"Audacity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... your journal a letter from Mr. Herbert Spencer in which he, relying on indirect information conveyed to him, regarding my book, Socialism and Modern Science, expresses "his astonishment at the audacity of him who has made use of his name to ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... of my sojourn in this country deepens the desire in my mind to see an increasing unity of understanding between America and England. I feel that the audacity of America, its passion for the Right Thing, and its impatience with the spirit of muddling through are the finest incentives for modern England, England at this dawn of her political renascence. I feel, too, as Americans themselves ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... of displeasing Mme. de Restaud, he meant to annoy the dandy. It had struck him all at once that he had seen the young man before at Mme. de Beauseant's ball; he guessed the relation between Maxime and Mme. de Restaud; and with the youthful audacity that commits prodigious blunders or achieves signal success, he said to himself, "This is my rival; I mean to ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... that, in their own opinion, these men were more or less criminal: and guilt always assumes an audacity, and fierceness, which it does not feel. They were not intentionally acting well: but were doing that which they supposed to be a deed of desperate wickedness, for selfish purposes. Had the consent of any one of them when dying been asked, to have his body dug up and dissected, he would have ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... all; we were the victims of circumstances. When I remember how quick-witted and alert that manager was, to catch us unawares and so add to the value of his picture, I can quite forgive the fellow his audacity." ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... mischief had been done. Even to-day an inquisition of the mails has been established in the United States. It is said to be unconstitutional, and one can well believe that that is so, but none the less it flourishes under the protection of what a famous American has called "the never-ending audacity of elected persons." But to allow subordinate officials to masquerade in the Postal Department as familiars of the inquisition, in the supposed interests of public morals, is a dangerous policy.[205] Its deadening influence on national life cannot fail sooner or later to be realized by Americans. ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... the open. Their numbers were probably less than ours, and the quality of their shooting and want of energy in pursuit make the defeat the more galling. On the other hand, their guns were served with skill and audacity. They consisted of commandos from Bethulie, Rouxville, and Smithfield, under the orders of Olivier, with those colonials whom they had seduced ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... I should like to know,' pursued Mr Boffin, 'that you were to have the audacity to follow up this young lady? This young lady was looking about the market for a good bid; she wasn't in it to be snapped up by fellows that had no money to lay out; nothing to ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... Mexican legend: according to this, the giant Xelhua built the great Pyramid of Cholula, in order to reach heaven, until the gods, angry at his audacity, threw fire upon the building and broke it down, whereupon every separate family received a language ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... found his continued existence personally inconvenient. That was what Burr had done; and morally it was undoubtedly murder. Throughout the whole East Burr became a man marked with the brand of Cain. He soon perceived it, but his audacity would not accept defeat. He turned to the West, and initiated a daring conspiracy which, as he hoped, would make him, if not President of the United States, at least ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... the slightest difference to him! But if he feels that way, I wish I were to wear the boots, and I wish he might be there to see me do it. As it is, I hope Mrs. Stuart Henderson will be deaf to his audacity, if he dares to ask an invitation. It would be ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... in his very face, so close together were they now. And then she taught him something! There was a dip such as the otter makes when he seeks the depths and there was no longer a girl in sight! But this was only a demonstration, made in sheer audacity and blithesome insolence, for the brown head soon appeared again some yards ahead and there was another twist of it and another merry laugh. Then the neat body turned upon its side, and with quick ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... thought it time to marry somebody, if she ever intended to marry at all; so she threw over half a dozen young fellows like Coursay, and married Sprowl. For two years her beauty, audacity, and imprudence kept a metropolis and two capitals in food for scandal. And now for a year gossip was coupling ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... Dreschok, and Hiller, and Leopold Hertz, Woertz, Karr, Wolff, Pixis, and Clara Wieck—and all Germans, generally speaking. Schmucke was a great musical composer doomed to remain a music master, so utterly did his character lack the audacity which a musical genius needs if he is to push his way to the front. A German's naivete does not invariably last him through his life; in some cases it fails after a certain age; and even as a cultivator of the soil brings water from afar ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... more scarcely reached the height of the audacity of these reporters in 1867. Like Mr. Bumble, the Serjeant-at-Arms of the day literally ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... sought day of woman's emancipation, when she will be free, in her own right, to scorn from the pedestal of her superiority, the audacity of the man who shows himself by daylight to the world to be that high society exacts from him, but whose superficial virtues set with the evening sun, leaving in their temporary dwelling place, the craving of material nature to be ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... knew how to assume on occasions. The queen, as he went on, looked at him with increasing astonishment. She could not comprehend how a man could conceive such an enterprise and still less how he could have the audacity to disclose it to her whose interest and almost duty ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... authority, and took off his hunting-cap to salute the assembly with a jaunty air. He had taken two glasses of cherry brandy, and as long as the stimulant lasted would no doubt be able to support himself with audacity. ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... him, Harsnett, Bishop of Chichester, and afterwards Archbishop of York, doubted the marvellous powers of the pious author, Dr. Darrell, and had the audacity to suggest that he made a trade of casting out devils, and even went so far as to declare that Darrell and the possessed had arranged the matter between them, and that Darrell had instructed them how ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... no foundation for any of these alarms. Prevost was a soldier of good reputation, but wanting in initiative, audacity, and resolution, as the current war was to prove. His presence at Kingston at this moment was simply one incident in a rapid official visit to the upper military posts, extending as far as Niagara, and accomplished in four weeks; for, leaving Quebec February 17, he was again ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... the unhappy slaves escaped from those who attempted to tie them, and jumped into the sea. One of them was saved by means of a cord thrown by the sailors of another vessel; and the monster who murdered his innocent companions had the audacity to claim him as his property. The Judges, either from shame, or a sense of ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... None can more justly boast of persecutions, and glory in the number and valour of martyrs. For, to speak properly, those are true and almost only examples of fortitude. Those that are fetched from the field, or drawn from the actions of the camp, are not ofttimes so truly precedents of valour as audacity, and, at the best, attain but to some bastard piece of fortitude. If we shall strictly examine the circumstances and requisites which Aristotle requires to true and perfect valour, we shall find the name only in his master, Alexander, and as little in ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... peasants, Hervagault and Bruneau, neither of whom had the audacity to steal into the confidence of the tenderest princess in Europe with the tokens she must recognize, or to penetrate into the presence," spoke the king: "and now an escaped convict from Ste. Pelagie, a ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... tread down the glories of the world; who, so far from finding any sacredness in his royalty, had classed him amongst all the wicked kings of the Old Testament, sentenced to be exterminated with the idolatry they fostered, and with whom the very audacity and fearful temerity of the deed, (if this at all affected them,) would add only to its merit. Unfortunate monarch! The tide of sympathy runs now against him, but we confess still to retain our compassion for the fallen prince,—our compassion, very ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... rather than the audacity of his assertion, she looked down, pondering intently a little space; then, not considering what the admission involved, she said in a choked voice, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... gazing on her for a few moments with eyes that seemed to devour her. His mind had suddenly recovered much of its wonted boldness and audacity. So long as Nisida seemed terrible as well as beautiful, he was subdued;—now that her eyes had ceased to dart forth lightnings, and the expression of her countenance had changed from indignation and resolute menace to pensiveness and a comparatively mournful softness, ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... daring recklessness of the tremendous London impresario. Of course both men possessed wonderful contrapuntal skill; but in Bach's case there is time and patience as well as skill, and in Handel's only consummate audacity and intellectual grip. Handel was by far a greater man than Bach—he appears to me, indeed, the greatest man who has yet lived; but though he achieves miracles as a musician, his music was to him only one of ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... it! I must dress for the part! In London I'll be a middle-aged aunt; in Surrey, a niece—my own niece and namesake, who, of her charity, consents to receive some of her auntie's protegees and give them a good time!" The wildness, the audacity of the project made to me its chief appeal. My life interest had been so sheltered, so hedged round by convention, that at times it had seemed as though there was a wall of division between me and every other human creature. It was so ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... obtainest thou this audacity, and this new pride, of appearing in places which thou hast filled with mourning? What! dost thou come even here to defy the shade of the Count? Hast ...
— The Cid • Pierre Corneille
... audacity," said Mr. Rattler. "But he has peculiar gifts of his own, and gifts fitted for the peculiar combination of circumstances, if he will only be content to use them. He is a just, unambitious, intelligent man, in whom after a while the country would come to have implicit confidence. But he is ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... stood near Odysseus and cheered him on. "Woe unto thee, Mentor, if thou dost dare to help Odysseus," cried one of the suitors. "We will not spare thee when we have slain him. More yet, we will drive thy wife and children out of Ithaca and keep thy wealth." The goddess, in great anger at this audacity, turned toward Odysseus and said: "Thou art not so swift and terrible in fighting, O Chieftain, as thou wert before the ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... head untouched—had Madame de Chevreuse remained at Court, ever ready to surround the Queen with attention and homage, assiduous to retain and husband the last remnant of her old favour, in order to sustain and secretly encourage the malcontents, inspire them with her audacity, and stir them up to fresh conspiracies? She still held in her grasp the scarcely-severed threads of the plot; and at her right hand there was a man too wary to allow himself to be again compromised by ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... them carefully, and fully approved their spirit and courage under such trying conditions. Major Doyle, Patsy's father, when the first copy of the Millville Tribune was laid on his desk in the city, was astounded at the audacity of this rash venture. When he could command his temper to write calmly he sent a letter to Mr. Merrick which read: "Taken altogether, John, you're the craziest bunch of irresponsibles outside an asylum. No wonder ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... mother the homesick child, and like the homesick child, back at last after weary days, she knew only that she had come home. In this first overflowing moment there was no thought of colour—brush work—this or that triumphant audacity; it was a coming to her own, a home-coming of the spirit—the heart's passionate thankfulness, ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... silence in the Executive Chamber—a silence that continued. The dignitaries at the door deigned to accord to Morrison neither glance nor word; they would not indulge his incredible audacity to that extent. As to Rellihan, they did not feel like stooping so low as to waste words on the impassive giant who personified an ignorant insolence that made no account of personalities. They adventured in no move against that obstacle in their path, either by concerted ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... political way, their father; but he was not their founder, for he would not have believed a word of what they ultimately came to say. Nor is this the conventional notion of the old man not keeping pace with the audacity of the young. Morris would have been disgusted not with the wildness, but the tameness of our tidy Fabians. He was not a Socialist, but he was a Revolutionist; he didn't know much more about what he was; but he knew that. In ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... regarding the countenances of the sleepers. He had been successful in his bold enterprise beyond his most sanguine hopes; but it was evident that even in the very moment of his triumph he was anxious and disturbed in his mind. He trembled at the audacity which had led him to pit himself against these extraordinary beings, and the very ease with which he had accomplished his purpose frightened him. Had these men—if men they were—been encountered and overcome awake, and in ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... of charter which enables a man to say anything foolish, or rude, or bad that may occur to him, and earn praise for it instead of blame. Some of us fail to find the greatness of this way of thinking, however much we may be impressed by its audacity. Indeed there seems to be much smallness in it ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... wot, it was defect Of spirit, life, and bold audacity. Such harmless creatures have a true respect To talk in deeds, while others saucily Promise more speed, but do it leisurely: Even so this pattern of the worn-out age Pawn'd honest looks, but laid no ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... miraculous power ... of seeing things steadily and seeing them wholly, with relentless humor and pitiless pathos. The book is crowded with types, and they are all etched in with masterly fidelity of vision and sureness of touch, with feminine subtlety as well as virile audacity."—James Douglas in ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... hand over Elizabeth's ships to Spain, confiscate property, and to kill a number of anti-Catholic people. The Hawkins counterplot of revenge on Philip and his guilty confederates was completely successful. The comic audacity of it is almost beyond belief. The Pope had bestowed his blessing on the conspiracy, and the Spanish Council of State was enthusiastically certain of its success. So credulous were they of the great piratical seaman's conversion, that an agreement was signed pardoning Hawkins for his ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... Madame Campan; "the intriguer who wanted to ruin me, or procure money by using my name and forging my signature, has just been fully acquitted." But it was due, she declared, to bribery on the part of some and to political passion on that of others, with an audacity towards authority which such people loved to display. The king ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... he was famous, and he went nowhere. I like you too much already to tell you all the mad things he has done for my sake. I will only reveal one, because it may perhaps help us to bring him back to you, and to punish him for the audacity of his behavior to me. He will end by compromising me. I know the world too well, my dear, to abandon myself to the discretion of a too superior man. You should know that one may allow them to court one, but marry them—that is a mistake! We women ought to admire men ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... angelic phantom, but she was not there. He took each of his former positions again and again, but the desired vision would in no wise make its appearance. He tried every day and every hour of the day, all with the same effect, till he grew absolutely desperate, and had the audacity to kneel on the spot and entreat of Heaven to see her. Yes, he called on Heaven to see her once more, whatever she was, whether a being of earth, heaven, ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... in audacity like this," thought he. "But it cannot last. It comes from internal torture—a thing as necessarily temporary as faith (the source of the other kind of strength) is durable. Not the slightest compunction ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... It was incomparable audacity on Fruen's part, of course, to say such a thing to our face, but we could not protest; we saw she was only using us to ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... his audacity, Chris dropped the phial which splintered on the floor. Watching there in the darkness, he shook so with nerves that ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... have spared her. After all she has done you no harm. Consider where you would be with Cecilia Holt for your wife and guardian. Hard though you are, I do not think you would have been hard enough to treat her as he has done. Indeed there is an audacity about his conduct to which I know no parallel. Fancy a man marrying a wife and then instantly bidding her go home to her mother because he finds that she once liked another man better than himself! I wonder whether the law couldn't touch him! But you have escaped from all that, and I really ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... round and regarded Jane, but, although she tried to meet him half-way by elevating her chin a little, his audacity failed him and the words died away on his tongue. A long silence followed, broken only by the ill-suppressed giggles of Annie, who had ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... on earth, will undergo such a fiendish metamorphosis in his exaltation and return? It is the most monstrous, the most atrocious travesty of the truth that ever was perpetrated by the superstitious ignorance and audacity of the human mind. It is a direct transference into the Godhead of the most egotistical and hateful feelings of a bad man. No good man who had been ever so grossly misconceived, vilified, and wronged, if he saw his enemies prostrate in submissive terror at his feet, perfectly powerless before ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... shoulders fall to a lower figure per minute. He has learned there to feel safe from hawk and cat, and knows enough of other birds to be sure that none of them will "jump" his little claim of fifty feet square whereof you are the moving centre. His individual audacity gives him the sway of that small empire, and he doubts not that you will support him in acting up to the motto of the Iron Crown of the Lombards. His cousin the robin may, and very probably does, hover on the outskirts, but an exact distance measures the comparative boldness and familiarity ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... method of his inferences, he attained the poetic quality only by the audacity with which he conceived the whole sublime extension of his premises. The contrast was a strange one between the careful, the almost petty fineness of his personal surrounding—all the elegant conventionalities of life, in that rising Dutch family—and ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... origin, is manifest in the destination of Rob Roy. He became a dealer in cattle. It was, it is true, the custom for landed proprietors, as well as their tenantry, to deal in the trade of grazing and selling cattle. In those days, no Lowlanders, nor any English drovers, had the audacity to enter ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... to summon a few at a time of those below to be treated in the same way. We soon had all those above deck secured. It seemed extraordinary that men should submit in so abject a manner to a party of men and boys. They appeared, indeed, entirely to have lost their wits. It shows what boldness and audacity will accomplish. However, it might have been the other way, and we might all have been knocked on the head, or tumbled down as prisoners into the Frenchman's hold. Having accomplished this, we sent a hand to the helm, trimmed sails, though there was not much wind to fill ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... is man in proportion to the vast systems of the Universe, in which he represents an ultra-microscopic atom less ten thousand times than the tiniest of the "gay motes that people the sunbeams." Yet, with colossal audacity, this thinking atom regards himself as the anthropocentric pivot around which revolve the eternal purposes of the Universe. Knowing not whence he came, why he is here, or whither he is going, man feels himself of supreme importance, and certainly is of interest—to ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... excommunicated. Lady Delacour's sprightly elegance—allow me to speak of myself in the style in which the newspaper writers talk of me—Lady Delacour's sprightly elegance was but pale, not to say faded pink, compared with the scarlet of Mrs. Freke's dashing audacity. As my rival, she would on certain ground have beat me hollow; it was therefore good policy to make her my friend: we joined forces, and nothing could stand against us. But I have no right to give myself credit for good ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... Consulate, had begun the career of the evangel. She had now and then created international difficulty, and Ismail, tolerant enough, had been tempted to compel her to leave the country, but, with a zeal which took on an aspect of self-opinionated audacity, she had kept on. Perhaps her beauty helped her on her course—perhaps the fact that her superb egotism kept her from being timorous, made her career possible. In any case, there she was at Assiout, and there she had been for years, and no accident had come to her; and, during ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... I replied (for I did begin to remember him now), 'to attribute mediocrity to you would have been beyond the audacity of the grossest sycophant.' ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... not holding Jim Cummings up in a laudatory spirit, or as an object to be envied and imitated, but as everything else has its degrees of comparison, so has the methods employed in committing robbery, and the address, audacity, skill, success and intelligence displayed by Jim Cummings in robbing the Adams Express Company of a cool $53,000, cannot help but excite a feeling akin to admiration. As this was his first attempt, it would take subsequent years to measure the height which he might attain as a highwayman. It ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... view, Mr Bott; not in the least. There is no reason why I should. You must excuse me if I say I cannot talk about her welfare with a perfect stranger." Then she did get up, and went away from the Member of Parliament, leaving him rather astonished at her audacity. But he was a constant man, and his inner resolve was simply to the effect that he would try ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... actually the audacity to reprimand the King and the royal princes, to impute ignoble motives to us all! They talk of us as if we were Messieurs and Mesdames Jones or Browns, trying to enrich ourselves at the expense ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... discouragingly—and seated herself on a tiny sofa in the corner, a curiously impregnable intrenchment, as I noted—for my impulse was to carry her by storm. I was astonished at my own audacity; I was wondering where my fear of her had gone, my awe of her superior fineness and breeding. "Mama will be down in a few ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... Scipio Aemilianus, when as censor he was conducting this sacrifice, and the scriba (on behalf of the pontifex?) was dictating to him the solemne precationis carmen ex publicis tabulis, in which the immortal gods were besought to make the prosperity of the Roman State "better and greater," had the audacity to interrupt him, saying that the condition of the State was sufficiently good and great: "itaque precor ut eas (res) perpetuo incolumes servent." This change, Valerius says, was accepted, and the formula altered accordingly in the tabulae.[413] This story, which is probably ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... however, that honesty and audacity would be my best allies, and at the same time I hoped to punish Adah a little through ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... do what another man dare not plan. In surgery none could follow him. His nerve, his judgment, his intuition, were things apart. Again and again his knife cut away death, but grazed the very springs of life in doing it, until his assistants were as white as the patient. His energy, his audacity, his full-blooded self-confidence—does not the memory of them still linger to the south of Marylebone Road and ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... friendly people were conveying to Quebec. Montmagny's military force was too small to allow of his avenging this insult; he, however, zealously promoted an enterprise to build a fort and effect a settlement on the island of Montreal, which he fondly hoped would curb the audacity of his savage foes. The Associated Company would render no aid whatever to this important plan, but the religious zeal of the Abbe Olivier overcame all difficulties. He obtained a grant of Montreal ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... that nothing more was necessary than to let Ratcliffe expose himself. Without talking very much, Carrington always aimed at drawing him out. He soon found, however, that Ratcliffe understood such tactics perfectly, and instead of injuring, he rather improved his position. At times the man's audacity was startling, and even when Carrington thought him hopelessly entangled, he would sweep away all the hunter's nets with a sheer effort of strength, and walk off bolder and ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... have walked up and down here with a humbled and broken spirit, and had nearly forsworn the audacity of painting anything beyond a beech stem, or a ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... merely because I was attracted by forbidden fruit, by the danger incurred and the friendship betrayed! No, that did not suit me, but what was I to do? To imitate Joseph would be acting a very stupid and, moreover, difficult part, for this woman was enchanting in her perfidy, inflamed by audacity, palpitating and excited. Let the man who has never felt on his lips the warm kiss of a woman who is ready to give herself to him throw the first ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... Zaluski, with the audacity of a privileged being. "It is just my little amusement, very harmless, very—what you call innocent. Mr. Blackthorne cannot make up his mind about me. One day I appear to him to be Catholic, the next Comtist, the next Orthodox Greek, the next a convert to the Anglican communion. ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall
... and Eunice gave him such a scornful shrug of her furred shoulders that Hendricks laughed out, in sheer enjoyment of her audacity. ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... the beaver fought the battle out at once to all but the bitter end. The crow, the muskrat, the fox have more than held their own, by reason of cunning, hiding or quickness of sight; but they cannot hope for this to last. The English sparrow has won by sheer audacity; but most to be admired are those creatures which have so changed their habits that some product of man's invention serves them as well as did their former wilderness home. The eave swallow and barn swallow and the chimney swift all belie their names in the few wild haunts still uninvaded by ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... will teach me, Molly—dear." He took a step forward eagerly—and then paused again, aghast at the audacity of that "dear." Something in the cool, fresh young girl standing so easily in front of him, smiling with faint derision, seemed to knock on the head all that carefully thought out plan which had matured in his mind during the silent watches of the previous night. It had all seemed so easy ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... although disabled from rapid motion, might turn and trample Jali. The extraordinary dexterity and courage required to effect this can hardly be appreciated by those who have never hunted a wild elephant; but the extreme agility, pluck, and audacity of these Hamran sword-hunters surpass all feats that ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... gentleman and marry that heiress who, in Lady Carbury's look-out into the future, was destined to make all things straight! Who was so handsome as her son? Who could make himself more agreeable? Who had more of that audacity which is the chief thing necessary ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... glory by the sacrifice of so many heroic lives and all the more glorified because so few,[3348] and because, in these days, a man did not obtain the cross by twenty years of plodding in a bureau, on account of routine punctuality, but by wonderful strokes of energy and audacity, by wounds, by braving death a hundred times and looking ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... amazement. "Yes, he was saved. The next day, Madame Bestuchef found means to convince her credulous husband that Trenck was the victim of an intrigue, and entirely innocent of the charge brought against him. Trenck remained, therefore, the friend of the house, and Madame Bestuchef had the audacity to publicly insult my ambassador. Trenck now announced himself as a raging adversary of Prussia. He inflamed the heart of his powerful mistress with hate, and they swore the destruction of Prussia. Both were zealously engaged in changing the chancellor, my private ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... "shower'd Favors upon him," Omar's Epicurean Audacity of Thought and Speech caused him to be regarded askance in his own Time and Country. He is said to have been especially hated and dreaded by the Sufis, whose Practise he ridiculed, and whose Faith amounts to little more than his own, when stript of the Mysticism and formal recognition of Islamism ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam
... fell out of the tree at the audacity of the suggestion. Like Jakin he feared not God, neither regarded he Man, but there are limits even to the audacity of drummer-boy, and to speak to a ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... and audacity devised a plan which, for assurance and ingenuity, defied even the powers of Mr. Puff in the Critic: for who but himself would have thought of summoning up a ghost from the grave to bear witness in favor of a halting body of divinity? There is a ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... scaffold, have confessed that their entrance into a life of crime began in early youth, when the audacity of some unprincipled associate tempted them from the ways of innocence. Through all the years of life, even to old age, the life and character are influenced by association. If this be true in the case of the more mature and ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... Seidlitz-powder-colored papers, and then what seemed, to Durkin's exploring fingers, to be a few small morocco cases. The question flashed through his mind: What if, after all, the money he was looking for was not to be found! He struck still another match, with impatient hands. His first fever of audacity had burned itself out, and some indefinite cold reaction of disdain and disgust was setting in. Stooping low, he peered into ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... Lalage, understood women less than any fisherman who bandied words with them across a boat. I remember a Yule night when both Adam and I were at her mother's cottage, and, as we were leaving, he had the audacity to kiss Margaret. She ran out of the room, and Adam swaggered off, and when I recovered from my horror, I apologized for what he had done. I shall never forget how her mother looked at me, and said, 'Ay, Gavin, ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... government, would ever dare to adopt. This is probably true; but between the extremes of very distant invasions, and wars of position, there is a proper mean, and, without imitating his impetuous audacity, we may pursue the line he has marked out. It is probable that the old system of wars of positions will for a long time be proscribed, or that, if adopted, it will be ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... swooped up Helen, pillows and all and holding her burden as she would have held a struggling baby, walked straight out of the room and down, the corridor to her own room, the shouts, screams and laughs of the girls following her. Helen was absolutely speechless at the audacity of the act. Bumping her door together by the only available means left her, since both arms were occupied, Polly then plumped Helen, now almost ready to resort to hysterical tears, upon a wooden shirt-waist box and placing herself in front of her, struck the attitude of a little red-headed ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... preference: texts of old Lieder, jolly old songs, which he had read perhaps in some improving work: he would take care not to preserve their choral character: he would treat them with a fine, lively, and altogether lay audacity. Or he would take words from the Gospel, or proverbs, sometimes even words heard by chance, scraps of dialogues of the people, children's thoughts: words often awkward and prosaic in which there was only pure feeling. With them he was at his ease, and he would reach a depth with them which ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... daily to result in exposure; and after the death of Sir Burnham, which occurred a short time later, these increased in number and audacity. The dying baronet had impressed upon his wife the necessity of following my guidance in all things. Undoubtedly he died hoping that Lady Coverly might live out her days in ignorance of the grim secret of the Bell House. ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... it till you have turned the last page."—Cleveland Leader. "Its very audacity of motive, of execution, of solution, almost takes one's breath away. The boldness of its denouement is sublime."—Boston Transcript. "The literary hit of a generation. The best of it is the story deserves all its success. A masterly ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... stared at him aghast. Was he crazy, or did he mean to insult her master? Evidently neither. He seemed as sane as herself, while no one could associate an insult with him. He did not know anything. That was the solution of his audacity, and pityingly, as she would have addressed a half idiot, Mrs. Noah made him understand how impossible it was for him to think her master would lend to a ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... in so playing fast-and-loose with such a man, particularly in a moment of such utter unfitness to resist him, is, notwithstanding the French protection enjoyed by the Signory, amazing in its reckless audacity. It was fortunate for Florence that the Pope's orders tied the duke's hands—and it may be that of this the Signory had knowledge, and that it was upon such knowledge, in conjunction with France's protection, that ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... room, leaving the others wondering at the cool audacity with which he undertook so desperate ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... of the city were torn up,' wrote the Field-Marshal in his official report; 'not hundreds, but thousands of barricades crossed the streets. Such circumspection and audacity were displayed that it was evident military leaders were at the head of the people. The character of the Milanese had become quite changed. Fanaticism had seized every rank and age ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... yet in her attitude were subtle reservations, a consciousness of the thin ice on which they both stood. Each saw, only too plainly, the need for great care, in every step. In each lay the power to uncover, at a hand's turn, old mistakes that were best unremembered. Yet there was a certain suave audacity about the woman. She was not really afraid of Blake, and the Second Deputy had to recognize that fact. This self-assurance of hers he attributed to the recollection that she had once brought about his personal subjugation, "got his goat," as he had ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... now up it; but, clever as they were, they could not guess what way I had gone. They examined the bushes all round, but they told no tale which they could read. They were evidently not a little astonished at my audacity in having ventured so close to them as to watch their movements. It made them look upon me as a mighty brave, and they would, I doubted not, have tried their most exquisite tortures on me to prove my heroism had they been able to ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... Nauvoo and one of the first presidency. To him she went first. She shrank from him because of his coarseness and the jocular admiration which he sometimes had the audacity to express for her, but she could not forget how assiduous his kindness had been in the days of Elvira's illness. She found him sitting, his heels on the upper part of a chimney-piece with a fireless grate, reading the Millenial Star. The hot April sun, streaming ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... Towns have seen him then, as he waited, it would hardly have recognized its "card," its character, its mirror of aplomb and inventive audacity, in this figure of provincial ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... party of fifteen is attacked by Opechancanough (Op-e-kan-ka-no), brother and successor of Powhatan, with seven hundred warriors; Smith drags the old chief by his long hair into the midst of the Indian braves, who, amazed at such audacity, immediately surrender. He is shockingly burned on a boat by the explosion of a bag of powder at his side; but he leaps into the water, where he barely escapes death by drowning. These and many other wonderful exploits he published in a book after his return to England. Historians very generally ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... reflected. He had been used to regarding his comrade as a blatant child with an audacity grown from his inexperience, thoughtless, headstrong, jealous, and filled with a tinsel courage. A swaggering babe accustomed to strut in his own dooryard. The youth wondered where had been born these new eyes; when his comrade had made the great discovery that there were many men who would refuse ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... their arrival had become known, and a crowd soon gathered outside, acquiring audacity with continuance there. Raising a hurrah, the group would not leave till Somerset had showed himself on the balcony above; and then declined to go away till Paula also had appeared; when, remarking that her husband seemed a quiet young man enough, and would make ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... Constable must have been to recover Scott (Hunter, the stone of stumbling, was now removed by death) is evident from the mere list of the titles of the books which he took over in whole or part from the Ballantynes. Even his Napoleonic audacity quailed before the Edinburgh Annual Register, with its handsome annual loss of a thousand a year, at Brewster's Persian Astronomy, in 4to and 8vo, and at General Views of the County of Dumfries. But he saddled himself with a good deal of the 'stock' (which in ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... them are old and feeble." "No, they are not there," the Emperor repeated, casting his eye on some empty benches. "Fools! fools!" he said angrily, his face growing darker. It was true! The thirteen cardinals who had declared that they would not come, had had the singular audacity to keep their word. What! they had dared to persist in a factious opposition which he, the Emperor, had defied them to exhibit! They had dared to brave him, to offer him a public insult! They were to receive one in their ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... who actually led antagonism to the thought of a saving Messiah, was this very Apostle Peter. How he displayed his ignorance in the words, 'This shall not be unto Thee, O Lord'; and you remember also how his audacity rose to the height of saying, 'Why cannot I follow Thee now, Lord? I will lay down my life for Thy sake,' so little did he understand the purposes of Christ's suffering and Christ's death. And even after His resurrection ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... are taken from the old list, the first and the third, and Sextus says that the five Tropes are intended to supplement the ten Tropes, and to show the audacity of the Dogmatics in a variety of ways.[6] The order of these Tropes is the same with Diogenes as with Sextus, but the definitions of them differ sufficiently to show that the two authors took their material ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick
... dread set her pulses throbbing. It seemed to her, as to most innocent and inexperienced young wives, that she was herself to blame for this love which she had all unwittingly inspired. With this thought came an instinctive terror, perhaps a sense of her own helplessness before aggressive audacity. One of a man's strongest weapons is the terrible power of compelling a woman to think of him when her naturally lively imagination takes alarm or offence at the thought that ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... nature of Athenian society. The Comic Poets exercised unlimited rights of making fun; we do not read in history of a single one of the class having ever been called to the bar of justice to answer for the audacity of his dramatic efforts. The same liberty extended to religious matters; the Athenian people, keen, delicately organized, quick to see a joke and loving laughter for its own sake, even when the point told against themselves, this people of mockers felt convinced the Gods appreciated ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... recalled the brilliant figure at Mrs. Nathanmeyer's. Thea was one of those people who emerge, unexpectedly, larger than we are accustomed to see them. Even at this distance one got the impression of muscular energy and audacity,—a kind of brilliancy of motion,—of a personality that carried across big spaces and expanded among big things. Lying still, with his hands under his head, Ottenburg rhetorically addressed the figure in the ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... cold spirits, Washington disappears in a cloud of commonplaces; in the rhodomontade of boiling patriots, he expires in the agonies of rant. Now, the sooner this bundle of mediocre talents and moral qualities, which its contrivers have the audacity to call George Washington, is hissed out of existence, the better it will be for the cause of talent and the cause of morals; contempt of that is the condition of insight. He had no genius, it seems. O no! genius, we must suppose, is the peculiar and shining attribute ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... departed, leaving Doris amazed at his audacity. She had met this young man often at Mrs. Lockyard's house, where he was invariably referred to as "the ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the whole place is only of a year and a half's growth. Since we arrived we can mark rapid and visible strides towards completion. The house has been banked up and grassed, a fence put to enclose all the yard, and we have actually had the audacity to talk about a tennis ground, which would take an immense deal of making, from the unevenness of the soil. The water, having no real outflow, makes itself little gullies everywhere, which would be very difficult to fill up level; but ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... been till lately no need of an American navy. But the European who measures the unpreparedness of the nation in the terms of the unpreparedness of his own, or any other European, country, not taking into account the colonial character of the population, the alertness and audacity of the national mind, the resourcefulness and confident self-reliance of the people, is ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... masters is no new invention of modern Europe. It is quite as old as the world. But Europe proposed to apply it on a scale and with an elaborateness of detail of which no former world ever dreamed. The imperial width of the thing,—the heaven-defying audacity—makes its ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... a new light. I should have been glad enough to put up with the slight privation to which my concession would subject me, and could have borne to witness the semi-starvation of poor Dthemetri with a fine, philosophical calm, but it seemed to me that the scheme, if scheme it were, had something of audacity in it, and was well enough calculated to try the extent of my softness. I well knew the danger of allowing such a trial to result in a conclusion that I was one who might be easily managed; and therefore, after thoroughly satisfying ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... to that," the Squire blandly submitted. "For one thing, and the main thing, because he was a coward. He had plently of audacity but mighty little courage, and his courage gave out just when he needed it the most. And perhaps he hadn't perfect faith in himself; he was a fool, but he wasn't a crazy fool. Then again, my idea is that the scale was too small, ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... with people, and even down in the hall it was so full of ladies and gentlemen that there was no question of moving about. However, I made my way as far as the stairs, every one wondering at my audacity, and ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... are persons not to be outdone in all loyalty and just respect for woman-kind, but by nature hard of head and haters of delusion, however charming, who not only repudiate the new woman-worship which so many sentimentalists and some philosophers are desirous of setting up, but, carrying their audacity further, deny even the natural equality of the sexes. They assert, on the contrary, that in every excellent character, whether mental or physical, the average woman is inferior to the average man, in the sense of having that character less in quantity, and lower in quality. ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... tickling French honor well, has determined on storm. Richelieu, giving order of the day, "Whosoever of you is found drunk shall NOT be of the storm-party" (which produced such a teetotalism as nothing else had done),—storms, that night, with extreme audacity. The Place has to capitulate: glorious victory; honorable defence: ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... to be given by the thunder god, or Animiki, and then only at long intervals and to a chosen few. The gift is received during youth, when the fast is undertaken and when visions appear to the individual. His renown depends upon his own audacity and the opinion of the tribe. He is said to possess the power to look into futurity; to become acquainted with the affairs and intentions of men; to prognosticate the success or misfortune of hunters and warriors, as well as other ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... and victims—wherever there are victims, there must be hearts swollen with hate—it is for us to inflame that hate with all the ardor of vengeance! It is for us, servants of Bowanee, to draw towards us, by seducing wiles, all whose zeal, courage, and audacity may be useful to the cause. Let us rival each other in devotion and sacrifices; let us lend each other strength, help, support! That all who are not with us may be our prey, let us stand alone in the midst of all, against all, and in spite of all. For us, there must be neither country nor family. ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... they explained, as they smiled, "is a worthy senior; while our father is, on the other hand, only her nephew; so that on a birthday of a man of his age, we should really not have had the audacity to invite her ladyship; but as the weather, at this time, is cool, and the chrysanthemums, in the whole garden, are in luxuriant blossom, we have requested our venerable ancestor to come for a little distraction, and to see the whole number of her children and grand-children ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... proas of the Malays, lurking among the low shaded coves and islets of Sumatra, have sallied out upon the vessels sailing through the straits, fiercely demanding tribute at the point of their spears. Though by the repeated bloody chastisements they have received at the hands of European cruisers, the audacity of these corsairs has of late been somewhat repressed; yet, even at the present day, we occasionally hear of English and American vessels, which, in those waters, have been remorselessly boarded ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... into the audacity of this experiment by consideration of a fact which hitherto does not seem to have been taken into consideration by any translator of the half divine humourist in whose incomparable genius the highest qualities of Rabelais were fused and harmonized with the supremest gifts of Shelley: namely, ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... "Liberator." Read the declaration of this poor young man with "no chance," in the very first issue: "I will be as harsh as truth, as uncompromising as justice. I am in earnest. I will not equivocate, I will not excuse; I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard." What audacity for a young man, with ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... "rocks the boat" of happiness at least once during a love affair—usually by trying to leap out of it before it lands in the port of Matrimony. All a man needs in order to win any woman is a little audacity, a little ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland
... infallibly lose this our character should the Kamashastra Society flourish. Captain Burton has long been known as a bold explorer; his pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, disguised in the dress and taking on him the manners and customs of a True Believer, was a marvel of audacity; but perhaps he may be held now to have surpassed himself, for he has been bold enough to lay before his countrymen a literal and unexcised translation of ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... Clapham, Brixton, and Wandsworth—to say nothing of an occasional incursion upon Putney—in order to procure you half-a-dozen pupils? And the very first favour I demand of you, which is only the gift of this clever little hand, you have the audacity to refuse ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... "has had the audacity to make his way into the palace with a message from your consort Nitetis ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... eyes traveled from the bewitching hat, set upon her head coquettishly yet without audacity, to the soft crepe dress, its round collar showing her perfect throat, its graceful lines subtly revealing her alluring figure, to the feet that men always admired, whatever else of beauty or charm they might ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... pressed more closely together, and as the struggle for pre-eminence becomes more feverish and fatal. Courage and skill in political and military combinations enabled William the Silent to overcome the most powerful and unscrupulous monarch of his age. The same hereditary audacity and fertility of genius placed the destiny of Europe in the hands of William's great-grandson, and enabled him to mould into an impregnable barrier the various elements of opposition to the overshadowing monarchy of Louis ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... the path that divides the two vineyards, and where we passed to and fro many times daily. I discovered her by chance early in the morning as I proceeded to my work. She started up at my feet and flitted quickly along above the ploughed ground, almost as red as the soil. I admired her audacity. Surely no prowler by night or day would suspect a nest in this open and exposed place. There was no cover by which they could approach, and no concealment anywhere. The nest was a hasty affair, as if the birds' patience at nest-building had been about exhausted. Presently ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... have stated in his letter that he should not be surprised if the Sultan had the audacity to send representatives to the Queen's Jubilee; and to have added that he hoped the British Government would prevent any such thing, as the Turkish envoys might meet with a reception that would not be ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 34, July 1, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... the two had passed into the night, and then, with a sudden resolve, went bravely to the doorbell and rang. Before he quite appreciated the audacity of his act, he found himself in the sanctum facing a much-perplexed ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... abolish it. The Messiah is come, and it is he that is the Messiah. The Kingdom of God is about to be revealed, and it is he that will reveal it. He knew well that he would be the victim of his own audacity, but it was by cries and the rending of hearts that the kingdom had to ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... rate, he carried himself as a man with a grievance, and when he looked at his offspring, which was seldom, it seemed to Letty that he regarded the second one as an unnecessary intruder and cherished a secret resentment at its audacity in coming to this planet uninvited. He went back to his work in Boston without its having crossed his mind that anybody but his sister could take care of his children. He didn't really regard them ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... genuine, tender, stupid beadsman and petty soul in it). To have bound up this New Testament (a kind of ROCOCO of taste in every respect) along with the Old Testament into one book, as the "Bible," as "The Book in Itself," is perhaps the greatest audacity and "sin against the Spirit" which literary Europe has upon ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... concerned. Would you believe it? he wished nothing less than to be appointed my colleague in authority. He talked of mounting his horse and marching with the troops that might be placed under his command. He wished, he said, to maintain the Constitution: nay, more; I am assured that he had the audacity to add that, if it were necessary to outlaw me, the Government might come to him and he would find soldiers capable of carrying the decree into execution."—"All this, General, should give you an idea how inflexible his principles are."—"Yes, I am well aware of ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... vary its direction. This being the first time that this phenomenon was ever noticed, it was viewed by the sailors with astonishment; they thought it an indication that nature itself had changed its laws, and that Providence was about to punish their audacity in venturing so far beyond the bounds of man. They declared that the commands of the government had been fully obeyed in their proceeding so many days in the same course, and so far surpassing all former navigators in ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... some of Johnson's fugitives had the audacity to bawl out, though from a very prudent distance, threatening us that they would yet rescue the prisoners before we got to the bluff. But they wisely took care not to make good their word, for they were only a pack of poor ignorant ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... I, tossing the letter upon the table, "such audacity—such presumption is beyond all belief; the question is, whether the fellow is ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol
... Because the author had a deep, practical knowledge of the stage. Because he disdained all stage tricks. Because he had the wit to select for his hero one of the world's greatest and finest characters. Because he had the audacity to select a gigantic theme and to handle it with simplicity. Because he had the courage of all his artistic and moral convictions. And of course because he has a genuine dramatic gift. Finally, because William J. Rea plays ...
— Abraham Lincoln • John Drinkwater
... The audacity of James. It was a gigantic suit of armor, and for the moment Jim thought of trying to get into it, but he gave it up. Perhaps as a last resort he might use it, to strike terror into the superstitious greasers and ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... never known, and my whole life is now ordered to make you forget that side of my character. I ask myself now, 'What would Helen have me do?' I don't say this humble mood will last. If Alessandra should make a 'barrel of money,' I am capable of soaring to such heights of audacity that you ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... respectable. It is a pity that it has the disadvantage of rendering stagnant things which are essentially voluntary and free,—labor and thought; of creating obstacles to power even among its agents, and of bestowing upon chance, often upon incapacity, the reward of genius and audacity. ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... small birds is only equaled by their courage, or rather their audacity. Sometimes they may be seen furiously chasing birds twenty times their size, fastening upon their bodies, letting themselves be carried along in their flight, while they peck fiercely until their tiny rage is satisfied. Sometimes they fight each other vigorously. ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... hand, had interposed between the sentence and the execution of the law, and this last offence, as being of so much greater magnitude than Holden's, cast it quite into the shade. Who were they? Who would have the audacity, in the midst of a law-loving and law-abiding people, to trample on the laws and defy the State? The constable could give no information. He had not even seen a person. He had only heard a voice he never heard before. Ought not some persons to be arrested on suspicion? Who ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... I accordingly took my leave. But, not before the astute lady of the world had contrived to impress me with the consideration that Mrs Clyde moved in a very different circle to that of Mr Lorton; and, that, if I had the assurance and audacity to aspire to the hand of "her daughter," I need not nurse the sweet belief that she would lend a favourable ear to my suit. I must, in that case, be prepared to wage a war a outrance, in which there would be no quarter allowed, on ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... there was a book written which claimed to be about Buffalo, but a microscopic examination would fail to find in it anything worth knowing about the history of this community. The author of that book, William Ketchum, had the audacity to name it, as we read on the title-page, "An Authentic and Comprehensive History of Buffalo, with some account of its early inhabitants, both savage and civilized." It was published in Buffalo in 1864, in two octavo volumes, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... full of the interest of life again, and his stock of audacity did not appear to be in the least diminished by his melancholy experience. He treated Dr. Slavens on the footing of an old friend, and if there was any shame in his heart at his past behavior toward Agnes, his colorless ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... in the streets, which are soiled with every sort of mire, while waiting for some wheel to crush them. Nevertheless, while Marius bent a pained and astonished gaze on her, the young girl was wandering back and forth in the garret with the audacity of a spectre. She kicked about, without troubling herself as to her nakedness. Occasionally her chemise, which was untied and torn, fell almost to her waist. She moved the chairs about, she disarranged the toilet articles which stood on the commode, she handled Marius' clothes, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... to enter it, and while the General was riding at the head of his men, some reprobate had the audacity to shoot at him. The offender was ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear
... Victor made me feel particularly uneasy. This terrible uncle had become absolutely unsufferable now that his sister was no longer there to calm him down. The harp of David was broken, and Saul was wholly delivered over to the spirit of madness. The fall of Charles X. had increased the audacity of the old Napoleonic veteran, who uttered all imaginable bravadoes. He no longer frequented our house, which had become too silent for him. But sometimes, at the dinner-hour, we would see him suddenly make ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... sole"—shook me familiarly by the hand, and actually called me "Bob." The indignation of the Mayor was roused, and I hinted to him that I did not understand such liberties, upon which the fellow had the insolence to laugh in my face—couldn't stand his audacity, so quitted the room with strong marks ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari. Vol. 1, July 31, 1841 • Various
... mistress of this house. Who is the woman who has the audacity to intrude upon my seclusion, and vividly remind me of one whose hated lineaments have cursed my memory for years? Woman, if I believed she had the effrontery to thrust herself into my presence, I should fear that at this instant ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... faults the picture had a poetic audacity that defied the criticism it provoked. If you looked long enough, you saw that a youth and a maiden were lying in a trance that was half sleep, half death; while their souls, diaphanous forms with indefinite legs, hovered above them in mid-air, each ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... planetary and now of the fixed," might put one in mind of Hecate's mode of ascending in a machine from the stage, "midst troops of spirits," in which you now admire the skill of the artist, and next tremble for the fate of the performer, fearing that the audacity of the attempt will turn his head or break his neck. The style of these "Discourses" also, though not elegant or poetical, was, like the subject, intricate and endless. It was that of a man pushing ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt |
