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More "Poltroon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... himself up to what he knew would be certain torture. Had he winced or whined as they tore the nails from his fingers and the hair from his head, the Iroquois would probably have brained him on the spot for a poltroon; but the young man, bound to a stake, pointed to a gathering storm as sign of Heaven's displeasure. The high spirit pleased the Iroquois. They unbound him and took him with them in their ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... "What a poltroon!" he cried contemptuously. "But I'll see you get no harm by this right-about face. He is mistaken if he thinks his treachery will give him a hold on ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... perhaps exert some influence in politics; he remembered that Mrs. Chudleigh had laid some stress on this. She had, however, told him that Bertram, from whom so much was expected, had shown himself a poltroon and, what was even worse, had allowed an innocent man to suffer for his baseness. Challoner had spent the last few days pondering the evidence she had offered him and had seen one or two weak points in it. By making the most of these, it might, perhaps, be rebutted, but his honesty rendered ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... to drive the string into its socket. Three times he tried, and failed; but the fourth time, making a great effort, he was on the point of succeeding, when his father nodded to him to desist. "Plague on it!" cried Telemachus, laying the bow aside with an air of vexation, "must I be called a poltroon all my life, or is it that I have not yet attained the full measure of my strength? Let the ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... do you?" he said. "I have a mind, then, to thrash you where you stand, you canting poltroon! Do you hear me?—here, where ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... no," she said, "I see you are no poltroon. It is for my own sake - I could not bear to have you slain for such ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had fancied that we chased him into Toulon; for, blind as I am, I could see his water line, when he clued his topsails up, shutting in Sepet. But from the time of his meeting Captain Hawker in the ISIS, I never heard of his acting otherwise than as a poltroon and a liar. Contempt is the best mode of treating such a miscreant." In spite, however, of contempt, the impudence of this Frenchman half angered him. He said to his brother: "You will have seen Latouche's letter; how he chased me and how I ran. ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... days after, this poltroon was in his turn superseded by a brave veteran, General Dugommier, and Napoleon could at last count on having his efforts backed. But, for the second time, the Representatives did their best to ruin his undertaking. The siege had now lasted four months, ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... mercy we crave - Go on—you're conferring a boon; We would rather be slanged by a warrior brave, Than praised by a wretched poltroon!" ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... often a cloak for deeper feeling. He dropped it now. "Yes," he said, "she's after the notes, of course. And I'll tell you I felt like a poltroon—whatever that may be—when I turned her down. She stood by the door with her face white, and told me contemptuously that I could save you from a murder charge and wouldn't do it. She made me feel like a cur. I was just as guilty as if I could have obliged ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... think me a base poltroon? No, d'Arthez; no, I am a boy half crazed with love," and he ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... news was too sudden for my self-possession to remain. But when I saw that the little English angel began to weep afresh at this exclamation, I longed for one moment to be able to get out of my own body, that I might chastise a poltroon so un-philosophical. I took her by the hand instead, and led her into this room and made her sit down, and, whilst I sponged the picture with cold water, made her tell me how the accident had happened. For I thought, in my Machiavellian ...
— The Romance Of Giovanni Calvotti - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... would put steel through the gus of ony man that turned bridle; there was young Allan Ravenswood, that was then Master, wi' a bended pistol in his hand—it was a mercy it gaed na aff!—crying to me, that had scarce as much wind left as serve the necessary purpose of my ain lungs, 'Sound, you poltroon!—sound, you damned cowardly villain, or I will blow your brains out!' and, to be sure, I blew sic points of war that the scraugh of a clockin-hen was music ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... insulted by such a coward," she said, gathering her skirts as though she intended to take her departure instantly. "But it will be a fine story that Signor Fenshawe cables from Aden when he tells how the Governor of Massowah aided and abetted this half-crazy poltroon in onslaughts on defenseless women. It was not enough that Italian law should be misused to further his ends, but the scum of the bazaar is enlisted under his banner, and he is supported by the authorities in an act that would be reprobated by any ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... highway, Saul Coplestone and John Cole; two marriageable sisters, Sarah and Christina Rowland. The highwaymen, being pestilential and murderous, badly wanted catching; of the two potential heroes, Saul was a stout enough fellow on the surface but a poltroon at bottom, while John, though less terrific in physique, was modest and courageous to a degree. Of the sisters, Sarah had most of the looks and Christina all the merits, so that at the beginning of things both Saul and John were concentrated upon the former, who, being ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 4, 1914 • Various
... his courage failed. Ratman his brother, Fastnet his brother's friend! At what a cost to the good name of his house was this wrong to be put right, this self-sacrifice to be accomplished. But ere he slept the honest man gained a victory over the poltroon. Providence had sent him stumbling into the track. It was not for ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... settled," Perion agreed. "I know that nothing save your love for Melicent could possibly induce you to decline a proffered battle. When Demetrios enacts the poltroon I am the most hasty of all men living to assert that the excellency of his reason is indisputable. Let us get on! I have only five hundred sequins, but this will be enough to buy your passage back to Quesiton. And inasmuch as we are ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... all who come within the sphere of their influence, and that women, does not, no earthly sage will ever know. As well ask what makes one man a Napoleon, another a poltroon. ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... outcast, pariah, pilgarlic, vagabond, knave, rogue, scoundrel, caitiff, miscreant, scapegrace, villain, rascal, renegade, reprobate, rake, scullion, poltroon, varlet, ronion, libertine, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... poluri. Polish (substance) polurajxo. Polished (manners) gxentila. Polite gxentila. Politic sagxa. Political politika. Politician politikisto. Politics politiko. Poll (vote) vocxdoni, baloti. Poll (of head) verto. Pollen florsemo. Pollute malpurigi. Poltroon timulo—egulo. Poltroonery timeco—egeco. Polygon multangulo. Polyp polipo. Polypus polipo. Polytechnic politekniko, a. Pomade pomado. Pomatum pomado. Pomegranate pomgranato. Pompous pompa. Pond lageto. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... evolutions. But with Tourville's name is associated not only a high level of professional management, but a caution in professional action not far removed from timidity, so that an impatient Minister of Marine of his day and nation styled him "poltroon in head, though not in heart." His powers were displayed in the preservation and orderly movement of his fleet; in baffling, by sheer skill, and during long periods, the efforts of the enemy to bring him to action; in skilful disposition, when he purposely accepted ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... precepts will lead you to happiness, though he uses neither flattery, nor bribery, nor intrigue, nor deceit; instead of loading you with praise, he will point you to the better way. I scoff at Cleon's tricks and plotting; honesty and justice shall fight my cause; never will you find me a political poltroon, a prostitute to ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... man, shunned every proffer of encounter with the husband whom he had wronged, and finally caused the death of his numerous brothers, the destruction of his native city, with all the wealth which it contained, and died himself the death of a pitiful poltroon, lamented only by his worthless leman, to show how well the rules of chivalry were understood ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... his death in a popish potion, he died unlamented. For his character, in all respects in nature, feature and manners, he resembled the tyrant Tiberius; and for all the numerous brood of bastards begot on other men's wives, he died a childless poltroon, having no legitimate heir to succeed him of his own body, according to the divine malediction, Write this man childless: for no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting on the throne of David, and ruling any ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... he, "I wish I had a chance to open school here and teach manners," and without more deliberation he set his horse to an amble, designed to betray neither complacency nor a poltroon's terrors. ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... records his address: whether they are the very words he (p. 175) uttered, or such only as he was likely to have used, they certainly suit his character: "My lords, far be from me such disgrace, as that, like a poltroon, I should stain my noviciate in arms by flight. If the Prince flies, who will wait to end the battle? Believe it, to be carried back before victory would be to me a perpetual death! Lead me, I implore you, to the very face ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... in silence for a while. That this Sir George Covert should call the patroon a poltroon hurt me, for he was kin to us both; yet it seemed that there might be truth in the insolent fling, for selfishness and poltroonery are too ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... his meanness. It discovers a want of heart, and an infinite littleness of soul. We can hardly conceive him to have possessed a drop of the blood of Hampden or Cromwell in his veins, and cease to wonder why two high-spirited ladies of rank should have spurned the homage of a poetic poltroon, whom instinctively they seem to have known to be such, even before he ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... her bashful fear so irresistibly funny, that it roared again. Also, when the little cow-herd with a crown on his head, lifted his hand or foot toward his partner, and then shrank trembling away, it roared yet more at the poltroon manner ...
— The Field of Clover • Laurence Housman
... metaphorically speaking, instead of walking off at the end in a sneaking, mincing sort of way, with no more than a little momentary twinge of discomfort at the wreck and ruin he has wrought, for having acted as a selfish, snivelling poltroon and coward, though in fine clothes and with fine ways and fine manners, which only, from our point of view, make matters worse. It is, with variations I admit, much the same all through: R. L. Stevenson felt it ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... of the hopes of a lifetime?" demanded Peregrine. "I, who have waited as long as Jacob, to be defrauded now I have you; and for the sake of the fellow who killed me in will if not in deed, and then ran away like a poltroon leaving you to ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... calls him a coward, he fires up and exclaims, "Coward! Mind, gentlemen, he calls me a 'coward,' coward by my valor!" and when dared by Sir Lucius, he replies, "I don't mind the word 'coward;' 'coward' may be said in a joke; but if he called me 'poltroon,' ods, daggers and balls——" "Well, sir, what then?" "Why," rejoined Bob Acres, "I should certainly think him very ill-bred." Of course, he resigns all claim to the ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... brute Bernardone, broker, worthless goldsmith, and by the Duke's grace purveyor to the mint, passed by me. No sooner had he got outside the church than the dirty pig let fly four cracks which might have been heard from San Miniato. I cried: "Yah! pig, poltroon, donkey! is that the noise your filthy talents make?" and ran off for a cudgel. He took refuge on the instant in the mint; while I stationed myself inside my housedoor, which I left ajar, setting a boy at watch upon ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... upon all cowards. Let me note carefully how you look, now; so that I may compare it with your appearance a few hours hence, when you face the muskets of your executioners. Pah! why you are quailing already, you white-livered poltroon; what will ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... it would, then, it's Carver that would quake like the aspin leaf—I know that. It's no malice at all in him; only just he's a mighty great poltroon. ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... I such a tyro at fence, or such a poltroon as to be afraid to meet him? No, Hyacinth, I go with you to Dover, or I stand ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... Prodigal Sons, To-day is a prodigious coxcomb, but To-morrow is a very poltroon, taking fright at the big words of his predecessor. To-day is the truculent captain of old world comedy, To-morrow ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... and a Pinto. In that judgment, as we shall show, there is naught save a stupid incapacity to understand an unlike man—in brief, no more than the dunderheadedness which makes a German regard every Englishman as a snuffling poltroon, hiding behind his vassals, and causes an Englishman to look upon every German as a fiend in human form, up to his hips ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... stung him not to resistance. Never shone moonlight on more of a poltroon, the glitter and grandeur of his warlike dress in striking contrast with ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... the fact that it is difficult for the mind to retain a sound and steadfast faith. A man labors for a decade before he succeeds in training his little church into orderly religion, and then some ignorant and vicious poltroon comes along to overthrow in a minute the patient labor of years. By the grace of God we have effected here in Wittenberg the form of a Christian church. The Word of God is taught as it should be, the ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... during a protracted strike—not dungs they, but flints all the nine; a barber, like many a son of genius, ruined by his wit, and who, after being driven from pole to pole, found refuge in the army at last; a bankrupt butcher, once a bully, and now a poltroon; two of the Seven Young Men—all that now survive—impatient of the drudgery of the compting-house, and the injustice of the age—but they, we believe, are in the band—the triangle and the serpent; twelve cotton-spinners at the least; six weavers of woollens; a couple of colliers ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... renounce myself, and see my name stolen by an impostor. How lucky I am a poltroon! Or, by ...
— Amphitryon • Moliere
... ingenious displays of the philosophic learning, the antiquarian research, and the patriotism of Vergil. But the story is yet more directly fatal in the way in which it cuts off the hero himself from modern sympathies. His desertion of Dido makes, it has been said, "an irredeemable poltroon of him in all honest English eyes." Dryden can only save his character by a jest, and Rousseau damns it with an epigram. Mr. Keble supposes that in the interview among the Shades the poet himself intended the abasement of his hero, and Mr. Gladstone has capped this by a theory that Vergil ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... can be clearly ascertained in history, one would think it must be the personal courage of a military man; yet here we are as much at a loss as ever; at the very same times, and on the same occasions, he is described by different writers as a man of undaunted intrepidity, and as an absolute poltroon. ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately
... A drunken poltroon of a bargeman was coming up from Liffey-side, lurching and yawing like a Dutch hooker in a gale; and seeing them in a little bunch on the cobblestones, he took an anger at them in his wooden head, and, whether purposely or not I know not, but he elbowed up against Miss Maria and drove her into ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... neither sink nor soar far from it—easy for them to dismiss this bitter truth for a mere sentimentalism; but there is a virginity of the soul which evil custom cannot deflower. Woe to him who knows it, the chaste in wish and the unchaste in act, the rogue who values honour, the poltroon who would fain be brave! Ah, the goat-hoofed Satyr dancing there, drunk and leering, goatish in odour, unwashed and foul! Is it I? Is it I? And the anguished angel who weeps to look upon him. Is it I? Woe, woe is me, for I am each ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... among his women, and ordered the cable instantly to be cut, and the yacht to be pulled out to sea by the oars. They were soon beyond the reach of the guns. It was now night, serene and beautiful; the sea was smooth as glass, and the stars shone with unusual splendor in the clear sky. The poltroon monarch of all the Russias had not yet ventured upon deck, but was trembling in his cabin, surrounded by his dismayed mistresses, when the helmsman entered the cabin and ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... exactly, Master Fritz; they would say that Willis was a poltroon or a deserter, whichever he likes; they would very likely condemn him to the yard-arm by default, and carry out the operation when they get hold of him. But I will not endanger any one else; all I want is the ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... at last; "that will do. I see you turned poltroon and shrank back, to leave them to go on by themselves. Man, man! if you hadn't the honest British pluck in you to go, ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... moment! Of course, I saw in an instant the game of this vile creature. Why should he risk his skin in climbing walls when he might be sure of a free pardon from the English for having prevented the escape of one so much more distinguished than himself? I had recognized him as a poltroon and a sneak, but I had not understood the depth of baseness to which he could descend. One who has spent his life among gentlemen and men of honour does not think of such ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... nodded and retired, leaving Cappy to grit his teeth and curse himself for a poltroon. "It's certainly hell when a man of my age and financial rating stands between his love and duty," he mourned. "Darn that fellow Skinner. If my bluff should fail to work and he got on his high horse ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... You have not fight Concombre Bateese yet!" he howled. "Non, you have cheat me, you have lie, you have run lak cat from Concombre Bateese, ze stronges' man on all T'ree River! You are wan' gran' coward, wan poltroon, an' you 'fraid to fight ME, who ees greates' fightin' man in all dees countree! Sapristi! Why you no hit Concombre Bateese, m'sieu? Why you no hit ze greates' ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... before he recovered sufficiently from the shock to move a limb. The officers were urging their prisoner forward, grinning and nodding to each other, whilst several voices from the crowd shouted abusively at the poltroon whose first instinct was to betray his associate. Bob turned his face away and walked on. He did not dare to run, yet the noises behind him kept his heart leaping with dread. A few paces and he was out of the alley. Even yet he durst not run. He had turned in ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... "I am not a poltroon though," he said to himself as he finished dressing. "I don't care a fig about Camille. It's absurd to think that this poor devil is under my bed. I shall, perhaps, have the same idea, now, every night. I must certainly marry as soon as possible. When Therese has me in her arms, I ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... her!" she said, in fierce impatience. "You are a poltroon and a carpet-knight, like the rest—ready with plenty of fine words, and nothing else! You asked her to marry you, and you don't care whether ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... war was imminent, would it not have been far better to have made your preparations in quiet, and when you found the war rumor blown over, to have said nothing about what you intended to do? Fie upon such cheap Lacedaemonianism! There is no poltroon in the world but can brag about what he WOULD have done: however, to do your Royal Highness's nation justice, they brag ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")
... this case, the evil part. Mere animal bravery has, unfortunately, such charms in the female eye, that a successful duellist is but too often regarded as a sort of hero; and the man who refuses to fight, though of truer courage, is thought a poltroon, who may be trampled on. Mr. Graves, a member of the American Legislature, who, early in 1838, killed a Mr. Cilley in a duel, truly and eloquently said, on the floor of the House of Representatives, when lamenting the unfortunate issue of that encounter, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... white-livered poltroon!" he cried, as the chill sweat of fear ceased to break out upon him, and he rallied his courage and ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... treacherously ruined? Is he to see her stretched on her death-bed, by your villainy, and not to avenge her? By heavens, if, under the circumstances of the provocation which you gave him, and his whole family, he would be as mean and cowardly a poltroon as I find you to ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... no right to stand tamely by and see gross oppression and cruelty exercised towards his family, and neighbours, and country. At least, if he does so, he earns for himself the character of an unpatriotic poltroon. True patriotism consists in a readiness to sacrifice one's-self to the national well-being. As far as things temporal are concerned, the records of the Scottish Covenanters prove incontestably that those long-tried men and women submitted with unexampled patience for full eight-and-twenty ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... fine a ship, but she could never be of any use to us, and necessity has no law, you know. Now—let me consider—there is one thing more to be done before we leave; what is it? It was in my mind a moment ago! Ah, yes, of course, that is it; we have to put this miserable poltroon of a steward back into his pantry, lock the door upon him, and—yes, that is all, I ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... allotted prison-yard? or stupendously to play the fool and swear even to himself (while his own judgment shrieks and proves a flat denial), that he is at will omnipotent? You have chosen long ago, my poor proud Ysabeau; and I choose now, and differently: for poltroon that I am! being now in a cold drench of terror, I steadfastly protest I am not very much afraid, and I choose ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... to bursting point. Were her knees going to give way?... They should not!... Play the poltroon?... Never!... Rage boiled up in her; brain and will were afire.... She submit to the humiliation of arrest, the long-drawn-out agonies of cross-examinations, the tortures of imprisonment in Noumea?... Not ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... that those types are repeated until they became conventionalized. There is always a very bad and a very good woman, a very generous and noble man and one so bad as to seem a monster. There is the type of the "love-lorn maiden," of "the lily-livered" hero, of the faithful friend, of the poltroon. It is supposed by many that such types repeated in play after play do not mark the highest original power, but rather poverty of invention, weak and shadowy conception, indistinctness of coloring. Professor ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... "Poor, contemptible poltroon! Fifty men against one feeble woman! Verily, you have a brave set of fellows under a brave commander! But you dare not call upon your men; I could make forty friends of the number in quick time; but, even if I should fail, you are too much of a coward to trust fifty men with your secret, especially ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... secret springs of his being as well as the overt events of his life. "His meanest creatures," says Arthur Symons, "have in them a touch of honour, of honesty, or of heroism; his heroes have always some error, weakness, or mistake, some sin or crime, to redeem." What is Lord Jim, scoundrel and poltroon or gallant knight? What is Captain MacWhirr, hero or simply ass? What is Falk, beast or idealist? One leaves "Heart of Darkness" in that palpitating confusion which is shot through with intense curiosity. ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... of Terror, with Robespierre the king. The struggles between the boa and the lion are past: the boa has consumed the lion, and is heavy with the gorge,—Danton has fallen, and Camille Desmoulins. Danton had said before his death, "The poltroon Robespierre,—I alone could have saved him." From that hour, indeed, the blood of the dead giant clouded the craft of "Maximilien the Incorruptible," as at last, amidst the din of the roused Convention, it choked his voice. ("Le sang de Danton ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... let that poltroon Stanford boast, as he does boast, that you will live and die single for his sake!" he cried, bitterly. "He has made it the subject of a bet in a London club-room with ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... the bravery of true champions of the pit, stood for a little while and stared at this shifty foe. He must have decided that he was dealing with a poltroon with whom science and prudence were not needed. He stuck out his neck and ran at Long-legs, evidently expecting that Long-legs would turn and flee in a panic. Long-legs jumped to let him pass under, and came down ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... air into the conversation. He perceived that he had made a terrible blunder; and, as it was not his business at that moment to vindicate the British constitution, but to serve Leonard Fairfield, he abandoned the cause of the aristocracy with the most poltroon and scandalous abruptness. Catching at the arm which Mr. Avenel had withdrawn from him, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... inferences widely different from the truth; and, perceiving the terror of this elect youth to be so great that expostulation was vain, he seized him by the mouth and nose with his left hand so strenuously that he sank his fingers into his cheeks. But, the poltroon still attempting to bray out, George gave him such a stunning blow with his fist on the left temple that he crumbled, as it were, to the ground, but more from the effects of terror than those of the blow. His nose, however, again gushed ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... past, I suffer intolerable apprehension in regard to my future, lest my good intentions should fail or my self-control not hold out. But the knowledge that you are acquainted with my resolve, and regard it with an undeserved sympathy, may suffice to sustain me, and I should certainly be a base poltroon if I should disappoint you ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... and the Lamb? We all know that old tale. But the Wolf, though a tyrant, was scarcely a cur. He bullied and lied, but he didn't turn pale, Or need poltroon terror as cruelty's spur. But a big, irresponsible, "fatherly" Prince Afeared—of a Jew? 'Tis too funny by far! The coldest of King-scorning cynics might wince At that comic ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, 13 June 1891 • Various
... shrinks from motherhood is as low a creature as a man of the professional pacifist, or poltroon, type, who shirks his ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... offered. Sevier refused. "I have some respect," he wrote, "for the laws of the State over which I have the honor to preside, although you, a judge, appear to have none." No duel followed; but, after some further billets-doux, Jackson published Sevier as "a base coward and poltroon. He will basely insult but has not the courage to repair the wound." Again they met, by accident, and Jackson rushed upon Sevier with his cane. Sevier dismounted and drew his pistol but made no move to fire. Jackson, thereupon, also drew his weapon. ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... feelings would be recreancy to principle. They who desire me to be dumb on the subject of Slavery, unless I will open my mouth in its defence, ask me to give the lie to my professions, to degrade my manhood, and to stain my soul. I will not be a liar, a poltroon, or a hypocrite, to accommodate any party, to gratify any sect, to escape any odium or peril, to save any interest, to preserve any institution, or to promote any object. Convince me that one man may rightfully make another ...
— No Compromise with Slavery - An Address Delivered to the Broadway Tabernacle, New York • William Lloyd Garrison
... discovery of the fatal mistake she had committed. Poor Jane Campbell soon wakened up to the discovery that she had exchanged the name and the family of a brave and noble house for the name and the house of a poltroon. No wonder that Rutherford's letters to her are so often headed: 'To Lady Kenmure, under illness and depression of mind.' Could you have kept quite well had you been a Campbell with John Gordon for a husband? Think of having to nurse your humbug ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... have been slaughtered and are smoking on the fire. The night is drawing on and now the meal is over. Twelve o'clock strikes, and in one moment every bell from every belfrey clangs out its summons. Poltroon were he who had gone to bed before twelve on Noche-buena. From every house the inmates hurry to the gaily-lit church and throng its aisles, a dark-robed crowd of worshippers. The organ peals out, the priests and ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... used of the Danish commodore after Copenhagen. "You will have seen Monsieur La Touche's letter of how he chased me and how I ran. I keep it; and, by G—d, if I take him, he shall eat it." He is a "poltroon," a "liar," and a "miscreant." It may be added that no admiral, whether a Nelson or not, could have abandoned the ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... which struck to him, after having lost a large proportion of men, and, at the instant that brave officer was boarding her to take possession, he was (p. 139) treacherously shot through the head by the captain of the boat that had surrendered, which base conduct enabled the poltroon (with the assistance he received from the other boats) to escape. The third boat of Captain Somers' division kept to windward, firing at the boats and shipping in the harbour; had she gone down to his assistance, it is probable several of the enemy's boats would ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... difficulty, and he possesses neither the manly independence of a freeman, nor moral nor physical courage, and he is, therefore, an improper person (possibly infamous) for such a high and responsible position, and my rights as a citizen are not safe in the keeping of such a poltroon and conniving attorney, and he is probably disqualified to hold the high and responsible office of Senator of the United States—that he improperly accepts fees from clients, possibly in part for the influence which his exalted position as Senator gives him as counsel for parties ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... they preferred to leave the ranks, and rush forward to loot and enrich themselves at our expense. Now, if 13 this conduct were to be the rule, general ruin would be the result. I do not deny that I have given blows to this man or the other who played the poltroon and refused to get up, helplessly abandoning himself to the enemy; and so I forced them to march on. For once in the severe wintry weather I myself happened to sit down for a long time, whilst waiting for a party who were getting their kit together, and I discovered how difficult it was ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... shot to his third," said Griffith, sternly; "he will not decline, unless he is a poltroon, as well as—what ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... a poltroon, indeed, was Narcissus beside you at that moment. You ready to stake your life on the throw, he temporising and bargaining as over the terms of a lease. Surely, if he could for one moment have seen himself in the light of your ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... protested, and the Duke of Brissac, his relative, threatened the Duke of La Rochefoucauld; whereupon the latter said that, if he had them outside, he would strangle them both; to which the coadjutor replied, "My dear La Franchise (the duke's nickname), do not act the bully; you are a poltroon and I am a priest; we shall not do one another much harm." There was no fighting, and the Parliament, supported by the Duke of Orleans, obtained from the queen a declaration of the innocence of the Prince of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the boat, remorselessly dragged there by the line, which had taken several turns around his chest and neck. Tashtego stood in the bows. He was full of the fire of the hunt. He hated Pip for a poltroon. Snatching the boat-knife from its sheath, he suspended its sharp edge over the line, and turning towards Stubb, exclaimed interrogatively, cut? meantime pip's blue, choked face plainly looked, Do, for God's sake! All passed in a flash. In less than half a minute, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... comfort the poor man about the rencounter between him and that poltroon Metcalfe? He acted in that affair like a man of true honour, and as I should have acted in the same circumstances. Tell him I say so; and that what happened he could neither ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... State Room to weep over the Situation, and the British Subject said: "The American is a Poltroon, for he will not defend his ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... of the fact that she was not a coward for herself, but through a slowly formulating and struggled—against fear, which chilled her very heart, and which she could best cover by a pretence of being a poltroon. ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... things is decidedly on the word normally. If a mess line were in an area under general fire, so that added waiting meant extra danger, then only a poltroon would insist on being fed first. And while an officer wouldn't be expected to pitch a tent, he would dig his own foxhole, unless he was well up in grade. At that, there were a few high commanders in World War II who made it a point of pride to do their own digging from first to last. Greater ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... age, as beautiful and attractive as you, and I had dared a man to kiss me, I should feel slighted, to say the least of it, and regard him as a poltroon, if he failed to take up my challenge," commented Lady Fermanagh drily. "You can't mean to say you did not expect Don Carlos to carry out the threat or promise he made in his note, particularly as you made no protest against his having entered ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... he is satisfied of my honour: your second will, I presume, be the same with respect to yours. It is for me only to question the latter, and to declare you solemnly to be void alike of principle and courage, a villain, and a poltroon. ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the stain that had been brought upon their name by his brother's deed (stain none the less dark, in his sight, because hidden from the world), his revulsion from this man, who was the only creature of their race who ever had turned poltroon, the thousand remembrances of childhood that uprose before him, the irresistible yearning for some word from the other's lips that should tell of some lingering trace in him of the old love strong enough to kill, for the moment at least, the selfish horror of personal peril—all these kept ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... Claverhouse asked, in an unconcerned tone of voice—"How came the fellow here?—Speak, you staring fool!" he added, addressing the nearest dragoon, "unless you would have me think you such a poltroon as to fear a ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... poltroon went and made his complaint to Captain Reud, who ordered him to leave the ship immediately ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... of candour, however, was probably owing to the claret. But Erskine's comparative taciturnity in the House may be accounted for on more honourable terms. Erskine was no poltroon: he was the boldest speaker at the bar. But the bar was his place, and no man has ever attained perfection in the two styles of oratory. It is true, that distinguished barristers have sometimes been distinguished in the House of Commons, but they have not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... without result, until the German was reached whom Frank had arrested at the point of his pistol. All his insolence and braggadocio had vanished. He was evidently a poltroon at heart, for he showed every evidence of being willing to betray his comrades and tell all that he knew on condition that his own ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall
... Ailie could be brave, but what a poltroon she was also! Three calls did she make on dear friends, ostensibly to ask how a cold was or to instruct them in a new device in Shetland wool, but really to announce that she did not propose keeping school after the end of the term—because—in ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... It was an honor to them to be selected for such an enterprise. To show cowardice now would be an eternal shame for them, and he would be the man to strike dead with his own hand any traitor or poltroon. But if, as he doubted not, every one was prepared to do his duty, their success was assured, and he was himself ready to take the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... that the Lacedaemonians at Plataea first fled from the Persians, and then, when the Persians were broken, turned upon them and won the battle, misapplies to them the term [Greek: thrasy/deiloi] (Arist., Eth. Nic., iii. 9.7)—men, that is, who affect the hero, but play the poltroon.] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... byword at the Vatican. His childish stories, however, amused the Pope, whom he greatly flattered, and who was fond of leaning on his arm while walking in the gardens. It was during these strolls that Gamba easily secured all sorts of little favours. However, he was a remarkable poltroon, and had such an intense fear of losing his influence that he never risked a request without having convinced himself by long meditation that no possible harm could ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... the captain, clenching his teeth and his fists; "let them kill you; die, you rascal, but go!" Then he uttered a horrible oath. "Ah, the infamous poltroon! he has sat down!" In fact, the boy, whose head he had hitherto been able to see projecting above a field of grain, had disappeared, as though he had fallen; but, after the lapse of a minute, his head came into sight again; finally, ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... her head carefully away from her hearer, lowered her eyes, and, looking the picture of guilt and shame all the time, sang an ancient ditty. The poltroon's voice was rich, mellow, clear, and sweet as honey; and she sang the notes for the sake of the words, not the words for the sake of the notes, as all but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... you want? Out with it. Dogs are loth to quit their kennels when they can dream of the game they never catch when awake. Come, Henderson, I sha'n't parley any longer. I suppose you are come to beg, like a poltroon, to be taken back to that precious office in Corn Street. Get Lambert to intercede ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... stood in no little awe of his bellicose spouse. What, though a hero in other respects; what, though he had slain his savages, and gallantly carried his craft from their clutches:—Like the valiant captains Marlborough and Belisarius, he was a poltroon to his wife. And Annatoo was worse than ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... little Prosper Leclere! He thinks himself one of the strongest—a fine fellow! But I tell you he is a coward. If he is clever? Yes. But he is a poltroon. He knows well that I can flatten him out like a crepe in the frying-pan. But he is afraid. He has not as much courage as the musk-rat. You stamp on the bank. He dives. He swims ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... creations, and which commends to our forbearance rather more of the highly colored and strongly-flavored parlance of the camps than could otherwise have demanded reproduction in literature. The bold strokes with which such an amusing and heroic reprobate as Van Zandt and such a pitiful poltroon as Gazaway are painted, are no less admirable than the nice touches which portray the Governor of Barataria, and some phases of the aristocratic, conscientious, truthful, angular, professorial society of New Boston, with its young college beaux and old college ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... what if it be my vice, My pleasure to displease—to love men hate me! Ah, friend of mine, believe me, I march better 'Neath the cross-fire of glances inimical! How droll the stains one sees on fine-laced doublets, From gall of envy, or the poltroon's drivel! —The enervating friendship which enfolds you Is like an open-laced Italian collar, Floating around your neck in woman's fashion; One is at ease thus,—but less proud the carriage! The forehead, free from mainstay or coercion, Bends here, there, everywhere. But I, embracing Hatred, ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... (who have rather a habit of being so).[52] Why a man who is represented as being intensely, diabolically, wicked, but almost diabolically shrewd, should employ, and go on employing, as his instrument a blundering poltroon like the Gascon Chaudoreille, is a question which recurs almost throughout the book, and, being unanswered, is almost sufficient to damn it. And at the end the other question, why M. le Marquis de Villebelle—represented as, though ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... a kind heart, Jean Paulet," she mocked. "But I think perhaps you are right. You are too much of a poltroon to be a ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... I do?" whimpered the photographer, a brave bully before the girl, when safe; a stricken poltroon now. "I'll do anything you say, to ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... shudder. If it had not been for that belief, the result of a cowardly fright, I would not have remained one minute where I was, and my hurried flight would no doubt have opened the eyes of my two dupes, who could not have failed to see that, far from being a magician, I was only a poltroon. The violence of the wind, the claps of thunder, the piercing cold, and above all, fear, made me tremble all over like an aspen leaf. My system, which I thought proof against every accident, had vanished: I acknowledged an avenging God who had waited for this opportunity of punishing ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... this bright Sword, that is so used to slaughter, he dies; [Draws.] old Fellow, say—the Poltroon's name. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... swept backward and forward. Paul did not at once see his brother, and the older boy stood over him in silence, watching the mental fight; watching until he knew that it was lost and that timidity had overpowered shame. His own eyes at first held only scorn for such a poltroon attitude, but suddenly there leaped into them a fierce glow of tenderness, which he as quickly masked. At the end of his silent contemplation he brusquely demanded, "Well, Paul, how long is it going to take you to fill that ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... you have a bad heart," said the poet. "You have laughed insolently at a man whose misfortune is none of his own making. You are a poltroon and ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... father for daring to marry him! High temper may be dangerous, and the rough hand something to be avoided and reprobated; but there is something worse in the extreme opposite, and humanity worse sickens at the sight of an abject poltroon, than at any other worthless fungus that springs as ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... an individual case, before the actual trial. Many a man has been unable to discover, till the critical moment, whether he himself possessed it or not. It is often denied to the healthy and strong, and given to the weak. The pugilist may be a poltroon, and the bookworm a hero. We have seen the most purely ideal philosopher in this country face the black muzzles of a dozen loaded revolvers with his usual serene composure. And on the other hand, we have known a black-bearded backwoodsman, whose mere voice and presence would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... and taken service with the biggest and most inveterate old coxcomb who ever stuffed himself with macaroni, to the patched Carnival fool who strutted about like a satisfied old hen after a shower of rain, to the snarling skinflint, the love-sick old poltroon, who infected the air of the Via Ripetta with the disgusting bleating which ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... (though, I confess, my mind was considerably relieved at the thoughts of not having killed him). 'And did the Bradys of Castle Brady consent to admit a poltroon like that into one of the most ancient and honourable families in ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... who at best was but a poltroon, could only repeat: "You got to keep away from here. It's the white man's law—one ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... "see the woman's nature shrinking from the path of honor because it is beset with danger. I did well not to let you know the nature of my last labors, for with your sighs and croakings you would have turned me back again into the highway of falsehood. But you are too late, poltroon. The work is done, and it shall see light." Gluck looked at his wife's face, and the expression he saw there made him pause. He was already sorry, and ready to atone. "No, no! I wrong you, my Egeria: not only are you the wife of my love, but the friend of my genius. Come, dearest, let ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... takes his chances,' I remarked. 'It is only the poltroon who reckons always upon ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... unwritten crimes against blood for one offshoot of a great house wantonly to thwart another in the wooing of her by humbling him in her presence, doing his utmost to expose him as a schemer, a culprit, and a poltroon. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... herself, yet I only hemmed and opened my eyes a little wide when I saw butchers' bills whose figures seemed to prove that fact—falsehood, I mean. Caroline, you may laugh at me, but you can't change me. I am a poltroon on certain points; I feel it. There is a base alloy of moral cowardice in my composition. I blushed and hung my head before Mrs. Gill, when she ought to have been faltering confessions to me. I found it impossible ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... the husband whom he had wronged, and finally caused the death of his numerous brothers, the destruction of his native city, with all the wealth which it contained, and died himself the death of a pitiful poltroon, lamented only by his worthless leman, to show how well the rules of chivalry were ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... pardon the poltroon who, believing that his mother has disgraced his escutcheon, weeps like a woman over wrongs which he should avenge like a man. But I forgot. The little abbe of Savoy is not accustomed to wear a sword; HIS weapon is the missal. Go, then, to your prayers, and when you pray for your ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... creatures in the world when you cry in your agony, "Come and help me!" Oh, assuredly Wellington was infamously used at that time, especially by your traders in Radicalism, who howled at and hooted him; said he had every vice—was no general—was beaten at Waterloo—was a poltroon—moreover, a poor illiterate creature, who could scarcely read or write; nay, a principal Radical paper said bodily he could not read, and devised an ingenious plan for teaching Wellington how to read. Now this was too bad; and the writer, being ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... wrong, but not masses who are innocent. Can you punish Paris and France for the crimes of the sans-culottes? The Bourbons are, it is said, the enemies of freedom; they have been led to the scaffold under the action of a right which I do not acknowledge. The Duke of Parma is weak, and a poltroon,—he will not stir. His people seem to love him, for we are here, and they rise not, they utter no complaint. Let him, then, continue to rule as long as he pays all that I exact from him." [Footnote: Napoleon's words.—See ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... laws of nature were constantly subverted, her ordeals must have operated at random when they were not regulated by fraud. The hand of guilt might be harder than that of innocence, and more likely to bear a moment's contact with hot iron or boiling oil. Besides, as Montesquieu observes, the poltroon stood the poorest chance in the judicial combat, and the poltroon was more likely to be guilty than the man of courage. The weak, of course, were at the mercy of the strong; but in one point, at least, the combat had an obvious advantage ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... inherited from generations of Puritans. It was now a religious instinct, and she was almost a fanatic with him, because she loved him, or had loved him. If he sinned, she tortured him. If he drank, and lied, was often a poltroon, sometimes a knave, ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... highwaymen in England surrounded him. "D—n my blood! what are you afraid of?" continued he; at the same time trembling with such agitation that the whole carriage shook. This singular piece of behaviour incensed Miss Ramper so much that she cried, "D—n your pitiful soul, you are as arrant a poltroon, as ever was drummed out of a regiment. Stop the waggon, Joey—let me out, and by G—d, if I have rhetoric enough, the thief shall not only take your purse, but your skin also." So saying she leaped out with great agility. By ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... she said; "I see you are no poltroon. It is for my own sake—I could not bear to have you slain for such ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... became conventionalized. There is always a very bad and a very good woman, a very generous and noble man and one so bad as to seem a monster. There is the type of the "love-lorn maiden," of "the lily-livered" hero, of the faithful friend, of the poltroon. It is supposed by many that such types repeated in play after play do not mark the highest original power, but rather poverty of invention, weak and shadowy conception, indistinctness of coloring. Professor Thorndike, however, cannot too much commend this style, because it gives ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... wildcat," I said, amazed, "give me the pistols! I know how to act. Give them, I say! Do you think me a poltroon to allow Sir Peter to ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... to his State Room to weep over the Situation, and the British Subject said: "The American is a Poltroon, for he will not defend his own ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... creatures," says Arthur Symons, "have in them a touch of honour, of honesty, or of heroism; his heroes have always some error, weakness, or mistake, some sin or crime, to redeem." What is Lord Jim, scoundrel and poltroon or gallant knight? What is Captain MacWhirr, hero or simply ass? What is Falk, beast or idealist? One leaves "Heart of Darkness" in that palpitating confusion which is shot through with intense curiosity. Kurtz is at once the ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... fell. As, half choked with grief and rage, I looked around for the cause, behold! my brave lieutenant Scott, at the head of his riflemen, came stooping along with his gun in his hand, and the black marks of shame and cowardice on his sheepish face. "Infamous poltroon," said I, shaking my sword over his head, "where is that hetacomb of robbers and murderers due to the vengeance of your ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... the room, he closed the door after him and went to find his lady, who began to laugh and embrace him, and confess to him that it was a trick devised by herself, assuring him that if he had behaved as a poltroon, and had not thus displayed the valour which he was said to possess, he should never have had her favours.... She was one of the most beautiful women of Milan, and he had had a deal of ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... him bitterly as a Pecksniff, a Tartuffe and a Pinto. In that judgment, as we shall show, there is naught save a stupid incapacity to understand an unlike man—in brief, no more than the dunderheadedness which makes a German regard every Englishman as a snuffling poltroon, hiding behind his vassals, and causes an Englishman to look upon every German as a fiend in human form, up to his ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... not to make a speedy and a heart-breaking discovery of the fatal mistake she had committed. Poor Jane Campbell soon wakened up to the discovery that she had exchanged the name and the family of a brave and noble house for the name and the house of a poltroon. No wonder that Rutherford's letters to her are so often headed: 'To Lady Kenmure, under illness and depression of mind.' Could you have kept quite well had you been a Campbell with John Gordon for a husband? Think of having to nurse your humbug ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... prisoner confined by his colonel commandant, and see the consequence!" The negro fell into the hands of the British, and conducted them upon the steps of our partisan. It so happened that the same Captain Clarke, who seems to have been a sad simpleton, and something of a poltroon, had been sent in front with five horsemen as an advanced guard. Near the great Waccamaw road, the bugles of the British were heard sounding the charge. Horry was fortunately prepared for the enemy, but such was not ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... retreated. This ship, commanded by a Frenchman, infamous in his own navy, and obnoxious in the service to which he at present belonged; this ship, foremost in insurgency to Paul hitherto, and which, for the most part, had crept like a poltroon from the fray; the Alliance now was at hand. Seeing her, Paul deemed the battle at an end. But to his horror, the Alliance threw a broadside full into the stern of the Richard, without touching the Serapis. Paul called to her, for God's sake to forbear destroying the Richard. The ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... yet," he interrupted, slapping his knee with delight. "Sneak-livered poltroon, eh? Well, well, well. ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... independence of a freeman, nor moral nor physical courage, and he is, therefore, an improper person (possibly infamous) for such a high and responsible position, and my rights as a citizen are not safe in the keeping of such a poltroon and conniving attorney, and he is probably disqualified to hold the high and responsible office of Senator of the United States—that he improperly accepts fees from clients, possibly in part for the influence ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... the estate in accordance with Challoner traditions and perhaps exert some influence in politics; he remembered that Mrs. Chudleigh had laid some stress on this. She had, however, told him that Bertram, from whom so much was expected, had shown himself a poltroon and, what was even worse, had allowed an innocent man to suffer for his baseness. Challoner had spent the last few days pondering the evidence she had offered him and had seen one or two weak points in it. By making the most of these, it might, perhaps, be rebutted, ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... no treason," said U-Thor in his deep voice. "I bring you a new jeddak for all of Manator. No lying poltroon, but a courageous ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... lover of violence was always trusted, and his opponent suspected. He who succeeded in a plot was deemed knowing, but a still greater master in craft was he who detected one. On the other hand, he who plotted from the first to have nothing to do with plots was a breaker-up of parties and a poltroon who was afraid of the enemy. In a word, he who could outstrip another in a bad action was applauded, and so was he who encouraged to evil one who had no idea of it. The tie of party was stronger than the tie of blood, ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... 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 me, sir, if you wish to escape any part of the punishment which ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... if he chooses, to submit to tyranny on his own account, he has no right to stand tamely by and see gross oppression and cruelty exercised towards his family, and neighbours, and country. At least, if he does so, he earns for himself the character of an unpatriotic poltroon. True patriotism consists in a readiness to sacrifice one's-self to the national well-being. As far as things temporal are concerned, the records of the Scottish Covenanters prove incontestably that those long-tried men and women submitted ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... been carefully gummed together, that you might not see it, has melted and given way. The thought of these things makes a man feel like Vesuvius on the eve of an eruption; but you must wait for relief till Dhobie day next week, and then the poltroon has stayed at home, and sent his brother to report that he is suffering from a severe stomachache. When the miscreant makes his next appearance in person, he stands on one leg, with joined palms and a piteous bleat, and pleads an alibi. He was ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... by his sword, Spoons, liquors, and furniture went by the board; He saw—at a distance, the rebels appear, And "rode to the front," which was strangely the rear; He conquered—truth, decency, honor full soon, Pest, pilferer, puppy, pretender, poltroon; And was fain from the scene of his triumphs to slope. Sure there never ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... invitation I mentioned in a previous letter is still urged upon me, and well as I know what penance its acceptance would entail in some points, I also know the advantage it would bring in others. My conscience tells me it would be the act of a moral poltroon to let the fear of suffering stand in the way of improvement. But suffer ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... should find in my country the manners, which drove me from Paris; that I should be under the necessity of incessantly struggling hard, and have no other alternative than that of being an unsupportable pedant, a poltroon, or a bad citizen. The letter Voltaire wrote me on my last work, induced me to insinuate my fears in my answer; and the effect this produced confirmed them. From that moment I considered Geneva as lost, and I was not deceived. I perhaps ought to have met the storm, had I thought myself capable ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... friend; and when his second calls him a coward, he fires up and exclaims, "Coward! Mind, gentlemen, he calls me a 'coward,' coward by my valor!" and when dared by Sir Lucius, he replies, "I don't mind the word 'coward;' 'coward' may be said in a joke; but if he called me 'poltroon,' ods, daggers and balls——" "Well, sir, what then?" "Why," rejoined Bob Acres, "I should certainly think him very ill-bred." Of course, he resigns all claim to the ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... "I wish I had a chance to open school here and teach manners," and without more deliberation he set his horse to an amble, designed to betray neither complacency nor a poltroon's terrors. ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... backward and forward. Paul did not at once see his brother, and the older boy stood over him in silence, watching the mental fight; watching until he knew that it was lost and that timidity had overpowered shame. His own eyes at first held only scorn for such a poltroon attitude, but suddenly there leaped into them a fierce glow of tenderness, which he as quickly masked. At the end of his silent contemplation he brusquely demanded, "Well, Paul, how long is it going to take you to fill that bucket ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... was a beggar named Irus, gluttonous and big-boned but a coward. Encouraged by the winkings and noddings of the suitors he bade Odysseus begone. A quiet answer made him imagine he had to deal with a poltroon and he challenged him to a fight. The proposal was welcomed with glee by the suitors, who promised on oath to see fair play for the old man in his quarrel with a younger. But when they saw the mighty limbs ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... gradually weaving a common standard of international appeal, it is clear that nations must fight, and ought to fight. Not being convinced, it is base to pretend that you are convinced; and failing to be convinced by your neighbor's arguments, you confess yourself a poltroon (and moreover you invite injuries from every neighbor) if you pocket your wrongs. The only course in such a case is to thump your neighbor, and to thump him soundly for the present. This treatment is very serviceable to your neighbor's optics; ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... teasing, humble, haughty, beautiful, the devil!—coquettish to the last, as well with the "asp" as with Antony. After doing all she can to persuade him that—but why do they abuse him for cutting off that poltroon Cicero's head? Did not Tully tell Brutus it was a pity to have spared Antony? and did he not speak the Philippics? and are not "words things?" [2] and such "words" very pestilent "things" too? If he had had a hundred heads, they deserved (from Antony) a rostrum (his was stuck ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... ringing of the bell and the flunkey's appearance, he had clearly seen what he was capable, and what he was incapable, of doing. And the correction of England's error was among his incapacities. He could not face the Dean. He could not face any one. He was a poltroon in all these things; a poltroon. No use arguing! ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... Welch replied to the lawyer's attack, pronouncing him to be "destitute of delicacy, decency, good manners, sound judgment, honesty, manhood, and humanity; a poltroon, a cat's-paw, the infamous tool of a party, a partisan, a political ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... man, so helpless was she in the midst of all her hollow grandeur, so lonely amongst a nation of curs whom she strove in vain to save, and should she escape destruction with them, doomed to so sad and repulsive a fate, namely to become the wife of a fat poltroon who was her own uncle. Well, we know to what emotion pity is akin, and the catastrophe had occurred a little sooner than I had expected, ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... to be afraid. He rose up, kissed my hand, and went out to prepare my food. Not long after, I heard lamentable cries and howls in the kitchen. I hastened thither, and to my great astonishment, saw the humble and trembling Monsieur poltroon engaged, very valiantly, in beating his wife and servant girls. When he perceived me he took to flight. I turned to the weeping wife and girls and demanded what could have excited such terrible anger ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... you?" he said. "I have a mind, then, to thrash you where you stand, you canting poltroon! Do you hear ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... your age, as beautiful and attractive as you, and I had dared a man to kiss me, I should feel slighted, to say the least of it, and regard him as a poltroon, if he failed to take up my challenge," commented Lady Fermanagh drily. "You can't mean to say you did not expect Don Carlos to carry out the threat or promise he made in his note, particularly as you made no protest against his having entered ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... him! High temper may be dangerous, and the rough hand something to be avoided and reprobated; but there is something worse in the extreme opposite, and humanity worse sickens at the sight of an abject poltroon, than at any other worthless fungus that springs as an excrescence ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... considered, who had been no undelightful companion, as a disagreeable fellow—and "The Christian Hero," by his own words, appears to have fought off several fool-hardy geniuses who were for "trying their valour on him," supposing a saint was necessarily a poltroon. Thus "The Christian Hero," finding himself slighted by his loose companions, sat down and composed a most laughable comedy, "The Funeral;" and with all the frankness of a man who cares not to hide his motives, he tells us, that after ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... sea drove his head against the ship's side; the boat swung with tremendous force. Scraunch! and the poor fellow was gone, with his head crushed like a walnut. Joe tried to grab him with the boathook, but it was useless, and the unhappy poltroon's body was whirled away. ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... into the conversation. He perceived that he had made a terrible blunder; and, as it was not his business at that moment to vindicate the British constitution, but to serve Leonard Fairfield, he abandoned the cause of the aristocracy with the most poltroon and scandalous abruptness. Catching at the arm which Mr. Avenel had withdrawn from ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... go," he said, sharply. "Ormond, am I a contemptible poltroon that I should leave you here to endure the consequences of my own negligence? Do you think I could accept life ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... companionship. He had hoped and expected that his eagerness to go with them on the wild and sudden campaign would reinstate him in their good graces, but it failed utterly. "Any man would seek that," was the verdict of the informal council held by the officers. "He would have been a poltroon if he hadn't sought to go; but, while he isn't a poltroon, he has done a contemptible thing." And so it stood. Rollins had cut him dead, refused his hand, and denied him a chance to explain. "Tell him he can't explain," was the savage reply he sent ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... began downstairs. He sat up and listened. Yes; undoubtedly burglars! He switched on his light and jumped out of bed. He took a pistol from a drawer, and thus armed went to look into the matter. The dreamy peer was no poltroon. ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... political fear. If I am afraid of voting against this bill, because a mob may gather about the House of Lords—because stones may be flung at my head—because my house may be attacked by a mob, I am a poltroon, and unfit to meddle with public affairs. But I may rationally be afraid of producing great public agitation; I may be honourably afraid of flinging people into secret clubs and conspiracies—I may be wisely afraid ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... should say that Pitt was a strutting, ranting, mouthing actor, Charles Townshend an impudent and voluble jack-pudding, Murray a demure, cold-blooded, cowardly hypocrite, Hardwicke an insolent upstart, with the understanding of a pettifogger and the heart of a hangman, Temple an impertinent poltroon, Egmont a solemn coxcomb, Lyttelton a poor creature whose only wish was to go to heaven in a coronet, Onslow a pompous proser, Washington a braggart, Lord Camden sullen, Lord Townshend malevolent, Secker an atheist who ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... preserves from ruin, even a guilty villain, forever actuate the noble bosoms of Americans! But let not the miscreant host vainly imagine that we feared their arms. No, those we despised; we dread nothing but slavery. Death is the creature of a poltroon's brains; 'tis immortality to sacrifice ourselves for the salvation of our country. We fear not death. That gloomy night, the pale-face moon, and the affrighted stars that hurried through the sky, can witness that we fear ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... "return with shame" to Mycenae. Menelaus is of much better cheer: "Be of good courage, [blank space] ALL THE HOST OF THE [misprint]"—a thing which Agamemnon does habitually, though he is not a personal poltroon. As Menelaus has only a slight flesh wound after all, and as the Trojans are doomed men, Agamemnon is now "eager for glorious battle." He encourages the princes, but, of all men, rebukes Odysseus as "last ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... future, lest my good intentions should fail or my self-control not hold out. But the knowledge that you are acquainted with my resolve, and regard it with an undeserved sympathy, may suffice to sustain me, and I should certainly be a base poltroon if I should disappoint you or ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... Skagafirth like a castle; he goes to his father's house, and bids farewell to his mother, and sets off for Drangey in the company of his youngest brother, Illugi, who will not leave him in this pinch, and a losel called "Noise," a good joker (we are told), but a slothful, untrustworthy poltroon. The three get out to Drangey, and possess themselves of the live-stock on it, and for a while all goes well; the land-owners who held the island in shares, despairing of ridding themselves of the outlaw, ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... tyro at fence, or such a poltroon as to be afraid to meet him? No, Hyacinth, I go with you to Dover, or I stand my ground and ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... after, this poltroon was in his turn superseded by a brave veteran, General Dugommier, and Napoleon could at last count on having his efforts backed. But, for the second time, the Representatives did their best to ruin his undertaking. The siege had now lasted four months, provisions were scarce in the camp, and ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... heard before he recovered sufficiently from the shock to move a limb. The officers were urging their prisoner forward, grinning and nodding to each other, whilst several voices from the crowd shouted abusively at the poltroon whose first instinct was to betray his associate. Bob turned his face away and walked on. He did not dare to run, yet the noises behind him kept his heart leaping with dread. A few paces and he was out of the alley. Even ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... the eastern division, which struck to him, after having lost a large proportion of men, and, at the instant that brave officer was boarding her to take possession, he was (p. 139) treacherously shot through the head by the captain of the boat that had surrendered, which base conduct enabled the poltroon (with the assistance he received from the other boats) to escape. The third boat of Captain Somers' division kept to windward, firing at the boats and shipping in the harbour; had she gone down to his assistance, it is probable several of the enemy's boats would have been captured in that quarter. ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... it be my vice, My pleasure to displease—to love men hate me! Ah, friend of mine, believe me, I march better 'Neath the cross-fire of glances inimical! How droll the stains one sees on fine-laced doublets, From gall of envy, or the poltroon's drivel! —The enervating friendship which enfolds you Is like an open-laced Italian collar, Floating around your neck in woman's fashion; One is at ease thus,—but less proud the carriage! The forehead, free from mainstay or coercion, Bends here, there, everywhere. But I, embracing ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... considered as a virtue, and to entitle us to the rewards bestowed upon it by the fair sex, who value it above all others, is so wholly out of our control, that when suffering under sickness or disease, it deserts us; nay, for the time being, a violent stomach-ache will turn a hero into a poltroon. ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... stroke better than he knew, and he of Hochfels bit his lip and fumed inwardly, but to no purpose. Not that he believed the peril to be great, but the fact he could not grasp it goaded him, and he cursed the trooper for a dolt and a poltroon that a mere fool should have vanquished him. And so he had left him, with a last look of disgust at the silent lips that could not do his bidding, and had proceeded to the royal pavilion, where the final act of the day's drama—more momentous ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... Sons, To-day is a prodigious coxcomb, but To-morrow is a very poltroon, taking fright at the big words of his predecessor. To-day is the truculent captain of old world comedy, To-morrow the clown ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... Enterprise fought the only equal battle which we won during the war; and that, in that action, an officer had proposed to haul down the stars and stripes, and a common sailor threatened to cut him to pieces, if he should do so. He spoke of Bainbridge as a sot and a poltroon, who wanted to run from the Macedonian, pretending to take her for a line-of-battle ship; of Commodore Elliot as a liar; but praised Commodore Downes in the highest terms. Percival seems to be the very pattern of old ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... South Carolina Negro, with the head of a fool and the carcass of an imbecile. Being only one and twenty, he had never been a slave, not even by birth, but that made no difference to him. Grinning and greedy and idle, and a magnificent poltroon, he had been the servant of Uncle Prudent for about three years. Over and over again had his master threatened to kick him out, but had kept him on for fear of doing worse. With a master ever ready to venture ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... done. We're better off without a coward like that. He'd be getting under our feet all the time, or else opening the doors to the Caesars, with the idea of currying favor with them. Where did you ever pick up such an arrant little poltroon? Most ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... the least force, whose indications are so clear that his horse cannot mistake them, and whose gentleness and fearlessness alike induce obedience to them. The noblest animal will obey such a rider, as surely as he will disregard the poltroon, or rebel against the savage. I say the noblest, because it is ever the noblest among them which rebel the most. For the dominion of man over the horse is an usurped dominion. And in riding a colt, or a restive horse, we should never forget that he has by nature ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... "Dastard!" he said. "Poltroon! Your turn, which should have come first, has arrived at last. You must fetch me the horns and the tail of the Fired rake. Probably you will be grilled, thank goodness; but who will give me back ...
— Prince Prigio - From "His Own Fairy Book" • Andrew Lang
... Petersburg after the delivery of his temperate and dispassionate address in New York, the handful of "true Russians" in the third Duma attacked him with violent and insulting abuse, and Mr. Vladimir Purishkevich, one of their most influential leaders, said to him in open session: "You are a poltroon and traitor, in whose face I would willingly spit!" Such is the spirit of the "true Russians" whom the Czar has asked to help him in bringing about "the peaceful regeneration of ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... found out, I know from my own experience, must be painful and odious, and cruelly mortifying to the inward vanity. Suppose I am a poltroon, let us say. With fierce mustache, loud talk, plentiful oaths, and an immense stick, I keep up nevertheless a character for courage. I swear fearfully at cabmen and women; brandish my bludgeon, and perhaps knock down a little man or two ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... is the usual poltroon contrasted with the manly and masterful girl, a conjunction of the lioness and the lamb ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... whereupon the latter said that, if he had them outside, he would strangle them both; to which the coadjutor replied, "My dear La Franchise (the duke's nickname), do not act the bully; you are a poltroon and I am a priest; we shall not do one another much harm." There was no fighting, and the Parliament, supported by the Duke of Orleans, obtained from the queen a declaration of the innocence of the Prince of Conde, and at the same time a formal disavowal of Mazarin's policy, and a ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the relations which exist between himself and his Maker, and his rational hope of immortality—if he have one—for the negative animal content, and frivolous enjoyments of a child, he does not deserve the name of a man;—he is a weak, unhealthy, broken-down creature, or a base poltroon. ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... brutal or tyrannical instincts were questioned or thwarted, and become insensible, for a time, even to physical danger. Ignorance, folly and self-conceit not seldom make a man seem fearless who is a poltroon at heart. Braddock's death was a better one than he deserved; he raged about the field like a dazed bull; fly he could not; he was incapable of adopting any intelligent measures to save his troops; on the contrary he kept reiterating conventional orders in a manner that showed his wits were gone. ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... of the stain that had been brought upon their name by his brother's deed (stain none the less dark, in his sight, because hidden from the world), his revulsion from this man, who was the only creature of their race who ever had turned poltroon, the thousand remembrances of childhood that uprose before him, the irresistible yearning for some word from the other's lips that should tell of some lingering trace in him of the old love strong enough to kill, for ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... enemies would claim that the party could not afford to stultify itself by the choice of a candidate who favored monopolies. He had given his promise, the word of a man of honor, and a business man. What escape was there from the predicament? If he vetoed the bill, would he not be a liar and a poltroon? If he signed it, the senatorship would slip through his fingers. The thought occurred to him to send for Elton and throw himself on his mercy, but he shrank from such an interview. Elton was a business man, and a promise was a promise. He had enjoyed the consideration for his promise; ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... his bellicose spouse. What, though a hero in other respects; what, though he had slain his savages, and gallantly carried his craft from their clutches:—Like the valiant captains Marlborough and Belisarius, he was a poltroon to his wife. And Annatoo was worse than ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... me for a white-livered poltroon!" he cried, as the chill sweat of fear ceased to break out upon him, and he rallied his courage and ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... in an unconcerned tone of voice—"How came the fellow here?—Speak, you staring fool!" he added, addressing the nearest dragoon, "unless you would have me think you such a poltroon as to fear ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... nothing; you are a poltroon! My son and I will go away from this place forever, forever! I will get a position for my son, I will find him a good position, do you understand? Just as I would be willing to sweep the streets with my tongue if I could gain a living for him in no other way, so I will move ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... greater poet than Wordsworth just as it made Peter a greater king than George III; but as it was, after all, only a negative qualification, it did not prevent Peter from being an appalling blackguard and an arrant poltroon, nor did it enable Byron to become a religious force like Shelley. Let us, then, leave Byron's Don Juan out of account. Mozart's is the last of the true Don Juans; for by the time he was of age, his cousin Faust had, in the hands of Goethe, ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... unconvincing), and even of villains (who have rather a habit of being so).[52] Why a man who is represented as being intensely, diabolically, wicked, but almost diabolically shrewd, should employ, and go on employing, as his instrument a blundering poltroon like the Gascon Chaudoreille, is a question which recurs almost throughout the book, and, being unanswered, is almost sufficient to damn it. And at the end the other question, why M. le Marquis de Villebelle—represented as, though also a ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... who had supported Mr. Wilson as long as they believed him determined to redeem his promises—"the governments have acquiesced in the Fourteen Points.... Hypocrisy. Each one cherished mental reservations. Virtue was exalted and vice practised. The poltroon eulogized heroism; the imperialist lauded the spirit of justice. For the past month we have been picking up ideas about the worth of the adhesions to the Fourteen Points, and never before has a more ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... place, and then I determined I would stop with Jemima. I could eke out an existence here on what I had left and still feel like a gentleman, but I couldn't settle down on dear Peggy Coston and be anything but a poltroon. As to my making a living at the law—that was pure moonshine. I haven't opened a law book for twenty years and now it's too late. People of our class"—here he looked away from his companion and talked straight at the foot of the bed—"People of our class ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Alexandria, the only existing memento of his name and deeds. Thence he marched to the Euphrates, wondering where Darius was and what he meant to do. Nearly two years had passed since the battle of Issus, and the kingly poltroon had apparently contented himself with writing letters begging Alexander to restore his family. But Alexander knew too well what a treasure he held to consent. If Darius would acknowledge him as his lord and master he could have back his wife ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... only in complete victory lay their own safety and a great advantage for the commonwealth. It was an honor to them to be selected for such an enterprise. To show cowardice now would be an eternal shame for them, and he would be the man to strike dead with his own hand any traitor or poltroon. But if, as he doubted not, every one was prepared to do his duty, their success was assured, and he was himself ready to take the lead in ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... my reply would be. "Withdraw," said I, "and have you laugh at me and tell your friends that I acted the poltroon? Really, you ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... want? Out with it. Dogs are loth to quit their kennels when they can dream of the game they never catch when awake. Come, Henderson, I sha'n't parley any longer. I suppose you are come to beg, like a poltroon, to be taken back to that precious office in Corn Street. Get ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... not to suppose that Pat Mahoney, of Muckafubble, was a poltroon; on the contrary, he had fought several shocking duels, and displayed a remarkable amount of savagery and coolness; but having made a character, he was satisfied therewith. They may talk of fighting for ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... pride whispered, that to speak that word now, would be ascribed to a motive which would degrade him more low than even the most injurious reasons that could be assigned for his silence. Every one, Miss Wardour included, must then, he thought, account him a mean dishonoured poltroon, who gave to the fear of meeting Captain M'Intyre the explanation he had refused to the calm and handsome expostulations of Mr. Lesley. M'Intyre's insolent behaviour to himself personally, the air of pretension which he assumed towards Miss Wardour, and the ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... a companion, friend and fellow-tourist, came Peter de Peyster, who hailed from the banks of the Hudson, and of what Roddy called "one of our ancient poltroon families." At Yale, although he had been two classes in advance of Roddy, the two had been roommates, and such firm friends that they contradicted each other without ceasing. Having quarrelled through two years of college ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... "The caitiff! The poltroon! Ah, poor stranger, why did you not leave the house at once and throw yourself upon the protection of the minister of your parish or some other ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... the Reign of Terror, with Robespierre the king. The struggles between the boa and the lion are past: the boa has consumed the lion, and is heavy with the gorge,—Danton has fallen, and Camille Desmoulins. Danton had said before his death, "The poltroon Robespierre,—I alone could have saved him." From that hour, indeed, the blood of the dead giant clouded the craft of "Maximilien the Incorruptible," as at last, amidst the din of the roused Convention, it ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of hazel bushes, trying to slink into the earth. "No," he thought; "no; I am not for public life. I have failed at the first test. Was ever so squeamish an exhibition? I have betrayed my country and the honour of public life. These Germans are now full of beer and pigeon-pie. What am I but a poltroon, unworthy to lace the shoes of the great leaders of my land? The sun has witnessed ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... have not fight Concombre Bateese yet!" he howled. "Non, you have cheat me, you have lie, you have run lak cat from Concombre Bateese, ze stronges' man on all T'ree River! You are wan' gran' coward, wan poltroon, an' you 'fraid to fight ME, who ees greates' fightin' man in all dees countree! Sapristi! Why you no hit Concombre Bateese, m'sieu? Why you no hit ze ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... course duels can never be defended, but for keeping up good manners, also for bringing out a man's character, these academic duels seem useful. However small the danger is, it frightens the coward and restrains the poltroon. For all that, what has taken place in England may in time take place in Germany also, and men will cease to think that it is impossible to defend their honour without a piece of steel or a pistol. The last thing that a German student desires to do in a duel is to kill ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... He was no poltroon, and had proved the fact on many occasions during the days when the entire German army seemed to be picking on him personally, but he hated and shrank from anything in the nature of a bally ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... I. Every Englishman I ever knew was a liar, and a sneaking poltroon. I was brought up to hate the race, and always have. I can't say that I like you any better than the others. By God! I don't, for the matter of that. But just now you can be useful to me if you are of that mind. This is a business proposition, and it makes no odds if we hate each ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... cleared his red skirts of the disputed territory, grown at least too hot for comfort, this Proctor—a fat poltroon—was now in hurried retreat through the forest-wilds of Canada West, at the head, not the rear, of an army composed of about nine hundred British regulars and two thousand Indian allies under the leadership of Tecumseh. On, in swift pursuit, ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... thou not comfort the poor man about the rencounter between him and that poltroon Metcalfe? He acted in that affair like a man of true honour, and as I should have acted in the same circumstances. Tell him I say so; and that what happened he could ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... stupendously to play the fool and swear even to himself (while his own judgment shrieks and proves a flat denial), that he is at will omnipotent? You have chosen long ago, my poor proud Ysabeau; and I choose now, and differently: for poltroon that I am! being now in a cold drench of terror, I steadfastly protest I am not very much afraid, and I choose death without any ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... fate was undoubtedly sealed, for he had invoked this very test—this meeting was to vouch for his sincerity. His mind went rapidly back over the whole period of his acquaintance with the Krovitch nobleman, to recall if there had been any indication of such a poltroon trait in Paul Zulka's character. He was, in justice, forced to deny ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... conflict. Elmham records his address: whether they are the very words he (p. 175) uttered, or such only as he was likely to have used, they certainly suit his character: "My lords, far be from me such disgrace, as that, like a poltroon, I should stain my noviciate in arms by flight. If the Prince flies, who will wait to end the battle? Believe it, to be carried back before victory would be to me a perpetual death! Lead me, I implore you, to the very face of the foe. I may not say to my friends, 'Go ye on first to the fight.' Be ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... they would say that Willis was a poltroon or a deserter, whichever he likes; they would very likely condemn him to the yard-arm by default, and carry out the operation when they get hold of him. But I will not endanger any one else; all I want is ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... for my self-possession to remain. But when I saw that the little English angel began to weep afresh at this exclamation, I longed for one moment to be able to get out of my own body, that I might chastise a poltroon so un-philosophical. I took her by the hand instead, and led her into this room and made her sit down, and, whilst I sponged the picture with cold water, made her tell me how the accident had happened. For I thought, in my Machiavellian Italian way, ...
— The Romance Of Giovanni Calvotti - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... asked, in an unconcerned tone of voice—"How came the fellow here?—Speak, you staring fool!" he added, addressing the nearest dragoon, "unless you would have me think you such a poltroon as to fear ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... to be found out, I know from my own experience, must be painful and odious, and cruelly mortifying to the inward vanity. Suppose I am a poltroon, let us say. With fierce moustache, loud talk, plentiful oaths, and an immense stick, I keep up nevertheless a character for courage. I swear fearfully at cabmen and women; brandish my bludgeon, and perhaps knock down a little man or two with it: brag of the images which I break ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of bleeding wounds and violent death that his heart fails him. Yet his pride revolts at the idea of being beaten; for a moment he is filled with rage, but his courage all disappears with the first blows he receives, and he finally shows himself to be the poltroon that he himself despises. This method it appears to me is far superior to the absurd grimaces, trembling legs, and exaggerated gestures, by which indifferent actors endeavour to excite the laughter of their audience—but meantime lose sight entirely ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... vagabond skewed such a brutal eagerness in seizing it with his filthy hands, and making not the least acknowledgment, that when they got out of the house, Morgante was ready to fell him to the earth. He called him scoundrel and poltroon, and said he had ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... in the army shook hands with a gallant lieut.-colonel (who had distinguished himself in the Peninsula) at one of the West End gaming houses, and Lieut. N—, who was present, upbraided the colonel with the epithet of "poltroon." On a fit opportunity the colonel inflicted summary justice upon the lieutenant with a cane or horse-whip. This produced a challenge; but the colonel was advised that he would degrade himself by combat with the challenger, and he therefore declined it, but promised similar chastisement ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... he is going to turn tail, as I always thought he would,—the cursed cowardly traitor!" replied the latter, gnashing his teeth. "But let him, and that pitiful poltroon of a Redding, go where they please. We will see to matters ourselves. I don't believe it is any thing more than a mere mob, who will scatter at the first fire. So follow me, Gale; and all the rest of ye, that aint afraid of your own shadows, follow ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... questioned without result, until the German was reached whom Frank had arrested at the point of his pistol. All his insolence and braggadocio had vanished. He was evidently a poltroon at heart, for he showed every evidence of being willing to betray his comrades and tell all that he knew on condition that his own lot would be ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall
... was too sudden for my self-possession to remain. But when I saw that the little English angel began to weep afresh at this exclamation, I longed for one moment to be able to get out of my own body, that I might chastise a poltroon so un-philosophical. I took her by the hand instead, and led her into this room and made her sit down, and, whilst I sponged the picture with cold water, made her tell me how the accident had happened. For I thought, in my Machiavellian Italian way, ...
— The Romance Of Giovanni Calvotti - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... said he, "that little Prosper Leclere! He thinks himself one of the strongest—a fine fellow! But I tell you he is a coward. If he is clever? Yes. But he is a poltroon. He knows well that I can flatten him out like a crepe in the frying-pan. But he is afraid. He has not as much courage as the musk-rat. You stamp on the bank. He dives. He swims ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... leading men either to good or to evil, takes in this case the evil part. Mere animal bravery has, unfortunately, such charms in the female eye, that a successful duellist is but too often regarded as a sort of hero; and the man who refuses to fight, though of truer courage, is thought a poltroon, who may be trampled on. Mr. Graves, a member of the American legislature, who, early in 1838, killed a Mr. Cilley in a duel, truly and eloquently said, on the floor of the House of Representatives, when lamenting the unfortunate ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... compassion which often preserves from ruin, even a guilty villain, forever actuate the noble bosoms of Americans! But let not the miscreant host vainly imagine that we feared their arms. No, those we despised; we dread nothing but slavery. Death is the creature of a poltroon's brains; 'tis immortality to sacrifice ourselves for the salvation of our country. We fear not death. That gloomy night, the pale-face moon, and the affrighted stars that hurried through the sky, can witness that we ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... done, they preferred to leave the ranks, and rush forward to loot and enrich themselves at our expense. Now, if 13 this conduct were to be the rule, general ruin would be the result. I do not deny that I have given blows to this man or the other who played the poltroon and refused to get up, helplessly abandoning himself to the enemy; and so I forced them to march on. For once in the severe wintry weather I myself happened to sit down for a long time, whilst waiting for a party who were getting ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... the result of a cowardly fright, I would not have remained one minute where I was, and my hurried flight would no doubt have opened the eyes of my two dupes, who could not have failed to see that, far from being a magician, I was only a poltroon. The violence of the wind, the claps of thunder, the piercing cold, and above all, fear, made me tremble all over like an aspen leaf. My system, which I thought proof against every accident, had vanished: I acknowledged an avenging God who had ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... you what of that," said Mr. Rousseau, who then proceeded to strike Mr. Grinnell about the head and shoulders with a rattan, stopping occasionally to lecture him, and saying, "Now, you d——d puppy and poltroon, ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... flight, though he will "return with shame" to Mycenae. Menelaus is of much better cheer: "Be of good courage, [blank space] ALL THE HOST OF THE [misprint]"—a thing which Agamemnon does habitually, though he is not a personal poltroon. As Menelaus has only a slight flesh wound after all, and as the Trojans are doomed men, Agamemnon is now "eager for glorious battle." He encourages the princes, but, of all men, rebukes Odysseus as "last at a fray and first ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... nor is Mrs. Pryor, nor is Mrs. Gill herself, yet I only hemmed and opened my eyes a little wide when I saw butchers' bills whose figures seemed to prove that fact—falsehood, I mean. Caroline, you may laugh at me, but you can't change me. I am a poltroon on certain points; I feel it. There is a base alloy of moral cowardice in my composition. I blushed and hung my head before Mrs. Gill, when she ought to have been faltering confessions to me. I found it impossible to get up the spirit even ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... despise, at the same time that they fear firearms, declaring them to be cowardly weapons [15] with which the poltroon can slay the bravest. ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... therewith." The luxurious breakfast at Roselands was partaken of with very little enjoyment that morning; by Walter especially, who had to bear contempt and ridicule; threats also: he was called a Yankee, coward, poltroon, traitor; and threatened with disinheritance and denouncement unless he would declare himself for the Confederacy and enlist in ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... of all the world found bashful; and in general she wasted the golden hours with much excellent fooling. Nor would she, perhaps, ever have found herself a heroine, but that her respectable father was a poltroon. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... regiment who survived the carnage of Waterloo. And yet this man, who had been familiar with death more than half his life, and who at times talked as though he were a perfect tornado in the field, was as arrant a poltroon as ever skulked. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... was a knave who held, somehow, the keys to a courtlier and nobler world. These tales made living seem a braver business, for all that they were written by a poltroon. Was it pure posturing? Patricia, at least, thought it was not. At worst, such dexterous maintenance of a pose was hardly despicable, she considered. And, anyhow, she preferred to believe that Charteris had by some miracle put the best of himself ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... rewards bestowed upon it by the fair sex, who value it above all others, is so wholly out of our control, that when suffering under sickness or disease, it deserts us; nay, for the time being, a violent stomach-ache will turn a hero into a poltroon. ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Harry, springing to his feet. "Stand off; my lords! Far be from me such disgrace as that, like a poltroon, I should stain my arms by flight. If the prince flies, who will ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... who was a British officer, once horsewhipped Paul Jones,—Jones being a poltroon. How singular it is that the personal courage of famous warriors should be ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... And she was too clever and too good a woman not to make a speedy and a heart-breaking discovery of the fatal mistake she had committed. Poor Jane Campbell soon wakened up to the discovery that she had exchanged the name and the family of a brave and noble house for the name and the house of a poltroon. No wonder that Rutherford's letters to her are so often headed: 'To Lady Kenmure, under illness and depression of mind.' Could you have kept quite well had you been a Campbell with John Gordon for a husband? Think of ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... his life. "His meanest creatures," says Arthur Symons, "have in them a touch of honour, of honesty, or of heroism; his heroes have always some error, weakness, or mistake, some sin or crime, to redeem." What is Lord Jim, scoundrel and poltroon or gallant knight? What is Captain MacWhirr, hero or simply ass? What is Falk, beast or idealist? One leaves "Heart of Darkness" in that palpitating confusion which is shot through with intense curiosity. Kurtz is at once the most abominable of rogues and the most fantastic of dreamers. ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... he said. "I have a mind, then, to thrash you where you stand, you canting poltroon! Do you hear me?—here, ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... rear, you cowardly poltroon!" shouted Washington, thoroughly aroused and indignant over the ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... it down that Alexander was a poltroon; a phthisicky professor, holding at every word a bottle of sal volatile to his nose, lectures on strength. Fellows who faint at the veriest trifle criticise the tactics of Hannibal; whimpering boys store themselves with phrases out of the slaughter at Canna; and ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Major, "a knave, a poltroon, a simpleton! And he came to me with no tale of having been outwitted by a stripling." Whereupon Major Colfax began to shake, gently at first, and presently he was in such a gale of laughter that I looked on him in amazement, Colonel Clark joining ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... contemptible opinion of you." "That does not surprise me," returned the Doctor; "all your opinions are contemptible." What is worthless or weak is contemptible. Despicable is a word that expresses a still more intense degree of the contemptible. A traitor is a despicable character, while a poltroon ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... international appeal, it is clear that nations must fight, and ought to fight. Not being convinced, it is base to pretend that you are convinced; and failing to be convinced by your neighbor's arguments, you confess yourself a poltroon (and moreover you invite injuries from every neighbor) if you pocket your wrongs. The only course in such a case is to thump your neighbor, and to thump him soundly for the present. This treatment is very serviceable ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... have said to you, I would say before him, were he not skulking in his cabin, afraid of justice. He is a pig of a poltroon!" cried his Excellency. "I wish he were here now, and I would ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... bell and the flunkey's appearance, he had clearly seen what he was capable, and what he was incapable, of doing. And the correction of England's error was among his incapacities. He could not face the Dean. He could not face any one. He was a poltroon in all these things; a poltroon. No use arguing! He ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... with which a gaping rent had been carefully gummed together, that you might not see it, has melted and given way. The thought of these things makes a man feel like Vesuvius on the eve of an eruption; but you must wait for relief till Dhobie day next week, and then the poltroon has stayed at home, and sent his brother to report that he is suffering from a severe stomachache. When the miscreant makes his next appearance in person, he stands on one leg, with joined palms and a piteous bleat, and pleads an alibi. He was absent about the marriage of a relation, and his ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... He was full of the fire of the hunt. He hated Pip for a poltroon. Snatching the boat-knife from its sheath, he suspended its sharp edge over the line, and turning towards Stubb, exclaimed interrogatively, "Cut?" Meantime Pip's blue, choked face plainly looked, Do, for God's sake! ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... too. And what I loved you for was your truth and purity and courage. I have given you a treasure which was greater than I could keep.—Where is it that you live now, Jacqueline? I am not yet such a poltroon that I am afraid to conduct you. I think that I should have the courage to protect you to-night, if you were in any immediate danger. Come, lead ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... The idea of being yet able to escape gave me fresh strength and served as a spur to me. I ran and laid hold of the bridle, which was fast in the hand of a man lying on the ground, whom I supposed dead; but, what was my surprise when the cowardly poltroon, who was suffering from nothing but fear, dared to remain in the most horrible fire to dispute the horse with me, at twenty paces from the enemy. All my menaces could not induce him to quit the bridle. Whilst we were disputing, a discharge ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... correspondence he vented his rage in terms similar to those used of the Danish commodore after Copenhagen. "You will have seen Monsieur La Touche's letter of how he chased me and how I ran. I keep it; and, by G—d, if I take him, he shall eat it." He is a "poltroon," a "liar," and a "miscreant." It may be added that no admiral, whether a Nelson or not, could have abandoned the "Excellent" under ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... too evident to be mistaken) that the cowardly Mexican man had, on his leaving, pulled off from her horse Mrs. Carson and her child, and having mounted the animal himself, was making good his escape. The Indians wished to keep up the ruse, pursue, Attempt to overtake and punish the poltroon; but Kit Carson was too thankful that matters had gone so well; therefore, he said that he felt that he could excuse such dastardly conduct, and requested the Indians to let it pass unnoticed. It is hardly necessary to add that ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... not comfort the poor man about the rencounter between him and that poltroon Metcalfe? He acted in that affair like a man of true honour, and as I should have acted in the same circumstances. Tell him I say so; and that what happened he ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... pronouncing this challenge rose erect in his stirrups. His countenance, noble and defiant, presented a strange contrast to the aspect of vulgar ferocity that characterised the features of the man thus addressed. The insult was point blank, and would have aroused the veriest poltroon; but Arroyo possessed only the ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... unmolested, I fear I should have totally forgotten Miss Eliza. But that was no part of her plan: at least it was no part of her practice. Our knees soon became very intimate, and had frequent meetings of a very sentimental kind: for, she being courageous enough to advance, could I be the poltroon to retreat? They were however very good and loving neighbours, and the language they spoke was peculiarly impressive. The whole subject before us was love, and intrigue, and the way to torment the jealous. Whenever a significant passage occurred, and that was ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... eagerness to go with them on the wild and sudden campaign would reinstate him in their good graces, but it failed utterly. "Any man would seek that," was the verdict of the informal council held by the officers. "He would have been a poltroon if he hadn't sought to go; but, while he isn't a poltroon, he has done a contemptible thing." And so it stood. Rollins had cut him dead, refused his hand, and denied him a chance to explain. "Tell him he can't explain," was the savage reply he sent by the adjutant, ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... break the bones of his body," I promised in a tone entirely new to me. And then to him—"The truth now, poltroon!" I ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... not given to every man to have that greater love which will make him lay down his life for a friend, but it is the sheer poltroon and craven who will watch a friend linger and expire in agony without lifting a finger to save him. Knave or fool—what does it matter when either is submerged ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... had proved often enough that she was no coward, but even the brave turn poltroon when they fight without a sense of justification. Her pride told her that she ought to cross over to Lady Clifton-Wyatt and demand that she speak up. But her sense of guilt robbed her of her courage. And ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... her sex—fond, lively, sad, tender, teasing, humble, haughty, beautiful, the devil!—coquettish to the last, as well with the "asp" as with Antony. After doing all she can to persuade him that—but why do they abuse him for cutting off that poltroon Cicero's head? Did not Tully tell Brutus it was a pity to have spared Antony? and did he not speak the Philippics? and are not "words things?" [2] and such "words" very pestilent "things" too? If he had had a hundred ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... call her, when that poltroon of an Anderson Walkley, who had stolen back into the house after running from it, crept behind me and struck me back of the ear with a shaving mug. I dropped unconscious. In the resulting confusion, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... would, then, it's Carver that would quake like the aspin leaf—I know that. It's no malice at all in him; only just he's a mighty great poltroon. ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... them, we should say that Pitt was a strutting, ranting, mouthing actor, Charles Townshend an impudent and voluble jack-pudding, Murray a demure, cold-blooded, cowardly hypocrite, Hardwicke an insolent upstart, with the understanding of a pettifogger and the heart of a hangman, Temple an impertinent poltroon, Egmont a solemn coxcomb, Lyttelton a poor creature whose only wish was to go to heaven in a coronet, Onslow a pompous proser, Washington a braggart, Lord Camden sullen, Lord Townshend malevolent, Secker an atheist who had shammed Christian for a mitre, Whitefield an impostor who swindled ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... more robust than I, this I who took possession of the door by force, this I who made me slope off, this I who wishes to be the only I, this I who is jealous of myself, this valiant I, whose anger made itself known to this poltroon of an I, in fact, this I who is at our house, this I who has shown himself to be my master, this I who ...
— Amphitryon • Moliere
... Bernadotte, in fact, the total defect of heroic minds amongst the French of that day, neutralized the defects and more than compensated the blunders of Napoleon. But these were advantages that could not be depended on: a glass of brandy extraordinary might have emboldened the greatest poltroon to do that which, by once rousing a movement of popular enthusiasm, once making a beginning in that direction, would have precipitated the whole affair into hands which must have carried it far beyond the power of any party to control. Never, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... brother. And so, having drunk his death in a popish potion, he died unlamented. For his character, in all respects in nature, feature and manners, he resembled the tyrant Tiberius; and for all the numerous brood of bastards begot on other men's wives, he died a childless poltroon, having no legitimate heir to succeed him of his own body, according to the divine malediction, Write this man childless: for no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting on the throne of David, and ruling any more ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... letter is still urged upon me, and well as I know what penance its acceptance would entail in some points, I also know the advantage it would bring in others. My conscience tells me it would be the act of a moral poltroon to let the fear of suffering stand in the way of improvement. But suffer I shall. ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... dangerous for ever. Men fear them, and are fascinated by them. They know how to show their teeth charmingly; the more enlightened of them have perfected a superb technique of fascination. It was Nietzsche who called them the recreation of the warrior—not of the poltroon, remember, but of the warrior. A profound saying. They have an infinite capacity for rewarding masculine industry and enterprise with small and irresistible flatteries; their acute understanding combines with their capacity for evoking ideas of beauty to make them incomparable companions ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... hand is the best who gets his horse to do what he wishes with the least force, whose indications are so clear that his horse cannot mistake them, and whose gentleness and fearlessness alike induce obedience to them. The noblest animal will obey such a rider, as surely as he will disregard the poltroon, or rebel against the savage. I say the noblest, because it is ever the noblest among them which rebel the most. For the dominion of man over the horse is an usurped dominion. And in riding a colt, or a restive horse, we should never forget that he has by nature the right ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... frequently defying and inviting the vengeance of banded Rocky Mountain cut-throats by shooting down their comrades and leaders, and never offering to hide or fly, Slade showed that he was a man of peerless bravery. No coward would dare that. Many a notorious coward, many a chicken-livered poltroon, coarse, brutal, degraded, has made his dying speech without a quaver in his voice and been swung into eternity with what looked liked the calmest fortitude, and so we are justified in believing, from the low intellect of such a creature, that it was not moral courage that enabled him to do it. Then, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Khujistah Akhtar Jahan-Shah and Rafi-ash-Shan, and placed the surviving of the four sons of Bahadur [i.e. Mu'izz-ud-din] on the throne with the title of Jahandar ("World-owner"). The new Emperor was an irredeemable poltroon and an abandoned debauchee.' (The History of the Moghul Emperors of Hindustan illustrated by their Coins, Constable, 1892, and in Introd. to B. M. Catal. ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... replied to the lawyer's attack, pronouncing him to be "destitute of delicacy, decency, good manners, sound judgment, honesty, manhood, and humanity; a poltroon, a cat's-paw, the infamous tool of a party, a partisan, a ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... pilgarlic, vagabond, knave, rogue, scoundrel, caitiff, miscreant, scapegrace, villain, rascal, renegade, reprobate, rake, scullion, poltroon, varlet, ronion, libertine, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... editor, backing out upon the sidewalk and drawing his repeater, "I denounce you as a traitor, a poltroon, and a coward!" Men darted away, dodged, ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... you, are the faintest creatures in the world when you cry in your agony, "Come and help me!" Oh, assuredly Wellington was infamously used at that time, especially by your traders in Radicalism, who howled at and hooted him; said he had every vice—was no general—was beaten at Waterloo—was a poltroon—moreover, a poor illiterate creature, who could scarcely read or write; nay, a principal Radical paper said bodily he could not read, and devised an ingenious plan for teaching Wellington how to ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... have the privilege of judiciously matching their children. Were daughters left to choose for themselves, there are those who would prefer their father's serving-man, or throw themselves away on some fellow they might chance to see in the street, mistaking, perhaps, an impostor and swaggering poltroon for a gentleman, since passion too easily blinds the understanding, so indispensably necessary in deciding on that most important point, matrimony, which is peculiarly exposed to the danger of a mistake, and therefore needs all the caution that human prudence can supply, ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... in the poltroon's calendar," cried Murray, seeing by the countenance of Wallace that his resolution was not to be moved; "yet I must gallop off from your black-eyed Judith, as if chased by the ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... intentions should fail or my self-control not hold out. But the knowledge that you are acquainted with my resolve, and regard it with an undeserved sympathy, may suffice to sustain me, and I should certainly be a base poltroon if I should disappoint ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... the provisional government, but an adventurer of fierce and reckless spirit, in manner and appearance a romantic outlaw, a man after his own heart. Henceforth Byron is reckoned at best a dupe, and at worst a sluggish poltroon; while Trelawny, it is said, imitated his hero so loyally that "he ate, dressed, and even spat in his manner." When the poet died Trelawny spoke with ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... she asked. "When that door falls, this point enters my heart. There is nothing beyond that door, with thou, poltroon, to which death in this little chamber would ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... madman in pursuit of me, and he threatens my life. An hour ago he got me to swear solemnly, and to put my hand to the oath, that I would renounce all pretensions to you, and never even speak to you again. I was a poltroon to submit to it. I know that well enough, and you cannot despise me more than I despise myself. But there is this to be said: until I consented to that declaration I never knew that I loved you. Perhaps, indeed, I had not done so. At any rate, now I know that I do love you—love you beyond measure, ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... threatened the Duke of La Rochefoucauld; whereupon the latter said that, if he had them outside, he would strangle them both; to which the coadjutor replied, "My dear La Franchise (the duke's nickname), do not act the bully; you are a poltroon and I am a priest; we shall not do one another much harm." There was no fighting, and the Parliament, supported by the Duke of Orleans, obtained from the queen a declaration of the innocence of the Prince of Conde, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... tried to do, and called upon him in Constantinople for that purpose; but Captain Ringgold is a coward, a poltroon! He keeps himself shut up in his cabin, and refuses to give my ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... Our elder blood flows in the veins of cowards: The gray-hair'd sneak, the blanch'd poltroon, The feign'd or real shiverer at tongues, That nursing babes need hardly cry the less for— Are they to be our ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... Selene and Helios, appear as quite distinct from Artemis and Apollo; Gaea, the Earth, is equally distinct from Demeter. The Hymn to Ares is quite un-Homeric in character, and is oddly conceived in the spirit of the Scottish poltroon, who cries to his friend, "Haud me, haud me, or I'll fecht!" The war-god is implored to moderate the martial eagerness of the poet. The original collector here showed lack of discrimination. At no time, however, was Ares a popular ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... General, looking scornfully at his son, whom terror had robbed of strength to stand. "You have the courage to plan cold-blooded murder, but when the time comes to face your own death you show yourself a miserable poltroon. Fear nothing: you shall not die. I have passed a sleepless night, struggling between duty and parental affection. But were it known in St. Petersburg that I had shown you mercy, I would answer for ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... tyranny on his own account, he has no right to stand tamely by and see gross oppression and cruelty exercised towards his family, and neighbours, and country. At least, if he does so, he earns for himself the character of an unpatriotic poltroon. True patriotism consists in a readiness to sacrifice one's-self to the national well-being. As far as things temporal are concerned, the records of the Scottish Covenanters prove incontestably that those long-tried men and women ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... said, gathering her skirts as though she intended to take her departure instantly. "But it will be a fine story that Signor Fenshawe cables from Aden when he tells how the Governor of Massowah aided and abetted this half-crazy poltroon in onslaughts on defenseless women. It was not enough that Italian law should be misused to further his ends, but the scum of the bazaar is enlisted under his banner, and he is supported by the authorities in an act that would be reprobated by ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... Hector has called a council, and asked for a volunteer spy to seek intelligence among the Achaeans. He offers no black ewes as a reward, but the best horses of the enemy. This allures Dolon, son of a rich Trojan, "an only son among five sisters," a poltroon, a weak lad, ugly, but swift of foot, and an enthusiastic lover of horses. He asks for the steeds of Achilles, which Hector swears to give him; and to be lightly clad he takes merely spear and bow and a cap of ferret skin, with the pelt of a wolf for covering. Odysseus sees him approach; he and ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... friends to lead him into the very hottest of the conflict. Elmham records his address: whether they are the very words he (p. 175) uttered, or such only as he was likely to have used, they certainly suit his character: "My lords, far be from me such disgrace, as that, like a poltroon, I should stain my noviciate in arms by flight. If the Prince flies, who will wait to end the battle? Believe it, to be carried back before victory would be to me a perpetual death! Lead me, I implore you, to the very ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... in the name of common sense, study the Koran, or some less ascetic tome. Don't be gulled by a plausible slave, who wants nothing more than to multiply professors of his theory. Why don't you read the Bible, you miserable, puling poltroon, before you hug it as a treasure? Why don't you read it, and learn out of the mouth of the founder of Christianity, that there is one sin for which there is no forgiveness—blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, hey?—and that sin I myself have heard you commit ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... ready to receive back Tamyra as his wife, though her sole motive in rejoining him is to precipitate vengeance on his head. Nor had anything in the earlier play prepared us for the spectacle of him as a poltroon, who has "barricado'd" himself in his house to avoid a challenge, and who shrieks "murther!" at the entrance of an unexpected visitor. In the light of such conduct it is difficult to regard as merely assumed his pusillanimity in the final scene, where he at first grovels before Clermont ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... any day of the year. She must help him. Whether he could see her from the stage, she did not know. She doubted it. But he knew where she was sitting. He might look for her at such a moment. He might miss her if she were hidden away in the shadow like a poltroon. ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... cable instantly to be cut, and the yacht to be pulled out to sea by the oars. They were soon beyond the reach of the guns. It was now night, serene and beautiful; the sea was smooth as glass, and the stars shone with unusual splendor in the clear sky. The poltroon monarch of all the Russias had not yet ventured upon deck, but was trembling in his cabin, surrounded by his dismayed mistresses, when the helmsman entered the cabin and said ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... feelings which are entirely distinct—personal fear and political fear. If I am afraid of voting against this bill, because a mob may gather about the House of Lords—because stones may be flung at my head—because my house may be attacked by a mob, I am a poltroon, and unfit to meddle with public affairs. But I may rationally be afraid of producing great public agitation; I may be honourably afraid of flinging people into secret clubs and conspiracies—I may be wisely afraid of making the aristocracy hateful to the great body of ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... nor deceit; instead of loading you with praise, he will point you to the better way. I scoff at Cleon's tricks and plotting; honesty and justice shall fight my cause; never will you find me a political poltroon, a prostitute to ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... starvation or surrender to the Iroquois. Throwing down his weapons, he gave himself up to what he knew would be certain torture. Had he winced or whined as they tore the nails from his fingers and the hair from his head, the Iroquois would probably have brained him on the spot for a poltroon; but the young man, bound to a stake, pointed to a gathering storm as sign of Heaven's displeasure. The high spirit pleased the Iroquois. They unbound him and took him with them in their wanderings for ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... fortunate. Had it been Monsieur Dampierre it would not have been a fist but a bullet through his head that would have punished him. Now mark me, Jean Diantre," and she moved a pace forward, so suddenly that the man started back, "you are a known assassin and poltroon. If at any time harm befalls Monsieur Dampierre I will stab you with my own hand. If you ever dare to speak to me again I will hold you up to the scorn of the women of the quarter. As it is, your comrades have heard how mean and cowardly a scoundrel you ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... cried out for water like the rest. Bababalouk, whose olfactory nerves were more familiarized to magical odors, readily conjecturing that Carathis was engaged in her favorite amusements, strenuously exhorted them not to be alarmed. Him, however, they treated as an old poltroon; and forbore not to style him a rascally traitor. The camels and dromedaries were advancing with water, but no one knew by which way to enter the tower. Whilst the populace was obstinate in forcing the doors, a violent east wind drove such a volume of flame against ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... submit to tyranny on his own account, he has no right to stand tamely by and see gross oppression and cruelty exercised towards his family, and neighbours, and country. At least, if he does so, he earns for himself the character of an unpatriotic poltroon. True patriotism consists in a readiness to sacrifice one's-self to the national well-being. As far as things temporal are concerned, the records of the Scottish Covenanters prove incontestably that ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... did not speak. (Aside, boxing his own ears, and thumping himself to raise his courage). Ah! I am enraged at my own cowardice! Chicken-hearted poltroon! ...
— Sganarelle - or The Self-Deceived Husband • Moliere
... the grounds of my complaint against you, but he is satisfied of my honour: your second will, I presume, be the same with respect to yours. It is for me only to question the latter, and to declare you solemnly to be void alike of principle and courage, a villain, and a poltroon. ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... gxentila. Polite gxentila. Politic sagxa. Political politika. Politician politikisto. Politics politiko. Poll (vote) vocxdoni, baloti. Poll (of head) verto. Pollen florsemo. Pollute malpurigi. Poltroon timulo—egulo. Poltroonery timeco—egeco. Polygon multangulo. Polyp polipo. Polypus polipo. Polytechnic politekniko, a. Pomade pomado. Pomatum pomado. Pomegranate pomgranato. Pompous pompa. Pond lageto. Ponder pripensi, reveti. Ponderous multepeza. Poniard ponardo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... paces before me, without a rider. The idea of being yet able to escape gave me fresh strength and served as a spur to me. I ran and laid hold of the bridle, which was fast in the hand of a man lying on the ground, whom I supposed dead; but, what was my surprise when the cowardly poltroon, who was suffering from nothing but fear, dared to remain in the most horrible fire to dispute the horse with me, at twenty paces from the enemy. All my menaces could not induce him to quit the bridle. Whilst we were disputing, a discharge from a cannon loaded ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... heard Washington swear," Lafayette once remarked, "was when he called General Charles Lee a 'damned poltroon,' after the arrest of that officer for treasonable conduct." Nor was Washington the only person of self-restraint and good manners whose temper and angry passions were roused by this ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... her! What kind of a woman do you want, anyhow?"—with rising anger. He saw the tragedy on the boy's face; but he was merciless. "Are you a poltroon, ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... use to us, and necessity has no law, you know. Now—let me consider—there is one thing more to be done before we leave; what is it? It was in my mind a moment ago! Ah, yes, of course, that is it; we have to put this miserable poltroon of a steward back into his pantry, lock the door upon him, and—yes, that is all, ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... do?" whimpered the photographer, a brave bully before the girl, when safe; a stricken poltroon now. "I'll do anything you say, to get to ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... his being as well as the overt events of his life. "His meanest creatures," says Arthur Symons, "have in them a touch of honour, of honesty, or of heroism; his heroes have always some error, weakness, or mistake, some sin or crime, to redeem." What is Lord Jim, scoundrel and poltroon or gallant knight? What is Captain MacWhirr, hero or simply ass? What is Falk, beast or idealist? One leaves "Heart of Darkness" in that palpitating confusion which is shot through with intense curiosity. Kurtz is at once the most abominable of rogues ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... the same time that they fear firearms, declaring them to be cowardly weapons [15] with which the poltroon can slay ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... the empty hall; before me was the breakfast-room door, and I stopped, intimidated and trembling. What a miserable little poltroon had fear, engendered of unjust punishment, made of me in those days! I feared to return to the nursery, and feared to go forward to the parlour; ten minutes I stood in agitated hesitation; the vehement ringing of the breakfast-room bell decided me; ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... all this, and yet, when I would have wakened the Indian, a shaking ague-fit of poltroon cowardice gave me pause. For while the doubt remained there was a chance to hope that she had sent to me, making the little cry for help a token, not of love, perchance, but of some dawning of forgiveness for my desperate wronging of her. And in that hesitant moment it was borne ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... prepared ourselves and torn his leprous hide from his dehauched and whiskey- poisoned frame, and polluted our fence with it, but he did not. True to his low, currish nature, he crept upon us unawares. Our back was toward him as he entered, perceiving which the cowardly poltroon seized us and threw us through our own window. Having accomplished his fiendish work, the miscreant left, justly fearing our wrath. The Stinging Lizard's exposure of this scoundrel as a drunkard, embezzler, wife-beater, jail-bird, thief, and general ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... that nations must fight, and ought to fight. Not being convinced, it is base to pretend that you are convinced; and failing to be convinced by your neighbor's arguments, you confess yourself a poltroon (and moreover you invite injuries from every neighbor) if you pocket your wrongs. The only course in such a case is to thump your neighbor, and to thump him soundly for the present. This treatment is very serviceable to your neighbor's optics; he ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... adj.; timidity, effeminacy. poltroonery, baseness; dastardness[obs3], dastardy[obs3]; abject fear, funk; Dutch courage; fear &c. 860; white feather, faint heart; cold feet * [U. S.], yellow streak*. coward, poltroon, dastard, sneak, recreant; shy cock, dunghill cock; coistril[obs3], milksop, white liver, lily liver, nidget[obs3], one that cannot say " bo" to a goose; slink; Bob Acres, Jerry Sneak. alarmist, terrorist|!, pessimist; runagate &c. (fugitive) 623. V. quail &c. (fear) 860; be cowardly &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... his women, and ordered the cable instantly to be cut, and the yacht to be pulled out to sea by the oars. They were soon beyond the reach of the guns. It was now night, serene and beautiful; the sea was smooth as glass, and the stars shone with unusual splendor in the clear sky. The poltroon monarch of all the Russias had not yet ventured upon deck, but was trembling in his cabin, surrounded by his dismayed mistresses, when the helmsman entered the cabin and said to ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... during the war; and that, in that action, an officer had proposed to haul down the stars and stripes, and a common sailor threatened to cut him to pieces, if he should do so. He spoke of Bainbridge as a sot and a poltroon, who wanted to run from the Macedonian, pretending to take her for a line-of-battle ship; of Commodore Elliot as a liar; but praised Commodore Downes in the highest terms. Percival seems to be the very pattern of old integrity; taking as much care of Uncle ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... town. I noted a deprecatory gesture, and following his gaze saw the Chevalier himself coming our way at a good round pace. My knees did quake, and the veriest poltroon might have well been ashamed of the overweening fear which possessed me. In defense of which I may say, I believe it was due in large part to my great respect and fondness for de la Mora, as well as a deep consciousness of the ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... system, and, in the name of common sense, study the Koran, or some less ascetic tome. Don't be gulled by a plausible slave, who wants nothing more than to multiply professors of his theory. Why don't you read the Bible, you miserable, puling poltroon, before you hug it as a treasure? Why don't you read it, and learn out of the mouth of the founder of Christianity, that there is one sin for which there is no forgiveness—blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, hey?—and ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... bribery, nor intrigue, nor deceit; instead of loading you with praise, he will point you to the better way. I scoff at Cleon's tricks and plotting; honesty and justice shall fight my cause; never will you find me a political poltroon, a prostitute ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... up his manly form. "War with all its perils and hardships is before us. Am I a villain, a poltroon, who will desert his country in the hour of her greatest need? I do not so ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... what of that," said Mr. Rousseau, who then proceeded to strike Mr. Grinnell about the head and shoulders with a rattan, stopping occasionally to lecture him, and saying, "Now, you d——d puppy and poltroon, ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... clean, intelligent, and brave; whilst we are reduced to the unprogressive Kru-man, who is, moreover, a model coward, a poltroon on principle. ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... Arc is by far the most complete and reliable, considers this man to have been an astute politician, without any moral strength or courage. When with Joan of Arc, he seems to have shown firmness and even enthusiasm in her mission, but he sank into the role of a poltroon when her influence was withdrawn. Instead of hastening the despatch of the reinforcements from Blois to Orleans, he threw delay in the way; he seems to have hesitated in letting these troops join those ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... from a frigate, are you? Shame on you, coward and poltroon! Stay and fight like a man for your King ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... Cowardice — N. cowardice, pusillanimity; cowardliness &c adj.; timidity, effeminacy. poltroonery, baseness; dastardness^, dastardy^; abject fear, funk; Dutch courage; fear &c 860; white feather, faint heart; cold feet [U.S.], yellow streak [Slang]. coward, poltroon, dastard, sneak, recreant; shy cock, dunghill cock; coistril^, milksop, white liver, lily liver, nidget^, one that cannot say 'boo' to a goose; slink; Bob Acres, Jerry Sneak. alarmist, terrorist^, pessimist; runagate &c (fugitive) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... vile creature. Why should he risk his skin in climbing walls when he might be sure of a free pardon from the English for having prevented the escape of one so much more distinguished than himself? I had recognized him as a poltroon and a sneak, but I had not understood the depth of baseness to which he could descend. One who has spent his life among gentlemen and men of honour does not think of ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... I confess, my mind was considerably relieved at the thoughts of not having killed him). 'And did the Bradys of Castle Brady consent to admit a poltroon like that into one of the most ancient and ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... by coming out only in school hours. This didn't help his trade. But then his trade had dwindled to the vanishing point anyway. Even Madame Tallafferr had dropped him. She preferred not to deal with a poltroon, as she put it. ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Throwing down his weapons, he gave himself up to what he knew would be certain torture. Had he winced or whined as they tore the nails from his fingers and the hair from his head, the Iroquois would probably have brained him on the spot for a poltroon; but the young man, bound to a stake, pointed to a gathering storm as sign of Heaven's displeasure. The high spirit pleased the Iroquois. They unbound him and took him with them in their wanderings for ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... master of by legitimate and lawful possession. With the pack-saddle I do not concern myself; but I may tell you on that head that my squire Sancho asked my permission to strip off the caparison of this vanquished poltroon's steed, and with it adorn his own; I allowed him, and he took it; and as to its having been changed from a caparison into a pack-saddle, I can give no explanation except the usual one, that such transformations will take place in adventures of chivalry. To confirm all which, run, Sancho my ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... had hoped and expected that his eagerness to go with them on the wild and sudden campaign would reinstate him in their good graces, but it failed utterly. "Any man would seek that," was the verdict of the informal council held by the officers. "He would have been a poltroon if he hadn't sought to go; but, while he isn't a poltroon, he has done a contemptible thing." And so it stood. Rollins had cut him dead, refused his hand, and denied him a chance to explain. "Tell him he can't explain," was the savage ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... which often preserves from ruin, even a guilty villain, forever actuate the noble bosoms of Americans! But let not the miscreant host vainly imagine that we feared their arms. No, those we despised; we dread nothing but slavery. Death is the creature of a poltroon's brains; 'tis immortality to sacrifice ourselves for the salvation of our country. We fear not death. That gloomy night, the pale-face moon, and the affrighted stars that hurried through the sky, can witness that we fear not death. Our hearts, which, ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... himself and his Maker, and his rational hope of immortality—if he have one—for the negative animal content, and frivolous enjoyments of a child, he does not deserve the name of a man;—he is a weak, unhealthy, broken-down creature, or a base poltroon. ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... as a companion, friend and fellow-tourist, came Peter de Peyster, who hailed from the banks of the Hudson, and of what Roddy called "one of our ancient poltroon families." At Yale, although he had been two classes in advance of Roddy, the two had been roommates, and such firm friends that they contradicted each other without ceasing. Having quarrelled through two years of college life, they were on terms of such perfect ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... often enough that she was no coward, but even the brave turn poltroon when they fight without a sense of justification. Her pride told her that she ought to cross over to Lady Clifton-Wyatt and demand that she speak up. But her sense of guilt robbed her of her courage. And that oath she had given ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... Toulon; for, blind as I am, I could see his water line, when he clued his topsails up, shutting in Sepet. But from the time of his meeting Captain Hawker in the ISIS, I never heard of his acting otherwise than as a poltroon and a liar. Contempt is the best mode of treating such a miscreant." In spite, however, of contempt, the impudence of this Frenchman half angered him. He said to his brother: "You will have seen Latouche's letter; how he chased me and how I ran. ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... army shook hands with a gallant lieut.-colonel (who had distinguished himself in the Peninsula) at one of the West End gaming houses, and Lieut. N—, who was present, upbraided the colonel with the epithet of "poltroon." On a fit opportunity the colonel inflicted summary justice upon the lieutenant with a cane or horse-whip. This produced a challenge; but the colonel was advised that he would degrade himself by combat with the challenger, and he therefore declined it, but promised similar chastisement ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... strive with him. She still had her high moral sense, inherited from generations of Puritans. It was now a religious instinct, and she was almost a fanatic with him, because she loved him, or had loved him. If he sinned, she tortured him. If he drank, and lied, was often a poltroon, sometimes a knave, she ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... protracted strike—not dungs they, but flints all the nine; a barber, like many a son of genius, ruined by his wit, and who, after being driven from pole to pole, found refuge in the army at last; a bankrupt butcher, once a bully, and now a poltroon; two of the Seven Young Men—all that now survive—impatient of the drudgery of the compting-house, and the injustice of the age—but they, we believe, are in the band—the triangle and the serpent; twelve cotton-spinners at the least; six weavers of woollens; a couple of colliers ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... fighting had to be done, they preferred to leave the ranks, and rush forward to loot and enrich themselves at our expense. Now, if 13 this conduct were to be the rule, general ruin would be the result. I do not deny that I have given blows to this man or the other who played the poltroon and refused to get up, helplessly abandoning himself to the enemy; and so I forced them to march on. For once in the severe wintry weather I myself happened to sit down for a long time, whilst waiting for a party who were getting their kit together, ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... to be mistaken) that the cowardly Mexican man had, on his leaving, pulled off from her horse Mrs. Carson and her child, and having mounted the animal himself, was making good his escape. The Indians wished to keep up the ruse, pursue, Attempt to overtake and punish the poltroon; but Kit Carson was too thankful that matters had gone so well; therefore, he said that he felt that he could excuse such dastardly conduct, and requested the Indians to let it pass unnoticed. It is hardly ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... stirrups. His countenance, noble and defiant, presented a strange contrast to the aspect of vulgar ferocity that characterised the features of the man thus addressed. The insult was point blank, and would have aroused the veriest poltroon; but Arroyo possessed only the ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... wishes with the least force, whose indications are so clear that his horse cannot mistake them, and whose gentleness and fearlessness alike induce obedience to them. The noblest animal will obey such a rider, as surely as he will disregard the poltroon, or rebel against the savage. I say the noblest, because it is ever the noblest among them which rebel the most. For the dominion of man over the horse is an usurped dominion. And in riding a colt, or a restive ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... Alliance, likewise approached and retreated. This ship, commanded by a Frenchman, infamous in his own navy, and obnoxious in the service to which he at present belonged; this ship, foremost in insurgency to Paul hitherto, and which, for the most part, had crept like a poltroon from the fray; the Alliance now was at hand. Seeing her, Paul deemed the battle at an end. But to his horror, the Alliance threw a broadside full into the stern of the Richard, without touching the Serapis. Paul called to her, for God's sake to forbear destroying the Richard. The reply was, a ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... of men, and, at the instant that brave officer was boarding her to take possession, he was (p. 139) treacherously shot through the head by the captain of the boat that had surrendered, which base conduct enabled the poltroon (with the assistance he received from the other boats) to escape. The third boat of Captain Somers' division kept to windward, firing at the boats and shipping in the harbour; had she gone down to his assistance, it is probable several of the enemy's boats would have been captured in that quarter. ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... What a poltroon, indeed, was Narcissus beside you at that moment. You ready to stake your life on the throw, he temporising and bargaining as over the terms of a lease. Surely, if he could for one moment have seen himself in the light of your greatness, he had been crushed beneath the misery of his ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... left to choose for themselves, there are those who would prefer their father's serving-man, or throw themselves away on some fellow they might chance to see in the street, mistaking, perhaps, an impostor and swaggering poltroon for a gentleman, since passion too easily blinds the understanding, so indispensably necessary in deciding on that most important point, matrimony, which is peculiarly exposed to the danger of a mistake, and therefore ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... amongst the crew by her cries, as would otherwise have been the case. Mr Zachariah Lathrope, too, came down to the cuddy, attracted by the smell of breakfast, which the captain had directed the steward to go on getting as if nothing had happened—thus to punish the poltroon in a sort of way for his cowardly alarm; hence, the coast was left clear for the officers and men to put out the fire without being flurried by the fears and importunities of ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... straightened; and presto! poor Pip came all foaming up to the chocks of the boat, remorselessly dragged there by the line, which had taken several turns around his chest and neck. Tashtego stood in the bows. He was full of the fire of the hunt. He hated Pip for a poltroon. Snatching the boat-knife from its sheath, he suspended its sharp edge over the line, and turning towards Stubb, exclaimed interrogatively, cut? meantime pip's blue, choked face plainly looked, Do, for God's sake! All passed in a flash. In less than half a minute, this entire thing ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... retiring from active service, rule the estate in accordance with Challoner traditions and perhaps exert some influence in politics; he remembered that Mrs. Chudleigh had laid some stress on this. She had, however, told him that Bertram, from whom so much was expected, had shown himself a poltroon and, what was even worse, had allowed an innocent man to suffer for his baseness. Challoner had spent the last few days pondering the evidence she had offered him and had seen one or two weak points in it. By making the most of these, it might, perhaps, be rebutted, but his honesty rendered ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... distinct—personal fear and political fear. If I am afraid of voting against this bill, because a mob may gather about the House of Lords—because stones may be flung at my head—because my house may be attacked by a mob, I am a poltroon, and unfit to meddle with public affairs. But I may rationally be afraid of producing great public agitation; I may be honourably afraid of flinging people into secret clubs and conspiracies—I may be wisely afraid of making the aristocracy hateful to the great body of the people. This surely has ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... best yet," he interrupted, slapping his knee with delight. "Sneak-livered poltroon, eh? Well, well, ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... dastard (Icel. doestr exhausted, breathless; O. Dut. dasaert a fool) is very appropriately used here, after the description above, St. xxii, to designate the poltroon that quails only before death. Cp. Pope's ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... a Duchess, whose rightful lover became jealous, and sent three or four fellows to give him his choice between drinking poison out of a cup and being assassinated. He chose the former, but being an Italian poltroon he died ALONE, and allowed his murderers to live on in peace and quiet. I would at least (in my own room) have taken a couple with me into the next world, if absolutely obliged to die myself. Such an admirable singer is a great ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... they may be considered as a brave race of men; but occasionally there is a poltroon, and, like all cowards, he brags more ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... by every name in the poltroon's calendar," cried Murray, seeing by the countenance of Wallace that his resolution was not to be moved; "yet I must gallop off from your black-eyed Judith, as if chased by the ghost ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... time in more or less open revolt against the provisional government, but an adventurer of fierce and reckless spirit, in manner and appearance a romantic outlaw, a man after his own heart. Henceforth Byron is reckoned at best a dupe, and at worst a sluggish poltroon; while Trelawny, it is said, imitated his hero so loyally that "he ate, dressed, and even spat in his manner." When the poet died Trelawny spoke with ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... supported Mr. Wilson as long as they believed him determined to redeem his promises—"the governments have acquiesced in the Fourteen Points.... Hypocrisy. Each one cherished mental reservations. Virtue was exalted and vice practised. The poltroon eulogized heroism; the imperialist lauded the spirit of justice. For the past month we have been picking up ideas about the worth of the adhesions to the Fourteen Points, and never before has a more sinister or a more odious comedy been played. Territorial demands have been heaved ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... have been above it. If you entertained an idea that war was imminent, would it not have been far better to have made your preparations in quiet, and when you found the war rumor blown over, to have said nothing about what you intended to do? Fie upon such cheap Lacedaemonianism! There is no poltroon in the world but can brag about what he WOULD have done: however, to do your Royal Highness's nation justice, they brag ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")
... would be the end of it!" cried Dame Zudar, gnashing her teeth. "The poltroon is betraying us himself. Let him perish if he does ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... "A thorough poltroon," cried S——th, laughing; "ay, and all the people in Scotland are wrong about him. Didn't he run off, after stabbing the governor's son? and he was always skulking about the Cartland Crags. Then, didn't he flee at the battle ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... then, was a knave who held, somehow, the keys to a courtlier and nobler world. These tales made living seem a braver business, for all that they were written by a poltroon. Was it pure posturing? Patricia, at least, thought it was not. At worst, such dexterous maintenance of a pose was hardly despicable, she considered. And, anyhow, she preferred to believe that Charteris had by some miracle put the best of himself into these ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... enemy—and they will be dangerous for ever. Men fear them, and are fascinated by them. They know how to show their teeth charmingly; the more enlightened of them have perfected a superb technique of fascination. It was Nietzsche who called them the recreation of the warrior—not of the poltroon, remember, but of the warrior. A profound saying. They have an infinite capacity for rewarding masculine industry and enterprise with small and irresistible flatteries; their acute understanding combines ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... reread it—an apparent familiarity which he did not misunderstand. The dog that believes in you does it—from perplexity sometimes, sometimes from loneliness. Or, even when afraid—not fearing with the baser emotion of the poltroon, but afraid with that brave fear which is a wisdom too, and which feeds and brightens the ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... proof that he gave of it was at the house of Madame Pelot, widow of the Chief President of the Rouen parliament. Playing at brelan one evening, she offered him a stake, and because he would not accept it bantered him, and playfully called him a poltroon. He said nothing, but waited until all the rest of the company had left the room; and when he found himself alone with Madame Pelot, he bolted the door, clapped his hat on his head, drove her up against ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... this poltroon was in his turn superseded by a brave veteran, General Dugommier, and Napoleon could at last count on having his efforts backed. But, for the second time, the Representatives did their best to ruin his undertaking. The siege had now lasted four months, provisions were scarce in the camp, ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... beardless barber's apprentice on the other; what with going to the bastions at eleven, and seeing half one's companions drunk before twelve; what with trying to keep their fists off one's face when one politely asks them not to call one's general a traitor or a poltroon,—the work of the ramparts would be insupportable, if I did not take a pack of cards with me, and enjoy a quiet rubber with three other heroes in some sequestered corner. As for night work, nothing short of the indomitable fortitude of a Parisian could sustain it; the tents ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... whatever the possibilities of his nature, had fallen under a spell of indolent security, which declared its power only when he came face to face with the demand for vigorous action. The moment found him a sheer poltroon. 'What! Is it possible that I—I—am henceforth penniless? I, to whom the gods were so gracious? I, without warning, flung from sheltered comfort on to the bare road side, where I must either toil or beg?' The thing seemed unintelligible. He had never imagined ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... 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 me, sir, if you wish to escape any part of the punishment ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... level of a craven suicide, because he cannot secure something beyond his reach? Does he think that nature brought him into existence for no other purpose than to feed his own petty desires? Would he deliberately die like a useless poltroon, and leave the world in its present state of savagery and wretchedness, without even attempting to be of service to humanity in the very ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... and cried out for water like the rest. Bababalouk, whose olfactory nerves were more familiarized to magical odors, readily conjecturing that Carathis was engaged in her favorite amusements, strenuously exhorted them not to be alarmed. Him, however, they treated as an old poltroon; and forbore not to style him a rascally traitor. The camels and dromedaries were advancing with water, but no one knew by which way to enter the tower. Whilst the populace was obstinate in forcing the doors, a violent ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... named Irus, gluttonous and big-boned but a coward. Encouraged by the winkings and noddings of the suitors he bade Odysseus begone. A quiet answer made him imagine he had to deal with a poltroon and he challenged him to a fight. The proposal was welcomed with glee by the suitors, who promised on oath to see fair play for the old man in his quarrel with a younger. But when they saw the mighty ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... continued he; at the same time trembling with such agitation that the whole carriage shook. This singular piece of behaviour incensed Miss Ramper so much that she cried, "D—n your pitiful soul, you are as arrant a poltroon, as ever was drummed out of a regiment. Stop the waggon, Joey—let me out, and by G—d, if I have rhetoric enough, the thief shall not only take your purse, but your skin also." So saying she leaped out with great agility. By this time the horseman came up and happened to be ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... dear Miss Featherstone. I am such a confounded poltroon"—and he seized her hands again—"that I dare not risk my fate; but that person is"—and he looked down upon her, his heart beating so violently that he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... without giving, the name of Helvetius's informant. The adventurer who insisted on going forward when, at his first landing in Scotland, even Sir Thomas Sheridan, with all the chiefs present, advised retreat, cannot conceivably have been the poltroon of Hume's myth. Even Hume's correspondent, Sir John Pringle, was manifestly staggered by the anecdote, and tells Hume that another of his fables is denied by the very witness to whom Hume appealed. {20b} Hume had cited Lord Holdernesse for the story that Charles's presence in London ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... yelled the editor, backing out upon the sidewalk and drawing his repeater, "I denounce you as a traitor, a poltroon, and a coward!" Men darted away, dodged, ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... Cleopatra strikes me as the epitome of her sex—fond, lively, sad, tender, teasing, humble, haughty, beautiful, the devil!—coquettish to the last, as well with the "asp" as with Antony. After doing all she can to persuade him that—but why do they abuse him for cutting off that poltroon Cicero's head? Did not Tully tell Brutus it was a pity to have spared Antony? and did he not speak the Philippics? and are not "words things?" [2] and such "words" very pestilent "things" too? If he had had a hundred heads, they deserved (from Antony) a rostrum (his was stuck up there) ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... even so; partly to mark the movements of the English, an they make a movement, which, till Pembroke come, they are all too much amazed to do; partly to see if in truth that poltroon Duncan of Fife yet hangs back and still persists in forswearing the loyalty of his ancestors, and leaving to better hands the proud task of placing the crown of Scotland ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... by the collar, spinning the dignity of the law round face down prone upon the log. "A'll not take my fist t' y' as A wud t' a Man! Ye dastard, drunken, poltroon, coward, whiskey sodden lout an' scum o' filth, an'," each word was emphasized by the thud of the empty whiskey ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... been sleeping a sound and peaceful sleep when the imbroglio began downstairs. He sat up and listened. Yes; undoubtedly burglars! He switched on his light and jumped out of bed. He took a pistol from a drawer, and thus armed went to look into the matter. The dreamy peer was no poltroon. ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... leaped in a sudden wild rage. "You—told them?" he stuttered. "You poltroon! 'Twas ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... If it had not been for that belief, the result of a cowardly fright, I would not have remained one minute where I was, and my hurried flight would no doubt have opened the eyes of my two dupes, who could not have failed to see that, far from being a magician, I was only a poltroon. The violence of the wind, the claps of thunder, the piercing cold, and above all, fear, made me tremble all over like an aspen leaf. My system, which I thought proof against every accident, had vanished: I acknowledged an avenging God who had waited for this opportunity ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... learning, the antiquarian research, and the patriotism of Vergil. But the story is yet more directly fatal in the way in which it cuts off the hero himself from modern sympathies. His desertion of Dido makes, it has been said, "an irredeemable poltroon of him in all honest English eyes." Dryden can only save his character by a jest, and Rousseau damns it with an epigram. Mr. Keble supposes that in the interview among the Shades the poet himself intended the abasement of his hero, and Mr. Gladstone has capped this ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... in the midst of all her hollow grandeur, so lonely amongst a nation of curs whom she strove in vain to save, and should she escape destruction with them, doomed to so sad and repulsive a fate, namely to become the wife of a fat poltroon who was her own uncle. Well, we know to what emotion pity is akin, and the catastrophe had occurred a little sooner than I ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... he swore away our liberty, and all our work has been turned to naught by the cowardly traitor. Listen to me, Haight, listen well, and when you see the poltroon tell him that Jim Cummings swore he would cut his heart out. Aye! I WILL DO IT, though he were guarded behind double bars. I'll search him out and tear the traitor heart from his breast and make him eat it, by ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... said to you, I would say before him, were he not skulking in his cabin, afraid of justice. He is a pig of a poltroon!" cried his Excellency. "I wish he were here now, and I would tell it to ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... of naval evolutions. But with Tourville's name is associated not only a high level of professional management, but a caution in professional action not far removed from timidity, so that an impatient Minister of Marine of his day and nation styled him "poltroon in head, though not in heart." His powers were displayed in the preservation and orderly movement of his fleet; in baffling, by sheer skill, and during long periods, the efforts of the enemy to bring him to action; in skilful disposition, when he purposely accepted ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... this Historic Woman, than, overcome with a false shame that he had made terms with a woman, he violated his noble word, and condemned to death all the men, except one, who was spared on condition that he should be the executioner of the others. And the poltroon compelled the brave woman to witness the execution, with the added indignity of a rope round her neck,—or as De Charlevoix much more neatly expresses it, "obligea sa prisonniere d'assister a l'execution, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... articles. Carnivorous I am not, nor is Mrs. Pryor, nor is Mrs. Gill herself, yet I only hemmed and opened my eyes a little wide when I saw butchers' bills whose figures seemed to prove that fact—falsehood, I mean. Caroline, you may laugh at me, but you can't change me. I am a poltroon on certain points; I feel it. There is a base alloy of moral cowardice in my composition. I blushed and hung my head before Mrs. Gill, when she ought to have been faltering confessions to me. I found it impossible to get up the spirit even to hint, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... treason," said U-Thor in his deep voice. "I bring you a new jeddak for all of Manator. No lying poltroon, but a courageous ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... make a speedy and a heart-breaking discovery of the fatal mistake she had committed. Poor Jane Campbell soon wakened up to the discovery that she had exchanged the name and the family of a brave and noble house for the name and the house of a poltroon. No wonder that Rutherford's letters to her are so often headed: 'To Lady Kenmure, under illness and depression of mind.' Could you have kept quite well had you been a Campbell with John Gordon for a husband? ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... just-married wife by his side was brutally caned by her millionaire father for daring to marry him! High temper may be dangerous, and the rough hand something to be avoided and reprobated; but there is something worse in the extreme opposite, and humanity worse sickens at the sight of an abject poltroon, than at any other worthless fungus that springs as ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... Lamb? We all know that old tale. But the Wolf, though a tyrant, was scarcely a cur. He bullied and lied, but he didn't turn pale, Or need poltroon terror as cruelty's spur. But a big, irresponsible, "fatherly" Prince Afeared—of a Jew? 'Tis too funny by far! The coldest of King-scorning cynics might wince At that comic conception, a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, 13 June 1891 • Various
... the cause, behold! my brave lieutenant Scott, at the head of his riflemen, came stooping along with his gun in his hand, and the black marks of shame and cowardice on his sheepish face. "Infamous poltroon," said I, shaking my sword over his head, "where is that hetacomb of robbers and murderers due to the vengeance ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... conversation. He perceived that he had made a terrible blunder; and, as it was not his business at that moment to vindicate the British constitution, but to serve Leonard Fairfield, he abandoned the cause of the aristocracy with the most poltroon and scandalous abruptness. Catching at the arm which Mr. Avenel had withdrawn ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... of the creature so at variance with the boastful scorn of his previous words and tone so obviously showed him to be a coward that all we could do was laugh and turn away. You could no more think of striking that weak, backboneless poltroon than of hitting a six ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... certainty, whether mirth or anger prevailed at the clap-trap trick of this dramatic denouement. I am quite sure, however, that if I laughed at first, I very soon swore; for I have a distinct recollection of dashing my fist in the poltroon's face before he ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... him before were he so notable a miscreant. He was not in hiding when I saw him first; he appeared to go about the city fearlessly. Doubtless it is but some new panic on the part of the King. God help us all now that we be ruled over by such a poor poltroon!" ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... amused the Pope, whom he greatly flattered, and who was fond of leaning on his arm while walking in the gardens. It was during these strolls that Gamba easily secured all sorts of little favours. However, he was a remarkable poltroon, and had such an intense fear of losing his influence that he never risked a request without having convinced himself by long meditation that no possible harm could come to him ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... didst thou not comfort the poor man about the rencounter between him and that poltroon Metcalfe? He acted in that affair like a man of true honour, and as I should have acted in the same circumstances. Tell him I say so; and that what happened he could ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... was but a poltroon, could only repeat: "You got to keep away from here. It's the white man's ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... takes, in this case, the evil part. Mere animal bravery has, unfortunately, such charms in the female eye, that a successful duellist is but too often regarded as a sort of hero; and the man who refuses to fight, though of truer courage, is thought a poltroon, who may be trampled on. Mr. Graves, a member of the American Legislature, who, early in 1838, killed a Mr. Cilley in a duel, truly and eloquently said, on the floor of the House of Representatives, when lamenting ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... to our forbearance rather more of the highly colored and strongly-flavored parlance of the camps than could otherwise have demanded reproduction in literature. The bold strokes with which such an amusing and heroic reprobate as Van Zandt and such a pitiful poltroon as Gazaway are painted, are no less admirable than the nice touches which portray the Governor of Barataria, and some phases of the aristocratic, conscientious, truthful, angular, professorial society of New Boston, with its young college beaux and old college belles, and its life pure, colorless, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... Coward, poltroon, shaker, squeamer, Blockhead, sluggard, dullard, dreamer, Shirker, shuffler, crawler, creeper, Sniffler, snuffler, wailer, weeper, Earthworm, maggot, tadpole, weevil! Set upon thy course of evil, Lest the King of Spectre-land Set on ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... with every appearance of real terror, that as he was crossing the court-yard at midnight, he had suddenly heard a noise like bats in the open cloisters, and when he looked he distinctly saw the White Lady gliding slowly through them; but they merely laughed at the poltroon, and though our hussar laughed also, he fully made up his mind, without saying a word about it, to keep a look-out for ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... meet the bravery of true champions of the pit, stood for a little while and stared at this shifty foe. He must have decided that he was dealing with a poltroon with whom science and prudence were not needed. He stuck out his neck and ran at Long-legs, evidently expecting that Long-legs would turn and flee in a panic. Long-legs jumped to let him pass under, and ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... second shot to his third," said Griffith, sternly; "he will not decline, unless he is a poltroon, as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... a more pitiful rascal never showed the white feather. Not once was he known to take a purse with his own hand, the summit of his achievement being to hold the horses' heads while his accomplice spoke with the passengers. A poltroon before his arrest, in Court he whimpered and whinnied for mercy; he was carried to the cart pallid and trembling, and not even his preposterous finery availed to hearten him at the gallows. Taxed with his timidity, he attempted ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... sword, Spoons, liquors, and furniture went by the board; He saw—at a distance, the rebels appear, And "rode to the front," which was strangely the rear; He conquered—truth, decency, honor full soon, Pest, pilferer, puppy, pretender, poltroon; And was fain from the scene of his triumphs to slope. Sure there never was ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... what hinders me, knave and coward as you are, from running my sword through your body. You are well known for a poltroon, and if you had one grain of courage, you would never have chosen your ground in the midst of your guards, to insult a gentleman of a better house, and of a more honourable birth than your own; but I shall one day have my revenge. As for the ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... the faintest creatures in the world when you cry in your agony, "Come and help me!" Oh, assuredly Wellington was infamously used at that time, especially by your traders in Radicalism, who howled at and hooted him; said he had every vice—was no general—was beaten at Waterloo—was a poltroon—moreover, a poor illiterate creature, who could scarcely read or write; nay, a principal Radical paper said bodily he could not read, and devised an ingenious plan for teaching Wellington how ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... unscrupulous freedom of thought made Byron a greater poet than Wordsworth just as it made Peter a greater king than George III; but as it was, after all, only a negative qualification, it did not prevent Peter from being an appalling blackguard and an arrant poltroon, nor did it enable Byron to become a religious force like Shelley. Let us, then, leave Byron's Don Juan out of account. Mozart's is the last of the true Don Juans; for by the time he was of age, his cousin Faust had, in the hands of Goethe, taken his place and ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... conventionalized. There is always a very bad and a very good woman, a very generous and noble man and one so bad as to seem a monster. There is the type of the "love-lorn maiden," of "the lily-livered" hero, of the faithful friend, of the poltroon. It is supposed by many that such types repeated in play after play do not mark the highest original power, but rather poverty of invention, weak and shadowy conception, indistinctness of coloring. Professor Thorndike, however, cannot too much commend this style, because it ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... Italian Pantomimic characters shows this. They had a Capitan, who probably originated in the Miles gloriosus of Plautus; a brother, at least, of our Ancient Pistol and Bobadil. The ludicrous names of this military poltroon were Spavento (Horrid fright), Spezza-fer (Shiver-spear), and a tremendous recreant was Captain Spavento de Val inferno. When Charles V. entered Italy, a Spanish Captain was introduced; a dreadful man he was too, if we are to be frightened by names: Sangre e Fuego! and Matamoro! ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... suppose that Pat Mahoney, of Muckafubble, was a poltroon; on the contrary, he had fought several shocking duels, and displayed a remarkable amount of savagery and coolness; but having made a character, he was satisfied therewith. They may talk of fighting for the fun of it, liking ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... bad enough, but he almost exulted under the blows she dealt him. He felt the horrible sting a vague comfort. He had fallen low enough surely when it was a comfort to be told that he was a liar, a poltroon, and ...
— Lodusky • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... colonel commandant, and see the consequence!" The negro fell into the hands of the British, and conducted them upon the steps of our partisan. It so happened that the same Captain Clarke, who seems to have been a sad simpleton, and something of a poltroon, had been sent in front with five horsemen as an advanced guard. Near the great Waccamaw road, the bugles of the British were heard sounding the charge. Horry was fortunately prepared for the enemy, but such was not the case with Clarke. He confounded the martial tones of ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... last; "that will do. I see you turned poltroon and shrank back, to leave them to go on by themselves. Man, man! if you hadn't the honest British pluck in you to go, why didn't you ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... keep the peace, however, in those days was to be wanting in the very first element of chivalry, and, accordingly, Mr. Stuart was pronounced by the Sentinel a 'bully,' a 'coward,' a 'dastard,' and a 'sulky poltroon.' Furthermore, he was 'a heartless ruffian,' 'a white feather,' and 'afraid of lead.' To vindicate his character Mr. Stuart raised an action of damages, and, curiously enough, he was twitted in the very court of justice to which he appealed for protection, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... had Bob heard before he recovered sufficiently from the shock to move a limb. The officers were urging their prisoner forward, grinning and nodding to each other, whilst several voices from the crowd shouted abusively at the poltroon whose first instinct was to betray his associate. Bob turned his face away and walked on. He did not dare to run, yet the noises behind him kept his heart leaping with dread. A few paces and he was out of the alley. Even yet he durst ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... and swear even to himself (while his own judgment shrieks and proves a flat denial), that he is at will omnipotent? You have chosen long ago, my poor proud Ysabeau; and I choose now, and differently: for poltroon that I am! being now in a cold drench of terror, I steadfastly protest I am not very much afraid, and I choose ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... perceiving the terror of this elect youth to be so great that expostulation was vain, he seized him by the mouth and nose with his left hand so strenuously that he sank his fingers into his cheeks. But, the poltroon still attempting to bray out, George gave him such a stunning blow with his fist on the left temple that he crumbled, as it were, to the ground, but more from the effects of terror than those of the blow. His nose, however, again gushed out blood, a system ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... people was but vapour, and he maintained it to the Queen, who was willing to believe him, though she had been satisfied to the contrary; and the conduct of the Queen, who had the courage of a heroine, and the temper of La Riviere, who was the most notorious poltroon of his time, furnished me with this remark: That a blind rashness and an extravagant fear produce the same effects while the danger ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... now Syndic? My uncle did," Claude answered rather curtly. He was more and more puzzled by the change in Basterga's manner. Was the big man a poltroon whom the bold front shown to Grio brought to heel? Or was there something behind, some secret upon which his words ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... lower than the angels, and beheld in the end,—with besmirched brow and debased mien, a disgraced sensualist, not merely a deceiver of another woman's innocent confidence, and her tempter to dishonor and wretchedness, but a poltroon—a whipped coward who had not dared to lift voice or pen in denial or extenuation of ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... frightfully—beating to bursting point. Were her knees going to give way?... They should not!... Play the poltroon?... Never!... Rage boiled up in her; brain and will were afire.... She submit to the humiliation of arrest, the long-drawn-out agonies of cross-examinations, the tortures of imprisonment in Noumea?... Not Bobinette!... Never, ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... sleep. The abject cowardice of this youth on subsequent occasions gave me but a poor impression of the modern Dalmatian—an idea which was confirmed by the conduct of his successor, who was, if possible, a more pitiable poltroon than Michaele. That the position of a servant whose master was without bed or coverlet was not particularly enviable, I am ready to admit, and many a time did he come to complain of incipient starvation; but at the moment it was difficult to make allowance for these little inconveniences, ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... actually caused the meeting between them, which was interrupted somehow by Sir John Fielding's men; how she was always saying that George Warrington was a coward for ever sneering at Mr. Will, and the latter doubly a poltroon for not taking notice of his kinsman's taunts; how George had run away and nearly died of fright in Braddock's expedition; and "Deuce take me," says Will, "I never was more surprised, cousin, than when you stood to your ground so coolly in Tottenham Court Fields yonder, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... them on. I have seen several of them suffer death with an admirable and even heroic composure, such as any man might envy when his last hour comes. It is not an unfrequent thing to see soldiers shot at Manilla for some misdemeanours, and I have not heard of one of them dying a poltroon; certainly, all those I have ever seen suffer, met their doom with ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... could not afford to stultify itself by the choice of a candidate who favored monopolies. He had given his promise, the word of a man of honor, and a business man. What escape was there from the predicament? If he vetoed the bill, would he not be a liar and a poltroon? If he signed it, the senatorship would slip through his fingers. The thought occurred to him to send for Elton and throw himself on his mercy, but he shrank from such an interview. Elton was a business man, and a promise was a promise. He had enjoyed the consideration for his promise; ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
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