"Timorous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... our Barbara is not at all afraid. She never was reckoned one of the bravest of us—never—timorous rather! Often we have laughed at her easy fears, we bolder ones. But which of us, I pray you, could go with such valiant cheer to meet the one prime terror of the nations as ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... needs be mistaken there," said the Doctor, with a timorous chuckle. "It is many a year since I have taken a deliberate note of my wretched old visage in a glass, but I remember they were ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... much as you wish it yourself. Why should you regard the councils of the traitorous and the timorous, who, for aught you know, may be in the pay of the Cabal? If the British retreat unmolested, the American army is disgraced. If Congress undertake to manage it, the whole cause will be lost, and the British will be stronger far than ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... with which the President, the Earl of Rosse, accompanied the presentation of the medal, "it is not difficult," writes Sir M. Foster, "reading between the lines, to recognise the appreciation of a new spirit of anatomical inquiry, not wholly free from a timorous apprehension as to its complete validity." ("In these papers (on the Medusae) you have for the first time fully developed their structure, and laid the foundation of a rational theory for their classification." "In your second paper 'On the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... Nagoo, the snake-charmer, heard that there was a large one in Beharilal's garden, he thought he might do good business by capturing it for the Jadoo-walla Saheb, and at the same time demanding a reward from the timorous Bunia for ridding him of such a dangerous neighbour. With this intent he repaired to the garden with all the apparatus of his art, his flat snake baskets, his mongoose and his crooked pipe. Having reconnoitred the ground, he commenced operations by ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... next morning. The others, however, were not far behind. The wind was favorable and the indications were all that a sailor could wish for. After a hearty breakfast the anchor was weighed and the Gem was once more under way, with all sails set. The Little 'Un was somewhat timorous and apprehensive of a repetition of the trouble that overcame him the night before they played the Long Island town on the circus man's paper, but he appeared to be satisfied by Handy's assurance that it never ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... weapon in the king's hand. He measured the distance between himself and the king. He well knew the reputed cowardice of Leopold. Could he make the leap and strike up the king's hand before the timorous monarch found even the courage of the cornered rat to fire at him? Then his eyes sought the face of the king, searching for the signs of nervous terror that would make his conquest an easy one; but what he saw in the eyes that bored straight ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... relieved his mind from a weight which had been oppressing it for some time, and set his heart at rest. Egan, it must be remarked, was an odd mixture of courage and cowardice: undaunted by personal danger, but strangely timorous where moral courage was required. A remarkable shyness, too, made him hesitate constantly in the utterance of a word which might explain away any difficulty in which he chanced to find himself; and this helped to keep his tongue tied in the matter where Larry Hogan ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... his attachment to her—the only point on which she had yet seen him tried—decided her to trust to the persuasive voice of love and hope, and to believe that Russell's friendship had in this instance, been too harsh or too timorous in its forebodings. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... Hermes is a god and has wings and flies, and so do many other gods. First of all, Victory flies with golden wings, Eros is undoubtedly winged too, and Iris is compared by Homer to a timorous dove.(1) If men in their blindness do not recognize you as gods and continue to worship the dwellers in Olympus, then a cloud of sparrows greedy for corn must descend upon their fields and eat up all their seeds; we shall see then if Demeter will ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... fixing a successor; that by an opposite conduct she showed herself the step-mother, not the natural parent of her people, and would seem desirous that England should no longer subsist than she should enjoy the glory and satisfaction of governing it; that none but timorous princes, or tyrants, or faint-hearted women, ever stood in fear of their successors; and that the affections of the people were a firm and impregnable rampart to every sovereign, who, laying aside all artifice or by-ends, had courage and magnanimity to put ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... point that the timorous-hearted among the witnesses turned their heads away. Those who were more resolute—or as the case might be, more morbid—and who continued to look, were made aware of a freak of physics which in accord, I suppose, with the laws of horizontals ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... Stephen's face. Any allusion made to his father by a fellow or by a master put his calm to rout in a moment. He waited in timorous silence to hear what Heron might say next. Heron, however, nudged him expressively ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... or was inclined to make a fuss about it. In either event, so Cheesy was assured, he, could have his wish gratified. And Cheesy, who had the heart of a rabbit—a rabbit feeding on other folks' cabbage, but a timorous, nibbling bunny ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... terror, and endeavouring to hide themselves away, thinking that the insurgents would speedily come in and slay them. It might have been a happy thing for this kingdom and people, if the advice of these timorous soldiers had been followed. Some probably were only too glad at having an excuse for persuading the Queen to leave the kingdom. She, however, refused to move, declaring "that now she was Queen—Queen ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... And these were his followers. Of the first—his friends—there were not many left. Of the second group there were millions that multiplied themselves. Of the third there had been at the outset but a timorous and furtive few, and they mostly men and women who spoke English, if they spoke it at all, with the halting speech and the twisted idiom that betrayed their foreign birth; being persons who found it entirely consistent to applaud the preachment ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... his bundle and obeyed the summons, advancing with an awkward almost stumbling step, suggestive of actual weakness as well as the extremity of shyness. Reaching the two men, he touched his cap humbly, and stood with timorous eyes upraised to the ...
— "Seth" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to his Prime Minister and invited him to lead the way. "I will follow your Highness," the minister discreetly replied, but the muscular Governor, Captain John P. Finley, ended the palaver by gently lifting the Sultan into the vehicle, whilst he himself immediately entered it, and the timorous Prime Minister and suite summoned up courage to follow. During the drive the Governor gave the word to the teamsters to detach the forecarriages on reaching the foothills and let the teams go. To the great amazement of the Moro chiefs, the waggons suddenly became stationary, ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... desert I love to ride, With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side, O'er the brown karroo, where the bleating cry Of the springbok's fawn sounds plaintively; And the timorous quagga's shrill whistling neigh Is heard by the fountain at twilight gray; Where the zebra wantonly tosses his mane. With wild hoof scouring the desolate plain; And the fleet-footed ostrich over the waste Speeds like a horseman who travels in haste, Hieing away to the ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... You are generally so quick. This morning you are quite unlike yourself—so weak, so tearful, and timorous. Have you not seen that by side of the cabman there sits another man altogether? One of the most remarkable men of the age, as ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... satisfy the envious birdlings of the moor, the pomegranate slowly half-opens its fruit; the thousand vermeil seeds glitter in the sun; the thousand timorous sisters with rosy cheeks peep through the arched window: and the roguish birds come in flocks and feast at ease on the beautiful coral-grains; the roguish lovers devour with kisses ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... limped about. For long he thought that his eyes were as hideous as his body was distorted. In her frenzies she told him that evil spirits looked out from them and that he was possessed of devils. Without thought of rebellion or resentment he accepted with timorous humility, as part of his existence, her taunts at his twisted limbs. What use in rebellion or anger? With the fatalism of the East he resigned himself to that which was. He had been born a deformity, and even his glance carried evil. This was life. He knew no other. Of his origin he ...
— The Little Hunchback Zia • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... letter was being read, the president, a timorous man, who perceived the agency of Robespierre in the advice of Petion, had quietly removed from his head the repudiated bonnet rouge, and the members of the society, one after another, followed his example. ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... accents, "quok—quok—quoo," are more to be relied upon as ready means of identification than any striking difference in plumage; the white-headed, the pheasant-tail, the gorgeous "superb," the tranquil dove, Ewing's fruit pigeon—most timorous of the order—are regular patrons, and each of the family has the distinctive demeanour and note. All save the allied—which is too full of assurance and fruit to be disconcerted by the presence of man—may flutter into the jungle, and then, as the momentary ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... if thou are not over timorous even for a love-sick youth," she sighed. "And must thou go when my heart inclineth to hours spent with thee? And yet at night the stars come out so 'tis said, and can be seen from the roof of my dwelling; ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... wrath of God, were consumed for their wickednesse with Fire and Brimstone, and together with them the countrey about made a stinking bituminous Lake; the place of the Damned is sometimes expressed by Fire, and a Fiery Lake: as in the Apocalypse ch.21.8. "But the timorous, incredulous, and abominable, and Murderers, and Whoremongers, and Sorcerers, and Idolators, and all Lyars, shall have their part in the Lake that burneth with Fire, and Brimstone; which is the second Death." So that it is manifest, that Hell Fire, which is here expressed ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... begged his bride to go with him to the pastor, to get the certificate. Abashed, Freneli tried to decline, under the pretext that she did not know him, that it was unnecessary, and so on. But she went none the less, and no longer timorous, like a thief in the night, but as well becomes a happy woman at the side of an honest man. Freneli knew how to take herself ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... whether you use it or not. Some of these fellows have a truly ruffianly aspect, and waylay you in secluded lanes and narrow pathways; and carrying a broom-stump, which looks marvellously like a bludgeon, no doubt often levy upon the apprehensions of a timorous pedestrian a contribution which his charity would not be so blind as to bestow. The whole of this tribe constitute a monster-nuisance, which ought to be abated by ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various
... speech with the chapmen and men-at-arms; and both of these were very courteous with him; for they rejoiced in his company, and especially the chapmen, who were somewhat timorous of the ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... past. At the beginning of October, however, I at once began to compose Tristan, finishing the first act by the new year, when I was already engaged in orchestrating the prelude. During that time I developed a dreamy, timorous passion for retirement. Work, long walks in all winds and weathers, evenings spent in reading Calderon—such was my mode of life, and if it was disturbed, I was thrown into the deepest state of irritation. My connection with the world confined itself almost entirely to my negotiations ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... so near together in one thing, so far apart in another—alike in this, that both were singing. And in that choir—celestial and infernal—sang the jealous woman with grey cheeks and haggard eyes, and the timorous woman, and she of the fearless face, and the woman who could scale the stars for the creature she worshipped, and the woman who could lie down in the mud and let the world see her there, and the woman who had sold her soul for food, and a thin woman, such a thin, almost transparent, ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... is six feet long, shiny, and as clean and smooth as ivory. Its members are famous rat-killers. You can pick up a wild one wherever you find it, and it will not bite you. They do not at all object to being handled, even by timorous lady visitors who never before have touched a live snake; and in the South they are tolerated by farmers for the good they ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... houses with their flowery gardens and then, suddenly timorous, she decided not to go too far afield. She might get lost, she might meet nasty people or horned beasts. A little path on her right hand had an inviting look; it might lead her down through the trees to the water's edge. It was all strewn and richly brown with last autumn's leaves and on a tree ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... the big touring-car Anderson hastily leaped to the side of the road. A couple of small headlights veered around a curve in the road and came down the slight grade, followed naturally and somewhat haltingly by an automobile whose timorous brakes were half set. There was ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... which kept him at home. Writing from Oxford on June 27 of this year to Mrs. Thrale, who had been ill, he says:—'I will not increase your uneasiness with mine. I hope I grow better. I am very cautious and very timorous.' Piozzi Letters, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... emphatically one of rewards and punishments, for the condition of the soul after death depended on its training during life. A savage and bloodthirsty man was exiled, as in the case of Lycaon, into the body of a wild beast: the soul of a timorous man entered a hare, and drunkards ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... see everybody, but Yarchenko in the beginning—until the champagne had mounted to his head—only raised high his small, short eyebrows with a timorous, wondering and naive air. It suddenly became crowded, smoky, noisy and close in the cabinet. Simeon, with rattling, closed the blinds with bolts on the outside. The women, just having gotten done with a ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... Fall blunted from each indurated heart. Some sterner virtues o'er the mountain's breast May sit, like falcons, cow'ring on the nest; But all the gentler morals, such as play 235 Thro' life's more cultured walks, and charm the way, These, far dispersed, on timorous pinions fly, To sport and flutter in ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... and yet who can look into it, and not be conscious of a real though invisible presence? In the eye of a brute, we see only a part of the animal; it gives us little beyond the palpable outward; at most, it is but the focal point of its fierce, or gentle, affectionate, or timorous character,—the character of the species, But in man, neither gentleness nor fierceness can be more than as relative conditions,—the outward moods of his unseen spirit; while the spirit itself, that daily and ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... summer song it was, Counting of many unseen stars In an intangible sky Making new milky ways— Silver-shadow-paths that lead From sapphire abysses Into deeper abysses still. The deeps of our souls Lit by passion's burning flowers Tremulous, timorous flames of silver, That with thousand hands Our hearts sought to pluck and scatter, Or make barbed garlands For love's nuptial hour. Nuptial hour, briefer than a moment, Longer than Heaven's Eternal ...
— Sandhya - Songs of Twilight • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... most practical and real and lean like John your full weight on the Lord's breast? That is the way He would have us prove our love. "If you love me lean hard," said a heathen woman to her missionary, as she was timidly leaning her tired body upon her stalwart breast. She felt slighted by the timorous reserve, and asked the confidence that would lay all its weight upon the one she trusted. And He says to us, "Casting all your care upon Him for He careth for you." He would have us prove our love by a perfect trust that ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... Martin's point of view, embraced a definite assurance that Chris was free; and, as they walked homewards, he kept silence upon this thought for the space of half an hour. The uneasy hopes and black fears of love circled him about. Perhaps his timorous mind, in some moods, had been almost relieved at declaration of the girl's engagement to another. But now the tremendous task of storming a virgin heart lay ahead of him, as he imagined. Torments unfelt by those of less sensitive ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... and therefore it is that in recalling the surpassing excellence of our guest as an artistical performer, one is really at a loss to say in what line of character he has excelled the most. The Titanic grandeur of Lear, the human debasement of Werner, the frank vivacity of Henry V, the gloomy and timorous guilt of King John, or that—his last—personation of Macbeth, in which it seemed to me that he conveyed a more correct notion of what Shakespeare designed than I can recollect to have read in the most profound of ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... a place where I might spend the night—towns are inhospitable places, and one is timorous of sleeping in a tavern full of armed drunkards—when I was hailed by a queer old man, who noticed that I was a stranger. He kept one of the two hundred wine-cellars of the town, and was able to give me a good supper and a glass of wine ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... like timorous fawns. Within the walls escaping, dried their sweat, And drank, and quench'd their thirst, reclining safe On the fair battlements; but nearer drew, With slanted shields, the Greeks; yet Hector still In front of Ilium and the Scaean gate, Stay'd by ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... faithful Argus came to announce the near approach of Monteblanco and his guest, Don Rodrigo. Gomez Arias, however, could not believe the danger to be so imminent, making due allowance for the valet's timorous disposition; but the good duenna, who had been unpleasantly disturbed at her devotions, now came forward to ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... exposing vice in all its seductiveness. Over-sensitive and maudlin sympathy is as ridiculous as it is unhealthy; its tendency is principally to encourage and spoil. But a judicious, discreet and measured sympathy will lift up the fallen, strengthen the weak and help the timorous over many a difficulty. It will suggest, too, the means best calculated to insure freedom from ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... and her mother that she loves so well. I meant to have bought or built one this very year. And after having made the pretty nest, to have wooed my pretty bird to come and occupy it. I meant to have been such a good boy to her mother, too! I pleased myself with fancying how the poor, little timorous woman would rest in so much peace and confidence in our home—with me and Lina. I have saved so much that I am richer than any one knows, and I meant to have accomplished all that this very time of coming home. I hurried home. I ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... child is likely to imbibe to some extent his physical and ethical nature. The milk of an animal can never supply the place to a child of that of its own mother. In Walter Scott's story of The Fair Maid of Perth, Eachim is represented as timorous by nature, having been nourished by a white doe after ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... the inner Truth in the outward form to afford an excuse for the timorous, and those who have not sufficient mental energy to think for themselves, to cry out that finality has already been attained, and that any further search into the matter must end in the destruction of Truth. But in raising ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... sentimental nobleman advocates the commission of treachery and cruelty, in the interest of the State, by certain more energetic, less timorous men. Nor does he define their functions so as to raise a bar against a second St. Bartholomew massacre. A deed of this kind he would submissively take to be an act of Heaven, shirking all responsibility for, or discussion of, anything that 'begins to molest ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... without question, as a reporter for the "Clarion." At first Sadie Breen, anaemic, hopeless-eyed, timorous, was reluctant to speak. But the mother proved ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... I had the privilege myself, damsel," said Guarine; "but for these fellows, they are not so timorous as you suppose them, being even too ready to avouch their roguery when it hath less excuse—Besides, I promised them impunity.—Have you any ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... by no means the only members of the congregation of St. Chrysostom who discussed Vane's sermon on their way home. In fact, whether people walked or rode home, it was the universal topic. Some discussed it with timorous sympathy; others, perhaps with more worldly wisdom, talked of it quietly and cynically as the outburst of a half-fledged clerical enthusiast who would very soon find out that his superiors, on whom he depended for preferment, regarded the doctrines of Christianity ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... inclemency of the weather, but had also furnished him with places of secure refuge against the violence of his fellow-man. As sure as the rabbit runs to its hole on the sight of the sportsman, so did the oppressed and timorous when the slayer ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... as any that might then have been noted there, far or near; yet if I didn't somehow "subtly" feel it, why am I now so convinced that I must have had familiarly before me a masterpiece of the great Daumier, say, or Henri Monnier, or any other then contemporary projector of Monsieur Prudhomme, the timorous Philistine in a world of dangers, with whom I was later on to make acquaintance? I put myself the question, of scant importance though it may seem; but there is a reflection perhaps more timely than any answer to it. I catch myself in the act of seeing poor anonymous "Dear," as ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... hills of heaven, When for my sin thou drav'st me forth, Hadst thou forgot what this was worth, Thine own hand had made? The tears of men, The death of threescore years and ten, The trembling of the timorous race— Had these things so bedimmed the place Thine own hand made, thou couldst not know To what a heaven the earth might grow If fear beneath the earth were laid, If hope ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... wine, yelped in unison. This auriferous insect, who was for four years comptroller of the currency, is remembered in Washington chiefly for a remarkable burst of speed displayed one night when his timorous mind conceived the idea that a somnolent hackman was going to rob him. He had his dress suit case in one hand and his plug hat in the other, and he covered three blocks in ten seconds. The cabby, whom ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... was not afraid of death on his own account; it was for the weak timorous girl by his side that all his sympathies were aroused. Doubtless she too possessed a faith firm enough to enable her to meet her fate undismayed—he believed she did; but what terrible bodily suffering must she pass through ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... Do, with like timorous accent and dire yell, As when, by night and negligence, the fire Is spied in ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... I mean the power, whatever it be, which makes a man choose what is hard rather than what is easy; what is lofty and noble rather than what is mean and selfish; that puts courage into timorous hearts and ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... whether it would have been the more unworthy thing to pass such a bill or to pass none at all; but the last, being the most timorous course, had been adopted for ten successive years, as it has also been resorted to in ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... speed to France and deliver the box to Madame Fayel. The old servant did as his master had commanded him, and so went to France; and coming one day to Monsieur Fayel's house, he suddenly met him with one of his servants, who knowing him to be Captain Coney's servant, examined him; and finding him timorous, and to falter in his speech, he searched him, and found the said box in his pocket, with the note which expressed what it contained; then he dismissed the bearer, with injunction that he should come no more thither. Monsieur Fayel, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... would you say? Hel. I am not worthie of the wealth I owe, Nor dare I say 'tis mine: and yet it is, But like a timorous theefe, most faine would steale What law does vouch ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Wisdom, it must now be used; If we have Numbers, they must be united; If we have Strength, it must be all exerted; If we have Courage it must be inflamed, And every Art and Stratagem be practis'd: We've more to do than fright a Pigeon Roost, Or start a timorous Flock of running Deer; Yes, we've a strong, a warlike stubborn Foe, Unus'd to be repuls'd and quit the Field, Nay, flush'd with Victories and long Success, Their Numbers, Strength, and Courage all renown'd, 'Tis little of them that ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers
... Then some one spoke to him, too low to be heard. He bent forward to hear the words repeated, and 'Mian said for the timorous speaker:— ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... sheep-path, up which they marched in single file. Father first, Lucy next, with her gown prettily tucked-up; George and Fred following, with large fishing-baskets stuffed with edibles; Jacky next, light and active, but as yet quiescent; timorous Peter bringing up the rear. He, also, was laden, but not heavily. Mr Sudberry carried rod and basket, for he had been told that there were large trout in the Lake ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... visible, though we do not know its cause. He never was a warrior, though a true soldier. He never was a courtier, though he had always a good mind to be one. He never was a good party man, though his whole life was engaged in partisanship. He was very timorous and bashful in conversation, and thought he always stood in need of apologies, which, considering that his "Maxims" showed not great regard for virtue, and that his practice was always to get out of affairs with the ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... such multitudes, that we cannot exaggerate in saying that at a single glance we saw three thousand of them before us. Of all the animals we had seen the antelope seems to possess the most wonderful fleetness: shy and timorous they generally repose only on the ridges, which command a view of all the approaches of an enemy: the acuteness of their sight distinguishes the most distant danger, the delicate sensibility of their ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... way. The sun was still high enough to fill the hollows with warm light and mellow the doubles of trees and grass in the stream. In this landscape of green and pale gold he looked black and tall and angular. The wind blew longish locks of hair across his forehead, and she had a moment's pleased and timorous reflection that he looked like Satan coming ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... idiot!" roared the captain, his serene brow suddenly overcast, and the red surging up to his own brow. "Dost mean to say the girl flouted the suit of—nay, then, what dost thou mean? Speak out, man, and be not so timorous!" ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... the steed that represents the concupiscible part. But the irascible part, the other steed, has its own fault, and that fault twofold, sometimes of over-venturesomeness, sometimes of shying and turning tail. The habit engendered, in the irascible part, of being neither over-venturesome nor over-timorous, but going by reason, ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... beginning of the Revolution the Marquise de Combray had numbered herself among the unchangeable royalists. Her husband, a timorous and quiet man, who employed in reading the hours that he did not consecrate to sleep, had long since abandoned to her the direction of the household and the management of his fortune. Widowhood had but strengthened the authority ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... attributed them by mistake to the wrong boys. He never allowed any comrade to take his punishment for him, but he knew very well how to extricate himself from the greatest difficulties. His candor often won him some indulgence. If he happened to be punished by a timorous master, he assumed a terrible facial expression and tried to frighten him. But when, on the contrary, he found himself in the presence of a man of energy, he pleaded extenuating circumstances, and persevered until he obtained the least possible punishment. He never ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... friend, and not an enemy; and that I must pray that, if it pleased God Aleck should never get well, he might go to the beautiful home prepared for all the children of God: and the firm grasp of my father's hand, and his clear, unhesitating voice, conveyed to my timorous, troubled heart, a sort of belief in a calm, sheltered haven, that might succeed in time to the outside tossings on stormy waters, and I felt comforted, ...
— The Story of the White-Rock Cove • Anonymous
... ensued. Mr. Verner may have been at a loss what to say next. When deliberately assured by any timorous spirit that they have "seen a ghost," it is waste of time to ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... sight of this man, whose licentious passion she considered as the root of her misfortunes, Rebecca drew backward with a cautious and alarmed, yet not a timorous demeanour, into the farthest corner of the apartment, as if determined to retreat as far as she could, but to stand her ground when retreat became no longer possible. She drew herself into an attitude ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... it. It has often made me think of my poor wife till I cried. I have sometimes got up to the window to look if I could see anybody, but as soon as I opened the casement all was hushed, and nobody to be seen; and I have listened, and listened till I have been so timorous, that even the trembling of the leaves in the breeze has made me start. They say it often comes to warn people of their death, but I have heard it these many years, and ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... trifles, indecisive in action, and anxious about their affairs. They are given early to morbid introspection, and are easily worried about their own indispositions or the illnesses of their friends. They are often timorous and apprehensive, and prone to pedantism. The moral sentiments are pronounced in most cases, and if they are, as a rule, somewhat exigent and egotistic, they have a lively sense of their ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... white curtains shot a timorous ray, And oped those eyes that must eclipse the day: Now lap-dogs give themselves the rousing shake, And sleepless lovers, just at twelve, awake: Thrice rung the bell, the slipper knocked the ground, And the pressed watch returned a silver sound. Belinda still ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... choose laborers of excellent qualifications; for their zeal for the propagation of the gospel and for the spiritual health of those poor Indians impels them. But were that subjection inaugurated, what timorous religious after that would leave his cell (a safe port whither to escape during storms) only to serve in the employ of cura? That is, any change is accompanied by a very great alteration; and he ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... shock sustained by all nations during the prevalence of the black plague is without parallel and beyond description. In the eyes of the timorous, danger was the certain harbinger of death; many fell victims to fear on the first appearance of the distemper, and the most stout-hearted lost their confidence. The pious closed their accounts with the world; their only remaining desire was for a participation in the consolations ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... military crisis. They voted large supplies; they endeavoured to make a war-navy; the leading members allowed nothing but their Parliamentary duties to interfere with their recruiting, arming, and training of troops. They were no timorous pedants, who shook and made homilies when sabres flashed and cannon roared. Our greatest soldiers, M'Carthy and Tyrconnell, and, indeed, most of the Colonels of the Irish regiments, sat in Lords or Commons;—not that the Crown brought in stipendiary soldiers, but that the Senate were fearless ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... boy of five. From the moment when he caught the gleam of brass he knew that he had made the find of his life. But his nurse was a timorous, foolish thing. "You did ought to of left it ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... all, doomed to hopeless bondage?" I could say nothing, my heart was too full to speak, for at first I did not know what to do. However we knew it would never do to turn back to the "City of Destruction," like Bunyan's Mistrust and Timorous, because they saw lions in the narrow way after ascending the hill Difficulty; but press on, like noble Christian and Hopeful, to the great city in which dwelt a few "shining ones." So, after a few moments, I did ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft
... way into the circle, it shrank back as though timorous, then wavered. From the circle came a woman's voice—anxious, eager, ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... greater part of so vilely abused parents are so timorous and afraid of devils and hobgoblins, and so deeply plunged in superstition, that they dare not gainsay nor contradict, much less oppose and resist those unnatural and impious actions, when the mole-catcher hath been present at the perpetrating of ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... so timorous, every trifling noise Scatters my spirits, and announces to me The footstep of some messenger of evil. And you can tell me, sister, what the event is? Will he agree to do the Emperor's pleasure, And send the horse-regiments to the Cardinal? Tell me, has he dismiss'd ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... wife of the preceding, born Maximilienne Lousteau about 1750; sister of the sub-delegate; also god-mother of Mme. Bridau, nee Rouget. During her whole life she displayed a sweet and resigned sympathy. The neglected and timorous mother of a family, she bore the matrimonial yoke of a second Felix Grandet. [A ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... to carry the daily milk, the ice-man to leave the daily ice. But either of these would be afraid of exposing their vehicles to the heating orb of day,—the milkman afraid of turning the milk, the ice-man timorous of melting his ice,—and they probably avoid those directions where they shall meet the sun's rays. The student, who might inform us, has been burning the midnight oil. The student is not in the mood to consider ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... fiercely arose in our men the stern resolution What had been lost to avenge, and defend whate'er was remaining, Every man sprang to his arms, by the flight of the foeman encouraged, And by his blanching cheeks, and his timorous, wavering glances. Ceaselessly now rang out the clanging peal of the tocsin. Thought of no danger to come restrained their furious anger. Quick into weapons of war the husbandman's peaceful utensils All were converted; dripped with blood the scythe and the ploughshare. Quarter ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... silent goodnight. As on the first day, I am harassed by the conflict of the desire to see you and the dread of touching a dream lest it perish. Ah, yes, you spoke truly. Miserable, miserable wretches that we are, our timorous souls are so afraid of any reality that they dare not think a sympathy which has taken possession of them capable of surviving an interview with the person who gave it birth. Yet, in spite of this fine casuistry, I simply must confess to you—no, ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... before him, and immediately held forth their hands; all of them trembling like aspen leaves; the chief looked up full in their faces, kneeling on the ground; light seemed to flash from his dark rolling eyes; his body was convulsed all over, as though he was enduring the utmost torture, and with a timorous, yet indefinable expression of countenance, in which all the passions of human nature were strangely blended, he drooped his head, eagerly grasped their proffered hands, and burst into tears. This was a sign of friendship, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... lean arms against the sky and went down with a scream. Here, in the busiest spot of the mightiest city, there is no human creature abroad; but footsteps are yet ringing on the desolateness. They are heard only by me. There are two of them; the first light, timorous, musical; the other harsh and heavy, as if shod with steel. I recognize them with a thrill; for they have haunted me many years, and they are speaking to me now. The one is soothing and pleading, and it implores me to write; but the second ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... we were hopeful for aid from Montreal; but Marguerite Fontaine, being timorous as all Parisian women are, begged her husband to try and escape. The poor husband was almost distracted as she insisted, and he told her he would set her out in the canoe with her two sons, who could paddle it, but ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... and action, sins arising from over-fastidiousness—had he not yielded freely? Was he not a spiritual valetudinarian? He feared so. Offered, in the Eternal Mercy, endless precious opportunities of service, he had been too weak, too timorous, too slothful, to lay hold on them. And so, as it seemed to him very justly, to-night confession, prayer, adoration, left ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... reckless flame. The need of the hour was peculiar. There was little room for fact. In a moment of wayward impulse he had slipped up a stairway and blundered on a shrine. He must not make another mistake. The girl beside him was as timorous and defensive as a doe scenting an alien breath in the wood of wild things. A wrong step and in spirit she would bound ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... their locks of gold The strange cold forest-fairies dance in glee; Sylphs over-timorous and over-bold Haunt the dark hollows where the dwarf may be, The wild red dwarf, the nixies' enemy: Then, 'mid their mirth and laughter and affright, The sudden goddess enters, tall and white, With one long sigh for summers passed away; The swift feet tear the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... change—the moderation and caution of the one proposed—several undoubted and very great improvements in details, and, above all, a formal recognition of the principle of agricultural protection, still further allayed the fears of the most timorous. To us it appears, that the simple principle of a scale of duties, adapted to admit foreign corn when we want it, and exclude it when we can grow sufficient ourselves, is abundantly vindicated, and will not be disturbed for many years to come, if even ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... Dover, a little sunshine struggled forth to gladden us; but it was blowing rather hard when we arrived at our destination, and there was something of a sea to frighten the timorous. Being pretty fair sailors, however, and by the exercise of a little thoughtful physical preparation, we did not suffer from the voyage, and were able to render some assistance ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... bosom of the deep, O'er these wild shelves my watch I keep; A ruddy gem of changeful light, Bound on the dusky brow of night; The seaman bids my lustre hail, And scorns to strike his timorous sail. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various
... gray hairs," he responded, with a sigh. "She is as beautiful as ever, I hear; but I have not caught a glimpse of her. Tell me, Barby,—for I have grown timorous with sorrow,—will she hate the sight of such ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... to go through her entire frame, her very lips turned white and cold, and he, not understanding, timorous, chivalrous and humble, thought that she was repelled by his ardour and frightened by a passion to which she was too pure ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... useful might be the friendship of a potentate whose predecessor's hostility had been so formidable. "But," added the prudent Rohilla, "it must be remembered that the recollection of the past will make the Vazir timorous and suspicious. The negotiation will be as delicate as important. It should not be entrusted to ordinary agency, or to the impersonal ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... a timorous nature, seldom, if ever, showing fight. Two of them nearly ran over me once as I was squatting on a deer run waiting for sambar, which were being beaten out of a hill. I flung my hat in the face of the leading one, on which both turned tail and fled. ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... that he did every thing for personal gain, and was willing to do and say any thing now for the same purpose. He was moreover a brave man! 'I hope,' says he, 'the public will consider that I have been a timorous man, or if you will, a coward from my youth, so that I cannot fight; my belly is so large that I cannot run; and I am so great a lover of eating and drinking that I cannot starve. When these things are considered, I hope they will ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... the Giant-killer's gone, Mother Goose and Oberon, Bluebeard and King Solomon. Robin, and Red Riding Hood Take together to the wood, And Sir Galahad lies hid In a cave with Captain Kidd. None of all the magic hosts, None remain but a few ghosts Of timorous heart, to linger on ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... Their entertainment consisted of two parts, the first entitled: "The Death of Agolante and the Madness of Count Orlando"; the second: "A Delightful Comedy, the Devil's Castle with Pulcinella as the Timorous Soldier." In addition were promised "new duets and Neapolitan songs." The theatre would comfortably seat three hundred persons, and the performance would be given twice, at half-past eighteen and half-past twenty-one o'clock. It was unpardonable in me that I did not seek out ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... contact fly! For strong the infection of our mental strife, Which, though it gives no bliss, yet spoils for rest; And we should win thee from thy own fair life, Like us distracted, and like us unblest. Soon, soon thy cheer would die, Thy hopes grow timorous, and unfix'd thy powers, And thy clear aims be cross and shifting made; And then thy glad perennial youth would fade, Fade, and grow old at last, and ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... time Lanyard, one of the last to be grilled and passed, found himself as little inclined for sleep as the most timorous soul on board. Selecting an American novel from the ship's library, he repaired to the smoking room, where, established in a corner apart, he became an involuntary and, at first, a largely inattentive, eavesdropper upon an ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... utterly thoughtless and insensible of his approaching fate. Though from the cutting of Wild's throat, and some other barbarities of the same nature, he acquired amongst the mob the character of a brave fellow, yet he was in himself but a mean-spirited timorous wretch, and never exerted himself but either through fury and despair. His cowardice appealed manifestly in his behaviour at his death; he wept much at the chapel in the morning he was to die, and though he drank deeply ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... matted vaults were picturesque enough; each peon, seeing how easily they were constructed, chose to have a house for himself; and the Tiger's Beach quickly presented the appearance of a camp disposed in a long straight line, of which the timorous Indians occupied the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... seems to us that we hear timorous people and those of narrow views rising up against our idea of hygiene in the name ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... only one which I expect, madam—I could almost say the only one which I wish—I am sure I will use no efforts to bring about any other; if I am bold in his cause, I am timorous enough in my own. During our only interview I was unable to speak a word to him. He knows not the sound of my voice—and all that I have risked, and must yet risk, I am doing for one, who, were he asked the question, would say he has long since forgotten that he ever ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... inconstant in everything but what fear constrain them to keep; crafty, timorous, quick of apprehension, ingenious enough in their own works, as may testify their weirs in which they take their fish, which are certain enclosures made of reeds and framed in the fashion of a labyrinth or maze ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... the motives that led to it? She was sure he had never felt like that; and as she evaded his questions the something within her demanding life and expression grew stronger and more rebellious, more contemptuous of the fear-precepts congenial to a nature timorous and less vitalized. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... moony maze of mellado mull, And a protoplasm for next of kin. O, sweet is the note of the shagreen shard And mellow the mew of the mastodon, When the soboliferous Somminard Is scenting the shadows at set of sun. And it's O for the timorous tamarind In the murky meadows of Mariboo, For the suave sirocco of Sazerkind, And the pimpernell ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... heard the noise of their feet, and rushed helter-skelter to the deep water for safety. On seeing the rapid disappearance of the Frogs, one of the Hares cried out to his companions: "Stay, my friends, do not do as you intended; for you now see that other creatures who yet live are more timorous than ourselves." ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... we were entirely dependent upon the fleet. There were here no living creatures which would suffer themselves to be caught; even the water-fowl being so timorous that it was impossible to approach them within musket-shot. Salt meat and ship biscuit were, therefore, our food, moistened by a small allowance of rum; fare which, though no doubt very wholesome, was not such as to reconcile us to the cold and wet ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... the timorous Madame Delphine many trifles became, one after another, an impediment to the making of this proposal, and many weeks elapsed before further delay was positively without excuse. But at length, one day in May, 1822, in a small private office behind Monsieur ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... The two reasons they knew were, firstly, that Almanza had proved to be too timorous as regarded the taking of life, and secondly that his death would give them a greater ...
— John Frewen, South Sea Whaler - 1904 • Louis Becke
... of sixteen followed her, ugly and misshapen as a gargoyle; he carried the baby in a sling on his back. Two timorous little ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... bend in silence o'er the countless Dead; Marks with loud sobs infantine Sorrows rave, And wring their pale hands o'er their Mother's grave; Hears on the new-turn'd sod with gestures wild The kneeling Beauty call her buried child; Upbraid with timorous accents Heaven's decrees, And with sad sighs augment the passing breeze. 200 'Stern Time,' She cries, 'receives from Nature's womb Her beauteous births, and bears them to the tomb; Calls all her sons from earth's remotest bourn, And from ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... of the most civilising institutions going; and Dick, after two cups of Templeton tea, and several cubic inches of Templeton bread- and-butter, felt amiably inclined towards his left-hand neighbour, a little timorous-looking boy, who blushed when anybody looked at him, and nearly fainted when he heard his own voice answering Mrs Partlett's enquiry whether he wanted ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... fire, and lay gazing at the speaker with a reverence almost canine; and that, when the rough soldier had unconsciously but thoroughly betrayed his better qualities, and above all his rare affection for Gerard, Kate, though timorous as a bird, stole her little hand into the warrior's huge brown palm, where it lay an instant like a tea-spoonful of cream spilt on a platter, then nipped the ball of his thumb and served for a Kardiometer. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... be Lucia Orestilla?" exclaimed Catiline, "this puling love-sick girl, this timorous, repentant—I had nearly called thee—maiden! Why, thou fool, what would'st thou with the man farther? Dost think ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... put it about as you are dead in law; that is the word: and so the servants they don't know what to think; and the village folk are skeared with his clapping four brace on 'em in jail: and Joe and I, we wants to fight un, but my dame she is timorous, and won't let us, because of the laayer. And th' upshot is, this here Richard Bassett is master after a manner, and comes on the very lawn, and brings men with a pole measure, and uses the place ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... Ralph, "howsoever churlish they may be, and howso timorous, I cannot see why they should shut their gates in our faces, a little band, when there ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... restraints and perils. Her mental suffering had made the physical harder to bear; she was now recovering health of mind and body, and found with surprise that life had a new savour, independent of the timorous joy born with her child. Strangely, as it seemed to her, she grew conscious of a personal freedom not unlike what she had vainly desired in the days of petulant girlhood; the sense came only at moments, but was real and precious; under its influence she forgot everything abnormal in her ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... in the man, made it matter for surprise that he had waited so long before taking another wife. It would not have occurred to most of those who knew him that his extreme devotion to women made him shy, diffident, all but timorous in their presence. But Piers Otway, for all his mental disturbance at this moment, remarked the singular deference, the tone and look of admiring gentleness, with which Mr. Jacks turned to his wife ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... (hour of midnight or thereby); which of course Gortz, duly invisible to mankind, does. Friedrich explains: An errand to Munchen; perfectly secret, for the moment, and requiring great delicacy and address; perhaps not without risk, a timorous man might say: will your Brother go for me, think you? Gortz thinks he will. "Here is his Instruction, if so," adds the King, handing him an Autograph of the necessary outline of procedure,—not signed, nor with any credential, or even ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... dark, dark night, moonless, starless, skyless, on the trembling whiteness of a vast ledge of snow, slowly a long rope unrolled itself, to which were attached in file certain timorous and very small shades, preceded, at the distance of a hundred feet, by a lantern casting a red light along the way. Blows of an ice-axe ringing on the hard snow, the roll of the ice blocks thus detached, alone broke the silence of the neve on which the steps of the caravan made no ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... how the slow evening shadows drew over the quiet fields. The sunlight slowly faded to a mist of gold, into which the great trees thrust timorous, shy fingers, and these gradually widened, until, at last, the whole ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... a recurrence of such phenomena was always known as "earthquake weather." The wild cattle moved uneasily in the distance without feeding; herds of unbroken mustangs approached the confines of the hacienda in vague timorous squads. The silence and stagnation of the old house was oppressive, as if the life had really gone out of it at last; and Aunt Viney, after waiting impatiently for the young people to come in to chocolate, rose grimly, set her lips together, and went ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the moonlight burst into his cell, and with it, and in it, and almost as swift as it, Margaret Brandt was down at his knee with a timorous hand ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... eyes, contrives to send for a Dragoon Regiment with orders to charge: the dragoon officers mount; the dragoon men will not: hope is none there for him. The street, as we say, barricaded; the Earth all shut out, only the indifferent heavenly Vault overhead: perhaps here or there a timorous householder peering out of window, with prayer for Bouille; copious Rascality, on the pavement, with prayer for Salm: there do the two parties stand;—like chariots locked in a narrow thoroughfare; like locked wrestlers ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle |
