"Recreant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... present volume completes the history of the Boat Club, that my young readers will wish to know something of the subsequent fortunes of the prominent characters of the association. It gives me pleasure to say that not one of them has been recreant to his opportunities, or abandoned his high standard of character; that the moral, mental, and physical discipline of the organization has proved salutary in the highest degree. The members of the boat clubs are now active members of society. Each ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... words about God as long-suffering seem to suggest another reason, that he feared to go with a message of judgment which seemed to him so unlikely to be executed by the long-suffering God. If so, then what made him recreant was not so much fear from personal motives as intellectual perplexity and imperfect comprehension of the ways of God. Then we hear of his pitiable flight with its absurdity and its wickedness. Then comes the prayer which shows him to have been right and true at bottom, and teaches us ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... two months more passed, of labor by night and weakness by day, of desperate efforts on the part of the son, and of bitter reproaches on the part of the father. But the worst of it was, that the latter grew gradually colder towards the boy, only addressed him rarely, as though he had been a recreant son, of whom there was nothing any longer to be expected, and almost avoided meeting his glance. And Giulio perceived this and suffered from it, and when his father's back was turned, he threw him a furtive kiss, stretching ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... very outset to inculcate this truth on the mind of every man,—no barren and inconsequential dogma, but an effectual, ever influencing and productive rule of life,—that he is born a debtor, lives a debtor—aye, friend, and when thou diest, will not some judicious bystander,—no recreant as thou to the bonds of nature, but a good borrower and true—remark, as did his grandsire before him on like occasions, that thou hast 'paid the debt of nature'? Ha! I have thee 'beyond the rules', as one (a ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... must enjoy our breakfasts, even without the recreant Loftus. Mabel, my dear, what delicious raspberries! They give ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... "You recreant!" exclaimed the beauty, throwing down the novel which had occupied the moments intervening the completion of the extravagant toilet and the arrival of an admirer. "I feel very much inclined to impose severe punishment upon you. Is it becoming a suitor to play truant when he wishes to hear ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... wife?" she asked, arranging her scarf. "I never desire to be with him, or with any man recreant ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... me under the title of Baron of Otranto,(319) but unluckily the picture is more like Dr. Milles and Chatterton's own devotees' than to me, who am but a recreant antiquary, and, as the poor lad found by experience, did not swallow every fragment that 'Was offered to me as an antique; though that is a feature he has bestowed ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... did you leave her?" says Gerard—about the first sensible word he has uttered. She makes a fiery answer as to Love sometimes banishing from his servants all sense and reason. But for the time the subject again drops. It is, however, reopened at night, and some small pity comes on one for the recreant Gerard, inasmuch as she keeps him awake by wailing about her love. At last she "draws" the sluggard to some extent. "Has not he been in love, and does not he know all about it? But he was never such a fool as Conrad, and he is sure that Conrad's lady is not such either." ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... not taught him to foresee, endeavoured with all possible address and expedition to make his separate peace with Lady Angelica. Her ladyship, however, was proud to show that she had too much sense and spirit to accept again the homage of this recreant knight. He had not time to sue for pardon—his adventure might have ended in a jail; so forthwith he took his departure from Hungerford Castle, undetermined whether he should again haste to court to beg a place, or bend his course to the city, there to ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... built up around the house of McGuire, the mystery surrounding the awe-inspiring prowler, the night vigils, the secrecy—all seemed to fade into a piece of hobbledehoy buffoonery at Beth's contemptuous description of her recreant relative. And ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... nothing. But in the midst of this, a distracting love for you seems to unnerve and torment me. I beg you to wait until those days may come when I can show you all the devotion I yearn now to give you, but must not, for every moment that voice may reach me from beyond the grave, and I would be recreant to the most sacred obligations, and deep responsibilities that seem now to shape themselves before me, to our common humanity, if I forfeited an instant of inattention. I beg you to remember all this and wait, wait, until the depthless power ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... is Sunday, the Lord's Day. "The hour of attack approaches." And it is a singular consideration what I risk; I may yet be the subject of a tract, and a good tract too—such as one which I remember reading with recreant awe and rising hair in my youth, of a boy who was a very good boy, and went to Sunday Schule, and one day kipped from it, and went and actually bathed, and was dashed over a waterfall, and he was the only son of his mother, and she was a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... displeas'd, her own lov'd Spring surveys Passing, with volant step, o'er russet plains; Sees her to Summer's fierce embraces speed, Pale, and unrobed.—Faithless! thou well may'st hide Close in his sultry breast thy recreant head, That did'st, neglecting thy distinguish'd Isle, In Winter's icy arms so long abide, While Britain vainly ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... a space, as one who holds A white doe by the throat and searches for The blade to slay her. "This your answer still— "You doubt not—doubt not this far love of yours, "Tho' sworn a false young recreant, Kate, by me?" "He is as true as I am," Katie said; "And did I seek for stronger simile, "I could not find such in the universe!" "And were he dead? what, Katie, were he dead— "A handful of brown dust, a flame blown out— "What then would love be strongly, true to—Naught?" ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... unanimity of purpose never apparent in their short married life, rising from their common tomb and hastening to that other tomb at the end of the alley, and falling at the feet of the one to whom in life he had been recreant in love, she ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... religion. Whether a person's having no Christian religion be a title to favour, in exclusion to the largest description of Christians who hold all the doctrines of Christianity, though holding along with them some errors and some superfluities, is rather more than any man, who has not become recreant and apostate from his baptism, will, I believe, choose to affirm. The countenance given from a spirit of controversy to that negative religion may, by degrees, encourage light and unthinking people to a total indifference to everything positive ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... been an honest and good boy. Spena was greatly instrumental in spreading the glorious truths of the gospel throughout the country, but at length, venturing into a part of Europe where the papists were supreme, he was seized and accused of being a recreant monk. Refusing to abjure the faith, he—as were many others at that time—was condemned to the flames, and became one of the noble army of martyrs who will one day rise up in judgment against that fearful system of imposture and tyranny which ...
— The Woodcutter of Gutech • W.H.G. Kingston
... quoth Robert with a hard smile, "when they dangled him up with a line out of the moat. Change and adventure are meet for all men. And I look that I do a good deed, when I restore a recreant shepherd to the fold." The priest went off, crying unworthy tears and cursing the new lord, to try and find a priest's office if he could; and Robert rode grimly away, back to his uncle, and told him ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Soul, ye use These words to little end: for know, I may Better call back that time was Yesterday, Or stay the coming Night, than bring my Love Home to my self again, or recreant prove. I will no longer hold you with delays, This present night I have appointed been To meet that chaste Fair (that enjoys my Soul) In yonder Grove, there to make up our Loves. Be not deceiv'd no longer, ...
— The Faithful Shepherdess - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10). • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... fury of his breast. "Why stay'st thou, Turnus? Wherefore this delay? Fierce arms, not swiftness, must decide the day. Shift as thou wilt, and every shape assume; Exhaust thy courage and thy craft, and pray For wings to soar with, or in earth's dark womb Sink low thy recreant head, and hide ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... and stagnation at home; but, whenever they get to running things their way, it—it is just the reverse." (Shame! No! Wretch!) He vainly strives to rally under the fire of imprecation, but it is too late. The groomsmen are denouncing him, as he deserves to be, as a slanderer and recreant. Mr. Ferris and Mr. Waring spring to their feet to implore the assembly to reject any and all such statements as the emanations of an embittered, oft-rejected, and "subtle, perjured, false, disloyal man;" and poor Blake, who really wanted to wind up with an apostrophe to ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... you will doubtless be criticised by a class of your own people who think you are lowering your own dignity, but the South has suffered too much already from that kind of false pride to let it longer keep her recreant to ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... a mistress who engages a maid without such credentials is regarded as recreant to her order. In England, too, the former mistress is held partly responsible for the mischief done, if she turn loose upon other households a woman ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... Lady Seton.—Go, worthless recreant, and in thickest fight Blot out thy guilty purpose: know thy life Depends on this day's daring; and its deeds And wounds alone, won in the onset's brunt, Secures ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... slippers as they flew by as indefatigably as if winged. When little Vladimir finally relinquished her, with assurances that he was 'desolated to leave so early', she was ready to rest, and see how her recreant knight had borne ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... theirs upon which to thrust the blame of their helplessness. "Criminal helplessness," he called it, mutteringly. He tried to define the idea—or the idea tried to define itself—that they had somehow been recreant to their social caste, by getting down into the condition and estate of what one may call the alien poor. Carondelet street had in some way specially vexed him to-day, and now here was this. It was ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... speaking for the district?" inquired Rachel, conquering a recreant lip to put the question, and putting it ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... parties. It was for the sake of her rouge friends that she approached the President at all, and she has used the hand he stretched out to her only on behalf of persons in prison and distress. The same, being delivered, call her gratefully a recreant. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... anticipation. For three weeks he had not been to Oakwood, and she was determined no longer to endure such neglect,—at any rate, to investigate it. To this end she had sent Sydney to Dr. Morgan's to inquire of him news of the recreant German. And Sydney had not stayed to see ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... man!' said I in great affliction, 'they are awa'.' The night was so dark that I could not see Sirrah, but the faithful animal heard my words—words such as of all others were sure to set him most on the alert; and without much ado he silently set off in search of the recreant flock. Meanwhile I and my companion did not fail to do all in our power to recover our lost charge. We spent the whole night in scouring the hills for miles around, but of neither the lambs nor Sirrah could ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... feast, For ere a seedling of my golden tree Pushed off its petals to get room to grow, I stripped the boughs to make an April gaud And wreathe a spendthrift garland for my hair. But mine is not the failure God deplores; For I of old am beauty's votarist, Long recreant, often foiled and led astray, But resolute at last to seek her there Where most she does abide, and crave with tears That she assoil me of my blemishment. Low looms her singing face to point the way, Pendulous, blanched with longing, shedding flame ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... treasures he acquired thereby. His "adventures" is among the list of Historic Tales in the Book of Leinster, but unfortunately there is no copy of this tract in existence. It was probably about this time that a recreant Irish chieftain tried to induce Agricola to invade Ireland. But the Irish Celts had extended the fame of their military prowess even to distant lands,[88] and the Roman general thought it better policy ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... magic sword, just as the Greeks failed to take Troy without the arrows of Philoctetes, which are also emblems of the all-conquering rays of the sun. The recovery of the stolen treasure is like Menelaus's recovery of Helen, and it apparently brings as little happiness to Sigurd as his recreant wife did ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... looked at me again, and sickened me with her unmeaning laughter. I remembered the object of my visit, and struggled for composure. Had I become a recreant so quickly? Had I not a word to say for my Master? Nothing to offer the needy creatures, perishing, perhaps, of spiritual want? Alarmed at my own apathy, and eager to throw it off, I turned to the poor girl, and spoke to her. I asked her many questions before I could command attention. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... but if my family had ever treated me in this way, and then asked me to turn my back on my best friend, I'd whistle them down the wind;" and here Kate snapped her fingers, bent her black brows, and glared around the room as if in search of a recreant Van Corlear. ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... up in the presence of the great congregation and attested our love for Christ and said from this time we will serve the Lord, have we not all been recreant? Have we not gone astray like lost sheep, and there is no health in us? Oh, they touch Christ; they have touched Him on the tenderest spot of ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... we'll hack, and so thou shouldest not alter the article of thy gentry. The punishment of a recreant or undeserving knight, was to hack off his spurs: the meaning therefore is; it is not worth the while of a gentlewoman to be made a knight, for we'll degrade all these knights in a little time, by the usual form ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... more that courteous angel kind: "What boon demand'st then?" And the Saint, "No less Than this. Though every nation, ere that day Recreant from creed and Christ, old troth forsworn, Should flee the sacred scandal of the Cross Through pride, as once the Apostles fled through fear, This Nation of my love, a priestly house, Beside that Cross shall stand, fate-firm, like him That stood beside Christ's Mother." Straightway, as one Who ends ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... Landry, the recreant, the apostate, the only seceder of our family from the just cause, who speaks thus?" said the old woman lifting her head ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... resigned To vacant musing, unreproved neglect Of all things, and deliberate holiday. Far better never to have heard the name 255 Of zeal and just ambition, than to live Baffled and plagued by a mind that every hour Turns recreant to her task; takes heart again, Then feels immediately some hollow thought Hang like an interdict upon her hopes. 260 This is my lot; for either still I find Some imperfection in the chosen theme, Or see of absolute accomplishment ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... continued to fight, though their decks were slippery with blood and melting hail. Only one coward appeared among them, their chief Earl Sigvalde, who suddenly turned his ship and fled. When Vagn Aakesson, the most daring of the Jomsvikings, saw this recreant act he ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... allegiance, and some of them are ready to pay it, to the queens of the Latin poets.[85] Virgil's Dido and Ovid's Medea taught the eloquence of love to the French poets, and the first chivalrous lovers are those who have learned to think poorly of the recreant knights ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... dreamed how anxiously the young girl watched and waited for some word from Frank which should say that he was ready to defy his mother, and abide by his first promise. But no such letter came, and at last, when she could bear the suspense no longer, Ethelyn wrote herself to her recreant lover, asking if it were really so that hereafter their lives lay apart from each other. If such was his wish, she was content, she said, and Frank Van Buren, who could not detect the air of superb scorn which breathed in every line of that letter, ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... family meal the young men sat outside in the shed-room, and smoked and lazily talked together. Their words reached the silent group at the table. Kirkwood's companions were deriding him as a recreant sportsman. He puffed his short-stemmed pipe and looked at them tranquilly. He was not dissatisfied with his share of ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... strange to say, the character of the blithe Adele, notwithstanding the terrible nature of her early associations, seems to fuse more readily into agreement with the moral atmosphere about her than does that of the recreant boy. There may not be, indeed, perfect accord; but there are at least no sharp and fatal antagonisms to overcome. If the lithe spirit of the girl bends under the grave teachings of the Doctor, it bends with a charming grace, and rises again smilingly, when sober speech is done, like the floweret ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... whom, but ready to throw aside her work and talk the moment the pen is out of my hand. Talk—and what about? Heaven knows! But I would rather hear that talk, though on the affairs of a hamlet, than babble again with recreant nobles and blundering professors about commonwealths and constitutions. When I want to see how little those last influence the happiness of wise men, have I not Machiavelli and Thucydides? Then, by and by, the parson will drop in, and we argue. He never knows when he is beaten, so ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... confusion, cutting down some with their swords, transpiercing others with their spears, and trampling many under the hoofs of their horses. At this moment, they were attacked by a band of Spanish horsemen, the recreant partisans of Count Julian. Their assault bore hard upon their countrymen, who were disordered by the contest with the foot soldiers, and many a loyal Christian knight fell beneath the sword of an ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... her recreant cavalier she went on to rage against life built on a man-made plan for the benefit of man. Women were hurt, no matter what they did. Being good wasn't any use. You got hurt all the worse if you were good. It was silly even to try. It was better to shut your eyes ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... glorious prize Sets more than life and health before our eyes, For beauty triumphs too! Beauty! sweet name, The mother's feelings kindling into flame! For, where dwells she, who, while the virtues grow. With cold indifference marks the arching brow? Or, with a lifeless heart and recreant blood, Sighs not for daughters fair as well as good? That sigh is nature, and cannot decay, 'Tis universal as the beams of day; Man knows and feels its truth; for, Beauty's call Rouses the coldest mortal of us all; A glance ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... ypluck'd might be! For O! I wish my Sara's frowns to flee, 5 And fain to her some soothing song would write, Lest she resent my rude discourtesy, Who vow'd to meet her ere the morning light, But broke my plighted word—ah! false and recreant wight! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... he married Margaret Aitken—a serving-woman. She bore nine children. Thomas was the eldest and the only one who proved recreant to the religious faith of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... the day is the American President who was once a historian. In those days it became his task to tell us how, after that great war in America which was more clearly than any other war of our time a war for an idea, the conquerors, confronted with a heroic task of reconstruction, turned recreant, and spent fifteen years in abusing their victory under cover of pretending to accomplish the task they were doing what they could to make impossible. Alas! Hegel was right when he said that we learn ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... puer! tibi primas, ecce, corollas Deproperat tellus, fundit tibi munera, quicquid Carpit Arabs, hortis quicquid frondescit Eois; Altius, en! Lebanon gaudentia culmina tollit; En! summo exultant nutantes vertice sylvae: Mittit aromaticas vallis Saronica nubes, Et juga Carmeli recreant fragrantia coelum. Deserti laeta mollescunt aspera voce: Auditur Deus! ecce Deus! reboantia circum Saxa sonant, Deus! ecce Deus! deflectitur aether, Demissumque Deum tellus capit; ardua cedrus, Gloria sylvarum, dominum inclinata ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... sustain a distinction so odious, the very shades of their ancestors would rise from the battlefields of the Revolution, from Paoli and Germantown, and call their children bondmen of Carolina, vassals and recreant slaves! I speak not now of the whiskey insurrection, when, at the order of Washington, the militia of Virginia and of other States moved against the people of Western Pennsylvania, under the command of the Governor of Virginia and Carolina, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... similar to the above was told by the late Judge John Pearson shortly before his death. In the February term, 1850, of the Circuit Court of Vermilion County, Illinois, a case was being tried in which a young lady had brought suit for $10,000 against a recreant lover who had married another girl. The amount sued for was thought to be an enormous sum in those days, and the ablest talent to be found was brought into requisition by both sides. Richard Thompson and Daniel ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... the Colonel joined me. He had been to the jobbing-tailor's to be sewn up in several places, and attributed our defeat to the refusal of the detested Drowvey to fall. Finding her so obstinate he had said to her in a loud voice, "Die, recreant!" but had found her no more open to reason on that ...
— The Trial of William Tinkling - Written by Himself at the Age of 8 Years • Charles Dickens
... this strong-minded, politic, crafty woman feel that her daughter was placed under influences which might draw her from the idols of her mother, and make her recreant to the policy of her ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... satisfactory; but then night-school day came again, and Bill felt that he was in a worse position than ever. He had played truant once with success; but he was aware that it would not do a second time. Bully Tom was spiteful, and Master Arthur might come to "look up" his recreant pupil, and then Bill's father ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... themselves be rated according to the Jurisdiction order for the Ministers Maintaynance." The delinquents were ordered to bring their "rate" to the Deacon's house at once. A presuming young man ventured to suggest that the recreant members who would not pay in the face of the whole congregation would hardly rush to the Deacon's door to give in their "rate." He was severely ordered to keep silence in the company of wiser and elder people; but time proved his simply wise supposition ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... Russia still hovers, as an eagle might Within a cloud, near which a kite and crane Hang tangled in inextricable fight, To stoop upon the victor;—for she fears 310 The name of Freedom, even as she hates thine. But recreant Austria loves thee as the Grave Loves Pestilence, and her slow dogs of war Fleshed with the chase, come up from Italy, And howl upon their limits; for they see 315 The panther, Freedom, fled to her old cover, Amid seas and mountains, and a ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... silent for a minute or two during which she pressed him over and over again to have an interview with her recreant lover, bringing up all the arguments that she knew, reminding him of their former affection for each other, telling him that she had no brother of her own, and that her own father was worse than useless in ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... doing valiantly Last die upon their spears? Nay, for by this I might perchance make Atreus' offspring glad. That may not be imagined. I must find Some act to let my grey-haired father feel No heartless recreant once called him sire. Shame on the wight who when beset with ill Cares to live on in misery unrelieved. Can hour outlasting hour make less or more Of death? Whereby then can it furnish joy? That mortal ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... I hold if I should be hang'd, I must crie too. Come to thine own beloved, and do even what thou wilt with me sweet, sweet Abigal. I am thine own for ever: here's my hand, when Roger proves a recreant, hang him i'th' Bel-ropes. ...
— The Scornful Lady • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... Pfeiffer. I knew the look; I knew the gait. He was gone in a moment and the carriage rolled on. But I knew my doom as well that minute as I did an hour later. My husband was alive and he was here. He had escaped the perils of the Klondike and wandered east to reclaim his recreant wife. There had been time for him to do this since the rescue party left home in search of him; time for him to recover, time for him to reach home, time for him to reach the east. He had heard of my ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... reaching the hallway just in time to see the little man deposit his burden on the couch. And both of them cried-out in astonishment. For the stripling who had reduced Rodney Hade to numb paralysis was Sato, their own recreant Japanese butler. ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... right or wrong. Sir, when I heard the gentleman lay down principles which place the murderers of Alton side by side with Otis and Hancock, with Quincy and Adams, I thought those pictured lips [pointing to the portraits in the hall] would have broken into voice to rebuke the recreant American—the slanderer of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... caught sight of the rifle leaning near-by, and straightway they filled with apprehension. Her militant love would have turned to hate for Samson, should he have proved recreant to the mission of reprisal in which he was biding his time, yet the coming of the day when the truce must end haunted her thoughts. Heretofore, that day had always been to her remotely vague—a thing belonging to the ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... sore with grief and rebellion at "the inexorable trend of things," I entered the car, and when from its window I looked back upon my grieving mother, my throat filled with a suffocating sense of guilt. I was deserting her, recreant to my blood!—That I was re-enacting the most characteristic of all American dramas in thus pursuing an ambitious career in a far-off city I most poignantly realized and yet—I went! It seemed to me at the time that my duty lay in the way of giving up all my selfish plans ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... on herself for caring a straw about it, Cecil had forgiven him, and a deceitful sunbeam peeped through in the prospect of meeting at luncheon, only to be again overcast, as the Colonel returned without the recreant Bertie. ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... day laborer—a leather-cutter who never achieved even to the honors and emoluments of a saddler. There were seven children in the family, and never a servant crossed the threshold. One daughter survived Immanuel, and in her eighty-fourth year she expressed regrets that her brother had proved so recreant to the teachings of his parents as practically to alienate him from all his relatives. One brother became a Lutheran minister and lived out an honored career; the others vanish and fade away into the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... of Verona is the first of the series of Shakespeare's romantic comedies. Our interest in this play turns upon the purely romantic characters; two friends, one true, the other recreant; the true friend exiled to an outlaw's life in a forest, the false in favor at court; two loving girls, one fair and radiant, the other dark and slighted, and following her lover in boy's dress; two clowns, Speed ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... hotel," I rejoined. "Or possibly he has returned home. I no longer take account of his existence. Felix, I shall never leave my wife. I had rather prove recreant to the oath I took before I realized the worth of the woman whose happiness I vowed to destroy. This is what I have come to tell you. Make it easy for me, Felix. You are a man who has loved and suffered. Let us bury ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... in the neighbourhood of Walworth who has greatly distinguished himself in the minor drama, and who takes his portrait with him when he makes an engagement, for the illustration of the playbill. His portrait (which is not at all like him) represents him in the act of dragging to the earth a recreant Indian, who is supposed to have tomahawked, or essayed to tomahawk, a British officer. The design is pure poetry, for there is no such Indian in the piece, and no such incident. He is a dog of the Newfoundland breed, for whose honesty I would ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... notes, and observations that I have not found a moment to write you since the last steamer. . .Never did the future look brighter to me than now. If I could for a moment forget that I have a scientific mission to fulfill, to which I will never prove recreant, I could easily make more than enough by lectures which would be admirably paid and are urged upon me, to put me completely at my ease hereafter. But I will limit myself to what I need in order to repay those ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... Whatever the Social Democracy might have done, had they been in the ascendant or under other supposable circumstances, the fact is that theirs has been actually the cause of Order, of Conservatism, of Tranquillity and the Constitution. Had they proved recreant to their faith and trust, France would ere this have been plunged into convulsions through the mutual jealousies and hostilities of the factions who vaunt themselves collectively the party of Order; they have been withheld from cutting each other's throats by the calm, determined, ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... delights to beget A haughty heart. From time to time In children's children recurrent appears The ancestral crime. When the dark hour comes that the gods have decreed And the Fury burns with wrathful fires, A demon unholy, with ire unabated, Lies like black night on the halls of the fated; And the recreant Son plunges guiltily on To perfect ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... not?" said Lord Dalgarno, "or what are these fellows fit for, but to play the intellectual gladiators before us? He of them who declares himself recreant, should, d—n him, be restricted to muddy ale, and the patronage of the Waterman's Company. I promise you, that many a pretty fellow has been mortally wounded with a quibble or a carwitchet at the Mermaid, and ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... "ye maunay learn that there is nae rule wi'out its aicciptions." And then he added, "A pledge to a boy in play, like to ours of yester-eve, Baby Charles, is not to be kept when matters of state conflict." Then turning to the Spanish ambassador, he said: "Rest content, my lord count. This recreant Raleigh shall ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... character of Abolitionism such unfounded accusations. You know that I am a Southerner; you know that my dearest relatives are now in a slave Slate. Can you for a moment believe I would prove so recreant to the feelings of a daughter and a sister, as to join a society which was seeking to overthrow slavery by falsehood, bloodshed and murder? I appeal to you who have known and loved me in days that are passed, can you believe it? No! my friends. As a Carolinian I was ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke
... accepted these statements with unquestioning faith, I went on to inquire whether he felt himself equal to the delicate duty of hanging about the yard of the Black Swan, and watching the doors of exit from that hotel, with a view to following my recreant nephew wherever he might go, even if considerably beyond the limits of Ullerton. I saw that the lad's intelligence was likely to be equal to this transaction, unless there should arise any difficult or complicated position by reason of the suspicion of Hawkehurst, or other mischance. ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... people to never intrust to any hands but their own, that thing is the preservation and perpetuity of their own liberties and institutions. And if they shall think as I do, that the extension of slavery endangers them more than any or all other causes, how recreant to themselves if they submit The question, and with it the fate of their country, to a mere handful of men bent only on seif-interest. If this question of slavery extension were an insignificant one, one having ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... leaves the Executive without discretion. The committee took the whole matter very seriously, believing that great principles were at stake. "As representatives of the people," they declared, "we conceive that we should be recreant to their rights and true interests, if we should acquiesce in the 'veto power' as used by the Executive . . . . We believe the people should be heard through those who represent them and are responsible to them. That their wishes should be regarded, ...
— History of the Constitutions of Iowa • Benjamin F. Shambaugh
... rights) to crush the people's liberties, and compel them to receive officials so lost to self-respect as to accept appointments against the known and expressed wish of the people, and so craven and degraded as to need an army to protect them in their position, we feel that we should be recreant to every principle of self-respect, honor, integrity, and patriotism to bow tamely to such high-handed tyranny, a parallel for which is only found in the attempts of the British government, in its most corrupt stages, against the rights, liberties, and ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... arrives with her father she recognizes him at once, and vows eternal constancy to him. In the last act, however, Eric appears and reproaches Senta with her faithlessness. The stranger overhears them, and concludes that as she has been recreant to her former lover, so too she will be untrue to him. He decides to leave her; for if he should remain, her penalty would be eternal death. As his mysterious vessel sails away Senta rushes to a cliff, and crying ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... disputed; he was one of the heroes of the Synthesis, and much was conceded to him because he had more than once replaced the instructor in still-life there. But there remained a misgiving with some whether Cornelia was right in giving up her art for him; whether she were not recreant to the Synthesis in doing that; the doubt, freshly raised by her beauty, was not appeased till Charmian met it with the assertion that Cornelia was not going to give up her art at all, but after her marriage was coming back to study ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... see it all! There floats the direful cause 'longside them now! "Ahoy!" the seamen cry; "Ahoy! ahoy! Four hundred souls aboard! Ahoy! ahoy!" "All will be well!" "No, no, she heeds us not!" And shrieks of awful frenzy fill the air— "We sink! we sink!" but lo! the aid so near Slinks like a recreant coward ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... the Cross in its power of drawing men to itself. It is strange to think that, perhaps, at that moment the only human being who thoroughly believed in Christ was that dying robber. The disciples are all gone. The most faithful of them are recreant, denying, fleeing. A handful of women are standing there, not knowing what to think about it, stunned but loving; and alone (as I suppose), alone of all the sons of men, the crucified malefactor was in the sunshine of faith, and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... thus feebly, there was still spirit left among their brethren on the other side of the Zuyder Zee. It was not while William of Orange was within her borders, nor while her sister provinces had proved recreant to him, that Holland would follow their base example. No rebellion being left, except in the north-western extremities of the Netherlands, Don Frederic was ordered to proceed from Zutphen to Amsterdam, thence to undertake the conquest of Holland. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... before me and then slowly faded: David, boyish and comradely; David, manly and strong, without ever a sneer or an unholy light upon his face. Could I ever forget him? Could I ever look into the face of any other man and call it the dearest in the whole world to me? Ach—I shook my head and gathered my recreant wits together! I'd forget what he said and attribute it to the weird influence of ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... the name, association and people of Virginia. Hatton, Forbes, Anderson, Gilliam, Govan, Loring, Ashby and Schumaker were names with which we had been long associated. We hated to leave all our old comrades behind us. We felt that we were proving recreant to the instincts of our own manhood, and that we were leaving those who had stood by us on the march and battlefield when they most needed our help. We knew the 7th and 14th Tennessee regiments; we knew the 3rd Arkansas, the 14th Georgia, and 42nd Virginia regiments. Their ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... chandelier, that has been so effectively touched up for this recreant knight, she stands bathed in the soft light of the many candles that beam down with mild kindliness upon her. It seems as though they love to rest upon her,—to add yet one more charm, if it may be, to the sweet, graceful figure, the half-angry, wholly charming attitude, ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... for nine weeks, indeed—but still, it was a little disappointing. However, Cousin Hans understood human nature, and he had seen enough of her that morning to know that her feelings towards her recreant lover could not have been true love. So ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... too strong for an honest man in your position to resist,—whether successfully or not is beyond the question. The officer who is intimidated by threats, or by his own fears, is recreant to his duty, and no better than the mob which threatens him. But you will have no such test, Mr. Wemyss! I shall see to it myself that there is ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... was made for the traitor who was known to the Haussas as MacGreg. His horse, surrounded by half a dozen badly-charred corpses, was discovered, but of the rider there were no signs. Reluctantly Wilmshurst was forced to come to the conclusion that fortune had favoured the recreant, and that under cover of the dense smoke the fellow had either crawled away or else had been carried ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... question in all its beatings. The course of events is so rapidly hastening forward that the emergency may soon arise when you may be called upon to decide the momentous question whether you possess the power by force of arms to compel a State to remain in the Union. I should feel myself recreant to my duty were I not to express an ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan
... there were a copy of Mrs. Trollope's translation of "Arnaldo da Brescia" in America, that we might make noble extracts, and cause other eyes to glisten with the fire of its passion. We can recall but one passage, a speech made by Arnaldo to the recreant Pope Adrian. It is as strong and fearless as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... if, 'mid the cannons' thunder, Whistling shot and bursting bomb, When my brothers fall around me, Should my heart grow cold and numb?' But the drum Answered, 'Come! Better there in death united, than in life a recreant,—Come!'" —BRET HARTE. ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... class ignorant or oppress the weak. We must establish here republican government. That which wrongs one man, in the end recoils on the many. Sir, if we accept, as the Republican party of the Union, our true position and our duty, we shall nobly win. If we are false and recreant, we shall miserably fail. Let us have faith in the people and the grand logic of a mighty revolution, and dare to do right. Class legislation will be the inevitable result of class power; and what would follow, so far as the colored race ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... fatentur se uti; recordatione pristinarum voluptatum se recreant, et adversante natura, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... No recreant I to a noble cause, Nor traitor base to a leader bold; 'Twas a fight where he won most applause Who captured most of his ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... corridor and vanished as he approached, reappeared some moments later in Yerba's salon as Don Caesar and Dona Anna, with a benignly different expression. Dona Anna especially greeted him with so much of the ostentatious archness of a confident and forgiving woman to a momentarily recreant lover, that he felt absurdly embarrassed in Yerba's presence. He was thinking how he could excuse himself, when he noticed a beautiful basket of flowers on the table and a tiny note bearing a baron's crest. Yerba had put it aside with—as it seemed ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... by him who made The world! thy heart-blood dyes my blade.— Thy threats, thy mercy I despise, Let recreant yield, who fears ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... wrestling. They tugged, and strained, and panted, without either getting the mastery, until both came to the ground, and rolled upon the green. Just then, the disconsolate Phoebe came by. She saw her recreant lover in fierce contest, as she thought, and in danger. In a moment pride, pique, and coquetry, were forgotten; she rushed into the ring, seized upon the rival champion by the hair, and was on the point of wreaking on him her puny vengeance, when a buxom, strapping ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... such an institution as this has never existed. Every political or social aristocracy in history has been mixed and adulterated with bad characters and recreant representatives. There never has been and never will be a perfect aristocracy. Quite true; neither has there ever been a perfect democracy, or a perfect monarchy for that matter. As men we work with imperfections, but we live by faith, and our sole duty is to establish ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... commotion, as the ladies flocked with the children into the hall, with many exclamations of astonishment and reproach, surrounding the recreant young men. Mr. Errol, the Captain, the veteran, and even Mr. Perrowne, came to learn what was the matter. When they heard the intentions of the pair, Mr. Thomas and the parson were prepared to make the most abject apologies to ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... share will make a goodly glaive— Then tear it from the plough! Lingers there here a crouching slave! Depart, a recreant thou! ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... a disadvantage we would have been recreant to our trust, to ourselves, to our cause, and to our country. Profoundly loyal, and conscious of its strength, the Army of the Potomac will give or decline battle whenever its interests or honor ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... Clement and Giles! I burn here unaided! To the rescue— to the rescue, brave Bois-Guilbert, valiant De Bracy! It is Front-de- Boeuf who calls! It is your master, ye traitor squires! Your ally—your brother in arms, ye perjured and faithless knights! All the curses due to traitors upon your recreant heads, do you abandon me to perish thus miserably! They hear me not—they cannot hear me—my voice is lost in the din of battle. The smoke rolls thicker and thicker, the fire has caught upon the floor below. O, for one draught of the air of heaven, were ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... known those look avow, The mantling cheek, the knitting brow: I could not hope it did he live, But now, O! now, ye must forgive! Most recreant they who dare offend One who has lost her only friend! De Stafford's widow here appears— For him, my Eustace, flow these tears! Ye may not blame me! ye have wives, Who yet may sorrow for your lives! Who, in the outset of their grief, Upon a father's neck may spring; Or find in innocence ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... who have surrendered to the foreign elements and fallen in with their ideas instead of maintaining public worship and insisting upon respect for law at least. Let the blame fall where it belongs, and let the Church members recreant to duty take their share. When the sea threatened Holland her resolute people built the dykes and maintained them; American Christians have failed to stop the leaks in the church dykes, and we have had ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... mine, Whose vineyards flow with antimonial wine, Whose gates admit no mirthful feature in, Save one gaunt mocker, the Sardonic grin, Whose pangs are real, not the woes of rhyme That blue-eyed misses warble out of time;— Truant, not recreant to thy sacred claim, Older by reckoning, but in heart the same, Freed for a moment from the chains of toil, I tread once more thy consecrated soil; Here at thy feet my old allegiance own, Thy subject still, and ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the king was successful in preventing the worship of idols in public, his subjects knew how to deceive him. Josiah sent out his pious sympathizers to inspect the houses of the people, and he was satisfied with their report, that they had found no idols, not suspecting that the recreant people has fastened half an image on each wing of the doors, so that the inmates faced their household idols as they closed the door upon ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... have done so unto me, how much more shall they unto you! Do not, through fear of hostile men, who can only kill your bodies and are not able in any wise to injure your souls, shrink from danger and prove recreant to the momentous duties imposed upon you; but be inspired to proclaim the principles of the heavenly kingdom with earnestness and courage, in the face of all perils, by fearing God, him who is able to plunge both your souls and your bodies in abomination and agony, him who, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... broke the tie of strong affection between us three brothers. Griffith might figure as the 'vary parfite knight,' the St. George of the piece, glittering in the halo shed round him by the bright eyes of the rescued damsel; while Clarence might drag himself along as the poor recreant to be contemned and tolerated, and he would accept the position meekly as only his desert, without a thought of bitterness. Indeed, he himself seemed to have imbibed Nurse Gooch's original opinion, that his genuine love for sacred things was a sort of impertinence and pretension ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... received with applause not only by the popular, but by the Conservative party: by persons of the highest rank as well as by the general mass of the community; and every Government that pretended to adhere to the Treaty of 1852 was denounced as recreant to the cause of Germany. In this state of affairs the Governments of Austria and of Prussia took a somewhat singular and not very defensible course. In the beginning they declared in the Diet that, having a majority in favour of this declaration, ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... handed countesses to their coaches? Is this the hand I kissed to the divine Georgiana? with which I pledged Lady Blessington, and ratified my bond to Lord Lovely? This the hand that Georgiana clasped to her bosom, when she vowed she was mine?—Out of sight, recreant and apostate!—deep down—disappear in this foul monkey-jacket pocket where ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... this reflection entered his mind than he became bitterly angry with himself for having indulged in it. How recreant, how base an idea! ... how incompatible with the adoring homage he felt for his friend! What!—Sah-luma,—a Poet, whose songs of Love were so perfect, so wildly sweet and soul- entrancing—HE, to be ignorant of Love's true ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli |
