"Dastardly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fight, and I will see to it that you shall not escape as you did at Montreal. Perhaps you do not know that I have knowledge of your evil doings at Montreal—how you and others tried to loot the stores and private dwellings, and how both the French and the English soldiers turned on you and your dastardly companions and shot you down. How you escaped from justice I do not know, but perhaps, even yet, the authorities will listen to a charge ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... seriousness. Doubtless, Curtius rode at his last leap without a speck on his burnished mail: purple, and gold, and gems flamed all round Sardanapalus when he fired the holocaust in Nineveh: even that miserable, dastardly Nero was solicitous about the marble fragments that were to line his felon's grave. So it befell that, on this particular evening, Cecil went through a very careful toilet, though it was as simple as usual; for ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... a woman so aged, defenceless, and kind? According to the doctor, the shock of the robbery had not been the originating cause of Mrs. Maldon's death; but it might have been; quite possibly it had hastened death.... Louis was not merely a thief; he was a dastardly thief. ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... observing a sailor with a lighted match in his hand, and our captain busied in appointing an extraordinary watch for the night, as a precaution against the pirates who swarm in these seas." These wretches, as dastardly as they were cruel, the instant they boarded a vessel, put every individual of the crew to death. They lurked about the isle of Fouri, to the north of Patmos, in great numbers, taking possession of bays and creeks the least frequented ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... who had been old Blackwater's chere amie before she married him, and, as Lady Blackwater, had sacrificed her innocent and defenceless step-daughter to one of her own lovers, in order to secure for him the step-daughter's fortune—black and dastardly deed! ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... am going to quit, or that you're going to force me to do so? retorted Prescott. "Haynes, even up to this hour I have hesitated to believe the half evidence of my own eyes. I have tried to convince myself that no man who wears the honored gray of West Point could do such a dastardly piece of work. And you have as good as ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock
... him, the next she felt an extraordinary desire to hear him speak, to learn the prevailing tone of his mind, to know his opinions. There was an earnestness in his look and manner that appealed to her sympathies. He was a just, upright gentleman. What would he think of the dastardly deed by which ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... impure milk'd from a watery fen; (110) Hewn, so stories avouch, in a mountain's kernel; an hero Hew'd it, falsely declar'd Amphytrionian, he, When those monster birds near grim Stymphalus his arrow 115 Smote to the death; such task bade him a dastardly lord. So that another God might tread that portal of heaven (115) Freely, nor Hebe fair wither a chaste eremite. Yet than abyss more deep thy love, thy depth of emotion; Love which school'd thy lord, made of a master ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... presumption of ignorance he had fancied that he knew his own power, and so in one sense he did, but he was not aware of his own want of power. He knew, indeed, that he had the brute courage to dare and do anything desperate or dastardly, but he did not know that he lacked the moral courage to bear the consequences of his deeds. The insurance policies, therefore, lay unclaimed—even ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... her feet, she had recognised the voice of one of the speakers—he had spoken once only, but that was enough—she had snatched up the naked sword that since the previous morning had leant in the chimney corner. As Colonel John crossed the threshold—oh, dastardly audacity, oh, insolence incredible, that in the hour of his triumph he should soil that threshold!—she lunged with all the force of her strong young ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... asked for their blood, and they gave it." So then from scores of punctures the life-blood of the mother of nations drops, and each new bloodshed leads to yet further bloodshed, until the deadly series looks endless. We sent Burnes to Cabul, and we betrayed him in the most dastardly way by the mouth of a Minister. England, the great mother, was not answerable for that most unholy of crimes; it was the talking men, the glib Parliament cowards. Burnes was cut to pieces and an army lost. Crime ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... Miles was put in command of the picket line to our front. His own regiment was not in this advance line, but was in the first main line behind the works that I have mentioned. Our Colonel here made a great reputation for himself. I quote from Swinton, "Amid much that is dastardly at Chancellorsville, the conduct of this young, but gallant and skillful officer, shines forth with a brilliant lustre." Walker says of him, "So delighted was Hancock at the splendid behavior of his skirmish line ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... to describe the state of loyal excitement into which the Metropolis has been thrown by this event," says the Annual Register. "It seems as if only the dastardly deed had been wanted to bring out the full love and devotion of the people to their young Queen," the happy wife and expectant mother, whose precious life might have been cut short by the unlooked-for shot of an assassin. At the different ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... her will, at a given moment, broke down, and the collapse was determined by that fellow's dastardly stroke. He told her, the scoundrel, that you and I ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... man to have a fool for a son. I see plainly that you were leagued with Druce and Anson to blacken the woman I love. But right is might and love is right. The whole dastardly affair enlightens me as to the nature of your alliance with that dive. Why did you renew the lease to Druce against my protest? I never realized until tonight the horror of your extensive holdings of tenderloin property. I don't want another ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... experience I have been obliged to look upon many cruel scenes in connection with Indian warfare on the Plains since that day, but the effect of this dastardly and revolting crime has never been effaced from my memory. Greater and more atrocious massacres have been committed often by Indians; their savage nature modifies one's ideas, however, as to the inhumanity ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... and children, and ready to do such a dastardly act as that! Here, you shall tell me this, who set ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... encircled the little village of fifty houses. When the lines met at the far gate, completely investing the town, a wild yell rent the air! Doors were hacked down. Indians with tomahawks stood guard outside the windows, and the dastardly work began,—as gratuitous a butchery of innocent people as ever the Iroquois perpetrated in their worst raids. Two hours the massacre lasted, and when it was over the French had, to their everlasting discredit, murdered in cold blood thirty-eight men (among them the poor inoffensive ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... swish of invisible skirts—vanishing possibly in the same direction whence they came. They go leaving him wiping his astonished eyes disgustedly, for the act was so sudden and tragic as to excite tears. Before he is aware of it other and stronger gusts duplicate the dastardly deed of the first wingless wizard of the plains, and the hapless voyager is left gasping. Almost immediately there are to be seen the regular "desert devils," as they are called, bringing a dozen or more whirling columns of yellow silt rapidly ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... which might be damning evidence against them, or by stating your opinion in Court. There is only one way of staying the trio from doing this dastardly thing, and that is by getting this case, which is now being tried, ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... whether he was quite awake; for two velvet lips seemed to be still touching his. He stirred, and somebody was gone like the wind, with a rustle of flying petticoats, and his door shut in a moment. It closed with a catch-lock; this dastardly vision had opened it with her key, and left it open to make good her retreat if he should awake. Alfred sat up in bed indignant, and somewhat fluttered. "Confound her impudence," said he. But there was no help for it; he grinned ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... dastardly slander than is contained in the assertion that the majority or any considerable proportion of working men neglect their families through drink. It is a condemned lie. There are some who do, but they are not even a large minority. They are few and far between, and are regarded ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... at daybreak much distressed over a most dastardly outrage perpetrated upon the Countess of Clare and Sir John de Bury," said Aymer abruptly, watching the monk's face—but all he saw ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... of God the Papists detract when they consider divinely enjoined tasks as paltry and attempt to undertake something better or more difficult. God is not propitiated by such works, but rather provoked, as Saul's example shows. As if God were stupid, dastardly, and cruel in that he commanded to destroy the Amalekites and all their belongings, Saul conceived a kinder plan and reserved the cattle for the purpose of sacrifice. What else was such action but to deem himself wise ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... cried the landlord, angrily. "It is a dastardly conspiracy! Upstairs there they are driving a poor, innocent girl to despair. Help me to rescue her. It's the 'Marquise.' Oh, heavens! her cries have ceased, she ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... doubtless, aware that my son makes grave accusations against you, that he accuses you, in fact, of a dastardly crime." ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... You are an ass, Barker, with your complicated calculations, as the Duke has often told you; and now it is a thousand to one that you have ruined yourself with the Countess. She will never take your view that it was a justifiable piece of revenge; she will only see in it a cruel and dastardly deception, practised on a woman whose only fault was that, not loving, she discovered her mistake in time. A man should rejoice when a woman draws back from an engagement, reflecting what his life might have been ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... wrote to his mother, and his brother, John Augustine, apprising them of his safety. "The Virginia troops," says he, in a letter to his mother, "showed a good deal of bravery, and were nearly all killed. ... The dastardly behavior of those they called regulars exposed all others, that were ordered to do their duty, to almost certain death; and, at last, in despite of all the efforts of the officers to the contrary, they ran, as sheep pursued by dogs, and it ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... though the swimmers spoke to each other occasionally, none now referred to the dastardly conduct of the enemy in setting them ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock
... protested against this wild prophecy; but as Paul's mother left the room she rushed upon her father, crying: "Tell me the truth! What do you think of it? Did you ever hear of such a dastardly thing?" ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... interested at this picture of patient, grateful, and high-minded resignation, Morton could not help bestowing an execration upon the poor-spirited rascal who had taken such a dastardly course of vengeance. ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... moment that I remained undecided whether or not to follow my servant; pride and curiosity alike forbade so dastardly a flight. I re-entered my room, closing the door after me, and proceeded cautiously into the interior chamber. I encountered nothing to justify my servant's terror. I again carefully examined the walls, to see if there were ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... school. He would have denied it could he have found words in which to do it, had he had time to frame a denial, but he was so entirely off his guard, so confounded by Seabrooke's sudden accusation and this evidence of the dastardly deed he had performed that he was utterly overwhelmed, and stood speechless, and the picture of ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... and passion!" said the unfortunate youth; "but when saw you them supported by the resolution that should have backed them? The sparks you speak of fell on my dastardly heart as on a piece of ice which could catch fire from nothing: if my offended pride urged me to strike, my weakness of mind prompted me the next ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... situation in its true light would wait till their oppressors thought fit to decree their destruction, and not take arms in their defence while it was yet in their power? Which was most meritorious, the unresisting and dastardly submission of a slave, or the enterprise and gallantry of the man who dared to assert his claims? Since, by the partial administration of our laws, innocence, when power was armed against it, had nothing ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... dastardly impulse to forswear my bargain, I tucked the mewing kitten under my coat, where it clawed me unobserved by any jeering boy in the street. Passing Mrs. Cudlip's house on my way home, I noticed at once that the window stood invitingly open, and yielding with a quaking heart to temptation, I leaned ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... hair in a careless knot at the base of her head. There were times when she was impeccably groomed, others when she looked as if an infuriated maid had left her helpless. She was, as Ruyler well knew, a kind and generous woman (in certain of her moods), with whom the dastardly cradle fates had experimented, hoping for high drama when the whip of life snapped once too often. Perhaps she had found her revenge as well as her consolation ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... purchase present ease, and to secure his low pleasures, at any price—ready to give up the honour of his country, and submit to the conqueror—that he had been secretly intriguing with the enemy, had been suspected, and this suspicion was confirmed by his dastardly capitulation when the means of defence were in his power and the spirit of ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... of it in an instant. Since the supper of the night before he had been pestered by many misgivings, and troubled by some remorse. Capt'n Davy was bent on going away. Overwhelmed by a sense of what he took to be his dastardly conduct he was in that worst position of the man who can forgive neither himself nor the person he has injured. So much had Lovibond done for him by the fine scheme that had brought matters to such a pass. But having gone so far, Lovibond had found ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... crime, who confesses it and dies. The story is full of the most evident inconsistencies. There is no adequate reason for Tyrrel's hatred of Falkland, which leads to the murder. It is inconceivable that a man of Falkland's worship of honor should commit so dastardly a crime, and should suffer two innocent men to pay its penalty. The facility with which Falkland allows his secretary to discover a secret which would bring him to the gallows is entirely inconsistent with the ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... to a group of men whose eyes had been straining for months to see a relief ship head their way! Imagine sending such a message to the most illustrious discoverer the world has ever known! A more dastardly bit of cruelty hardly ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... increasing the strength of the fortification, it becomes, with many, a pretence for an immediate surrender, under the notion that no power is able to withstand so formidable an adversary; while others brave the danger, and think it mean to surrender, and dastardly to fly. Melissa, indeed, knew better; and though she could not boast the apathy, steadiness, and inflexibility of a Cato, wanted not the more prudent virtue of Scipio, and gained the victory by ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... of Worms, after due deliberation, declared Luther an outlaw before God and man, and forbade all Germans to give him shelter or food or drink, or to read a single word of the books which the dastardly heretic had written. But the great reformer was in no danger. By the majority of the Germans of the north the edict was denounced as a most unjust and outrageous document. For greater safety, Luther was hidden in the Wartburg, ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... wrecked! Two dead!... Mr. Beard and I alive—but what a future! What a dastardly thing to bring all ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... scarlet. His first impulse was to strike back; but how could he? Those guns pointed at him from every direction. He was as powerless as a baby. But his hour would come. This dastardly Mexican bandit should suffer for ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... thus better to retain the stored-up heat for cloudy days. Among the passengers one man, envious of the young officer, did all in his power to wrest from him the glory of success. Fortunately his dastardly attempt ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... Almost all the articles in our favor are only defensive and explanatory; the offensive is altogether carried by the secesh press in England and in France. But to deal offensive blows, our agents would be obliged to stand firm on human principles, and show up all the dastardly corruption of slavery, of slaveholders, and of rebels. Such a warfare is forbidden by Mr. Seward's policy; and perhaps if such a Weed should speak of corruption, some English secesh may reprint Wilkeson's ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... they heard of the surrepti- tious flight, and loaded the fugitives with all the invectives they could lay their tongues to. So enraged were they at the dastardly trick of which they had been made the dupes, that if chance should bring the deserters again on board I should be sorry to ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... council had any jurisdiction over him. The same sentence was passed upon all the other leaders who had placed themselves out of reach of Alva's arm—Sainte Aldegonde, Hoogstraeten, Culemburg, Montigny, Lewis of Nassau and others. Unable to lay hands upon the prince himself, the governor-general took dastardly advantage of William's indiscretion in leaving his eldest son at Louvain to pursue his studies at the university. At the beginning of 1568 Philip William, Count of Buren in right of his mother, was seized and sent to Madrid to be brought up at the court of Philip ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... Publius Cornelius Scipio lived no more; his ambition might reach without hindrance the utmost limits of his desires, and yet he could not rejoice; he could not escape from a deep horror of himself, and he struck his broad forehead with his clenched fists. He was face to face with his first dastardly murder. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... swallowed hard. The jurymen thought no more of evidence and of the stability of the laws. They all had mothers, or memory-mothers, and they only resolved that whatever crime Stephen Coburn might have committed, it would be a more dastardly crime for them to drive their twelve daggers into the aching breast that had suckled him. On the instant the trial had resolved itself into "The People vs. One Poor Old Mother." The jury's tears voted ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... dismissal of the king's ministers, and read him a lesson on constitutional government which ended in a threat of deposition unless the king should mend his ways. Richard was at the time only twenty-one years of age. In the impetuosity of his youth he is recorded as having contemplated a dastardly attempt upon the life of his uncle, whom he had grown to hate as the cause of all his difficulties. A plan was laid, which is said to have received Brembre's approbation, for beguiling the duke into the city by an invitation to supper, ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... know how it is if a man is hit in the face by a cloud of smoke when he is going into a burning building to get somebody out. He draws back—and then he goes in. We went in. We charged—well, it was the way we felt about it. We wanted to get at them and we were boiling mad over such a dastardly ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... peace conference, who are busily making money off the war, having prudently kept our own skins out of danger, are officiously ready with proposals of peace. What a peace! The only peace that could be made to-day would be a dastardly treason to every one of the millions whose blood has watered Europe, to every woman who has given a son or a father or a husband to the settlement of the cause. The parochialism of the American intelligence has ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... Mr. Meredith's case more specially and for a longer preliminary period, but virtually in both—they have had to await the taste for their work: and that in awaiting it they have never stooped for one moment to that dastardly and degrading change of sail to catch the popular breeze, which has always been the greatest curse of politics and of literature—the two chief worldly occupations and ends of the mind of man—that they have been and are artists who wait till the world comes to them, and ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... explained. "Not a clue—except a warning letter signed with this mysterious clutching fist. Last week it was the robbery of the Haxworth jewels and the killing of old Haxworth. Again that curious sign of the hand. Then there was the dastardly attempt on Sherburne, the steel magnate. Not a trace of the assailant except this same clutching fist. So it has gone, Jameson—the most alarming and most inexplicable series of murders that has ever happened in this country. And nothing but this uncanny hand ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... Bird Uncovers a Dastardly Plot, Amazing in its Mechanical Ingenuity, Behind the Apparently Trivial Eye Trouble of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... since men, however well disciplined, had proved powerless against Maroons, to try a Spanish fashion against them, and use dogs. The proposition was met, in some quarters, with the strongest hostility. England, it was said, had always denounced the Spaniards as brutal and dastardly for hunting down the natives of that very soil with hounds; and should England now follow the humiliating example? On the other side, there were plenty who eagerly quoted all known instances of zooelogical warfare: all Oriental nations, for instance, used elephants in war, and, no doubt, would ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... of the following ballad is the atrocious and dastardly assassination of James Sharp, Archbishop of St Andrews and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... none but poets of the second rank were now remaining. Bacchus misses Euripides, and determines to bring him back from the infernal world. In this he imitates Hercules, but although furnished with that hero's lion- skin and club, in sentiments he is very unlike him, and as a dastardly voluptuary affords us much matter for laughter. Here we have a characteristic specimen of the audacity of Aristophanes: he does not even spare the patron of his own art, in whose honour this very ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... scheme which, instigated from Potsdam, and paid for by German gold, was about to be worked. Already Germany had decided to conquer Russia, and already the far-seeing Kaiser had watched and recognised that he could use Rasputin's undoubted influence in our priest-ridden country for his own dastardly ends. ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... of his days a moment's weakness. "I was quite exhausted by torture, and I let fall this unhappy expression: 'Very well, then, I will be reconciled.' This sin has brought me down as it were into hell itself, and I have looked upon myself as a dastardly soldier who turned his back on the day of battle, and as an unfaithful servant who betrayed the interests of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... supped out of a nice Tea-Cup, sweatened with Sugar, biting a Bit of nice thin Bread and Butter between Whiles. This mocks the strong Appetite, relaxes the Stomach, satiates it with trifling light Nick-Nacks which have little in them to support hard Labour. In this manner the Bold and Brave become dastardly, the Strong become weak, the Women become barren, or if they breed their Blood is made so poor that they have not Strength to suckle, and if they do the Child dies of the Gripes; In short, it gives an effeminate, weakly Turn to the People ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... displeased at the insults of his former minister. "Let him come," answered he coolly: "I am ready, if he desire it, to hold out my throat to him. Your conduct, my dear Flahaut, touches me; but your country wants you: remain in the army, and forget, like me, the Prince of Eckmuhl and his dastardly menaces." ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... cabin with the master and second-master, examining the charts, and had also been on deck, giving directions to the officer of the watch, but a short time before the first alarm. When the panic was at its height, there was no act of dastardly selfishness for personal preservation, to the disregard of the safety of others. The officers are not accused of losing their composure. Lieut. Marryat is stated to have been 'calm and self-possessed;' and Mr. Rooke's strenuous ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... Anne, and wrote, with interruption of a nap (in which my readers may do well to imitate me), till two o'clock. I wrote with care, having digested Comines. Whether I succeed or not, it would be dastardly to give in. A bold countenance often carries off an indifferent cause, but no one will defend him who shows the white feather. At two I walked till near four. Dined with the girls, smoked two cigars, and to work again till supper-time. Slept like a top. Amount of the day's work, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... running after her money? Does he make her life a misery to her, and leave her no peace anywhere, not even in her own house? Does he spy upon her, and set others to do the same?—does he listen at doors and interrogate servants as to her movements—and does he altogether play the dastardly traitor to prove ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... Woeful at dawn I asked Where lingers my lord, in what land does he dwell? Then I fared into far lands and faithfully sought him, 10 A weary wanderer in want of comfort. His treacherous tribesmen contrived a plot, Dark and dastardly, to drive us apart The width of a world, where with weary hearts We live in loneliness, and longing consumes me. 15 My master commanded me to make my home here. Alas, in this land my loved ones are few, My faithful friends! ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... a creature of impulse. In the excitement of the moment he forgot danger, and the dastardly nature of the crimes gave him more than his usual amount of courage. He rushed at the chimney, and, regardless of soot and darkness, ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... pollution of the Holy of Holies; and his miserable death at Taba, after a tumultuous reign of eleven years, are circumstances of a prominent kind, and therefore more generally noticed by the historians of his time than the impious, dastardly, cruel, silly, and whimsical achievements which make up the sum total of his ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... when she and Gorley had been engaged, to their meetings, their intimate conversations. This man, in whose hand her hands had lain, whose lips had pressed hers, been pressed by hers, this man had been convicted of a double crime—dastardly murder and dastardly theft—and punished for it! Her pride cried out against her knowledge, and cried out against the man who ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... I am aware that one author, who is, I blush to say, a personal friend of mine, resorts freely to the dastardly subterfuge of calling them conversations, discussions, and so forth, with the express object of evading criticism. But I'm not to be disarmed by such tricks. I say they are not plays. Dialogues, if you will. Exhibitions of character, perhaps: especially ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... grilling in eternal fires. We are too few to resist him, although, by that great Power whom we all worship, if we had not wives and children to protect, I, with a spear in my hand, my sword by my side, and mounted on my mare—I would not fear to encounter the whole host of his dastardly ragamuffins, and I should like to see the cherkaji[45] that would face me. I propose, therefore, that, without a moment's delay, we abandon the Turkish territory, and migrate into Persia, where we shall not fail to meet with ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... at our gates had not wanted courage for the attempt!—Rome taken while I was consul—Of honours I had sufficient,—of life enough—more than enough.—I should have died in my third consulate. But who are they that our dastardly enemies thus despise? The consuls, or you Romans? If we are in the fault, depose us, or punish us yet more severely. If you are to blame, may neither God nor man punish your faults! only may you repent. No, Romans, the confidence ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... fellow-student in the neck—a dreadful wound—because he taunted me about my mode of dress. I was wearing the only clothes my eccentric father would provide me with. I am wearing the same style of costume yet, as penance for that dastardly act—caused by an ungovernable temper with which I have been cursed from my birth. I would have entered the service of God had it not been for that temper. I am unable to control it, except by avoiding undue contact with my ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... "It is dastardly," Paul remarked as he bent over and discovered that not a particle of the motive mechanism had been ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... infinitely great the glory from such acts! How despicable the fame of a tyrant conqueror, the ruler of slaves! It would be pleasing to support you as the author of great and good works, but it is shameful to permit your present proceedings, and dastardly to leave the unfeeling apostate sons of neutral and Christian nations unopposed, aiding to perpetuate barbarism for horrid gain, drawn from the price of Christians torn from their homes and sold as slaves in foreign ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... taken prisoner the king of France, was a cousin of the fugitive king of Castile, who sought him at Cape Breton, and begged his aid to recover his dominions. The chivalrous prince of Wales knew little of the dastardly deeds of the suppliant. Don Pedro had brought with him his three young maiden daughters, whose helpless state appealed warmly to the generous knight. National policy accorded with the inclination of the prince, for the Castilian revolution had been promoted by France, and the ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... therefore the honor to request that you will return him, that I may inflict the punishment which his dastardly offense merits. I cannot be responsible for the good conduct of my soldiers, if they are to find protection from punishment by entering ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... he belongs to God," said Christian. "And hark 'ee, Matthew Quintal, if ever again you do such a dastardly, cowardly, brutal act, I'll take on myself the office of your executioner, and will beat out your brains. You know me, Quintal; I never ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... London fencing-masters, as he but now admitted," replied Colden, grumpily. "He made no secret of his desertion; and in a coffee-house discussion I said it was a dastardly act. So we—fought. Since then I've met officers of the regiment he left. Such a thing was never known before,—the desertion of an officer of the Sixty-third,—and General Grant, its colonel, has the word of Sir Henry ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... This coarse, dastardly, and rather stupid stratagem he put into execution as quickly as possible. There were some dangers to be guarded against, as for instance Apaches, and the chance of getting ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... spread optimistic rumours and by a powerful effort put a brake upon the fall in prices. Business improved. Newspapers with big circulations supported the movement. With patriotic eloquence they depicted capital as laughing in its impregnable position at the assaults of a few dastardly criminals, and public wealth maintaining its serene ascendency in spite of the vain threats made against it. They were sincere in their attitude, though at the same time they found it benefited them. Outrages ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... like an almost dastardly thing to do, sir, but the death of the datto stopped the fighting inside. Wouldn't it be a good plan, sir, since the datto is assuredly dead, to have his body placed upon the top of the wall and hurled over to the Moros outside? When they behold that sight they may feel that ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... real danger to Frances, you must look higher," I said, cautiously refraining from being too explicit. "There is one whom my cousin scorns, but from whom she is in hourly peril. There is no length to which he would not go, no crime, however dastardly, he would not commit to gain his end. I watch over her constantly, and although my fear may be groundless, still I believe that her only safety is to marry at once and to ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... like a soap opera, Marian," I told her bitterly. "Will Catherine find solace in Phillip's arms? Will Steve catch Mekstrom's Disease? Will the dastardly Scholar Phelps—" ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... you both to carry on your private dealings with dastardly clerks. Back to your room, and leave this heap of bloody flesh and rags for the negroes ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... a moment to chronicle, with deep sorrow, the sad fate that ultimately befell the kind and noble surgeon, Maj. York. While he, with his regiment, was home on veteran furlough, in March, 1864, an organized gang of Copperheads made a dastardly attack on some of the soldiers of the regiment at Charleston, Illinois, and murdered Maj. York and five privates, and also severely wounded the Colonel, Greenville M. Mitchell, and three privates. ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... at the age of about twenty, was a favorite companion of Mademoiselle de Montpensier, the grand-daughter of Henry IV and a daughter of the weak and dastardly Gaston, Duke of Orleans. Nothing in French annals has found more readers than the story of the exploit of this spirited princess at Orleans during the civil war of the Fronde. Her cousin Conde, chief of the revolt, had found favor in her eyes; ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... the saddest of the year. He is a moral double-ender, iron-clad at that. He is unpleasant in two ways. He burrows in the ground so that you cannot find him, and he flies away so that you cannot catch him. He is rather handsome, as bugs go, but utterly dastardly, in that he gnaws the stem of the plant close to the ground, and ruins it without any apparent advantage to himself. I find him on the hills of cucumbers (perhaps it will be a cholera-year, and we shall not want any), the squashes (small ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... crimes committed by the Boers—a list of some of which will be found in the Appendix to this book—in only three cases were a proportion of the perpetrators produced and put through the form of trial. Those three were, the dastardly murder of Captain Elliot, who was shot by his Boer escort while crossing the Vaal river on parole; the murder of a man named Malcolm, who was kicked to death in his own house by Boers, who afterwards put a bullet through his head to make the ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... political enemies rose in troops, and the "Lieutenant-General of Canada and the adjacent countries" was clapped in jail like a common malefactor. Meanwhile what of the forty promising colonists on Sable Island? They dropped for years out of human knowledge as completely as Henry Hudson when dastardly mutineers set him adrift in an open boat in the bay which bears his name,[2] or Narvaez and his brilliant expedition whose fate was a mystery until the appearance of four survivors, eight ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... to understand, then, that it was you who committed an unprovoked assault upon me—who planned to have me waylaid in that dastardly fashion?" ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... so dastardly as incendiarism. We are open enemies; and I can protect myself from any violence that I apprehend. And I will assuredly protect all others who come to me for work. They know my determination by this time, as well and as fully ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... reply, his thoughts were in wild confusion, and it was with difficulty that he hid the fierce anxiety of his heart or his rage against the perpetrators of this dastardly act which tore ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... England; frightening with the loudness of its voice the weak, the timid and the ailing; perpetrating, whenever it had an opportunity, that species of crime to which it has ever been most partial—deathbed robbery; for as it is cruel, so is it dastardly. Yes, it went on enlisting, plundering and uttering its terrible threats till—till it became, as it always does when left to itself, a fool, a very fool. Its plunderings might have been overlooked, and so might its insolence, had it been common insolence, but it—, and then ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... to cheap seats, and the purchaser of the cheap seat has come there to have his money's worth. Directly the curtain goes up he is ready to collaborate. It is perfectly safe for the Villain to come on at once and reveal his dastardly plans; the audience is alert ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... done is not for love of you or Mancini—for I love neither of you. It is done because noblesse m'oblige. I told St. Auban that I would have no part in this outrage. But that is not enough; I owe it to my honour to attempt the frustration of so dastardly a plan. You, M. de Luynes, appear to be the most likely person to encompass this, in the interests of your friend Mancini; I leave the matter, ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... to go back by the river's bank. Whoever the devils that have done this dastardly thing, they may be still prowling about, and to meet them would be for me to get served the same as they've served him, that's sure; so I'd best take another route, though it be a bit round the corner. Let me see. I think I know a way that should lead tolerably straight to the estancia without ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... rewarded these villains, even with my own money, to fabricate and propagate all sorts of calumnies against her abroad, while their infamous agents at home were reiterating and magnifying those falsehoods; if I had bribed the dastardly hireling press to libel and villify her; if in fact, I had carried my persecutions and deadly hatred so far as at last to break the heart of her daughter; if, upon her return, I had made another atrocious ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... covertly at his fiancee. She must not know the truth at any cost. Possibly he lost his head! At all events, that is the kindest construction to put on his subsequent action, for, dastardly as his behaviour had been to Jean in the past, one can hardly imagine him capable of deliberately murdering her, and in so horrible a fashion. There was not a second to lose; an instant more, and the secret, that he had so assiduously hidden from the lady beside him, would be revealed. Jean's ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... him at Lima. The measure was, fortunately, not adopted. Many of his men were for availing themselves of the vessels which rode at anchor in the port to make their escape from the country at once, and take refuge in Panama. Pizarro would not hearken to so dastardly a counsel, which involved the desertion of the brave men in the interior who still looked to him for protection. He cut off the hopes of these timid spirits by despatching all the vessels then in port on a very different mission. He sent letters by ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... attempt to suppress her activities was organized a year ago by the united police force of the country. But like all previous similar attempts, it failed in a most brilliant manner. Energetic protests on the part of the intellectual element of America succeeded in overthrowing the dastardly conspiracy against free speech. Another attempt to make Emma Goldman impossible was essayed by the Federal authorities at Washington. In order to deprive her of the rights of citizenship, the government ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... did pretty well in denunciation of the Plot and condemnation of dastardly Government responsible for its planning. CHALONER opened fire with demand that judicial enquiry should be ordered into "allegations as to an unauthorised plot to over-awe Ulster by armed occupation." BUTCHER, WORTHINGTON EVANS, HELMSLEY, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... hidden it yourself, then you knew nothing about the book and its enclosure? When you told Mr Griffith down at Coed that you had something to divulge, were you not then almost driven to tell the truth by your dastardly cowardice as to this threatened trial? And did you not fail again because you were afraid? You mean poltroon! Will you dare to say before us, now, that when we entered the room this morning you did not know what the book contained?" Cousin Henry once more opened his mouth, but no word came. "Answer ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... maddened criminals was set free in the streets. Nevertheless, there was fair order throughout the fifteenth. Next day a raging conflagration burst forth. At the time, and long afterwards, this was attributed as a deed of dastardly incendiarism to the invaders; with the growth of modern ideas about ruthlessness in warfare, Russian historians have begun to attribute it to the inhabitants as a heroic measure. It is now asserted that the governor cast the first brand into his own country-seat. More ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... and understanding of dogs, who could explain dogs and the cock of their ears and the droop of their tails and their vanity and their fidelity, and why they looked up and why they suddenly went off round the corner, and their pride in the sound of their voices and their dastardly thoughts and sniffing satisfactions, so that for the first time dogs had souls for Benham to see. And there was an Amanda with a striking passion for the sleekness and soft noses of horses. And there was an Amanda extremely garrulous, who was a biographical dictionary ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... poured into the bank till the previous evening, when disturbing reports again began to predominate. In consequence, a run on the bank had begun, and its doors were likely to close before the day was over. The ugliest things were being said of Beaufort's dastardly manoeuvre, and his failure promised to be one of the most discreditable in the history of ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... midst of so much treachery, such dastardly deeds of murder and rapine, the bright light of unwavering fidelity, sealed and confirmed by surpassing gallantry in the field, so appealed to the hearts of the storm-pressed Englishmen, that the Guides received little short of an ovation when they returned to Peshawur. By order of Major-General ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... on the whole, no credit to Scotland. He was a bad, mean, insincere, and unprincipled man, whose success was procured by despicable and dastardly arts. He had doubtless some genius, and his 'Birks of Invermay,' and 'William and Margaret,' shall preserve his name after his clumsy imitation of Thomson, called 'The Excursion,' and his long, rambling 'Amyntor and ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... who joined Captain Hill in a dastardly attack on the actor, Mountford, on his way to Mrs. Bracegirdle's house, in Howard Street. Captain Hill was jealous of Mountford, and induced Lord Mohun to join him in this "valiant exploit." Mountford died next day, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... companies on the ground that day, scarce thirty men were left alive. Captain Peronny, and all his officers down to a corporal, were killed. Captain Poulson had almost as hard a fate, for only one of his escaped. In short, the dastardly behaviour of the regular troops (so called,) exposed those who were inclined to do their duty, to almost certain death; and, at length, in spite of every effort to the contrary, they broke, and ran as sheep before hounds; leaving the artillery, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... is it possible that they would go to such extreme limits as that. I had thought that he would be in danger of some assault in the dark, or something of that kind, but to trap him in the mines! I never dreamed of anything so cowardly, so dastardly! He will be in constant danger in the performance of ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... post-chaise, that I might hasten to town and make my depositions; for I was determined to let loose the hounds of the law after my dastardly enemies, without the loss of a moment. The chaise was soon procured; and, much to the satisfaction of Pigtop, we drove directly to Bow Street—the good fellow having a firm persuasion that the moment his make-shift tourniquet was withdrawn, I should breathe ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... in a voice like a low cry of pain. But she did not bend towards him; she held herself erect, and paused at two yards' distance from him. There was an unconquerable repulsion for her in that monkish aspect; it seemed to her the brand of the dastardly undutifulness which had left her father desolate—of the grovelling superstition which could give such undutifulness the name of piety. Her father, whose proud sincerity and simplicity of life had made him one of the few frank pagans of his time, had brought ...
— Romola • George Eliot |
