and its horrors. Nor ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... Genius that Lived under the Great Ovens, and, with his finger pointed at the cat, said in a frightful voice, husky with wood-ashes: "Miserable and pusillanimous beast! By telling a falsehood to cover a wrong you have only made bad matters worse. For betraying man's kindness to cover your shame, a curse shall be upon you and all your kind until the end of the world. Whenever men stroke you in kindness, remembrance of your guilt shall ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... resistance to the barbarous conduct of their captor. He thought his companion had been tame and mean-spirited, he had submitted so quietly to his punishment; and when they had got out of the hearing of Mr. Batterman, he roundly reproached him for his pusillanimous demeanor. ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... me, and in particular yourself and princely daughter, O king Alcinous, demand from me that I should no longer keep you in ignorance of what or who I am; for to reserve any secret from you, who have with such openness of friendship embraced my love, would argue either a pusillanimous or an ungrateful mind in me. Know, then, that I am that Ulysses, of whom I perceive ye have heard something; who heretofore have filled the world with the renown of my policies. I am he by whose counsels, if Fame is to be believed at all, more than by the united valour ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... soldiers, and barricadoed the quarter of the Colonna—that the bell of the Capitol sounded—that Rienzi addressed the People—that they were silent and inactive—and that Rienzi then abdicated the government. But for this he calls Rienzi "pusillanimous." Is not that epithet to be applied to the People? Rienzi invoked them to move against the Robber—the People refused to obey. Rienzi wished to fight—the People refused to stir. It was not the cause of Rienzi alone which demanded their exertions—it was the cause ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... a conscientious official; but throughout this time he was regarded, and regarded himself, primarily as Grillparzer the poet; and in spite of loyalty to the monarchy, he was entirely out of sympathy with the antediluvian administration of Metternich and his successors. Little things, magnified by pusillanimous apprehension, stood in his way. In 1819 he expressed in a poem The Ruins of Campo Vaccino esthetic abhorrence of the cross most inappropriately placed over the portal of the Coliseum in Rome, and was thereafter never free of the suspicion of heresy. In 1825 membership in a social club raided ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... and the seriousness thereby dissipated into an affair not serious at all. Yes, that was the point of it and the reason it epitomised him. There was none of life's dilemmas—little dilemmas that irritate ordinary people or in which ordinary people display themselves pusillanimous; or tragic dilemmas that find ordinary people wanting and leave them in vacillation and despair—there was none of any sort that Harry, receiving with his comic, "Mice and Mumps! Mice and Mumps, old girl!" did not receive with the assurance ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... who was to succeed him upon the throne, was then in Poland. Catharine was glad to have the pusillanimous Charles out of the way. He was sufficiently depraved to commit any crime, without being sufficiently resolute to brave its penalty. Henry III. had, in early life, displayed great vigor of character. At the age of fifteen he had been placed in the command ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... whole army now moved rapidly forward, confident of an easy victory, many even supposing that Artaxerxes would make no stand at all, but abandon his capital to them. The Great King, however, was not so hopelessly pusillanimous as that; for, when Cyrus reached Kunaxa, scouts brought word that the enemy's hosts were not far behind. This time the intelligence was correct. That very afternoon a great cloud of white dust rolled up from the plain, and as it kept advancing ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... Kine speaks, lamenting still that no adequate lord has been assigned her. Zarathustra is a feeble and pusillanimous man, not one of royal state who is able to bring his purpose to effect. The Ameshospends join in the cry for the true ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... of States' selfishness, stinginess, and indifference—caused by the natural reversion of human nature to first principles after the collapse of that enthusiasm which inflates mankind into a bombastic pride of itself; Virginia pusillanimous, Rhode Island an old beldam standing on the village pump and shrieking disapproval of everything; Jay, Adams, and Franklin, after years of humiliating mendicancy, their very hearts wrinkled in the service of the stupidest country known to God or ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... travellers, have seemed to readers as inconsistencies in their reports; Thornton accepts the inconsistency. "The national character of the Turks," he says, "is a composition of contradictory qualities. We find them brave and pusillanimous; gentle and ferocious; resolute and inconstant; active and indolent; fastidiously abstemious, and indiscriminately indulgent. The great are alternately haughty and humble, arrogant and cringing, liberal and sordid." What is ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... advisers of the crown recommended the King not to commence a suit against them, in which they might probably be acquitted. It is impossible to describe the displeasure which affected Elizabeth on this turn of affairs, which she ascribed to the pusillanimous and negligent government of James. Did he not know, she asked, that the religion of the rebels was only a cloak for treason? Would he trust men who had so often betrayed him? He could never expect them ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... the streets of our capital; detaining the enemy at least for a day, my army will arrive, and we shall be strong enough to give battle. I must go to Paris; when I am not there, they do nothing but blunder! My brother Joseph is a pusillanimous and easily-disheartened man, and Minister Clarke is a blockhead. Marmont and Mortier are traitors deserving death, for they violated my express instructions. I asked them to hold out only two days, and the traitors capitulated before they had elapsed! ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... in this respect. By proper legislation we may, and ought to, place in the hands of the Federal Executive the means of enforcing the treaty rights of such aliens in the courts of the Federal Government. It puts our Government in a pusillanimous position to make definite engagements to protect aliens and then to excuse the failure to perform those engagements by an explanation that the duty to keep them is in States or cities, not within our control. If we would promise we must put ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... remaining hopes; his wisdom was the sacred altar and temple to which they fled for refuge, and his counsels, more than anything, preserved them from dispersing and deserting their city, as in the time when the Gauls took possession of Rome. He, whom they esteemed fearful and pusillanimous when they were, as they thought, in a prosperous condition, was now the only man, in this general and unbounded dejection and confusion, who showed no fear, but walked the streets with an assured and serene countenance, addressed his fellow-citizens, checked the women's lamentations, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... one emasculated by his successor. What can be more august than our rites? The first dignitaries of the republic are emulous to administer them: nothing of low or venal has any place in them; nothing pusillanimous, nothing unsocial and austere. I speak of them as they were; before Superstition woke up again from her slumber, and caught to her bosom with maternal love the alluvial monsters of the Nile. Philosophy, never fit for the people, had entered the best houses, ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... of our Union! Such a condescension would damn an honest man, would put modesty to the blush. What! to engage in a contest with you? a rogue, a damnable thief, a negro thief, an outbreaker, a criminal in the sight of all honest men; ... the mother, too, of a pusillanimous son, who permitted me to curse and damn you in Sylvania! I would rather be caught with another man's sheep on my back than to engage in such a subject, and with such an individual as old Laura ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... behaviour of the Court makes one think that the Italians were frightened, and that the Spanish part of the ministry were not sorry it took that turn. As I suppose there is no great city in Spain which has not at least a bigger bundle of grievances than the capital, one shall not wonder if the pusillanimous behaviour of the King encourages ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... sick prison-house and doubting-castle! 'His great business,' he would profess, 'was to escape from himself.' Yet towards all this he has taken his position and resolution; can dismiss it all 'with frigid indifference, having little to hope or to fear.' Friends are stupid, and pusillanimous, and parsimonious; 'wearied of his stay, yet offended at his departure;' it is the manner of the world. 'By popular delusion,' remarks he, with a gigantic calmness, 'illiterate writers will rise into renown:' it is a portion of the history of English literature; a perennial ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... brave as Robespierre was pusillanimous, repressed the smile of disdain that quivered on his lips a moment, ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... those personally acquainted with the habits of this lesser lion of the New World it is known to possess a marvellous courage and daring, it is nevertheless always spoken of in books of natural history as the most pusillanimous of the larger carnivores. It does not attack man, and Azara is perfectly correct when he affirms that it never hurts, or threatens to hurt, man or child, even when it finds them sleeping. This, however, is not a full statement of the facts; the puma will not even defend itself against man. How natural, ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... showed me yesterday a letter he had received from Paris from Count Pahlen, saying that, though the guillotine was not yet erected, the reign of terror had virtually commenced; for that the pusillanimous dread that kept the whole nation in awe of a handful of pickpockets could be described as ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... neighbor. When in this situation, he received intelligence of the treaty secretly concluded between John and Philip; and though uneasy at this concurrence of a French and Scottish war he resolved not to encourage his enemies by a pusillanimous behavior, or by yielding ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... would have to trace their "genealogical tree" before finding something much worse than a working woman. It is said that "three generations make a gentleman"; and if that be true there is some hope of Halliwell's great-grandsons—granting, of course, that the pusillanimous prig is not too epicene to provide himself with posterity. Day by day it becomes more evident that the purse-proud snobocracy of New York's old rat- catchers and sprat peddlers is fast getting a foothold ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... popular tumults into civil wars. Dissensions were not to be prevented; and those martial spirits which were so fierce and formidable abroad could not be habituated to any considerable moderation at home. Those who expect in a free state to see the people undaunted in war and pusillanimous in peace, are certainly desirous of impossibilities; and it may be advanced as a general rule that whenever a perfect calm is visible, in a state that calls itself a republic, the spirit of liberty ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... say the Annals, by the title of Ala ed-din Juhan-shah in September 1735.) But to this measure the concurrence of the other chiefs was wanting. At daybreak the guns of the castle began to play upon the mosque, and, some of the shot penetrating its walls, the pusillanimous Jemal al-alum, being alarmed at the danger, judged it advisable to retreat from thence and to set up his standard in another quarter, called kampong Jawa, his people at the same time retaining possession of the mosque. A regular warfare now ensued between the two parties and continued for ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... a drawn sword, shouting, "For King and Country"? They'd laugh at you, and follow a—leader: one of their own. Ruling by fear, ruthlessly without thought of human weakness, without tinge of mercy? They'd hate you, and you would have to drive them like the Prussians do. Ruling by pusillanimous kindness, by currying favour, by seeking to be a popularity Jack? ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... myself that I could relinquish it and turn back to Falmouth, cheating—yes, I fear deliberately cheating—myself with the assurance until more than half the journey lay behind me, and to turn back would be worse than pusillanimous. At St. Austell a carrier offered me a lift, and brought me to Liskeard. Thence I walked forward again, and in the late afternoon came in ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... There is nothing pusillanimous about the Irishman, except when in cold blood he was expected to attack an agent, or landlord, or policeman, armed to the teeth. In such cases, he remembered that his parents, by the blessing of the Holy Virgin, had endowed ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... Hill was followed by the complete surrender of the Gladstonian Government, an act which was either the most pusillanimous or the most magnanimous in recent history. It is hard for the big man to draw away from the small before blows are struck, but when the big man has been knocked down three times it is harder still. ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... precautions, and sneer at the pusillanimous mind that had suggested them, he defied proof, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... head was getting turned. Perhaps he had excuse. The newspapers printed nonsensical editorials praising "the young Napoleon." His mail was filled with letters urging him to carry things with a high hand; disregard, if necessary, the pusillanimous civil government, and boldly "save the country." He had so little humor that he could take this stuff seriously. Among all the foolish letters which the executors of famous men have permitted to see the light of publicity, ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... to defray the expenses of the war, provided the King would leave them in possession of their liberty and sovereignty. Leyden, Haarlem, and most of the other towns followed the example of the nobles in receiving these pusillanimous counsels with approbation. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson |
