|
|
|
More "Pusillanimous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Indians and their political condition, by observing that the proceedings of the American government, throughout, towards this brave but unfortunate race, have only been exceeded in atrocity by the past and present conduct of the East India government towards the pusillanimous but unoffending Hindoos. ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... house languished a wretched, abortive garden, running over with weeds and sage-brush, and here a man pottered with the purposeless energy of old age, working with an ear cocked in the direction of the house, as he turned a spade of earth again and again in hopeless, pusillanimous industry. But when his strained attention was presently rewarded by a shouted summons to supper, and he stood erect but for the slouching droop of shoulders that was more a matter of temperament than of age, one saw a tall man of massive build, whose keen glance and ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... every good citizen ought henceforth to insult his contemptible government. Heaven will look favourably on those who despise him. 'He hath put down the mighty from their seat.' God will depose these pusillanimous chiefs and will put in their place strong men who will call upon Him. I tell you, gentlemen, I tell you officers, non-commissioned officers, and soldiers who listen to me, I tell you General of the Penguin armies, the hour has come! If you do not obey God's orders, ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... Rizal's education and development and that they were seeking to set themselves right in order to maintain their prestige. Add to this the persistent and systematic effort made to destroy every scrap of record relating to the man—the sole gleam of shame evidenced in the impolitic, idiotic, and pusillanimous treatment of him—and the whole question becomes such a puzzle that it may just as well be left in darkness, with a throb of pity for the unfortunate victim caught in such a maelstrom of ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... that followed the discovery of my loss rendered me for a long time unable to think clearly. My mind was dejected and pusillanimous— my brain, as it were, paralysed—so that whenever I took to thinking, my thoughts only wandered, or centred on the terrible doom that ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... Blackfeet, who were probably hunting in the plain. It was thought most advisable, therefore, to strike directly across the mountain, since the route, though rugged and difficult, would be most secure. This counsel was indignantly derided by M'Lellan as pusillanimous. Hot-headed and impatient at all times, he had been rendered irascible by the fatigues of the journey, and the condition of his feet, which were chafed and sore. He could not endure the idea of encountering the difficulties ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... be longer to the time when they shall be needed in this abode of peace. These are instruments of death, resembling those used in my youth, by cavaliers that rode in the levies of the first Charles, and of his pusillanimous father. There were worldly pride and great vanity, with much and damning ungodliness, in the wars that I have seen, my children; and yet the carnal man found pleasure in the stirrings of those graceless days! Come hither, younker; ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... she would give vent to an irritable cough and retire discomfited. In reality Elsmere was thinking of nothing in the world but what Catherine Leyburn might be doing that morning. Judging a North countrywoman by the pusillanimous Southern standard, he found himself glorying in the weather. She could not wander far ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... well as in religion. Ulster was 'planted' with Englishmen and Lowland Scots. In the midst of all these changes the great Queen, grown old and very lonely, died in 1603; and with her ended the glorious Tudor dynasty of England. James, pusillanimous and pedantic son of Darnley and Mary Queen of Scots, ascended the throne as the first of the sinister Stuarts, and, truckling to vindictive Spain, threw Raleigh into prison under suspended sentence ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... great and mighty princes to have in their hand; to the end that neither by over-measuring their forces, they leese themselves in vain enterprises; nor on the other side, by undervaluing them, they descend to fearful and pusillanimous counsels. ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... replied Tom Bullover brusquely, he, like most of the hands, being pretty sick by now of the captain's drunken ways, and pusillanimous behaviour in leaving the deck when the vessel and all on board were in such deadly peril; "and if you don't believe me, why, you can look over the side and judge where the ship is ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... published by Augereau after he had deserted Napoleon in 1814, is accompanied by a detailed recital of the events of July 30th-August 5th, in which Bonaparte appears as the dazed and discouraged commander, surrounded by pusillanimous generals, and urged on to fight solely by the confidence of Augereau. That the forceful energy of this general had a great influence in restoring the morale of the French army in the confused and desperate movements which followed may freely be granted. But ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... man who was both mediocre and pusillanimous, without education, without ideas, without knowledge, without force of character, and who might be expected not to succeed in the slipperiest city in the world, came by his principles of conduct, by his sense of justice, by the goodness of a heart that ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... terrified mind; at least, if he had any doubts on that subject—and reports of the fiery temper of the king might have roused his suspicions—he conceived that a bold bearing would do him more good than a pusillanimous demeanour; and, as for flight, he despised it, as well as disapproved of it, on grounds of fancied prudence, seeing that he would thereby admit his guilt, and prove his pusillanimity, while it might ultimately turn out that the king's intentions were not hostile, whereby he would ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... that Time, or consequently they would not have sent them there. (Wherefore it is evident, this Scheme facilitated the Army's becoming Masters of Boccachica, and put an End to the Dispute sooner than was expected, or could possibly have happened, had any Nation but pusillanimous Spaniards had the Defence of it; for had the Place been defended equal to its Strength and excellent Disposition, both of the Ships and Batteries, it would have been a difficult Task for the Fleet and Army both to ...
— An Account of the expedition to Carthagena, with explanatory notes and observations • Sir Charles Knowles
... the obscurity of the house of David might protect them from the suspicions of a tyrant, the present greatness of his own family alarmed the pusillanimous temper of Domitian, which could only be appeased by the blood of those Romans whom he either feared, or hated, or esteemed. Of the two sons of his uncle Flavius Sabinus, the elder was soon convicted of treasonable intentions, and the younger, who bore the name of Flavius Clemens, was indebted ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... thyself? Couldst thou not have awaited warlike Menelaus? Then shouldst thou have known of how brave a man thou dost possess the blooming spouse. Nor will thy harp, and the gifts of Venus, and thy hair, and thy figure avail thee, when thou shalt be mingled with the dust.[147] But the Trojans are very pusillanimous; else wouldst thou have been arrayed in a garment of stone, on account of the evils which thou hast ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... shed over his soul neither aridity nor lukewarmness. He referred all things to God, and his discourse always concluded by some Christian reflections, which he skilfully drew from the topic of the conversation. His virtue was neither minute nor pusillanimous: religion had, in his discourse as well as in his conduct, that solemn gravity which can alone make it worthy of the Supreme Being. Ever composed, he feared neither contradictions nor adversities: he dreaded nothing but praises. He never allowed himself a word that could injure ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... reluctance to attack lines which were daily growing more formidable and were held by troops that were being gradually reinforced. Bulgarian ambition was also restrained by German counsels, for even Constantine and his new and pusillanimous premier, Skouloudis, might resent the occupation of Salonika by their hereditary rivals, and the Kaiser trusted more to family and diplomatic influence at Athens than to Bulgarian valour. The Germans themselves were more intent on consolidating the Berlin-Constantinople ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... that I pretend lovers should always be quarreling to preserve their happiness. I only desire to impress it upon you, that all their misunderstandings should emanate from love itself; that the woman should not forget (by a species of pusillanimous kindness) the respect and attentions due her; that by an excessive sensitiveness, she does not convert her love into a source of anxiety capable of poisoning every moment of her existence; that by a scrupulous fidelity, ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... under the willows past Eynsham, past Oxford, under the church at Clifton, past Moulsford, past Sonning. And he thought: 'My God! To have her to myself one day on the river—one whole long day!' Why had he been so pusillanimous all this time? He passed his hand over his face. Broad faces do not easily grow thin, but his felt thin to him, and this gave him a kind of morbid satisfaction. If she knew how he was longing, how he suffered! He turned away, toward Whitehall. Two men he knew ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... carping criticism," says Magoon, "are usually the product of obtuse sensibilities and a pusillanimous will. Plutarch tells us of an idle and effeminate Etrurian, who found fault with the manner in which Themistocles had conducted a recent campaign. 'What,' said the hero, in reply, 'have you, too, something to say about war, who are like the fish that has a sword, but no heart?' He is always the severest ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... injured the government deeply and degradingly in the opinion of its own subjects, as well as of other nations: but, thirdly, the imbecile conduct of the chief Prussian officers, in the campaign of Jena, was as little likely to have been foreseen or expected, as the pusillanimous, if not treacherous, baseness of those who, after the army was defeated, abandoned so easily a chain of ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... the Genius that Lived under the Great Ovens, and, with his finger pointed at the cat, said in a frightful voice, husky with wood-ashes: "Miserable and pusillanimous beast! By telling a falsehood to cover a wrong you have only made bad matters worse. For betraying man's kindness to cover your shame, a curse shall be upon you and all your kind until the end of the world. Whenever men stroke you in kindness, remembrance ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... which he is to find escape from the prison-house. He has begun to realise that fear—a nameless fear of he knows not what—has taken hold upon him. "I lived in a continual, indefinite, pining fear; tremulous, pusillanimous." Fear affects men in widely different ways. We have seen how this same vague "sense of enemies" obsessed the youthful spirit of Marius the Epicurean, until it cleared itself eventually into the conscience of a Christian man. But Teufelsdroeckh is prouder ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... Mexico with rich presents and a message vindicating the pusillanimous Emperor from any share in the conspiracy against Cortes. Continuing their march, the allied army of Spaniards and Tlascalans proceeded till they reached the mountains which separate the table-land of Puebla from that of Mexico. To cross this range they followed the route which passes between ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... not—perhaps had rather—because they don't want any large nation left fresh when the war ends. They'd like to have the whole world bankrupt. There is a fast growing feeling here, therefore, that the American Government is pusillanimous—dallies with 'em, is affected by the German propaganda, etc., etc. Of course, such a judgment is not fair. It is formed without knowing the conditions in the United States. But I think you ought to realize the strength of this sentiment. No doubt before you receive this, the President will ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... up pepper from the southern factories. He took with him a fine squadron: the Greenwich, 42 guns; the Chandos, 40 guns; the Victory, 26 guns; the Britannia, 24 guns; the Revenge, 16 guns; and a fireship. The pusillanimous Upton was left behind, and, next to himself in command of the expedition, but in reality the moving spirit, he took the gallant Macrae. England and Taylor had meanwhile been constrained to run down to the Laccadives, for want of water and provisions. Not getting what they wanted, ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... zenith and the slope Of yon gray blank of sky, we might be faint To muse upon eternity's constraint Round our aspirant souls. But since the scope Must widen early, is it well to droop For a few days consumed in loss and taint? O pusillanimous Heart, be comforted,— And like a cheerful traveler, take the road, Singing beside the hedge. What if the bread Be bitter in thine inn, and thou unshod To meet the flints?—At least it may be said, "Because the way is ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... defending with our blood the streets of our capital; detaining the enemy at least for a day, my army will arrive, and we shall be strong enough to give battle. I must go to Paris; when I am not there, they do nothing but blunder! My brother Joseph is a pusillanimous and easily-disheartened man, and Minister Clarke is a blockhead. Marmont and Mortier are traitors deserving death, for they violated my express instructions. I asked them to hold out only two days, and the traitors capitulated before they had ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... horrible stress of apprehension. Apparently there was no hope. The old New England spite and prejudice against General Schuyler had stirred up now a fierce chorus of calumny and attack. He was blamed for St. Clair's pusillanimous retreat, for Congressional languor, for the failure of the militia to come forward—for everything, in fact. His hands were tied by suspicion, by treason, by popular lethargy, by lack of money, men, and means. ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... Fat was ill and proved an incompetent emperor, entirely unequal to the serious task of governing and protecting his vast territories. His weakness was especially shown in his pusillanimous treaties with the Northmen. When Paris was making an heroic defense against them under its count, Odo, Charles, instead of marching at the head of an army to relieve it, agreed to pay the invaders seven hundred pounds of silver if they would raise the siege. They were ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... possible appointment of Colonel Ternant to his office. This officer had won a great European reputation as Generalissimo of one of the United Provinces, and it was even hinted that, had he been put at the head of affairs instead of the pusillanimous Rhinegrave of Salm, the cause might have been saved. All this and other details had to be communicated to Mr. Jay, and so delicate was the business that Calvert was instructed to put the letter in cipher lest it be opened and the French Government prematurely informed of the dissatisfaction felt ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... who could hold his tongue when it was wisdom not to speak, and because he carefully kept his own counsel when to have revealed it might have been dangerous to the liberties of his country. He was so gentle and conciliatory in his manner that his enemies even described him as timid and pusillanimous. Yet, when the time for action came, his courage was heroic, his determination unconquerable. "The rock in the ocean," says Mr. Motley, the historian of the Netherlands, "tranquil amid raging billows, was the favourite emblem by which his friends expressed ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... the Space Vikings had captured Prince Bentrik and were holding him for ransom. Beyond that, the Government was trying to sit on the whole story, and the Opposition was hinting darkly at corrupt deals and sinister plots. Prince Bentrik arrived in the midst of an impassioned tirade against pusillanimous traitors surrounding his Majesty who were betraying Marduk to the ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... Poet's Saccharissa, or the gentle Lady Sophia Murray, the beauteous Amoret of his idolatry, were most worthy the affection he so generously bestowed on both. Waller, the most specious flatterer of flattering courts—the early worshipper of Charles the First—the pusillanimous betrayer of his friends—the adulator of Cromwell—the wit and the jester of the second Charles—the devotional whiner of the bigot James—had not, however, sufficient power to keep the lady from her slumbers long. She was soon in the refreshing sleep, known ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... announcing the fact to the world. During the remainder of that day, and during the sessions of the 3rd and 4th, the phraseology, allegations, and principles of this paper were subjected to severe scrutiny. Its author relates: 'The pusillanimous idea that we had friends in England worth keeping terms with still haunted the minds of many. For this reason, those passages which conveyed censure on the people of England were struck out, lest they should give ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... something better might present itself, she resolved to accept the terms of the straw manufacturer, and entered upon her duties. For a week or two the sum earned by the unfortunate lady was faithfully paid her, but on the third week the pusillanimous nature of the Jew cropped out. She had bargained to manufacture straw hats at eighty cents a dozen, or six and two-third cents each. At this rate, she managed to earn two dollars and fifty cents per week. Upon applying for her wages at the close of the third week, the employer ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... heard of this noble affair, and thought of my own pusillanimous rendering—for verily I had been low enough, from rumors of Firm's pugnacity, to attribute these little defects of line to some fisticuffs with some miner—I looked at Firm's nose through the tears in my eyes, and had a great mind not to go away at all. For what is the noblest of all ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... scribe, dip your pen in rose-pink, Or the Censor's black blurr shall your slander efface A CAESAR turn sophist, an Autocrat shrink? Pusillanimous spite mark the ROMANOFF race? Too wholly absurd! What is this we have heard Which on courtier spirits must painfully jar? Who is he, this mal a propos "little bird" Who twitters such tales of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, 13 June 1891 • Various
... hardships are mitigated by custom, by popular applause, and by the secret relaxation of discipline. [31] The subjects of Rome, whose persons and fortunes were made responsible for unequal and exorbitant tributes, retired from the oppression of the Imperial government; and the pusillanimous youth preferred the penance of a monastic, to the dangers of a military, life. The affrighted provincials of every rank, who fled before the Barbarians, found shelter and subsistence: whole legions were buried in these religious sanctuaries; and the same cause, which relieved the distress of individuals, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... made an attack upon the Indians at the same time from different quarters, this numerous host was at once and utterly put to flight. In speaking of such a defeat, the modern reader must not be lavish of the words "cowardly," "pusillanimous," and the like, until, at least, he has well considered what it is to expose naked bodies to firearms, to the charge of steel-clad men on horseback, and to ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... defective being, with calfless legs and stooping shoulders, weak in body and mind, inert, pusillanimous and stupid, whose premature wrinkles and furtive glance, tell of misery and degradation? That is an English peasant or pauper, for the words are synonymous. His sire was a pauper, and his mother's milk wanted nourishment. From infancy his food has been bad, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... the truckling and pusillanimous reptile, Crippled-Speech Trollop, has gone over to the enemy. It is contended, now, that he has been a friend to the bill, in secret, since the day it was introduced, and has had bankable reasons for being so; but he himself declares that he has gone over because the malignant ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... orders for the removal of troops and war material.[7] This prompt compliance was received by the people of Greece with {166} loud disapproval. They criticized vehemently their rulers' readiness to yield as pusillanimous and injudicious. The Government, they said, instead of profiting by the events of 1 December to clear up the situation, drifts back into the path of concessions which led to those fatal events: it encourages the Entente Powers to put forward increasingly exorbitant pretensions, and, forgetting ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... pusillanimous reprobates did not know it as well as you!" spluttered Mrs. Wynn, with her apron to her eyes. Clemence's white face, with its appealing look, had gone straight to her motherly heart. "The unfeeling creatures, to take away a girl's character, like that! There had ought to be a place of everlasting ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... faces every danger, and combats every foe in their defence. The reumda, on the contrary, is easily terrified, and leaves all to secure her own safety; so that it is usual to compare a man who bravely defends his tent to a delim, and a pusillanimous soul to a reumda. The delim finds himself more than a match for the dog, the jackal, the hyaena, or the eagle: man is his only invincible foe; yet he dares to wage the unequal war when the young are in danger. If the Arabs desire to make a prey of the ral, as the young ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various
... was hurt and unhappy and I doubted you. I suppose if I'd cared less I should have been more confident. I cared so much that I couldn't risk another failure. For you'd made me feel that I'd miserably failed. So I shut my eyes and set my teeth and turned my back. There's the whole pusillanimous truth of it!" ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... daughter, O king Alcinous, demand from me that I should no longer keep you in ignorance of what or who I am; for to reserve any secret from you, who have with such openness of friendship embraced my love, would argue either a pusillanimous or an ungrateful mind in me. Know, then, that I am that Ulysses, of whom I perceive ye have heard something; who heretofore have filled the world with the renown of my policies. I am he by whose counsels, if Fame ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... infuriated by the long unaccustomed presence of a hostile army within their sacred frontier, and worked up by all the circumstances of the invasion to the highest pitch of patriotic enthusiasm. Unable to appreciate the value of what must have appeared to them a timid and pusillanimous policy, they overwhelmed Barclay de Tolly with violent accusations of cowardice, and even of treachery; rendered the more plausible to the mind of the ignorant, by the circumstance of their object being a foreigner—or at least of foreign blood. So violent ultimately ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... Heliogabalus was a great religious reformer, who was in advance of his times; a third to present Lucrezia Borgia to the world as a much-maligned and very virtuous woman; and a fourth to tell us that the "ever pusillanimous" Barere, as he is called by M. Louis Madelin, was "persistently vilified and deliberately misunderstood." Biographical research has, moreover, destroyed many picturesque legends, with some of which posterity cannot part without a pang of regret. We are reluctant to believe that William ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... so proud and haughty towards the king, was, like all the revolutionary assemblies which followed it, extremely pusillanimous ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... conference with Jocasta in [2385]Euripides, reckons up five miseries of a banished man, the least of which alone were enough to deject some pusillanimous creatures. Oftentimes a too great feeling of our own infirmities or imperfections of body or mind, will shrivel us up; as ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... descending to the plain, and when we had got half-way across it, I scoured the hills all round with my telescope to see if I could discern traces of our pusillanimous foes. ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... what a weak, pusillanimous wretch you must be, having known me so long, and tried my temper so well, to hope to find me such a fool, after all,—that kind of fool, I mean! My deepest shame, in this unutterably shameful hour, is that I chose such a cowardly ass to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... treacherous breach of faith towards mankind; we being all, in order to the maintenance of society, by an implicit compact, obliged by speech to declare our mind, to inform truly, and not to impose upon our neighbour; arguing pusillanimous timorousness and impotency of mind, a distrust in God's help, and diffidence in all good means to compass our designs; begetting deception and error, a foul and ill-favoured brood: lying, I say, is upon such accounts ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... prerogative of originality, Hume further takes away from it its fame as in every respect the best religion. It is disadvantageously distinguished from polytheism by the fact that it is more intolerant, makes its followers pusillanimous, and, by its incomprehensible dogmas, puts their faith to severer tests; while it is on a level with polytheism in that most of its adherents exalt belief in foolish mysteries, fanaticism, and the observance of useless customs above the ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... broker and customer ought now be established. As for Littleton, he perceived that he was not free to retire from the market on the profits of friendly regard unless he was prepared to fly in the face of advice and buy in his two hundred Reading railroad. To do so would be pusillanimous; moreover to retire and abstain from further dealings would make Williams' two cheques more obviously a charitable donation, and the thought of them was becoming galling. Above all there were Selma's feelings to be considered. The possession of the means to afford her happiness was ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... them while displaying. Williams at the head of forty or fifty men then commenced the attack, and kept up a brisk fire. But the militia no sooner beheld the enemy advance impetuously, than they threw down their arms without firing and fled instantly. This was followed by others, acting in the same pusillanimous style, and at least two-thirds of the army never fired a shot. ...
— A sketch of the life and services of Otho Holland Williams • Osmond Tiffany
... be all very well in its recollection fifty years after. But the impression of the moment was, we presume, not quite so favourable. The inevitable consequence of this habit was to spoil both master and scholars. It made the timid boy pusillanimous, while it made the fierce more indignant and resentful. What could be the feelings of the master who could inflict almost agony on seventeen mere children, let the offence be what it might? Yet the offence was trifling; troublesome behaviour ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... one of the self-punitive characteristics of tyranny, whether the tyrant be a man, a community, or a caste, to have a pusillanimous fear of its victim. It was not when Clemence lay in irons, it is barely now, that our South is casting off a certain apprehensive tremor, generally latent, but at the slightest provocation active, and now and then violent, concerning her "blacks." This fear, like others similar elsewhere in ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... A pusillanimous peace, always possible at any period At length the twig was becoming the tree Being the true religion, proved by so many testimonies Certainly it was worth an eighty years' war Chief seafaring nations ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... that it was essentially Royalist, and all resistance would be over in a day or two, till the whole ruin burst on him at once, when he became like a man awakened from a dream, utterly confounded with the magnitude of the calamity and as pusillanimous and miserable as he had before been blind and confident. It must be owned that their end has been worthy of the rest, for not one of them has evinced good feeling, or magnanimity, or courage in their fall, nor excited the least sympathy or commiseration. The ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... out of the cubicle and Edwin had a dreadful moment introducing her to Darius and explaining their purpose. Why had he not prepared the ground in advance? His pusillanimous cowardice again! However, the directing finger of God sent a customer into the shop, and Edwin escaped with his Hilda through ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... the last one, is concerned with war. War brings to every man not incapacitated by age or physical defects the call of his country to fight, and if need be to die, for it. It also exposes to view the few pusillanimous young men who are satisfied to enjoy protection from the horrors of invasion and the priceless boon of personal freedom, secured to them by the self-sacrifice and valour of others, while they themselves remain snugly at home and talk ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... greater glory of Goya. They are something more than secular, often little short of blasphemous. That they were tolerated proves the cynical temper of his times. When the fat old scoundrel of a Bourbon king ran away with all his court and the pusillanimous Joseph Bonaparte came upon the scene, Goya swerved and went through the motions of loyalty, a thing that rather disturbs the admirers of the supposedly sturdy republican. But he was only marking time. He ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... walked forward, playing with my intention, always telling myself that I could relinquish it and turn back to Falmouth, cheating—yes, I fear deliberately cheating—myself with the assurance until more than half the journey lay behind me, and to turn back would be worse than pusillanimous. At St. Austell a carrier offered me a lift, and brought me to Liskeard. Thence I walked forward again, and in the late afternoon came in sight ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... ancient order of the world. No disaster of war, no calamity of season, could ever strike me with half the horror which I felt from what is introduced to us by this junction of parties, under the soothing name of peace. We are apt to speak of a low and pusillanimous spirit as the ordinary cause by which dubious wars terminated in humiliating treaties. It is here the direct contrary. I am perfectly astonished at the boldness of character, at the intrepidity of mind, the firmness of nerve, in those who ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... stranger? That is all Charles is to me. He has fought battles here which he has lost, he is therefore a bad captain; he has succeeded in no negotiation, he is therefore a bad diplomatist; he has paraded his wants and his miseries in all the courts of Europe, he has therefore a weak and pusillanimous heart. Nothing noble, nothing great, nothing strong has hitherto emanated from that genius which aspires to govern one of the greatest kingdoms of the earth. I know this Charles, then, under none but bad aspects, ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... front of the men with a drawn sword, shouting, "For King and Country"? They'd laugh at you, and follow a—leader: one of their own. Ruling by fear, ruthlessly without thought of human weakness, without tinge of mercy? They'd hate you, and you would have to drive them like the Prussians do. Ruling by pusillanimous kindness, by currying favour, by seeking to be a popularity Jack? They'd despise ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... a slothful and pusillanimous people, is a neighbor island, anciently subjected by the arms of Oceana; since almost depopulated for shaking the yoke, and at length replanted with a new race. But, through what virtues of the soil or vice of the air soever it be, they come still to degenerate. ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... fellow in a politic way, though in bad company. He afterward married my laconic cousin Sarah, whose shrewdness made him the first Duke of Marlborough, and last, I regret to chronicle, was George Hamilton, resting from his labors at self-reform. Soon after dark another congenial spirit, the most pusillanimous of them all, young William Wentworth, Sir William's son and Roger's nephew, entered the taproom dripping with rain. Before going to the fire, he called Crofts and Berkeley to one side. Placing his arms about their necks, he drew their faces close to his and ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... the effect of his meditations at this juncture: "Plainly," he said, "I must give up my playthings in the meanwhile, since I am not in a position to secure myself against idle jeers. At the same time, I am sure that playthings are the very pick of life; all people give them up out of the same pusillanimous respect for those who are a little older; and if they do not return to them as soon as they can, it is only because they grow stupid and forget. I shall be wiser; I shall conform for a little to the ways ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it is the Nature of Actions, not the Number of Actors, by which we ought to regulate our Behaviour. Singularity in Concerns of this Kind is to be looked upon as heroick Bravery, in which a Man leaves the Species only as he soars above it. What greater Instance can there be of a weak and pusillanimous Temper, than for a Man to pass his whole Life in Opposition to his own Sentiments? or not to dare to be what he thinks he ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Augustus have come from Rome to demand from the King of Britain payment of the tribute that Julius Caesar had long since imposed on the island, by virtue of a force majeure, which is temporarily extinguished. The pusillanimous King Cymbeline is indisposed to put himself to the pains of contesting the claim, but the resolute queen awakens in him a sense of patriotism and of patriotic obligation by recalling the more nobly inspired attitude of his ancestors, ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... different minds recoil from death—not considered as an agony or torment, but considered as a mystery, and, next after God, as the most infinite of mysteries. In a brave man this terror may happen to be strong; in a pusillanimous man, simply through inertness and original feebleness of imagination, may happen to be scarcely developed. This oscillation of horror, alternating between death as an agony and death as a mystery, not only exists with a corresponding set of consequences ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... at him. There was only the thin glass between. It was like the defiance of a living thing. It threatened him. It dared him. It invited him out like a great bully, with a brawling show of fists. He had always been more or less pusillanimous in the face of winter. He disliked cold. He hated snow. But this that beat and shrieked at him outside the window had set something stirring strangely within him. It was a desire, whimsical and undecided at first, ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... the chief men wrote to the Roman consul, begging him to help them. They entitled their piteous and pusillanimous appeal, "The Groans of the Britons." They said, "The savages drive us to the sea, the sea casts us back upon the savages; between them we are either slaughtered or drowned." But the consul was busy fighting enemies at home, and he left the groaning ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... however, who had been chosen by the insurgents, considered this conduct as pusillanimous, and despised it accordingly. Dazzled by dreams of ambition, fired with hopes of asserting their independence, and aware that the wild recesses of the mountains afforded facilities for conducting ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... passions, which at first sight seems very extraordinary, viz, that surprize is apt to change into fear, and every thing that is unexpected affrights us. The most obvious conclusion from this is, that human nature is in general pusillanimous; since upon the sudden appearance of any object. we immediately conclude it to be an evil, and without waiting till we can examine its nature, whether it be good or bad, are at first affected with fear. This I say is ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... every thing in his power to induce his guide to proceed, without waiting for the escort; but El Wordee and the shreef, who were the most pusillanimous rascals he ever met with, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... Kine speaks, lamenting still that no adequate lord has been assigned her. Zarathustra is a feeble and pusillanimous man, not one of royal state who is able to bring his purpose to effect. The Ameshospends join in the cry for ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... attempts have been made towards communism,—as has been the case with others. We have been laborious, contented, and prosperous; and if we have been reabsorbed by the mother country, in accordance with what I cannot but call the pusillanimous conduct of certain of our elder Britannulists, it has not been from any failure on the part of the island, but from the opposition with which the ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... morals," and partisan malice was naturally alert to interpret it as something even more offensive. The report soon came from Baltimore that Chase had deliberately assailed the Administration as "weak, pusillanimous, relaxed," and governed by the sole desire of continuing "in unfairly acquired power." But even before this intelligence arrived, Jefferson had decided that the opportunity afforded by Chase's outburst was too good a one to be neglected. ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... not been sustained in his resistance to the barbarous conduct of their captor. He thought his companion had been tame and mean-spirited, he had submitted so quietly to his punishment; and when they had got out of the hearing of Mr. Batterman, he roundly reproached him for his pusillanimous demeanor. ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... thereupon acknowledged as sovereign. However, it was only in 1516 that the former rulers were expelled from Navarrese territory. "Had I been Don Juan and you Donna Catherine," said the Queen to her pusillanimous husband, as they crossed the Pyrenees, "we should not have lost our kingdom." From this time forward the d'Albrets, like their successors the Bourbons, were sovereigns of Navarre in name only, for an attempt made in 1521 to reconquer the kingdom resulted in total failure, ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... over the banisters, even though I took no aim and scurried back into my bedroom immediately after. That would have satisfied her, she subsequently admitted to me; but to drop a pair of Indian clubs on the floor in order to make a clatter could be regarded as little less than pusillanimous, ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... warlike tone of the first message, this sounded like a retreat. It outraged the feelings of the war party. It was, to their minds, an anticlimax, a pusillanimous surrender. None was angrier than John Randolph of Virginia, hitherto the leader of the forces of the Administration in the House. He did not hesitate to express his disgust with "this double set of opinions and principles"; and his ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... dissipated into an affair not serious at all. Yes, that was the point of it and the reason it epitomised him. There was none of life's dilemmas—little dilemmas that irritate ordinary people or in which ordinary people display themselves pusillanimous; or tragic dilemmas that find ordinary people wanting and leave them in vacillation and despair—there was none of any sort that Harry, receiving with his comic, "Mice and Mumps! Mice and Mumps, old girl!" did not receive with the assurance to her that, though this was a nuisance, ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... of him that he could write well, the only thing he could do which was worth doing, always supposing that there is any merit in being able to write. He was of a mean appearance, and, like his father, pusillanimous to a degree. The meanness of his appearance disgusted, and his pusillanimity discouraged the Scotch when he made his appearance amongst them in the year 1715, some time after the standard of rebellion had been hoisted by Mar. He only stayed a short time in Scotland, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... machinery of such stupendous engines of destruction; and even in the earliest times there was neither deficiency in courage nor in zeal for investigation. "When the glandular plague first made its appearance as a universal epidemic, whilst the more pusillanimous, haunted by visionary fears, shut themselves up in their closets, some physicians at Constantinople, astonished at the phenomena opened the boils of the deceased. The like has occurred both in ancient and modern times, not without favorable results ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... grown up in Poland, men not nobles nor serfs, but a race of patriots familiar with the stirring literature of their century. They had seen their land broken into fragments and then ground fine by a proud and infatuated nobility. They had seen their pusillanimous kings one after another yielding to the insolent demands for their territory. Polish territory extended eastward into the Ukraine; now that must be cut off and dropped into the lap of Russia. Another arm extended north, separating Eastern ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... of the Present Deplorable State of New England, Boston, 1707. The Deplorable State of New England, by Reason of a Covetous and Treacherous Governour and Pusillanimous Counsellors, London, 1708. The first of the above is answered by a pamphlet called a Modest Inquiry. All three are reprinted in Mass. Hist. ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... captured, with reckless profusion of local blood, the independent island of Katu. Katu is in the Malay Archipelago. Of vital importance as a key to the Eastern trade route it is eagerly sought after by Germany, and to Germany's protection, after Sir Gerald's exploit, a pusillanimous and almost more than Liberal English Government basely ceded it. But what could you expect when Sir Joseph Darkin, smug-faced hypocrite (I am sorry, but almost everybody in this book except the Cardines had a smug face), was a member ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... adroitly managed to shift the conversation to some other subject, in a quiet and playful manner. He was therefore not prepared for this vehement outburst; she had not only refused to comply with his demand, but taunted him with stinging words for his pusillanimous conduct. He knew her great ambition, and that the sole object of her life was to become mistress of Vellenaux, and to gain this she would risk everything. It was her weak point, the only vulnerable part he could attack with any hope of success. He had for months pondered over ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... Richard made free talk of the undertaking to Diana and to Ruth, loving, as does the pusillanimous, to show himself engaged in daring enterprises. Emulating his friend Sir Rowland, he held forth with prolixity upon the great service he was to do the State, and Ruth, listening to him, was proud of his zeal, the ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... thro' the Interest of Lust; how often, Britain, have I congratulated thy Happiness, where Virtue is rewarded, Vice discountenanc'd and punish'd; where the Man of Merit is provided for, and not oblig'd to pay a Levee to the kept Mistress of a Statesman; and where the Ignorant, Pusillanimous, and Vicious, however distinguish'd by Birth and Fortune, are held in Contempt, and never ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... said Pericles, "I am surprised to see the Republic so much fallen off from what it was." "In my opinion," replied Socrates, "she has behaved herself like those persons who, for having too great advantage over their rivals, begin to neglect themselves, and grow in the end pusillanimous, for after the Athenians saw themselves raised above the other Greeks they indulged themselves in indolence, and became ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... all that is pusillanimous in war, inhuman in peace, forbidden in morals, and corrupt in politics, I could name it ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... congenial. He liked the Peetrees better in his present mood, and his interest in the popular movement that was to culminate at Eureka was deepening daily. He had even addressed a small meeting of miners on the subject of the rights of the people, and he was no pusillanimous reformer. He declared the diggers had reached that point at which toleration meant meanness of spirit. The thought of civil war was appalling, but not so much so as the degradation of a nation in which the manhood plodded meekly under the whip, like driven ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... to fight the Duke of Buckingham, &c. This diversity at different periods may perhaps be accounted for on the ground of the nervousness which continued dissipation produces, and perhaps from his poetical temperament. A poet, we are persuaded, is often the bravest, and often the most pusillanimous of men. Byron was unquestionably in general a brave, almost a pugnacious man; and yet he confesses that at certain times, had one proceeded to horsewhip him, he would not have had the hardihood to resist. Shelley, who, in a tremendous ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... a name! when that damnable English spy was actually in his power, the man was a pusillanimous fool to allow the rich prize to slip from his grasp! Chauvelin felt as if he were choking; his slender fingers worked nervily around his cravat; beads of perspiration trickled unheeded down ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... official nature; for he was still continued in office, though in one of less consideration than that which he had hitherto filled. He survived but a few years, leaving behind him a reputation not to be envied, of one who united a pusillanimous spirit with uncontrollable passions; who displayed, notwithstanding, a certain energy of character, or, to speak more correctly, an impetuosity of purpose, which might have led to good results had it taken ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... well known that Dr. Ryerson had strenuously opposed any reference of the questions to the British Parliament as a pusillanimous, and yet an interested, party abnegation of Canadian rights. He, therefore, prepared and circulated extensively a petition to the House of Assembly on this and kindred subjects. This proceeding called forth a counter petition, urging the Legislature to recognize the principle of an ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... upon his present position. This was an unanswerable denial; and so he sent the letter to Baltimore. This story, fabricated out of nothing but malice, was meant to injure in two ways, by proving him a gambler, and also pusillanimous. The slanderous officer will probably cease to be one, as I believe falsehood is not considered ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... I would earnestly warn you against such pusillanimous sentimentality, which would not win over the foes of the new order, but would only supply them with the means of attacking it, or shall we say allow them to retain those means. If we would exercise ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... Then Count Raymond took hold of the matter; he sent reports on Rukavina to the Viennese authorities, and he and they seem to have cared little whether these reports contradicted one another. He exhibited his adversary as a man of unbounded violence, as a man of the most pusillanimous nature; General Rukavina was despicable, said these documents, he was an absolute nonentity; but no, shrieked von Thurn on the next day, this man Rukavina was imbued as no other with the abominable spirit of Machiavelli. ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... at some disgusted shop-girl, or a scraping of shins under the table. Let any woman who is disquieted by reports of her husband's derelictions figure to herself how long it would have taken him to propose to her if left to his own enterprise, and then let her ask herself if so pusillanimous a creature could be imaged in the ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... proposing a committee of inquiry. 'It has been represented to me,' he said, 'by the colonies and by persons in this country who are interested in them, that the course which I am proposing is not consistent with the necessities of the case; that there is something pusillanimous in the motion which I am going to make; that in point of fact the interests connected with sugar and coffee planting are in extremis; and that while the question of their redress is being discussed in a committee ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... with which America is spoken of, and the epithets of a 'nation of cheats,' 'sprung from convicts,' 'pusillanimous,' 'cowardly,' and such like,—these I think are sufficient to make any true American's blood boil. These are not used by individuals only, but on the floor of the House of Commons. The good effects of our declaration of war begin to be perceived already. ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... imagination and fancy, and are full of delineations calculated to gratify man's most natural curiosity;—this takes under its special patronage those virtues which man is least likely to love or cultivate, and which men in general regard as pusillanimous infirmities, if not vices; they patronize the must energetic passions,—the passions which made the demigods and heroes of antiquity. I am not saying which is the belief in these respects; I am only saying that human nature appears more true to itself in the last. ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... himself grand prince, and Vassali in vain endeavored to move the compassion of his captor by tears. The uncle, however, so far had pity for his vanquished nephew as to appoint him to the governorship of the city of Kolomna. This seemed perfectly to satisfy the pusillanimous young man, and, after partaking of a splendid feast with his uncle, he departed, rejoicing, from the capital where he had been enthroned, to the provincial city ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... Shelburne. The foundation of success was the separate negotiation with England, and here there had stood in the way a more formidable obstacle than the mere reluctance of Franklin. The chevalier Luzerne and his secretary Marbois had been busy with Congress, and that body had sent well-meant but silly and pusillanimous instructions to its commissioners at Paris to be guided in all things by the wishes of the French court. To disregard such instructions required all the lofty courage for which Jay and Adams were noted, and for the moment it brought upon them something like a rebuke from ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... declaration of your government. They must know that the strict performance of treaties is the best and safest policy; they must know that good faith alone can inspire respectability to a nation; that a pusillanimous conduct provokes insult, and brings upon a country those very dangers which it ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... hinder this Samson from governing? There is in him what far transcends all apprenticeships; in the man himself there exists a model of governing, something to govern by! There exists in him a heart-abhorrence of whatever is incoherent, pusillanimous, unveracious,—that is to say, chaotic, ungoverned; of the Devil, not of God. A man of this kind cannot help governing! He has the living ideal of a governor in him; and the incessant necessity of struggling to unfold the same ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... other nations had, up to this time, been in the habit of fishing in English waters, but, though the pusillanimous king would not, of his own accord, have interfered for fear of giving offence, so great an outcry was raised by the people, that he was compelled to issue a proclamation prohibiting any foreigners from fishing on the ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... seem to her, so long as her sufferings endure, that he deceived her just expectations, and was a vain pretender to the superhuman:—for it was only a superhuman Jew and democrat whom she could have thought of espousing. The pusillanimous are under a necessity to be self-consoled when they are not self-justified: it is their instinctive manner of putting themselves in the right to themselves. The love she bore him, because it was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Olympian superior. And there is no denying that his head was getting turned. Perhaps he had excuse. The newspapers printed nonsensical editorials praising "the young Napoleon." His mail was filled with letters urging him to carry things with a high hand; disregard, if necessary, the pusillanimous civil government, and boldly "save the country." He had so little humor that he could take this stuff seriously. Among all the foolish letters which the executors of famous men have permitted to see the light of publicity, few outdo a letter of ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... throughout this time he was regarded, and regarded himself, primarily as Grillparzer the poet; and in spite of loyalty to the monarchy, he was entirely out of sympathy with the antediluvian administration of Metternich and his successors. Little things, magnified by pusillanimous apprehension, stood in his way. In 1819 he expressed in a poem The Ruins of Campo Vaccino esthetic abhorrence of the cross most inappropriately placed over the portal of the Coliseum in Rome, and was thereafter never free of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... endless, but morning ever follows night, death cannot be endless. Be unconcerned; thy being shall as little be lost as the grain of dust at thy foot! Because in death thou dost not know that thou art, therefore fearest thou that thou shalt be no more? O pusillanimous! the great events of nature are too vast for thy weak heart. A whole eternity thou hast not been conscious that thou art, and yet thou hast become conscious of it. Every night thou losest thy consciousness, yet art thou conscious ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... inextricable complications. Not only in one and the same State, but in one and the same district, nay, even in the same township, after January 1st, 1863, may be found Africo-Americans, portions of whom are emancipated, the others in bondage. But the stern logic of events will save the illogical, pusillanimous, confused half-measure, as ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... said the Manager. 'Mine are certainties. You pusillanimous, abject, cringing dogs! All making the same show, all canting the same story, all whining the same professions, all harbouring the ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... hostilities of his northern neighbor. When in this situation, he received intelligence of the treaty secretly concluded between John and Philip; and though uneasy at this concurrence of a French and Scottish war he resolved not to encourage his enemies by a pusillanimous behavior, or by ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... taken upon myself a responsibility which I decline not, and having encouraged and blessed the departure of several of those youthful volunteers, I would be ashamed of myself if now, restrained by the fears arising from a pusillanimous prudence, I did not offer them the homage of my admiration together with that of my prayers. Your sympathies are already with my words. If they gave offence to any hearers, I would, indeed, be afflicted. But, by the grace of God, the country which we inhabit is called ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... Sievershausen in 1553, and contributed essentially to the conclusion of peace. King Christian III. died on New Year's Day 1559. Though not perhaps a great, he was, in the fullest sense of the word, a good ruler. A strong sense of duty, genuine piety, and a cautious but by no means pusillanimous common-sense coloured every action of his patient, laborious and eventful life. But the work he left behind him is the best proof of his statesmanship. He found Denmark in ruins; he left her stronger and wealthier than she had ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... Brandes means to imply so much; but in all of his writings there is manifested a deep sympathy with the law-breaker whose Titanic soul refuses to be bound by the obligations of morality which limit the freedom of ordinary mortals. Only petty and pusillanimous souls, according to him, submit to these restraints; the heroic soul breaks them, as did Byron and Shelley, because he has outgrown them, or because he is too great to recognize the right of any ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Asben by the Kailouees. The houses we passed in ruins are said to have been once occupied by the Kilgris. If so, they evidently were in former times powerful and opulent, and have since become relaxed and pusillanimous. At any rate, they have been expelled by the fiercer and more ferocious Kailouees. The Oulimad also come here to plunder occasionally. At Gurarek we saw a phenomenon which, after so much desert, gladdened indeed our eyes. This was a fine sheet of water, of great extent, covered ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... allurements, nor fearing opposition, but by a pious obstinacy and frowardness, we must thrust away the one and bear down the other. This is the Christian who will carry heaven by force, when the whining pusillanimous professor, who only complains of difficulty, but never attempts to conquer it, will be for ever ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... cobbler, and such sort, all food for the guillotine for attempting to do no more than has been most treacherously perpetrated by the present King of the French and the ex-Queen of Spain. How is it that LOUIS-PHILIPPE feels no touch of sympathy for that pusillanimous scoundrel—Just? He is naturally his veritable double; but then Just is only a carpenter, LOUIS-PHILIPPE is King ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... persuaded that I had not only the consent and protection of the magistrate, but that the book merited and had obtained the favor of the minister, I congratulated myself upon my courage in doing good, and laughed at my pusillanimous friends who seemed uneasy on my account. Duclos was one of these, and I confess my confidence in his understanding and uprightness might have alarmed me, had I had less in the utility of the work and in the probity of those by whom it was patronized. He came from the ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... this man left me drained of all courage. Surely, on no other occasion should I have been thus pusillanimous. My state I regarded as a hopeless one. I was wholly at the mercy of this being. Whichever way I turned my eyes, I saw no avenue by which I might escape. The resources of my personal strength, my ingenuity, ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... news of the capitulation been bruited about the streets, than it was received with a sorrow and indignation almost past description. Had the unlucky and pusillanimous Mr. Forster appeared at that moment, he "would certainly," as Mr. Patten relates, "have been cut to pieces." Even in his chamber, the General was attacked by his own Secretary, Mr. Murray, and a pistol which was aimed at him only averted by Mr. Patten's hand. The truth is, even Forster's ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... be the most advisable course for them to pursue. It appeared, that as soon as the current had passed the bank, it took a more southerly direction towards New Guinea. It was then debated between them whether they should or should not land on that island, the natives of which were known to be pusillanimous, yet treacherous. A long debate ensued, which ended, however, in their resolve not to decide as yet, but wait and see what might occur. In the mean time, the boats pulled to the westward, while the current set them fast ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... hag began to get angry and show a glimpse of her diabolic nature, like a snake's head peeping with a hiss out of her bosom, at this pusillanimous behavior of the thing which she had taken the ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... far we would have to trace their "genealogical tree" before finding something much worse than a working woman. It is said that "three generations make a gentleman"; and if that be true there is some hope of Halliwell's great-grandsons—granting, of course, that the pusillanimous prig is not too epicene to provide himself with posterity. Day by day it becomes more evident that the purse-proud snobocracy of New York's old rat- catchers and sprat peddlers is fast getting a foothold in the West, that the social gulf ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... revealed the inefficiency and the cowardice of the Persians. The whole army now moved rapidly forward, confident of an easy victory, many even supposing that Artaxerxes would make no stand at all, but abandon his capital to them. The Great King, however, was not so hopelessly pusillanimous as that; for, when Cyrus reached Kunaxa, scouts brought word that the enemy's hosts were not far behind. This time the intelligence was correct. That very afternoon a great cloud of white dust rolled up from the plain, and as it kept advancing ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... believed?" she questioned a third time, and there was a fire in her eyes which seemed to leap out and scathe the pusillanimous monarch as he ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... to the Commonwealth as "the late United States!" All this, I say, will influence, and ought to influence, America in favor of the independence of Ireland, and prevent the American people from regarding the present pusillanimous blandishments of John Bull as other than simply the result of cowardice, and an attempt to propitiate a great power that had survived his infernal machinations, and now looms up a just and mighty avenger ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... ways. First, in itself; and thus it is evident that by its very nature it is opposed to magnanimity, from which it differs as great and little differ in connection with the same subject. For just as the magnanimous man tends to great things out of greatness of soul, so the pusillanimous man shrinks from great things out of littleness of soul. Secondly, it may be considered in reference to its cause, which on the part of the intellect is ignorance of one's own qualification, and on the part of the appetite is the fear of failure in what one falsely ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... course for them to pursue. It appeared that as soon as the current had passed the bank, it took a more southerly direction towards New Guinea. It was then debated between them whether they should or should not land on that island, the natives of which were known to be pusillanimous, yet treacherous. A long debate ensued, which ended, however, in their resolving not to decide as yet, but wait and see what might occur. In the meantime, the boats pulled to the westward, while the current set them fast down ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... however, which we saw among them, was the perforation of the shield by a spear, which has been just mentioned, for none of them appeared to have been wounded by an enemy. Neither can we determine whether they are pusillanimous or brave; the resolution with which two of them attempted to prevent our landing, when we had two boats full of men, in Botany Bay, even after one of them was wounded with small shot, gave us reason to conclude that they were not only ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... brother, who was to succeed him upon the throne, was then in Poland. Catharine was glad to have the pusillanimous Charles out of the way. He was sufficiently depraved to commit any crime, without being sufficiently resolute to brave its penalty. Henry III. had, in early life, displayed great vigor of character. At the age of fifteen he had been placed in the command of armies, and in several combats ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... soft mother of a slothful and pusillanimous people, is a neighbor island, anciently subjected by the arms of Oceana; since almost depopulated for shaking the yoke, and at length replanted with a new race. But, through what virtues of the soil or vice of the air soever ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... judgment, acknowledging that Anne Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell must be guilty since Henry was convinced: but there was no man in the country who took the part of either. To have defied the King would have been heroic, and there is a wide interval between failing of heroism and being pusillanimous. He withdrew his resistance to Northumberland's plot; but he resisted on the ground that it was illegal and withdrew only when he was assured that the Judges had unanimously affirmed its legality. ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... its own, as Demeter, in the days of her desolation, took the child Demophoon to nurture him as her own on the food of gods, and to plunge him through the flames of a fire that would give him immortal life. As the pusillanimous and sordid fears of the mortal mother lost to the child for evermore the possession of Olympian joys and of perpetual youth, so did the craven and earthly cares of bodily needs hold the artist back from the radiance of the life of the soul, and drag him from the ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... to his theme. "Why, when the Russians actually fired on our flag—the Union Jack of England, sir, that had never previously been insulted with impunity—they actually blamed me for returning the fire, and recalled me for it! I tell you what it is, Vernon, they were all a pack of pusillanimous time-servers, frightened at their own shadows; and, between you and me and the bedpost, that chap, Jimmy Graham, our precious late First Lord of the Admiralty, knew as much about a ship as a Tom cat does of logarithms, ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... it appear to me! From time to time the author plainly reels to and fro like a drunken man. And, when I had done all, what had I done? Written a book to amuse boys and girls in their vacant hours, a story to be hastily gobbled up by them, swallowed in a pusillanimous and unanimated mood, without chewing and digestion. I was in this respect greatly impressed with the confession of one of the most accomplished readers and excellent critics that any author could have fallen in with ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... say, Mozart could not convince his pusillanimous father that he did not owe an apology to the Archbishop for being kicked. But he was so deeply offended that he never returned to Salzburg. So much for those who cherish the pathetic belief that the days of patrons were of benefit to the artist and ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... that they were seeking to set themselves right in order to maintain their prestige. Add to this the persistent and systematic effort made to destroy every scrap of record relating to the man—the sole gleam of shame evidenced in the impolitic, idiotic, and pusillanimous treatment of him—and the whole question becomes such a puzzle that it may just as well be left in darkness, with a throb of pity for the unfortunate victim caught in such a maelstrom of ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... for the guillotine for attempting to do no more than has been most treacherously perpetrated by the present King of the French and the ex-Queen of Spain. How is it that LOUIS-PHILIPPE feels no touch of sympathy for that pusillanimous scoundrel—Just? He is naturally his veritable double; but then Just is only a carpenter, LOUIS-PHILIPPE is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 27, 1841 • Various
... as a mere vision of some terrified mind; at least, if he had any doubts on that subject—and reports of the fiery temper of the king might have roused his suspicions—he conceived that a bold bearing would do him more good than a pusillanimous demeanour; and, as for flight, he despised it, as well as disapproved of it, on grounds of fancied prudence, seeing that he would thereby admit his guilt, and prove his pusillanimity, while it might ultimately turn out ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... pleasure in handling the weapons of strife; may it be longer to the time when they shall be needed in this abode of peace. These are instruments of death, resembling those used in my youth, by cavaliers that rode in the levies of the first Charles, and of his pusillanimous father. There were worldly pride and great vanity, with much and damning ungodliness, in the wars that I have seen, my children; and yet the carnal man found pleasure in the stirrings of those graceless days! Come hither, younker; thou hast often sought to know the manner in which the ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... press towards a climax in this memorable siege. The French King, awakened from his long and inexplicable lethargy by the entreaties of his starving subjects so bravely holding the town for a pusillanimous master, and stung by the taunts of the English King, had mustered an army, and was now marching to the relief of the town. It was upon the last day of July, when public excitement was running high, and all men were talking and thinking of an ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... mood, and his interest in the popular movement that was to culminate at Eureka was deepening daily. He had even addressed a small meeting of miners on the subject of the rights of the people, and he was no pusillanimous reformer. He declared the diggers had reached that point at which toleration meant meanness of spirit. The thought of civil war was appalling, but not so much so as the degradation of a nation in which the manhood ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... an abdication of authority on our part would lead to the perpetration of wrongs that would soon become unendurable, even if we were first to become a broken spirited people? And, considering the arrogance and recklessness of many foreigners in China, and the pusillanimous character of the natives, what can be expected but contempt and aggression on one side, and mistrust and finesse on the other? What but a chronic discontent, wholly incompatible with healthful commerce and peaceful intercourse, can be expected from such ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... contempt with which America is spoken of, and the epithets of a 'nation of cheats,' 'sprung from convicts,' 'pusillanimous,' 'cowardly,' and such like,—these I think are sufficient to make any true American's blood boil. These are not used by individuals only, but on the floor of the House of Commons. The good effects of our declaration of war begin to be perceived ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... (which he did, say the Annals, by the title of Ala ed-din Juhan-shah in September 1735.) But to this measure the concurrence of the other chiefs was wanting. At daybreak the guns of the castle began to play upon the mosque, and, some of the shot penetrating its walls, the pusillanimous Jemal al-alum, being alarmed at the danger, judged it advisable to retreat from thence and to set up his standard in another quarter, called kampong Jawa, his people at the same time retaining possession of the mosque. A regular warfare now ensued between the two parties and continued for no less ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... restless endeavor, The youngest, fairest soul of the twain, The most ethereal, most divine, Will escape from my hands forever and ever. But the other is already mine! Let him live to corrupt his race, Breathing among them, with every breath, Weakness, selfishness, and the base And pusillanimous fear of death. I know his nature, and I know That of all who in my ministry Wander the great earth to and fro, And on my errands come and go, The safest and subtlest are such ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... that he babbles and is going to babble again, if he has another try at it. Unless—and this is where I want you to follow me very closely, Jeeves—unless steps are taken at once through the proper channels. Only active measures, promptly applied, can provide this poor, pusillanimous poop with the proper pep. And that is why, Jeeves, I intend tomorrow to secure a bottle of gin and lace his luncheon orange juice with ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... Christian III. died on New Year's Day 1559. Though not perhaps a great, he was, in the fullest sense of the word, a good ruler. A strong sense of duty, genuine piety, and a cautious but by no means pusillanimous common-sense coloured every action of his patient, laborious and eventful life. But the work he left behind him is the best proof of his statesmanship. He found Denmark in ruins; he left her stronger and wealthier than she had ever ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... his meditations at this juncture: "Plainly," he said, "I must give up my playthings, in the meanwhile, since I am not in a position to secure myself against idle jeers. At the same time, I am sure that playthings are the very pick of life; all people give them up out of the same pusillanimous respect for those who are a little older; and if they do not return to them as soon as they can, it is only because they grow stupid and forget. I shall be wiser; I shall conform for a little to ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of this man left me drained of all courage. Surely, on no other occasion should I have been thus pusillanimous. My state I regarded as a hopeless one. I was wholly at the mercy of this being. Whichever way I turned my eyes, I saw no avenue by which I might escape. The resources of my personal strength, my ingenuity, and my eloquence, ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... "The pusillanimous cuss," the latter muttered, "he 's worse than a cur dog. Blamed if he was n't actually afraid of me. A gun-fighter—pugh!" He lifted his voice, as "Reb" paused in the light of the hall beyond and glanced back, a fist doubled and uplifted. "Oh, go on! Sure, you 'll get me? You are ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... arouse far-reaching rebellion against human wrongs and imperfections in general. But our famous American sense of humor may be worked overtime, and, from a perception of the incongruity and relative importance of things, be insensibly degraded into pusillanimous indifference to everything, good or bad. The soberest observer may concede that there is a spiritual energy and movement behind visible phenomena, whose purport and aim it is the province of the wise ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... have been driven from all this part of Asben by the Kailouees. The houses we passed in ruins are said to have been once occupied by the Kilgris. If so, they evidently were in former times powerful and opulent, and have since become relaxed and pusillanimous. At any rate, they have been expelled by the fiercer and more ferocious Kailouees. The Oulimad also come here to plunder occasionally. At Gurarek we saw a phenomenon which, after so much desert, gladdened indeed our ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... found again the pusillanimous "End of Time," and at Wilensi they were rejoined by Shahrazad, Dunyazad and the one-eyed Kalandar. Persons who met Burton and his friends enquired Irish-like if they were the party who had been put to death by the Amir of Harar. Everyone, indeed, was amazed to see them not only alive, but uninjured, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... Rome without opposition. The triumph was very brief. Neither the Neapolitan troops, nor their leader, General Mack, were capable of contending successfully against the skilful officers and well-trained soldiers opposed to them. On the first alarm, the pusillanimous Ferdinand of Naples fled from Rome in disguise, and soon afterwards embarked for Sicily with his wife and court, carrying away "the wealth and jewels of the crown, the most valuable antiquities, the most precious works of art, and what remained from the pillage of the banks and churches, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... himself, primarily as Grillparzer the poet; and in spite of loyalty to the monarchy, he was entirely out of sympathy with the antediluvian administration of Metternich and his successors. Little things, magnified by pusillanimous apprehension, stood in his way. In 1819 he expressed in a poem The Ruins of Campo Vaccino esthetic abhorrence of the cross most inappropriately placed over the portal of the Coliseum in Rome, and was thereafter never free of the suspicion of heresy. In 1825 membership in a social club ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... made free talk of the undertaking to Diana and to Ruth, loving, as does the pusillanimous, to show himself engaged in daring enterprises. Emulating his friend Sir Rowland, he held forth with prolixity upon the great service he was to do the State, and Ruth, listening to him, was proud of his zeal, ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... candidate, the man himself is one of the most improper and incompetent that could be selected. Naturally dull and stupid; extremely illiterate; indecisive to a degree that would be incredible to one who did not know him; pusillanimous, and, of course, hypocritical; has no opinion on any subject, and will be always under the government of the worst men; pretends, as I am told, to some knowledge of military matters, but never commanded a platoon, nor was ever fit to command one. "He served ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... meantime the master had reached the caravel, and made known the perilous state in which he had left the vessel. He was reproached with his pusillanimous desertion; the commander of the caravel manned his boat and hastened to the relief of the admiral, followed by the recreant master, ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... which those names usually produce, will the reader please note that it is not my business now to defend either the general principles of Cobden and Bright or the political spirit which they are supposed to represent. Let them be as sordid, mean, unworthy, pusillanimous as you like—and as the best of us then said they were ("a mean, vain, mischievous clique" even so good a man as Tom Hughes could call them). We called them cowards—because practically alone they faced a country which had become ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... He had no pusillanimous notion of the unworthiness of revenge. He believed retaliation, when complete and inflicted without cost or injury to the giver, to be a most logical and fitting thing. But he knew that revenge ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... thereof; and when, months afterward, I came North, I found not one single sign of preparation. It was for this reason, somewhat, that the people of the South became convinced that those of the North were pusillanimous and cowardly, and the Southern leaders were thereby enabled to commit their people to the war, nominally in defense of their slave property. Up to the hour of the firing on Fort Sumter, in April, 1861, it does seem to me that our public men, our politicians, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... and proved an incompetent emperor, entirely unequal to the serious task of governing and protecting his vast territories. His weakness was especially shown in his pusillanimous treaties with the Northmen. When Paris was making an heroic defense against them under its count, Odo, Charles, instead of marching at the head of an army to relieve it, agreed to pay the invaders seven hundred pounds of silver if they would ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... twenty-first he fled. Though he was captured, and brought back to act the impossible role of a democratic prince, the patriots who had wished to advance with experience and tradition as guides were utterly discredited. All the world could see how pusillanimous was the royalty they had wished to preserve, and the masses made up their mind that, real or nominal, the institution was not only useless, but dangerous. This feeling was strong in the Rhone valley and the adjoining districts, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... through the sense of taste or of touch? Shall we idolize our stomachs and our backs? Have we no higher missions, no nobler destinies? Shall we "disgrace the fair day by a pusillanimous preference of ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... opinion of its own subjects, as well as of other nations: but, thirdly, the imbecile conduct of the chief Prussian officers, in the campaign of Jena, was as little likely to have been foreseen or expected, as the pusillanimous, if not treacherous, baseness of those who, after the army was defeated, abandoned so easily a chain of the ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... captured Prince Bentrik and were holding him for ransom. Beyond that, the Government was trying to sit on the whole story, and the Opposition was hinting darkly at corrupt deals and sinister plots. Prince Bentrik arrived in the midst of an impassioned tirade against pusillanimous traitors surrounding his Majesty who were betraying Marduk to ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... other, who had committed this most cowardly act of revenge. The expression of Mr. Hunter's face, as the truth slowly dawned upon him, was rich in its blending of indignation, disgust, and contempt. "The pusillanimous rascal!" he exclaimed, as he hurried ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... finding something much worse than a working woman. It is said that "three generations make a gentleman"; and if that be true there is some hope of Halliwell's great-grandsons—granting, of course, that the pusillanimous prig is not too epicene to provide himself with posterity. Day by day it becomes more evident that the purse-proud snobocracy of New York's old rat- catchers and sprat peddlers is fast getting a foothold in the West, that the social ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... that the pusillanimous James II. acquired no popularity by his royal tours; and that the affections of the people were not to be gained by the merely personal condescension ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... have not shrunk from my duty in the worst times, and I will not trifle with it in those which look more prosperous. Much must be done to save the British Government from an infamous and daring combination, which might have been yielded to by a more pusillanimous minister; but could only be met by one confident in his character and conduct. Do not think this the language of vanity; the times have been, and still are much too serious for such a boyish passion: ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... enervated soldiers abandoned their own, and the public defence; and their pusillanimous indolence may be considered as the immediate cause of the downfall of the empire." Gibbon's ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... present position. This was an unanswerable denial; and so he sent the letter to Baltimore. This story, fabricated out of nothing but malice, was meant to injure in two ways, by proving him a gambler, and also pusillanimous. The slanderous officer will probably cease to be one, as I believe falsehood is not considered a ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... horse, and twenty thousand foot, to the assistance of the Romans. But the feeble Arsaces Tiranus, king of Armenia, had degenerated still more shamefully than his father Chosroes, from the manly virtues of the great Tiridates; and as the pusillanimous monarch was averse to any enterprise of danger and glory, he could disguise his timid indolence by the more decent excuses of religion and gratitude. He expressed a pious attachment to the memory of Constantius, from whose hands ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... phaenomenon in the passions, which at first sight seems very extraordinary, viz, that surprize is apt to change into fear, and every thing that is unexpected affrights us. The most obvious conclusion from this is, that human nature is in general pusillanimous; since upon the sudden appearance of any object. we immediately conclude it to be an evil, and without waiting till we can examine its nature, whether it be good or bad, are at first affected with fear. This I say is the most obvious conclusion; but ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... reflect on all this," said Pericles, "I am surprised to see the Republic so much fallen off from what it was." "In my opinion," replied Socrates, "she has behaved herself like those persons who, for having too great advantage over their rivals, begin to neglect themselves, and grow in the end pusillanimous, for after the Athenians saw themselves raised above the other Greeks they indulged themselves in indolence, ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... Stamford, one of the greatest nobles of England, was routed by the Royalists at Stratton. Nathaniel Fiennes, inferior to none of his contemporaries in talents for civil business, disgraced himself by the pusillanimous surrender of Bristol. Indeed, of all the statesmen who at this juncture accepted high military commands, Hampden alone appears to have carried into the camp the capacity and strength of mind which had made him ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of such stupendous engines of destruction; and even in the earliest times there was neither deficiency in courage nor in zeal for investigation. "When the glandular plague first made its appearance as a universal epidemic, whilst the more pusillanimous, haunted by visionary fears, shut themselves up in their closets, some physicians at Constantinople, astonished at the phenomena opened the boils of the deceased. The like has occurred both in ancient and modern times, not without favorable results for Science; nay, more ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... cannot understand the inactivity of the French: it would seem that the authorities had lost their heads. We cannot otherwise explain the lack of foresight of the officers absent from their posts, the pusillanimous orders of the governor to M. de Vaudreuil, his imprudence in sending too weak a troop through the dangerous places, the lack of initiative on the part of M. de Saint-Jean, finally, the absolute lack of energy and audacity, ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... duty!" cried the admiral furiously. "It is not the only occasion upon which a man has gained the confidence of his friends. It is not the first time I have been so cruelly deceived. I can see it plainly. Either, like a pusillanimous coward, he turned tail, or there is some disgraceful entanglement ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... a brief, painful tragedy of low life, written under the influence of Russian evangelism, and full of reminiscences of Dostoievsky's 'Crime and Punishment.' Giovanni is a poor clerk, of a weak, pusillanimous nature, completely dominated by a coarse, brutal companion, Giulio Wanzer, who makes him an abject slave, until a detected forgery compels Wanzer to flee the country. Episcopo then marries Ginevra, the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... of quarrels and warfare. I had heard the people talking of an expedition some of them had made into the territory of a distant tribe, when they had cut down some cocoa-nut and palm-trees, and committed other mischief; but they spoke of their enemies as a weak and pusillanimous race, who were unable or unwilling to retaliate, and I thought no more of the matter. When sent into the woods to gather bark or gums, or the heads of the cabbage-palm, or to catch fish on the river or neighbouring lake, I used to be interested by the vast number of birds ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... weak, pusillanimous wretch you must be, having known me so long, and tried my temper so well, to hope to find me such a fool, after all,—that kind of fool, I mean! My deepest shame, in this unutterably shameful hour, is that I chose such a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... too clear that hopes based on his intervention were not likely to be fulfilled. We find Sidonius writing for information.... He began to fear that something was going on behind his back, and that the real danger to Auvergne came no longer from determined enemies but from pusillanimous friends. His suspicions were only too well founded. On receipt of the quaestor's report a Council was held to determine the policy of the Empire towards the Visigothic king.... The empire did not feel strong enough to support Auvergne and it was decided to cede the whole territory ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... was as brave as Robespierre was pusillanimous, repressed the smile of disdain that quivered on his lips a moment, and ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... talked of, than thoroughly understood; and yet highly necessary to be perfectly known and considered by every man of rank or property, lest his ignorance of the points whereon it is founded should hurry him into faction and licentiousness on the one hand, or a pusillanimous indifference and criminal submission on the other. And we have seen that these rights consist, primarily, in the free enjoyment of personal security, of personal liberty, and of private property. So long as these remain inviolate, the subject is perfectly ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... hostile army within their sacred frontier, and worked up by all the circumstances of the invasion to the highest pitch of patriotic enthusiasm. Unable to appreciate the value of what must have appeared to them a timid and pusillanimous policy, they overwhelmed Barclay de Tolly with violent accusations of cowardice, and even of treachery; rendered the more plausible to the mind of the ignorant, by the circumstance of their object ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... Georgetown in an armed vessel, and filled the country with printed proclamations from lord Cornwallis, calling on the GOOD PEOPLE of South Carolina to submit and take royal protections!! Numbers of the ignorant and pusillanimous sort closed with the offer. But the nobler ones of the district, (Williamsburgh,) having no notion of selling their liberties for a 'pig in a poke', called a caucus of their own, from whom they selected captain John James, and sent him down to master captain Ardeisoff, ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... they fled for refuge, and his counsels, more than anything, preserved them from dispersing and deserting their city, as in the time when the Gauls took possession of Rome. He, whom they esteemed fearful and pusillanimous when they were, as they thought, in a prosperous condition, was now the only man, in this general and unbounded dejection and confusion, who showed no fear, but walked the streets with an assured and serene countenance, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... little operation of "sticking up" without a word, but with revived interest in life. He noted the pusillanimous pallor of the driver and his friend, and felt personally indebted to the desperado who had put a stop to their unpleasant conversation. The inside passenger made a yet more obsequious surrender. Not that the trio were set any better example by their noble ally, who ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... fact that the flattery residing in devotion and affection makes such an impelling appeal to all vain people, that the superior animal is discarded for the inferior? The dog is grossly and offensively obscene; he is dirty, he pollutes our streets; he is a coward, and has the pusillanimous spirit of a rather faint-hearted lackey. The cat, on the other hand, is decent, clean, consistently sanitary, brave, and possessed of the great-hearted self-reliant spirit of a born warrior. The cat, ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... political treatises there is an immeasurable dreariness. They lay down rules for life, and if they be asked what makes such a life worth living they are without any hint of an answer. Their world is a workhouse, tyrannically ordered, and full of pusillanimous jealousies. ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... would resemble and equal those of Natal and the Cape. But he reckoned without his host, and all that he had taken the trouble to do was ultimately undone. In 1852 the Government at home declared its policy to be the ultimate abandonment of the Orange River Sovereignty. For this pusillanimous policy there were several reasons, the greatest being a fear of a Basuto rising and the trouble it would entail. The British Government therefore decided to maintain its rights over the Transvaal no further, and by the Sand River Convention, signed on the 17th of January 1852, the ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... any kind be properly pardoned till we have it in our power to punish them? To pretend to pardon, while we are labouring under the pain or dishonour of them, will be thought by some to be but the vaunted mercy of a pusillanimous heart, trembling to resent them. The remedy I propose is a severe one: But what pain can be more severe than the injury? Or how will injuries be believed to grieve us, that are never honourably ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... greatness of kingdoms and estates, and the means thereof. An argument fit for great and mighty princes to have in their hand; to the end that neither by over-measuring their forces, they leese themselves in vain enterprises; nor on the other side, by undervaluing them, they descend to fearful and pusillanimous counsels. ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... state that strives for liberty, though foiled And forced to abandon what she bravely sought, Deserves at least applause for her attempt, And pity for her loss. But that's a cause Not often unsuccessful; power usurped Is weakness when opposed; conscious of wrong, 'Tis pusillanimous and prone to flight. But slaves that once conceive the glowing thought Of freedom, in that hope itself possess All that the contest calls for; spirit, strength, The scorn of danger, and united hearts, The surest presage of the ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... Briconnet's pusillanimous defection, as marked by the publication of these pastoral letters, is involved in some obscurity; for assuredly the date affixed to the transcripts that have come down to us conflicts too seriously with the well-known facts of history to be ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... myself!" he repeated, as he led the way out to the veranda. "I'll see what goblin scared my pusillanimous staff and ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... us," said I, with a sigh of pusillanimous relief. "Our hands are tied for this week, ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... Cyprus, at that time ruled by Henry II a pusillanimous prince. Vertot. Hist. des Chev. de Malte, 1. iii. iv. The meaning appears to be, that the complaints made by those cities of their weak and worthless governor, may be regarded as an earnest of his condemnation ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... employment. The wife and mother, for example, with as indeterminate a number of children as the Martyr Rogers, who visits me monthly,—what claim would she have upon me, were not her husband forever taking to drink, or the penitentiary, or Spiritualism? The pusillanimous lapse of her lord into morality would not only take the very ground of her invention from under her feet, but would rob her and him of an income that sustains them both in blissful independence of the curse of Adam. But do not let us be disheartened. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... for you," said Bog, smiling at this pusillanimous postponement—which is a mild way of ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... send a very satisfactory answer to your health inquiries, as far as regards myself. The mean, pusillanimous fever which took under-hold of me two months ago is still THERE, as impregnably fixed as a cockle-burr in a sheep's tail. I have tried idleness, but (naturally) it won't WORK. I do no labor except works of necessity — such as kissing Mary, who is a more ravishing angel than ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... Society will be sure to see that he is not legally punished. He thus finds safe scope for the indulgence of his crank, and when there is nothing left of his own wife, he turns his unattractive and pusillanimous attentions to someone else's. ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... the Ultimatum, and immediately gave orders for the removal of troops and war material.[7] This prompt compliance was received by the people of Greece with {166} loud disapproval. They criticized vehemently their rulers' readiness to yield as pusillanimous and injudicious. The Government, they said, instead of profiting by the events of 1 December to clear up the situation, drifts back into the path of concessions which led to those fatal events: it encourages the Entente Powers to put forward ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... reception of his Lordship's bountiful hospitality. The reply was gracious and acquiescent; so that I presented myself in the great entrance-hall of the Mansion-House, at half-past six o'clock, in a state of most enjoyable freedom from the pusillanimous apprehensions that often tormented me at such times. The Mansion-House was built in Queen Anne's days, in the very heart of old London, and is a palace worthy of its inhabitant, were he really as great a man as his traditionary state and pomp would seem to indicate. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... the Poet's Saccharissa, or the gentle Lady Sophia Murray, the beauteous Amoret of his idolatry, were most worthy the affection he so generously bestowed on both. Waller, the most specious flatterer of flattering courts—the early worshipper of Charles the First—the pusillanimous betrayer of his friends—the adulator of Cromwell—the wit and the jester of the second Charles—the devotional whiner of the bigot James—had not, however, sufficient power to keep the lady from her slumbers long. She was soon in ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... province. The Bavarians themselves long for annexation to Austria, for they know that it is their only road to prosperity. They look with hope and confidence to Maria Theresa, whose goodness and greatness may compensate them for all that they have endured at the hands of their pusillanimous little rulers. The only man in Germany who will oppose the succession of Austria to Bavaria, is Frederick, who is as ready to enlarge his own dominions as to cry 'Stop thief!' when he sees others doing likewise. But he will not raise a single voice unless he receive ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... yourself and princely daughter, O king Alcinous, demand from me that I should no longer keep you in ignorance of what or who I am; for to reserve any secret from you, who have with such openness of friendship embraced my love, would argue either a pusillanimous or an ungrateful mind in me. Know, then, that I am that Ulysses, of whom I perceive ye have heard something; who heretofore have filled the world with the renown of my policies. I am he by whose counsels, ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... commonly lively, ingenious, full of imagination, passionate, voluptuous, enterprising; whilst the phlegmatic man is dull, of a heavy understanding, slow of conception, inactive, difficult to be moved, pusillanimous, without imagination, or possessing it in a less lively degree, incapable of taking any strong ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... bad company. He afterward married my laconic cousin Sarah, whose shrewdness made him the first Duke of Marlborough, and last, I regret to chronicle, was George Hamilton, resting from his labors at self-reform. Soon after dark another congenial spirit, the most pusillanimous of them all, young William Wentworth, Sir William's son and Roger's nephew, entered the taproom dripping with rain. Before going to the fire, he called Crofts and Berkeley to one side. Placing his arms about their necks, he drew their faces close ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... new species of confederation has been the cause which has brought all Unions to Civil War, to subjection, or to a stagnant apathy, and the peoples which formed these leagues have been either too dull to discern, or too pusillanimous to apply this great remedy. The American Confederation ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... beneath his show of superhuman strength. And it will seem to her, so long as her sufferings endure, that he deceived her just expectations, and was a vain pretender to the superhuman:—for it was only a superhuman Jew and democrat whom she could have thought of espousing. The pusillanimous are under a necessity to be self-consoled when they are not self-justified: it is their instinctive manner of putting themselves in the right to themselves. The love she bore him, because it was the love his high conceit exacted, hung on success she was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... be to us a cause of suffering and of pain: suffering and pain bespeak rather an ungratified wish than an unsatisfied moral want. An unsatisfied moral want ought to be accompanied by a more manly feeling, and fortify our mind and confirm it in its energy rather than make us unhappy and pusillanimous. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... some who declare that Canada's trade is declining; there are some who maintain that the rich glow of health which at present mantles o'er Canada's virgin cheek will soon be replaced by the pallid hues of the corpse. To such pusillanimous propagandists of a preposterous pessimism, I answer, Mr. Speaker with all confidence, never! never!" As a rhetorical effort this is striking, though there seems a lack of lucidity ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... no, scurril scribe, dip your pen in rose-pink, Or the Censor's black blurr shall your slander efface A CAESAR turn sophist, an Autocrat shrink? Pusillanimous spite mark the ROMANOFF race? Too wholly absurd! What is this we have heard Which on courtier spirits must painfully jar? Who is he, this mal a propos "little bird" Who twitters such tales ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, 13 June 1891 • Various
... Mrs. Willoughby. I don't believe you women like timid, pusillanimous men. How could I appear otherwise to Miss Bodine if I should withdraw, like a growling bear into winter quarters, there to hibernate indefinitely? The period wouldn't be life to me, scarcely tolerable existence. What could ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... outrageous manner, I repeat, it has been all but 'up' with US! But the vigorous resistance offered on that memorable occasion by the patriotic inhabitants of Bermuda to the aggressions of arbitrary power, secured and established their privileges on a firmer basis than heretofore; and, while their pusillanimous allies were crushed and annihilated, they became more prosperous than ever. Gentlemen, I am proud to say that I originated—that I directed those measures. I hope to see the day, when not Southwark alone, but London itself shall become one Mint,—when ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... under Kawabe no Nie fared differently. Japanese annals attempt to palliate his discomfiture by a story about the abuse of a flag of truce, but the fact seems to have been that Kawabe no Nie was an incompetent and pusillanimous captain. He and his men were all killed or taken prisoners, the only redeeming feature being the intrepidity of a Japanese officer, Tsugi no Ikina, who, with his wife and son, endured to be tortured and killed rather than utter ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... and ambition, call me forward more powerfully than a poor, regardless, and unprofitable sin of curiosity should be able to withhold me; whereby a man cuts himself off from all action, and becomes the most helpless, pusillanimous, and unweaponed creature in the world, the most unfit and unable to do that which all mortals most aspire to—either to be useful to his friends or to offend his enemies? Or, if it be to be thought a natural proneness, there is against ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... Congress, and the possible appointment of Colonel Ternant to his office. This officer had won a great European reputation as Generalissimo of one of the United Provinces, and it was even hinted that, had he been put at the head of affairs instead of the pusillanimous Rhinegrave of Salm, the cause might have been saved. All this and other details had to be communicated to Mr. Jay, and so delicate was the business that Calvert was instructed to put the letter in cipher lest it be opened and the French Government prematurely ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... interest in itself, unfolds in a striking light the circumstances under which Schiller stood at present; and may serve to justify the violence of his alarms, which to the happy natives of our Island might otherwise appear pusillanimous and excessive. For these reasons we subjoin a sketch ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... Actions, not the Number of Actors, by which we ought to regulate our Behaviour. Singularity in Concerns of this Kind is to be looked upon as heroick Bravery, in which a Man leaves the Species only as he soars above it. What greater Instance can there be of a weak and pusillanimous Temper, than for a Man to pass his whole Life in Opposition to his own Sentiments? or not to dare to be what he thinks ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... enough merely to plunge the soul of the victim into incurable despair, but also to reduce him to the corpse-like obedience required by the Society of Jesus. In that awful book may be found a thousand terrors to operate on weak minds, a thousand slavish maxims to chain and degrade the pusillanimous soul. ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... case, how these memoirs written at Venice, when his heart was torn with grief and bitterness, could possibly have been silent as to the injustice and calumny overwhelming him, or even as to the pusillanimous behavior of so-called friends; while even writers generally hostile no longer ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... fellow-cardinalists. He longed, he said, to be in Burgundy, drinking Granvelle's good wine. His patience under the daily insults which he received from the government made him despicable in the eyes of his own party. He was described by his friends as pusillanimous to an incredible extent, timid from excess of riches, afraid of his own shadow. He was becoming exceedingly pathetic, expressing frequently a desire to depart and end his days in peace. His faithful Hopper sustained and consoled him, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... we should do here?" replied the pusillanimous commander; and no other answer would he give to the sub-ordinate who had rashly ventured to expostulate with him. The next day, accordingly, Putnam escorted Webb back to Fort Edward, whence the latter sent letters to the Governor of New ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... the cowardice of the Persians. The whole army now moved rapidly forward, confident of an easy victory, many even supposing that Artaxerxes would make no stand at all, but abandon his capital to them. The Great King, however, was not so hopelessly pusillanimous as that; for, when Cyrus reached Kunaxa, scouts brought word that the enemy's hosts were not far behind. This time the intelligence was correct. That very afternoon a great cloud of white dust rolled up from the plain, and as it kept advancing the invaders caught sight of the flash ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... No one was powerful enough to screen him from these combined hostilities, except the very men who aimed at the subversion of Roman liberties, and who wished him out of the way; his friend Pompey showed a mean, pusillanimous, and calculating selfishness, and neither Crassus nor Caesar liked him. But in his latter days, part of which were passed in exile, and all without political consideration, he found time to compose those eloquent treatises on almost every subject, for which ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... instead of one, each buried up to the ears in folios, she would give vent to an irritable cough and retire discomfited. In reality Elsmere was thinking of nothing in the world but what Catherine Leyburn might be doing that morning. Judging a North countrywoman by the pusillanimous Southern standard, he found himself glorying in the weather. She could not ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... placed, probably by their own conduct from the beginning, but certainly by their violent and declamatory language, so full of invective and menace, their expensive and ostentatious preparations, and now their tame (and if it were possible they could be afraid), pusillanimous conclusion. He did not say a great deal, but what he did say was with energy and strong feeling, and these I am ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... wolf from the door until something better might present itself, she resolved to accept the terms of the straw manufacturer, and entered upon her duties. For a week or two the sum earned by the unfortunate lady was faithfully paid her, but on the third week the pusillanimous nature of the Jew cropped out. She had bargained to manufacture straw hats at eighty cents a dozen, or six and two-third cents each. At this rate, she managed to earn two dollars and fifty cents per week. Upon applying for her wages at the close of the third week, the employer informed her ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... puma of literature; for, although to those personally acquainted with the habits of this lesser lion of the New World it is known to possess a marvellous courage and daring, it is nevertheless always spoken of in books of natural history as the most pusillanimous of the larger carnivores. It does not attack man, and Azara is perfectly correct when he affirms that it never hurts, or threatens to hurt, man or child, even when it finds them sleeping. This, however, is not a full statement ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... three epochs we have named. During the first, our navigation sprang from infancy to manhood, surmounting all obstacles and bidding defiance to all foes. In the second, in the vigor of manhood, it was withdrawn by a mysterious and pusillanimous policy from the ocean. This very timidity invited aggression, seizures and war followed, and the growth was checked for nearly the fourth of a century. In the third epoch it resumed its onward march, stimulating improvement, and thereby accelerating its own progress, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... thing in his power to induce his guide to proceed, without waiting for the escort; but El Wordee and the shreef, who were the most pusillanimous rascals he ever met with, effectually dissuaded him ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... subversive of the whole ancient order of the world. No disaster of war, no calamity of season, could ever strike me with half the horror which I felt from what is introduced to us by this junction of parties, under the soothing name of peace. We are apt to speak of a low and pusillanimous spirit as the ordinary cause by which dubious wars terminated in humiliating treaties. It is here the direct contrary. I am perfectly astonished at the boldness of character, at the intrepidity of mind, the firmness of nerve, in those who are able with deliberation ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... a situation so seriously compromised, it became necessary to hold council; after a brief deliberation, I rejected far, far from me, as puerile and pusillanimous, the project suggested to me by my vanity at bay, that of giving up my lodgings, and even of leaving the district entirely. I made up my mind to pursue philosophically the course of my labors and my pleasures, to show a soul superior to circumstances, ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... it, but it meant nothing to him. He had been lolling upon the deck of the brigantine glaring at the yacht Lotus, hating her and the gay, well-dressed men and women he could see laughing and chatting upon her deck. They represented to him the concentrated essence of all that was pusillanimous, disgusting, loathsome in that other world that was as far separated from him as though he had been a grubworm in the manure pile back of ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... proposition that the "amazing" but, as the world has heretofore held, infamous Emperor Heliogabalus was a great religious reformer, who was in advance of his times; a third to present Lucrezia Borgia to the world as a much-maligned and very virtuous woman; and a fourth to tell us that the "ever pusillanimous" Barere, as he is called by M. Louis Madelin, was "persistently vilified and deliberately misunderstood." Biographical research has, moreover, destroyed many picturesque legends, with some of which posterity cannot part without ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... the spirit of its people. It was closely invested by the imperial troops, and fell before Gustavus could advance to relieve it. It was neglected by the electors of Saxony and Brandenburg, who were timid and pusillanimous, and it was lulled into false security by its strong position and defences. Not sufficient preparation for defence had been made by the citizens, who trusted to its strong walls, and knew that Gustavus was advancing to relieve it. But unexpectedly it was ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... press. They saw that it was a bold attack upon their idolatry, and that too by a black man who once lived among them. It was merely a smooth stone which this David took up, yet it terrified a host of Goliaths. When the fame of this book reached the South, the poor, cowardly, pusillanimous tyrants, grew pale behind their cotton bags, and armed themselves to the teeth. They set watches to look after their happy and contented slaves. The Governor of GEORGIA wrote to the Hon. Harrison Grey Otis, the Mayor of Boston, requesting him to suppress the Appeal. His Honor replied to the ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet
... submitted that the continuance of an armed possession actually jeopards the property you desire to protect. It is impossible but that such a possession, if continued long enough, must lead to collision. No people, not completely abject and pusillanimous, could submit, indefinitely, to the armed occupation of a fortress in the midst of the harbor of its principal city, and commanding the ingress and egress of every ship that enters the port, the daily ferry-boats that ply upon the waters moving but at the sufferance ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... distinguishing excellence of this instrument, like that of Magna Charta, consists in the wise and equitable protection which it affords to all classes of the community. [43] The General Privilege, instead of being wrested, like King John's charter, from a pusillanimous prince, was conceded, reluctantly enough, it is true, in an assembly of the nation, by one of the ablest monarchs who ever sat on the throne of Aragon, at a time when his arms, crowned with repeated victory, had secured to ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... the minutes passed, seemed to him the prospect of keeping the resolution which he had made when still pusillanimous, of acting on the determination to flee out of this night of miracle dumbly, unrecognized, like a thief. With the infallible conviction that he must be the bringer of delight even as he was the receiver of delight, ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... big-visioned men who saw that a nation was only as great as its industries. It was only in his later years that he loved power for the sake of power, and when, having outlived his generation, he had developed a rigidity of mind that made him view the forced compromises of the new regime as pusillanimous. ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... to search for the pirates, and give protection to the country vessels bringing up pepper from the southern factories. He took with him a fine squadron: the Greenwich, 42 guns; the Chandos, 40 guns; the Victory, 26 guns; the Britannia, 24 guns; the Revenge, 16 guns; and a fireship. The pusillanimous Upton was left behind, and, next to himself in command of the expedition, but in reality the moving spirit, he took the gallant Macrae. England and Taylor had meanwhile been constrained to run down to the Laccadives, for want ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... managed to shift the conversation to some other subject, in a quiet and playful manner. He was therefore not prepared for this vehement outburst; she had not only refused to comply with his demand, but taunted him with stinging words for his pusillanimous conduct. He knew her great ambition, and that the sole object of her life was to become mistress of Vellenaux, and to gain this she would risk everything. It was her weak point, the only vulnerable part he could ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... fortifications, equipped fleets, twice had Richmond at his fingers' ends, twice saw Providence take his side in the dispersion of Richmond's fleet, the overthrow of Buckingham's force; then was utterly ruined by the general treason of his most trusted nobles and his not unnatural scorn of a pusillanimous rival. In vain did he strive to be just and generous, vigilant and charitable, politic and enterprising. The poor excuse for Buckingham's desertion, the refusal of the grant of Hereford, is refuted by a Harleian MS. recording that royal munificence; ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... pretend lovers should always be quarreling to preserve their happiness. I only desire to impress it upon you, that all their misunderstandings should emanate from love itself; that the woman should not forget (by a species of pusillanimous kindness) the respect and attentions due her; that by an excessive sensitiveness, she does not convert her love into a source of anxiety capable of poisoning every moment of her existence; that by a scrupulous fidelity, she may not render her lover ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... nothing ahead of him but bitterness and cause for alarm, and, seeking consolation, he was forced to admit that only religion could heal, but religion demanded in return so arrant a desertion of common sense, so pusillanimous a willingness to be astonished at nothing, that he threw up ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... this formidable position that struck even the ignoble vulgar with awe and admiration. The brawling multitude could not but reflect with self-abasement upon their own pusillanimous conduct, when they beheld their hardy but deserted old governor, thus faithful to his post, like a forlorn hope, and fully prepared to defend his ungrateful city to the last. These compunctions, however, were soon ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... the Indians at the same time from different quarters, this numerous host was at once and utterly put to flight. In speaking of such a defeat, the modern reader must not be lavish of the words "cowardly," "pusillanimous," and the like, until, at least, he has well considered what it is to expose naked bodies to firearms, to the charge of steel-clad men on horseback, and to the clinging ferocity ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... be done. Even, on her behalf, if she were true to him, something must be done. Was it not pusillanimous in him to make no attempt to see his love and to tell her that he at any rate was true to her? These people, who were now his enemies, the lawyers and the Lovels, with the Countess at the head of them, had used him like a dog, had repudiated ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... their way out, in order to escape the fire that now seemed inevitable. The troops moved across the street, and faced toward the Bowery, obeying the word of command promptly, and marching with great steadiness, although the pelting they received was murderous. To retreat would be pusillanimous, to stand there and be pelted to death worse still; and General Hall finally gave the order to fire point blank, but to aim low, so that men would be wounded, rather than killed. The command fell ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com
|
|
|
