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More "Temerity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wonderful woman," he said with a conscious reddening of the face, yet looking me in the eyes with dogged temerity. "True, she is no longer young, and even rather elderly, as well as by no means good-looking; but as for loving a mere featherhead, a mere beauty—well, I never could understand that, for it is such a silly thing to do." (Dimitri said this as though he had just discovered ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... under the tree, taking with it the doomed native, whose last despairing cry was drowned in the roar of the rushing river. For a few moments the surviving Birwa remained kneeling on the inclined mass of timber, trembling in every limb, then, slowly and with every sign of temerity he began to make his way up ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... ignorance for any lawful or just cause of excuse, in that which shall be misordered by negligence, the burthen whereof shall light upon the negligent offending person, especially upon such as of their own heads, or temerity, will take upon him or them to do or to attempt anything, whereby prejudice may arise, without the commission of the agents as above is ...
— The Discovery of Muscovy etc. • Richard Hakluyt
... I suggested to Frances and Betty that I cross to Calais alone, regardless of the weather, leaving them at Dover till my return. But they would not be left behind, so we all set sail on a blustery morning and paid for our temerity with a day of suffering. In Calais we posted our letters, having learned that a messenger would leave that same day for Paris, and two days later ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... to Afick's cavalier; And much would have subjoined; but, on his side, That knight, with angry voice and haughty cheer, The pagan interrupted, and replied: " 'Tis sure temerity and madness sheer Moves you and whatsoever wight beside, That counsels matter, be it good or ill, Uncalled a counsellor's duty ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... the heroic in the enterprise. He might expose himself, unseasoned, to the poison of the Roman air, which in November lay, notoriously, much in wait. Fortune, however, favours the brave; and this adventurer, who took three grains of quinine a day, had at the end of a month no cause to deplore his temerity. He had made to a certain extent good use of his time; he had devoted it in vain to finding a flaw in Pansy Osmond's composition. She was admirably finished; she had had the last touch; she was really a consummate ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... had entered the presence of that terrible woman alone, at the dead hour of night! she had spoken bold and presumptuous words to that strange being whom even her own people hardly dared to approach uncalled for! Sick with terror at the consequences of her temerity, Catharine cast her trembling arms about the sleeping Indian girl, and, hiding her head in her bosom, wept and prayed till sleep came over her wearied spirit. It was late when she awoke. She was alone; the ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... outstretched hand, he walked to the closed door and opened it. The shrieks burst out afresh, and, as I recalled the appalling details of the scene which had occurred in this very room only five weeks ago, I shuddered at his temerity. ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... them, and their talk ceased. When it was over, Dorothy left the hall and sought her chamber. But in the fountain court her cousin overtook her, and had the temerity to resume the conversation. The moth would still at any risk circle the candle. It was a still night, and therefore not very cold, although icicles hung from the mouth of the horse, and here and there from the eaves. They stood by the marble basin, and the dim lights and scarce dimmer shadows ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... Slope, felt at the present rather abashed. He hardly knew how to frame his little request in language sufficiently modest. He had recognized and acknowledged to himself the necessity of shocking the bishop in the first instance by the temerity of his application, and his difficulty was how best to remedy that by his adroitness and eloquence. "I doubted myself," said he, "whether your lordship would have anyone immediately in your eye, and it is on this account that I venture to submit to you an idea that ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... stye a king to it—and in the doorway his—wife must I call her? Curious I suppose like all her sex she came down the strand to get a look at the white-skinned, light-haired stranger, and was rewarded for temerity in a most summary manner. The man, at first, seemed to expostulate with her, and so far as I could judge, ordered her back to her domicile; but as the lady did not seem prompt to obey the mandate, he ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... been some time since any man had had the hardihood or temerity to upbraid Madame Obosky. No male had cursed her since she left Petrograd,—and that was four years ago. She had been cursed often enough by her own sex,—professionally, of course,—but the men she had encountered since leaving Russia were either too chivalrous ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... rose and fell untiringly, flashing in the sunlight, now parrying a spear-thrust, and anon making a sweeping cut, and with every blow at least one savage had cause to regret his temerity. ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... and Jack Downing were not unsuitable figures here. The former heroically planted the bridges by which we cross to Goat Island and the Wake-robin-crowned genius has punished his temerity with deafness, which must, I think, have come upon him when he sunk the first stone in the rapids. Jack seemed an acute and entertaining representative of Jonathan, come to look at his great water-privilege. ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... his account of it, it was submitted to the general who was his friend; and the general carelessly passed one little statement which no Chief of Intelligence of any army would ever have passed and probably no correspondent of experience would have had the temerity to submit to the censor unless he wanted to be responsible for the death of men who were his hosts and his friends. For the writer stated that he saw the battle ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... in London. Beauchamp had not vacated either Holdesbury or the town-house; he was defying his uncle Everard, and Cecilia thought with him that it was a wise temerity. She thought with him passively altogether. On this occasion she had not to wait for directness in his eyes; she had to parry it. They were at a dinner-party at Lady Elsea's, generally the last place for seeing Lord Palmet, but he was present, and arranged things neatly ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to recall how long it was since they interested me. Nevertheless, I would not part with them. In my youth Ruskin's works were only for the wealthy, and I remember that my purchase of those volumes was an act of temerity, and even of sacrifice. And who but an ingrate would find fault with Ruskin, or would treat him lightly? With courage and eloquence he denounced dishonesty in the days when it was not supposed that cheating could be wrong if it were ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... 'I call it great temerity—and long to call it audacity—in Hewby,' resumed her father. 'I never heard such a thing—giving such a hobbledehoy native of this place such an introduction to me as he did. Naturally you were deceived as well as I was. I don't blame you at all, so far.' He went and searched ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... yours or mine. The inference of this is, that Fenwick has fallen under the ban of the same strange vengeance that overtook Van Fort and his wife. There is not the slightest doubt that he discovered the mine, and that he has not yet paid the penalty for his temerity." ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... protest, after having told them plainly that the balloon was leaky, the wind blowing out upon the lake, and that the ascent must necessarily be a peculiarly dangerous one. Nevertheless, they decided to take the hazard. Later they regretted their temerity. Husbanding his ballast as best he could, nevertheless, the loss of gas through leakage was such that by midnight, when well over the centre of Lake Ontario, the balloon descended into a rough, tempestuous ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... reflection I became thus, you shall speedily know: yet can you be at a loss to imagine it? You, who have passed through somewhat similar changes; who always made allowances for the temerity of youth, the fascinations of novelty; who always predicted that a few more years, the events of my peculiar destiny, the leisure of my long voyage, and that goodness of intention to which you were ever kind enough ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... with an air of indolent self-importance and consciousness of superiority, which inspired me with profound respect. If the ship had ever chanced to run down a row-boat, or a sloop, or any specimen of smaller craft, I should only have wondered at the temerity of any floating thing in crossing the path of such supreme majesty. The ship was leisurely chained and cabled to the old dock, ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... soon as they came across it, they would growl, bristle up, and then retreat with their tails between their legs. But one of his dogs ever really tried to master a wolf by itself, and this one paid for its temerity with its life; for while running a wolf in a canebrake the beast turned and tore it to pieces. Finally General Hampton succeeded in getting a number of his hounds so they would at any rate follow ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... tugging at the waistband of her habit, while Mrs. Spragg, relapsing from temerity to meekness, hovered about her with obstructive zeal. "If you'd only just let go of my skirt, mother—I can unhook ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... the affairs of Ireland might be justified upon the same grounds on which the argument for intervention in Spain was based. The King, never too fond of the brilliant commoner, whose presence in the ministry he considered scarcely less than a personal affront, had the temerity to criticise the policy which was so obnoxious to his fellow crowned heads. He thought that the English recognition of Spanish-American independence was as wicked as the French alliance in 1778 with ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... Mott, declared that God intended the male should dominate the female everywhere! Another was a son of Robert Purvis, who was earnestly and publicly rebuked by his father. Edward M. Davis, son-in-law of Lucretia Mott, also condemned the women for their temerity and severely criticised the resolutions, which demanded the same political rights for ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... alarmed at his own temerity, refused to accept the dismissal. "But, please, Sir," he begged; "I think the 'arf-crown ...
— The Lost House • Richard Harding Davis
... seem, had placed herself in an awkward predicament by her temerity. Sir Giles was not a man to threaten idly, as all who had incurred his displeasure experienced to their cost. His plan was to make himself feared; and he was inexorable, as fate itself, to a creditor. He ever exacted the full ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... Some of the descendants of the Irish redemptioners in Massachusetts are found among the prominent New Englanders of the past hundred years. The Puritans of Massachusetts extended no welcoming hand to the Irish who had the temerity to come among them, yet, as an historical writer has truly said, "by one of those strange transformations which time occasionally works, it has come to pass that Massachusetts today contains more people of Irish blood in proportion to the ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... American patriots had achieved during the whole of their protracted struggle with Spain. That victory had literally electrified the troops, and inspired them with a courage and contempt of their enemy, that frequently showed itself, as on this occasion, in acts of the greatest daring and temerity. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... carrying audacity to temerity, had continued its endeavor to envelop our left, had crossed the Grand Morin, and reached the region of Chauffry, to the north of Rebaix and of Esternay. It aimed then at cutting our armies off from Paris, in order to begin the investment of ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... know that you're too good and generous, That you will pardon my temerity, Excuse, upon the score of human frailty, The violence of passion that offends you, And not forget, when you consult your mirror, That I'm not blind, and ...
— Tartuffe • Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere
... intensity. 'Since the creation of the hierarchy,' Monsignor Talbot wrote, it is the greatest moment for the Church that I have yet seen.' It was the duty of the Chapter of Westminster to nominate three candidates for succession to the Archbishopric; they made one last effort, and had the temerity to place upon the list, besides the names of two Old Catholic bishops, that of Dr. Errington. It was a fatal blunder. Pius IX was furious; the Chapter had committed an 'insulta al Papa', he exclaimed, striking his breast three times in his rage. 'It was the Chapter that did it,' said Manning, afterwards; ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... nevertheless, to attract the king's attention. Louis walked through the pond, went up to the leper, gave him some money, took his hand and kissed it. "All present," says the chronicler, "crossed themselves for admiration at seeing this holy temerity of the king, who had no fear of putting his lips to a hand that none would have dared to touch." In such deeds there was infinitely more than the goodness and greatness of a kingly sold; there was in them that profound ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... importunities of a new desire. Yet, since the fear of missing what we seek must always be proportionable to the happiness expected from possessing it, the passions, even in this tempestuous state, might be somewhat moderated by frequent inculcation of the mischief of temerity, and the hazard of losing that which we endeavour to ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... saw the tiger the latter roared. But the old boar did not seem to mind the roar so very much as might have been anticipated. He actually repeated his 'hoo! hoo!' only in a, if possible, more aggressive, insulting, and defiant manner. Nay, more, such was his temerity that he actually advanced with a short, sharp rush in the direction of the striped intruder. Intently peering through the indistinct light, we eagerly watched the development of this strange rencontre. The tiger was now ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... the gods neglected. Their stimulating influence was invoked by the dictator to inspire the people with confidence, while he soothed them with the intimation that Flaminius had failed rather through overcourage and neglect of divine things than through mere plebeian temerity and ignorance. Fabius took care to impress it upon all that he himself would take full warning from the lesson. He moved that the Sibylline books should be consulted, and the Senate promptly acted upon the motion. These directed that a holy spring be proclaimed forthwith; ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... exact spot now occupied by Montgomery's Bank, and the proper authorities a few years later called the name of the place Montgomery, which it remains to this day. This explains why the superintendent of schools overlooked the temerity of Amzi's great-granddaughter in electing the Main Street fauna as the subject of her commencement address rather than her indebtedness to the poets, though it may not be illuminative as to the holes in Phil's stockings. But on this point ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... life he exposed with careless gaiety; but it was said that he was nervously anxious and pusillanimously cautious when his professional reputation was in danger. He was so much annoyed by these censures that he soon became, unfortunately for his country, bold even to temerity, [670] ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... skies had not assumed the splendour which now deepens around them with a tinge of purple, when I left the Turkish Divan, and, after dismissing my companions, proceeded ad libitum along the streets of Aleppo. You may feel surprise at my temerity, but, remember, that a person delegated by the Porte is as secure in the public walks as if he were honoured with the chains and straw of a dungeon in the Pacha's palace. But, as I pursued my path with sauntering steps, I heard the sound of a lute, accompanied ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various
... altitude, and no one overlooked his dignity. For twenty-eight years he had served Tinkletown and himself in the triple capacity of town marshal, fire chief and street commissioner. He had a system of government peculiarly his own; and no one possessed the heart or temerity to upset it, no matter what may have been the political inducements. It would have been like trying to improve the laws of nature to put a new man in his place. He had become a fixture that only dissolution could remove. Be it said, ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... always dressed in a blue blouse and the apparel of a man, saying that skirts were not made for bushes. She walked before me in the sand with a firm step and such a charming melange of feminine delicacy and childlike temerity, that I stopped every few moments to look at her. It seemed that, once started, she had to accomplish a difficult but sacred task; she walked in front like a soldier, her arms swinging, her voice ringing through the woods in song; suddenly she turned, came to me, and kissed me. This ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... class"! The phrase had brought up even Helen Starratt with a round turn. One might have called them both peasants with equal temerity. No, Hilmer had not made that point consciously, ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... Canadian militia had dispersed from sheer starvation. In spite of all, he had trusted to hold out till the winter frosts should drive the invaders from before the town; when, on that disastrous morning, the news of their successful temerity fell like ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... to one of his hostages, that he would, with no other attendants than his own servants, play a game of chess on Thurles Green, without fear of interruption. Carrying out this foolish wager, he accordingly went to his game at Thurles, and was very properly taken prisoner for his temerity, and made to pay a smart ransom to his captors. So runs the tale, which, whether true or fictitious, is not without its moral. Flan experienced greater difficulty with the tribes of Connaught, nor was it ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... to learn what unusual circumstance had caused him to retain her name, but lacked the temerity to ask. She would have been amazed, unbelieving, had he told her that it was her beauty; that he was clinging rather desperately to the unlovely number, which had no individuality and whose features ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... bewitched him on their first meeting no longer existed. An odd bashfulness overtook him. It did not seem to him that it could possibly have been he who had talked to her so boldly only the evening before. At the thought of his temerity he felt almost inclined to flee, yet he would not have deserted his post for worlds. The sound of a voice shot through his troubled thoughts like a beam of sunlight through ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... tribunes of the people were for enhancing the popular power (vested in them) by promoting the popular law. The senators, considering that there was enough and more than enough of frenzy in the multitude without any additional incitement, viewed with horror largesses and all inducements to temerity: the senators found in the consuls most energetic abettors in making resistance. That portion of the commonwealth therefore prevailed; and not for the present only, but for the forthcoming year they succeeded in bringing in M. Fabius, Kaeso's brother, as consul, and one still more detested ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... treacherous tribes; but the fears which troubled the minds of his comrades did not affect that of Hurtado. He learned that his wife was a captive in the hands of the cacique of Timbuez, and love and indignation in his soul suppressed all other feelings. With a temerity that seemed the height of imprudence, he sought alone the village of the chief and demanded the release of ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... that he had no wish to rob them of the glory and the reward they so well deserved. 'But,' he said, 'an army and a general have different functions. It is right that soldiers should be greedy for battle, but the general often does more good not by temerity but by foresight, deliberation and delay. I have done all I could to aid your victory with my sword: now I will serve you by the general's proper arts of calculation and strategy. The risks that face us are obvious. It is night; we know nothing of the lie of the city; ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... brought him a worthy executioner in Hather, the son of a prince whom he had slain. The young hero was hunting, and seeing the old man, he ordered two of his attendants to tease him. Both lost their lives for their temerity. The prince then advanced; and the old man, after relating his great actions, desired the former to kill him. To make the inducement stronger, he displayed the golden chain, which would be the reward of the deed; and to excite his rage, as well as avarice, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various
... learning never diminished. On the contrary, his zeal for philosophic studies grew, and with it his reputation in the learned world of Berlin. The Jewish thinker finally attracted the notice of Frederick the Great, whose poems he had had the temerity to criticise adversely in the "Letters on Literature" (Litteraturbriefe). He says in that famous criticism:[80] "What a loss it has been for our mother-tongue that this prince has given more time and effort to the French language. We should otherwise possess a treasure which ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... them at last, that I resolved they should bother me no longer. If they would not permit me to shoot one of the others, I was determined they themselves should not escape scot-free, but should pay dearly for their temerity and insolence. I resolved to put a bullet through one ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... "monstrosity" into the midst of her family circle,—she was appalled! Never had any one ventured to address her with such freedom; never before had she been treated by any one as though she were mere flesh and blood. She had not believed it possible that any one could have the temerity to regard her in the light of equality. One might almost have imagined that the formidable New England nurse had inspired her with dread, for she could not rouse herself, could not gain courage to face ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... lord come into the garden, to the roses and doves and—me?" she asked falteringly, her gaze held now irresistibly by the dark orbs above her. Then, afraid of her own temerity, she became white as death ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... to assemble our army in time, or to provide the means for supporting or moving them; a feather would have turned the balance last year, notwithstanding the powerful aid we received from abroad. Providence blinded our adversaries; to their temerity we owe ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various
... murmured, himself astonished at his own temerity in thus daring to address her. It was her grief which had brought her down to his level: the instinct of chivalry, of protection, of friendship which had raised ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... moved steadily forward to receive the onset of the French. Wolfe had been hit on the wrist, but hastily binding up the shattered limb with his handkerchief, he now placed himself at the head of the Louisburg Grenadiers, whose temerity against the heights of Beauport, in July, he had soundly rated. He had issued strict orders that his troops were to load with two bullets, and to reserve their fire till the enemy were at close quarters. He was nobly obeyed, though the French columns ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... respectable contour, would be apt to look a little "mussy;" but for the poor General's part, he looked hard enough, in all conscience, and had he known the effect such an appearance was likely to produce upon Mistress Hall, he would not have had the temerity of invading her premises. But the General's views were far above "buttons," leather, and prunella. Such a thing as paying deferential courtesies to a man's garments, was something not dreamed ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... a purely practical character." The Legion he considered a matter of immediate necessity, and he added, "The winged warrior of the air perches upon the pole of American liberty, and the beast that has the temerity to ruffle her feathers should be made to feel the power of ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... disengaged her hands, her chief sensation one of amusement, Abbey was in such an agony of blushing diffidence, all flustered at his own temerity. Also, she thought, a trifle precipitate. That was not the sort of wooing to carry her off her feet. For that matter she was quite sure nothing Paul Abbey could do or say would ever stir her pulses. She had to put an end to the situation, however. She took refuge ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... heightened colour and angry eyes, eluded Howe's familiarities by a backward step, and, raising the glass, defiantly gave, "Success to Washington!" Then, scared at her own temerity, she darted from the room, in her fright carrying away the tumbler of spirits. But she need not have fled, for her toast only called forth ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... at Crozier, surprised at her temerity, but Crozier only smiled gently. "It is in the desk there. Bring it to me, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... table. This at least seemed to be a tenable theory. That man should have the temerity to take liberties with elementary principles was quite within reason, man being an animal of rare conceit, and that the result would bring about destruction was not at ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... replied the minister, "and sometimes, it seems to me, the result is hideous. I don't mind people taking themselves out of their places; but if the particles of this mighty cosmos have been adjusted by the divine wisdom, what are we to say of the temerity that disturbs ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... country. Sir Ralph's object in landing, surely, could only have been to try whether he could surprise or intimidate the scanty garrison. Had he not reembarked very soon, he would have had to repent his temerity, for the shipping could not safely remain at anchor where there was no harbor and where a dangerous coast threatened destruction. His communication with the country was cut off by the armed peasantry, who rose en masse, and to the number of not less than 20,000 threw themselves into the fortress ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... the reproach which the attack on a character so amiable brought upon him, he tried all means of escaping. The name of Cleland was again employed in an apology, by which no man was satisfied, and he was at last reduced to shelter his temerity behind dissimulation, and endeavour to make that disbelieved which he never had confidence openly to deny. He wrote an exculpatory letter to the duke, which was answered with great magnanimity, as by a man who accepted his excuse without believing ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... perhaps by his "glossy, unfeeling diction"—there is not one of them who overstepped the bounds marked out for literary effort by the prevailing taste of the Augustan age, in its narrowest sense, without paying the price for his temerity in the sneers or reprobation of Johnson. Collins, it is true, escapes more lightly than the rest; but that is probably due to the affection and pity of his critic. Yet even Collins, perhaps the most truly poetic spirit of the century between Milton and Burns, is blamed ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... Dutchman of the name of Cornelius Vermuyden was sent for, that the work might be begun. For fifty years this man dug and intrigued. He was called in to be the engineer; he had the temerity to compete with the new landlords; he boasted a desire—less legitimate in an alien than in a courtier—to make a great fortune rapidly. He ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... side of the fence, as I told you in the beginning. By winking at lawlessness of all kinds, their own particular brands of lawlessness, by which they and their backers make money, go unquestioned. So far from helping, they'd make it exceedingly difficult for any sheriff who should have the temerity to come in here in the discharge of ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... were sent to England.... But when both my position and myself stand virtually ... impugned by proclamation, I am neither the sycophant nor the renegade to crouch down under unmerited imputations, come from whence they may, even though I should suffer imprisonment and ruin for my temerity. ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... weapon down on the table and hastily rearranged her dishevelled hair, and then she said in a still and ominous voice, more indicative of aggressive temerity than shrinking timidity: ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... no one seemed to have the temerity or the presence of mind to break, the Sheep Queen turned at the foot of the stairway, and the various groups separated on a common impulse to let her pass. She went straight to Prentiss, whose greeting was a smile ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... it that had dared to visit the island of the dead after dark? The bravest warriors were not capable of such temerity. Old men told how, away back in the past, some braves had ventured upon the island after nightfall, and had paid the awful forfeit. They were struck by unseen hands. Weapons that had lain for years beside the decaying corpses of forgotten warriors wounded ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... of the Duke of Marlborough; and there he assisted at the several sieges which were undertaken by the Confederate army after his arrival, viz., Mons, Douai, Bouchain, and several others. Yet though he was bold there, even to temerity, he never received so much as one wound through the whole course of the war, in which, after the siege of Lille, he commanded as a lieutenant, and ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... one. You like to exert your power and keep yourself in practice. You do not rejoice so much in overcoming your enemy as in overcoming. If a marble statue could show fight, you would just as soon fight it; but as it cannot, you take something that can, and something, besides, that has had the temerity to attack you, and so has made a lawful target of itself. But against your friend your hands are tied. He has injured you. He has disgusted you. He has infuriated you. But it was most Christianly done. You ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... was surprise rather than disapproval. The money was hers, of course. But that a woman should have the temerity to spend fifty pounds odd in a few months when she was already supplied with enough to ensure comfort for ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... and going over to Don Quixote, who was insisting upon the keeper's opening the cages, he said to him, "Sir Knight, knights-errant should attempt adventures which encourage the hope of a successful issue, not those which entirely withhold it; for valor that trenches upon temerity savors rather of madness than of courage; moreover, these lions do not come to oppose you, nor do they dream of such a thing; they are going as presents to his Majesty, and it will not be right to stop them or ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the Sawtooth had on its pay roll men who were paid to kill and to leave no trace. So many heedless ones crossed the Sawtooth's path to riches! Fred Thurman had been one; a "bull-headed cuss" who had the temerity to fight back when the Sawtooth calmly laid claim to the first water rights to Granite Creek, having bought it, they said, with the placer claim of an old miner who had prospected along the headwaters of Granite at the base ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... several centuries. Of even more permanent influence was his work upon the New Testament, in which he initiated the modern method of comparing manuscripts to find what the sacred text really is. At an earlier or later period he would doubtless have paid for his temerity with his life; fortunately, just at that time the ruling pontiff and his Contemporaries cared much for literature and little for orthodoxy, and from their palaces he could bid ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... of which we derived an advantage so odious to our neighbors, and, in their opinion, so oppressive? Should we be able to preserve it against the incumbent weight of Connecticut on the one side, and the co-operating pressure of New Jersey on the other? These are questions that temerity alone ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... don't know,' said Davies, evidently aghast at my temerity; but I did not mind that. If he roughed my suit, so much the better; I intended ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... into the hall, and passing by the panic-stricken Vasya, who took her for a wood-witch, ran into the drawing-room. Tatyana Borissovna, scared, tried to rise, but her legs sank under her. 'Tatyana Borissovna,' began the visitor in a supplicating voice, 'forgive my temerity; I am the sister of your friend, Alexy Nikolaevitch K——, and I have heard so much about you from him that I resolved to make your acquaintance.' 'Greatly honoured,' muttered the bewildered lady. The sister flung off her hat, shook her curls, seated ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... the Pedagogue of Councils and Fathers, in short, the God of all witnesses and ages, I have nothing to hope of your reading or hearing me. But if you are such as I have pictured you in my mind, philosophers, keen-sighted, lovers of the truth, of simplicity, of modesty, enemies of temerity, of trifles and sophisms, you will easily see daylight in the open air, seeing that you already see the peep of day through a narrow chink. I will say freely what my love of you, and your danger, and the importance of the matter ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... rotation, and tearing him from the charmed circle, but his arm was torn from him in the attempt, and clung to the dancer with the grip of life till his day was done. The man paid his life as the forfeit of his temerity. No effort was left untried to relieve the dancers, but every one failed. The sufferers themselves, however, appeared quite unconscious of what was passing. They seemed to be in a state of perfect somnambulism, and to be altogether unaware of the presence of any persons, ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... man, to what lengths will it go? what will be the limit to its boldness and temerity? For if it shall increase with each generation of man, and the successor shall be wicked a degree beyond his predecessor, it will be necessary for the Gods to add to the earth another land, which[34] will contain the unjust and the evil ones.—But ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... of being conceited and of talking about books which we had not read, a habit which I have never had the temerity to acquire. John Addington Symonds—an intimate friend of mine—had brought out a book of essays, which were not very good and ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... from the normal, even though it be in the forward direction and carrying with it certain privileges, yet entails its disadvantages. The man who breaks out is generally made to pay pretty dearly for his temerity: but, if there were none to advance and thus break out, civilisation itself would stagnate and there could be no progress. The artist, the dreamer, the visionary, the poet, the genius, these all are the advance ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... long-suffering bookworm, the reader, had turned, but one who at the present day drags from cobwebby corners the accusive mass of material on the subject, must seek to justify, not merely the loquacity of its authors, but one's own temerity as well, in forcing it a second time upon the jaded ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... with him. But even for self-defence there are other resources. "The powers of the mind are yet unfathomed." He tells the story of Marius, who overawed the soldier sent into his cell to execute him, with the words, "Wretch, have you the temerity to kill Marius?" Were we all accustomed to place an intrepid confidence in the unaided energy of the intellect, to despise force in others and to refuse to employ it ourselves, who shall say how far the species might be improved? But punitive coercion deals only with a man whose violence is over. ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... time, Dr. Elliotson and M. Dupotet continued the public exhibition at the hospital; while the credulous gaped with wonder, and only some few daring spirits had temerity enough to hint about quackery and delusion on the part of the doctors, and imposture on the part of the patients. The phenomena induced in two young women, sisters, named Elizabeth and Jane Okey, were so extraordinary ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... promoter would trouble himself to make such a showing as that to the American sucker? Even if such detailed information existed in the records of the average American mining concern, the sucker could not get access to the books even did he have the temerity to ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... autumn fixed by popular mandate when the straw hat is to be discarded for the season is hilariously celebrated in Wall Street by the destruction by the affronted populace of the straw hats of those who have had the temerity or the thoughtlessness to wear them. Coloured men in livery stables, however, sometimes wear straw hats the year round. To the habit generally of wearing a hat baldness is attributed by some. And the ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... of War awoke no less lively anger than the Prince de Polignac. He was a general of great merit, bold to temerity, brave to heroism, and a tactician of the first order. But his career had felt the vicissitudes of politics, and like so many of his contemporaries,—more, perhaps, than any of them,—he had played the most contradictory parts. Equally intrepid in the army ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... protect, is a flattering indication of her mental and moral integrity. Even a dull-witted person can follow a set rule; it requires some genius to make a legitimate exception, and it also involves some temerity. It is like gathering mushrooms; perhaps they are edible, perhaps they are poisonous; for the various fungi look very much alike. If it happens to be right, it is right; if it happens to be wrong, it ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... for the sake of its public utility standing forward in its encouragement and support, will endeavour to damp it by premature censure, ascribe the undertaking to vanity, or unworthiness, and if it should fail, be ready to aggravate the disappointment of the projectors with the galling imputation of temerity, impudence, or overweening self-conceit. The sympathy which mankind in general think it handsome to feel for unassuming merit, stumbling in its way through life by incautiously venturing upon ground untrodden ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... thy unbounded ambition hath been wrecked in the gulf of thy self-love, it would be proper that thou shouldst take in the sails of thy temerity, and cast the anchor of repentance in the port of sincerity and justice, which is the port of safety; lest the tempest of our vengeance make thee perish in the sea ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... in mind, I suggested to Frances and Betty that I cross to Calais alone, regardless of the weather, leaving them at Dover till my return. But they would not be left behind, so we all set sail on a blustery morning and paid for our temerity with a day of suffering. In Calais we posted our letters, having learned that a messenger would leave that same day for Paris, and two days later ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... taken and carried in the vessel has been able to discover any there, he shall be condemned in all the charges and damages, which he shall have caused, both to the owners of the vessels, and to the owners and freighters of the cargoes with which they shall be loaded, for his temerity in taking and carrying them into port; it being declared most expressly, that free vessels shall assure the liberty of the effects with which they shall be ladened, and that this liberty shall extend itself ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... bookworm, the reader, had turned, but one who at the present day drags from cobwebby corners the accusive mass of material on the subject, must seek to justify, not merely the loquacity of its authors, but one's own temerity as well, in forcing it a second time upon the jaded attention ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... mankind,—on our own and every foreign shore,—in the present and every future age,—will, I trust, best plead my excuse as a retired individual, and acquit me from the charge of presumption, in having had the temerity to submit my views to the consideration of so many illustrious personages, and for the earnest solicitude with which I have addressed myself to the humanity, the benevolence, and the justice ...
— An Appeal to the British Nation on the Humanity and Policy of Forming a National Institution for the Preservation of Lives and Property from Shipwreck (1825) • William Hillary
... no personal risk." He states that the reason it was sent, as well as the reason that it was refused, was because the Constitution was going to remain in the offing and capture the British ship if she proved conqueror. It is somewhat surprising that even James should have had the temerity to advance such arguments. According to his own account (p. 277) the Constitution left for Boston on Jan. 6th, and the Hornet remained blockading the Bonne Citoyenne till the 24th, when the Montagu, 74, arrived. During these eighteen days there could ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... stairs and was gone. Kendal walked back slowly into his room and stood meditating. It seemed to him that Wallace did not quite realise the magnificence of his self-devotion. 'For, after all, it's an awkward business,' he said to himself, shaking his head over his own temerity. 'How I am to come round a girl as frank, as direct, as unconventional as that, I don't quite know! But she ought not to have that play; it's one of the few good things that have been done for the English stage for ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... even if incapable of being opened, not positively detrimental to you as long as you are on the right side. But that feeling of a prison under the open air is very terrible, and is rendered almost agonizing by the prisoner's consciousness that his position is the result of his own imprudent temerity, of an audacity which falls short of any efficacious purpose. When hounds are running, the hunting man should always, at any rate, be able to ride on, to ride in some direction, even though it be in a wrong direction. ...
— Hunting Sketches • Anthony Trollope
... forms of their government, to dispose of large sums for secret service, without account. When, therefore, I advised the Peloponnesian War, I neither acted from private views, nor with the inconsiderate temerity of a restless ambition, but as became a wise statesman, who, having weighed all the dangers that may attend a great enterprise, and seeing a reasonable hope of good success, makes it his option to fight for dominion and glory, rather than sacrifice both ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... raising many to loftier conceptions of duty, and to a higher and purer life? And might he not now, by a grand attack upon Pharisaism in its central stronghold, destroy its prestige in the eyes of the people, and cause Israel to adopt a nobler religious and ethical doctrine? The temerity of such a purpose detracts nothing from its sublimity. And if that purpose should be accomplished, Jesus would really have performed the legitimate work of the Messiah. Thus, from his own point of view, Jesus was thoroughly consistent and rational in announcing himself ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... first time in the history of his administration, that solemn ceremony was rudely halted. An excited aide, trembling at his own temerity, burst upon the ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... of England, is precisely in the same predicament, not only in that country but in the United States, Mr. Talbot being patentee in both. He is a man of some wealth, I believe, but he demands so high a price for a single right in this country, that none can be found who have the temerity to purchase. ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling
... interview are expounded and enlarged upon in this chapter. Agents sent by Louis had tempted the people of Liege to rebel against their superior, Duke Charles, and persecute and murder their Bishop. But Louis was not prepared for their acting with such promptitude. They flew to arms with the temerity of a fickle rabble, took the Bishop prisoner, menaced and insulted him, and tore to pieces one or two of his canons. This news was sent to the Duke of Burgundy at the moment when Louis had so unguardedly placed himself in his power; and the consequence was that Charles ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... them down, using dogs trained for the purpose to pull them to the ground. The dogs should be taught to reserve their attack until the emu is thoroughly tired out, and then to spring upon the neck; but an unwary puppy will bitterly rue his temerity should he come within reach of the powerful legs, which deal kicks fiercely around, and of sufficient power to disable any assailant. The ostrich always kicks forward, in which he differs from the emu, whose ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... chided his temerity, the very heavens split and shattered all sound with rending uproar. Coaley squatted, stopped and stood shaking, his heart pounding so that Lance felt its tremulous tattoo against his thigh. The rumbling after-note of ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... pockets of a nomad, neither lawful art nor occult science can, with certainty, discover what he will do with it.—Mr. Vance narrowly escapes well-merited punishment from the nails of the British Fair—Lionel Haughton, in the temerity of youth, braves the dangers of a ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... down and dropped his eyes upon the floor, as though ashamed that his temerity should have carried him so far. There was a strange little hush filling the courtroom. It was Judge ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... so long prevailed,' said a nun, who was called sister Frances, 'that the chateau was haunted, that I was surprised, when I heard the Count had the temerity to inhabit it. Its former possessor, I fear, had some deed of conscience to atone for; let us hope, that the virtues of its present owner will preserve him from the punishment due to the errors of the last, if, indeed, he ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... enjoyed my ..." Mr. Pellew had started to say that he enjoyed himself there. He got alarmed at his own temerity and backed out ... "my cigars there," said he. A transparent fraud, for the possessive pronoun does not always sound alike. "My," is one thing before "self," another before "cigars." Try it on ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... Brice was in San Francisco. But although successful and the bearer of the treasure, it is doubtful if he approached this end of his journey with the temerity he had shown on entering the robbers' valley. A consciousness that the methods he had employed might excite the ridicule, if not the censure, of his principals, or that he might have compromised them ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... his head. "I am sometimes disposed to throw aside the brush in disgust, at the temerity of man, which can attempt to copy even what is most noble, in the magnificent variety, and ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... excuse the seeming discourtesy of an invalid, gentlemen?" he said; "but I am suffering from undue temerity in the interior ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... girl gasped, wide eyed at my temerity. But Prof. Darmstetter's shrewd little eyes twinkled ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... be hoped the shade of Burns will forbear to haunt those who have the temerity to appropriate the sacred name of Haggis for anything innocent of the time-honoured liver and lights which were the sine qua non of the great chieftain. But in Burns' time people were not haunted by the horrors of trichinae, ...
— Reform Cookery Book (4th edition) - Up-To-Date Health Cookery for the Twentieth Century. • Mrs. Mill
... that he would be well advised to climb down; so that it was not until he saw the flashes of flame leap from the pieces as they were all fired simultaneously that he realised the full extent of his temerity. ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... one else. And if the other woman had, by some strange freak of chance, a scar also on her left foot, then the otherwise unaccountable apathy he had shown at being told of this distinctive mark, as well as his temerity in afterwards taking it as a basis for his false identification, becomes equally consistent and natural; and as for the marks of the rings, it would be strange if such a woman did not wear rings ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... Indianapolis, and at the end of ten days all was ready for the money to be delivered. Dic again asked for Rita, and Mr. Bays was for delivering the girl at once. His new venture at Indianapolis had stimulated his sense of self-importance, and he insisted, with a temerity never before dared, that Dic, whom he truly loved, should have the daughter whom they each loved. But the Chief Justice would agree to nothing more than an extension of the armistice, and graciously consented that Dic might visit ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... Alas! for my temerity in doing so; for no sooner had I crossed the threshold than the door by which I had entered closed with a click unlike any I had ever heard before, and when I turned to see what it meant, another click came from the opposite side of the room, and I perceived, with a benumbed sense ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... neither do I. He has found by studying himself and other people, a sane and salutary way of sex living, and fearlessly has prescribed this to a limited circle for a long time. I congratulate him for his perspicacity, temerity, and wisdom. He offers no apology, and there is no occasion for any. He says, "All has been set down in love, by a lover, for the sake of lovers yet to be, in the hope of helping them on toward a divine consummation." That is, he has developed these ideas ...
— Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living • H.W. Long
... under a deliberative aspect. An Elizabeth in brain and a Mary Stuart in spirit, she often performed actions of the greatest temerity with a manner of extreme discretion. Many of her thoughts were perfect syllogisms; unluckily they always remained thoughts. Only a few were irrational assumptions; but, unfortunately, they were the ones which most frequently ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... search. "That vision is now explained," muttered he; "the body is removed, but by whom? Death! can I doubt? It must be Lady Rookwood—who else can have any interest in its removal. She has acted boldly. But she shall yet have reason to repent her temerity." As he continued his search, his companions silently followed. Suddenly he stopped, and, signifying that all was finished, they not unwillingly quitted this abode of horror, ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Montpensier had the temerity to laugh; but for the rest, a sort of little groan ran through the company. Mme. de Mayenne bade sharply, "Peace, Blanche!" Mme. de Brie, red with anger, flamed out on her and ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... and ejected from solar volcanoes, of which the burning mountains of the earth convey but a feeble idea. Hence observations become necessary as to the nature of the incandescent matter of the sun; and when we remember the immense distance of that body, such an attempt may well appear to be one of temerity. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... evils of our colonial system, points out the remedies by which these evils may be counteracted, that thus the rule of the 'English in America' may be something better than a history of the blunders, the follies, and the ignorant temerity of colonial secretaries."—Irish ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... the first alarm, but the threats of the barbarians and their intolerable arrogance roused the courage of the Roman soldiers and inflamed their passions, for the enemy plundered and devastated all the country around, and often attacked the ramparts with much insolence and temerity, so that the words and indignant expressions of the soldiers were repeated to Marius. The soldiers asked, "If Marius had discovered any cowardice in them, that he kept them from battle, like women under ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... was the only person who ever spoke to Angela of her religion. With extreme courtesy, and with gentle excuses for his temerity in touching on so delicate a theme, he ventured to express his abhorrence of the superstitions interwoven with the Romanist's creed. He talked as one who had sat at the feet of the blind poet—talked sometimes in the ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... Miss Enid stood aghast at his temerity, and waited hourly for the lightning of Madam's wrath to annihilate him. But, though the bolts rained about him, ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... been torn out by a hurried hand. What name was it that had been in those hundreds of volumes? For what reason had it been so carefully removed? The girl had often speculated thereon, and fitted theory after theory; but never yet, wilful as she was, had she had the temerity to ask the only person who could ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... the uncanny hint of volcanic might effused by the giant—volcanic, yet quiescent for the moment. His lips opened to speak; and she sprang to the reaction. Now a fresh fury seized her at the slave's temerity; she flung off his hand, ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... battle-field—not one of which was won without a grievous sacrifice of the best blood of America. In this band of gallant men, it is not too much to say, General Pierce was as distinguished for what we must term his temerity in personal exposure, as for the higher traits of leadership, wherever there was an ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... rickety to a degree. To help you to estimate her conduct at its full temerity I may mention that Miss Limpenny had never attempted the climb before in her life. But whatever qualms she may have felt, they did not appear in her behaviour. Gingerly, but without hesitation, and clutching the telescope, which impeded her as an ice-axe the rock-climber, she essayed ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... fearful in what manner the event might answer the expectations which this wished distinction declared, he issued from his tent like a youthful Mars,—or rather like the Spartan Isadas,—trembling at the dazzling effects of his temerity, and hiding his valor and his blushes beneath the waving plumes of his helmet. Kosciusko, who was to head the party, observed this modesty with pleasure, and shaking him warmly by the hand, said, "Go, Thaddeus; ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... monster, this oppressor and enemy of the citizens. The succeeding ranks of "Greens" followed the example, and from the midst of a troop of young married men, members in the gymnasium of the society of the Dioscuri, one foolhardy spirit had the reckless temerity to blow a shrill, far-sounding whistle ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... juncture Jean in his earnestness and quite without thought grasped her hand. The contact checked the flow of his speech and suddenly made him aghast at his temerity. But the girl did not make any effort to withdraw it. So Jean, inhaling a deep breath and trying to see through his bewilderment, held on bravely. He imagined he felt a faint, warm, returning pressure. ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... those whom the contests with Arius led into still greater errors may undoubtedly be placed Photinus, bishop of Sirmium, who in the year 343 advanced opinions concerning God equally remote from those of the orthodox and those of the Arians. The temerity of the man was chastened not only by the orthodox, in their councils of Antioch in 345, of Milan in 347, and of Sirmium, but also by the Arians in a council held at Sirmium in 351. He was deprived of his office, and died in exile in the year 372. After ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... the years to come. But it is a doctrine which cannot be shaken. The constant and universal action of variation, the struggle for existence, and the "survival of the fittest," few who are competent to grasp will have the temerity to doubt. And to many, that lies within it as a doctrine, and forms the fibre of its fabric, is the existence of a continuity, an unbroken stream of unity running from the base to the apex of the entire organic ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... sent him into the army then in Flanders, under the command of the Duke of Marlborough; and there he assisted at the several sieges which were undertaken by the Confederate army after his arrival, viz., Mons, Douai, Bouchain, and several others. Yet though he was bold there, even to temerity, he never received so much as one wound through the whole course of the war, in which, after the siege of Lille, he commanded as a lieutenant, and that ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... belligerent ships, or firing into them, as was the case in the Nile, when Sir James Saumarez, in the Orion, was under the necessity of sinking the Artemise, which he did with one broadside, as a reward for her temerity. Under this pax in bellum sort of compact we might have come off scot-free, had we not partaken very liberally of the shot intended for larger ships, which did serious ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... always be reserved for those who can read him in French, it might be possible at least to convey something of his originality and blithe spirit through the medium of light verse. In making the attempt I am fully aware of my temerity, and the criticism it will invite. To excuse the one and to meet the other I have taken refuge in the term "adaptation"—even though the word applies only in part to my paraphrases. Some of the Fables in this book are translations ...
— Fables in Rhyme for Little Folks - From the French of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... lawlessness of all kinds, their own particular brands of lawlessness, by which they and their backers make money, go unquestioned. So far from helping, they'd make it exceedingly difficult for any sheriff who should have the temerity to come in here in the discharge ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... most useful remedies have been discovered by quacks. Do not therefore be afraid of conversing with them, and of profiting by their ignorance and temerity. Medicine has its pharisees as well as religion. But the spirit of this sect is as unfriendly to the advancement of medicine as it is to Christian charity. In the pursuit of medical knowledge let me advise you to converse with nurses and old women. They will often suggest facts in the ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... article to which my signature was attached. "I read it with great pleasure," he wrote, "and remembered under its influence our lively conversation by your bedroom fire. The consequence of this has been that I begin to measure the temerity of my having saddled you with a knowledge that you may find something of a burden. Now that the fit's over I can't imagine how I came to be moved so much beyond my wont. I had never before mentioned, no matter in what state of expansion, the ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... knight-errant of old strive harder for the hand of his lady-love than did I during that weary fortnight, if a hippogriff had been the animal I bestrode, instead of being, as it was, an old wall-eyed grey, I could not have felt more misgivings at my temerity, or more proud of my achievement. In the first three days the unaccustomed exercise proved so severe, that when I reached the deanery I could hardly move, and crossed the floor, pretty much as a pair ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... the contagion of sneering censure, and caused the Port Folio to say, in 1811: "American critics seem, in almost all cases, to have entered into a confederacy to exterminate American poetry. If an individual has the temerity to jingle a couplet, and to avow himself descended from Americans, the offence is absolutely unpardonable." When Fenimore Cooper published his first novel, he suppressed his name and wrote ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... take it? I replied that I would try if they would send slowly. I succeeded in getting the message and ran out with it. I waited anxiously for Mr. Brooks to come in, and told him what I had dared to do. Fortunately, he appreciated it and complimented me, instead of scolding me for my temerity; yet dismissing me with the admonition to be very careful and not to make mistakes. It was not long before I was called sometimes to watch the instrument, while the operator wished to be absent, and in this way I learned the art ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... they rather shrank from her, as if fearful that the dust of their garments would soil hers. Her presence to me at that moment was as if an angel had been sent from Heaven to encourage me in my anti-slavery endeavors. She came day after day thereafter, and at last I had the temerity to ask her name. She gave it—Sally Holly. "A daughter of Myron Holly?" said I. "Yes," she answered. I understood it all then, for he was amongst the foremost of the men in western New York in the anti-slavery movement. His ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... of force and of success: the men kept their word and taught me all their tricks, all their exploits. Soon I surpassed my teachers in address and in temerity. I soon became the glory of their band. In the summertime we wandered over the vast Lombard plains and the low Tuscan mountains; in winter we displayed our prowess in Rome, in Naples, in Palermo; we ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... their air and bearing, he called them to him and asked them some questions, to assure himself that they had been properly taught by the recalcitrant monk whom now he had resolved to find and to punish for his rebellion and temerity. ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... protested, there suddenly appeared a red star, that, blazing like a meteor with a surpassing brightness for a few seconds, was presently swallowed up into inky darkness again. Upon another occasion a fiddler, returning home after midnight from Sprowle's Neck, seeing the church alight, had, with a temerity inflamed by rum, approached to a nearer distance, whence, lying in the grass, he had, he said, at the stroke of midnight, beheld a multitude of figures emerge from the building, crying most dolorously, ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... himself as intolerantly strict in form as he was licentious in practice. He forbade the burial of a comedian's remains. Madame Moliere went to throw herself at the feet of Louis XIV., but with impolitic temerity her petition stated, that if her deceased husband had been criminal in composing and acting dramatic pieces, his majesty, at whose command and for whose amusement he had done so, must be criminal ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... saying "Oh," but Gibson had never, never in his whole life heard any woman say it as Phoebe said it then. It meant that she was staggered at anybody's having the temerity to want anything all ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... continually lose, but the State is always a gainer; such a people ought therefore to encourage and do honor to boldness in commercial speculations. But any bold speculation risks the fortune of the speculator and of all those who put their trust in him. The Americans, who make a virtue of commercial temerity, have no right in any case to brand with disgrace those who practise it. Hence arises the strange indulgence which is shown to bankrupts in the United States; their honor does not suffer by such ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... most naive unsophisticated and gushing of travellers, has ever had the temerity to signalize Rotterdam as a city of celebrated art. But it is a fondly interesting place nevertheless, far more so indeed than many a less lively mart ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... from the dungeon. As he gazed, it suddenly occurred to him that the same friendly shelter which had enabled him to leave the neighbourhood of the convent unperceived, put it in his power to return thither without detection. Bold to temerity, and forgetful of the Mochuelo's injunctions to expose himself to no risk of discovery, Paco no sooner conceived the project than he proceeded to execute it. The convent, it will be remembered, was situated at the extremity of the valley; the pass or rather ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... probably, of the race of Amalek, a people against which Jehovah had proclaimed a perpetual and exterminating war. If these were his motives, he is rather to be extolled for his heroism, than censured for his temerity. A man of God should persevere in his duty at all hazards, unseduced by the flatteries, and unawed by the threats of mankind. He must contend against spiritual wickedness, oppose internal lust, and resist external temptation. He must brave alike caresses and sneers; ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... temerity to laugh. "That sounds good to me," he told her unsympathetically. "Now maybe you'll come down and keep house for me and let that pinnacle go to thunder. It's no good anyway, and I told you so long ago. That whole eighty acres of yours wouldn't support ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... wretches, and tell their condition to the inattentive world; perhaps perish yourself from contagion, before you have time to tell it; and leave your afflicted friends to lament your untimely fate, and the ungrateful Publick to deride your temerity!' What force of intellect, what dignity of soul were required to prevent a mortal from yielding to remonstrances so engaging! The divine energy of Genius and of Virtue enabled HOWARD to foresee, that the sanctity of his pursuit would supply him with strength and powers ...
— The Eulogies of Howard • William Hayley
... was superior to it in one point, inasmuch as it was the first, and was, therefore, more likely to cement a reconciliation between the refractory aristocracy and the exasperated people. It had been asked, he continued, why they had the temerity to legislate in haste? He did not mean to dispute that a hurried settlement at a season of excitement might not be wholly unaccompanied with evil; but if so, the responsibility must be with those who ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Army, carrying audacity to temerity, had continued its endeavor to envelop our left, had crossed the Grand Morin, and reached the region of Chauffry, to the south of Rebaix and of Esternay. It aimed then at cutting our armies off from Paris, in order to begin the investment ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... would seem strange just at first," ventured Margaret, amazed at her own temerity and looking up at her guardian shyly. "I mean not ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... not my lord come into the garden, to the roses and doves and—me?" she asked falteringly, her gaze held now irresistibly by the dark orbs above her. Then, afraid of her own temerity, she became white as death under ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... occupation of Vienna was due to the successful temerity of Lannes and Murat, two men alike distinguished for courage and daring spirit. A bold artifice of these generals prevented the destruction of the Thabor bridge at Vienna, without which our army would have experienced considerable ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... officer, who had been at the enemy's camp with a flag, opposed it, as did also Colonel Dennison and several others, and Colonel Butler rather declined it; but, among others who were in favor of it, a certain captain, (who never lived to lament his temerity,) urged it with so much vehemence, that the commandant consented. A Mr. Ingersol, then in the garrison with a flag from the enemy, had been some time their captive, and was intimately acquainted with their strength. He did his utmost to deter them from the rash attempt, ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... or "when I was young," which is generally the prelude to similar narratives, Emma suddenly started up, and fixing an incredulous gaze upon our dignified relative, exclaimed: "But were you ever young, grandmother? I mean," she continued, a little frightened at her own temerity, "were you ever as little ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... establishments; nor might they even enter into the dwelling-places of those who came under the new charter. Severe penalties were to be imposed on those who ventured to speak ill of the keeper of a bathing establishment; he might even lose his head for such temerity; anyway, his property would go to the senior member of the ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... me an unpardonable wrong by marrying the daughter of a drunken pauper," Mr. Talboys would answer to any one who had the temerity to speak to him about George, "and from that hour I had no longer a son. I wish him no ill. He is simply dead to me. I am sorry for him, as I am sorry for his mother who died nineteen years ago. If you talk to me of him as you would talk of the dead, I shall be ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... our territory?" exclaimed one, advancing before the other. "Away—away—away! We are monarchs and rulers here. This land is ours, won by our trusty swords and battle-axes. Away, I say! or meet the consequences of your temerity." ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... in the sitting of the Academy in 1767. Those thoughts, however, would have defied the most squeamish mind, the most shadowy susceptibility. The panegyrist unrolls with emotion the frightful misfortunes that assailed France during the reign of King John. The temerity, the improvidence of that monarch; the disgraceful passions of the King of Navarre; his treacheries; the barbarous avidity of the nobility; the seditious disposition of the people; the sanguinary depredations of the great companies; the ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... however, unmingled with censure. The successful result alone had justified such insane and desperate conduct, for had he been slain or overcome, said the commander-in-chief, there would have been few to applaud his temerity. Alexander gaily replied by assuring his uncle that he had felt sustained by a more than mortal confidence, the prayers which his saintly wife was incessantly offering in his behalf since he went to the wars being a sufficient support and shield ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... where we have observed a particular event to follow upon another, we are not entitled to form a general rule, or foretell what will happen in like cases; it being justly esteemed an unpardonable temerity to judge of the whole course of nature from one single experiment, however accurate or certain. But when one particular species of events has always, in all instances, been conjoined with another, we make no longer any scruple of foretelling ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... will either say that the cause that he proposes holds good so far as regards the things that have been said, and introduce relation, abolishing an absolute standpoint; or if he accepts anything by hypothesis, he will be attacked by us. Therefore it is perhaps possible to put the temerity of the Dogmatics to shame in ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick
... and, my information being of the most unreliable description (derived invariably from the owners), I feel sure that those of your readers who follow my tips will have no cause to regret their temerity, as, being like all women, nothing if not original, I intend to tip, not the probable winner, but the probable last horse in ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... of the Revolution; and every citizen of Paris well knew the doom which awaited him if brilliant lights were not burning at his windows. It was then voted, and with enthusiasm, that the Convention should go out and fraternize with the multitude. Who would have the temerity, in such an hour, to oppose the affectionate demonstration? The degraded Assembly obeyed the mandate of the mob, and marched into the streets, where they were hugged in the unclean arms and pressed to the foul bosoms of beggary, and ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... England.... But when both my position and myself stand virtually ... impugned by proclamation, I am neither the sycophant nor the renegade to crouch down under unmerited imputations, come from whence they may, even though I should suffer imprisonment and ruin for my temerity. ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... came to her mind a recollection of Bukawai, the unclean, who dwelt in a cave in the hillside to the north, and who it was well known entertained devils in his evil lair. Few, if any, had the temerity to visit old Bukawai, firstly because of fear of his black magic and the two hyenas who dwelt with him and were commonly known to be devils masquerading, and secondly because of the loathsome disease ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to him as he sat gazing across the abyss that his temerity in proclaiming himself the Messiah was punished enough by crucifixion: the taking from him of the one thing that crucifixion had left behind often put the thought into his mind that God held him accursed; ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... Tarzan's keen eyes searched the arid landscape before him. In the distance he discerned the ragged tortuous lines that marked the winding course of the hideous gorges which scored the broad plain at intervals—the terrible gorges that had so nearly claimed his life in punishment for his temerity in attempting to invade the sanctity of ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... fallen tree, and his head bent slightly to one side, as if listening for a reply. But no reply came. A squirrel ran down the trunk of a neighbouring pine, and paused, with tail and ears erect, and its little black eyes glittering as if with surprise at the temerity of him who so recklessly dared to intrude upon and desecrate with his powerful voice the deep solitudes of the wilderness. They stood so long thus that it seemed as though the little animal and the man had been petrified by the unwonted sound. If so, the spell was quickly broken. The ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... quickly, that she thought she should faint. To think that the choice of a partner in the dance at the Abbey had been offered her, and that she should venture to choose Master Richard Assheton! She could scarcely credit her own temerity. And then to think that she should give him a flower, and, more than all, that he should kiss her hand in return for it! She felt the tingling pressure of his lips upon her finger still, and her little ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the showers of abuse levelled at me. As my appealing to a magistrate would be of little avail in the case of a family jar, and would certainly have entailed inconvenience and delay, I did not carry my threat into execution, wondering, at the same time, at my temerity in interfering in a quarrel between man and wife, which I now practically learnt, for the first time in my life, was to incur the unmitigated anger of both, and to learn how true it ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... note is mere political, an ebullition of party rage, in which Mr. Smith abuses the present ministry with great bitterness, talks of "wickedness," "weakness," "ignorance," "temerity," after the usual fashion of opposition pamphlets, and clamours loudly against what, with an obstinacy of misrepresentation hardly to be credited, he persists in terming the "persecuting laws" against the Roman Catholics.... He is very anxious that his political ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... is industrious. It is all business. It was an enormous risk, rebelling against his party, and leaving me, and going over; but his temerity justified itself, and it didn't matter to him that people said he went over to get office as we were going out. He got the office- and people forget so soon. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... supreme moment my brother had the temerity to argue with the boatman over the fare. Being now in the last stage of tender-hooks, I adjured him to give the man double what he asked, if only to be free. But the brother was calm, and for once—he was right! His display of want ...
— My Adventures as a Spy • Robert Baden-Powell
... fairly acquitted of presumption, and however I may fall, that I was strongly pressed to try by Mrs. Thrale, and by Mr. Sheridan, the most successful and powerful of all dramatic living authors, will abundantly excuse my temerity. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... the pride of his heart, to boast should be his daughter's property when she found a man to her mind. I repeat it, to be matter of profound astonishment and intense wonder, that Nathaniel Pipkin should have had the temerity to cast his eyes in this direction. But love is blind; and Nathaniel had a cast in his eye; and perhaps these two circumstances, taken together, prevented his seeing the ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... Act of Parliament was usually taken by the husband; not until 1801 did a woman have the temerity so to assert her rights. The fact is, ever since the dawn of history society has, with its usual double standard of morality for men and women, insisted that while the husband must never tolerate infidelity on the ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... Some of his more attached parishioners considered him as too rash in opposing the ancient faith of their fathers; and though they honoured the moral intrepidity of their pastor, they could not avoid entertaining and expressing fears that he would one day fall a victim to his temerity, and be torn to pieces in the glen of the Cloght-dearg, or some of those other haunted wilds, which he appeared rather to have a pride and pleasure in traversing alone, on the days and hours when ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... age to look my vanities in the face; I outfaced them and they quailed, but persisted, surviving for my discomfort to this day. Here is the confession: It was not until my arrival at the chateau that I realised what temerity it involved to dine there in evening clothes purchased, some four or five or six years previously, in the economical neighbourhood of the Boulevard St. Michel. Yet the things fitted me well enough; were clean and not shiny, having been worn no more than a dozen times, I ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... customary with people when they suspect the immediate presence of Satan; or whether, according to another custom, he had got courageously drunk at the smithy, I will not pretend to determine; but so it was that he ventured to go up to, nay, into, the very kirk. As luck would have it, his temerity came off unpunished. ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Mr. Tutt. "Who shall ever again have the temerity to suggest that the jury system is not the ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... apogee of its beauty, and that the smallest foreign loan would spoil it, but I make bold to assert that this is prejudice, for, although it certainly is the most clear, the most logical of all languages, it would be great temerity to affirm that it can never go farther or higher than it has gone. We all recollect that, in the days of Lulli, there was but one opinion of his music, yet Rameau came and everything was changed. The new impulse given to the French nation may open new and unexpected ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the Pacific seas, and so complete the tour of the world. He did nothing of the kind, but continued on his way to the southern regions. Where was he going to? To the pole? It was madness! I began to think that the Captain's temerity justified Ned Land's fears. For some time past the Canadian had not spoken to me of his projects of flight; he was less communicative, almost silent. I could see that this lengthened imprisonment was weighing upon him, and I felt that rage was burning ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... colour and angry eyes, eluded Howe's familiarities by a backward step, and, raising the glass, defiantly gave, "Success to Washington!" Then, scared at her own temerity, she darted from the room, in her fright carrying away the tumbler of spirits. But she need not have fled, for her toast only called forth an ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... than done. I went down to the edge of the river and drew the boat inshore by the chain that held it. Then I stepped gingerly in, half-frightened at my own temerity, and sat down. The boat glided slowly out again to the length of its chain and then became motionless. But it was motionless only for a moment or two. A splash in the water drew my attention to the chain. It had been insecurely fastened to a branch of the willow; ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... Nerle's made the two damsels laugh at the same time, and their sweet laughter sounded like rippling strains of harmonious music. But the two Ki-Ki frowned angrily, and the two Ki looked at the boy in surprise, as if wondering at his temerity. ...
— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum
... artful wretch that you are! learn to be more respectful! Are my passions to be wound and unwound by an insolent domestic? Do you think I will be an instrument to be played on at your pleasure, till you have extorted all the treasures of my soul? Begone, and fear lest you be made to pay for the temerity you have ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... 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, and the Frank's temerity became the talk of the desert. Burton now put the two women, the Kalandar, the camels, and the baggage, under the care of a guide, and sent them to Zeila, while he himself and the men made straight for Berbera. The journey, which led them past Moga's tooth [159] and Gogaysa, was a terrible one, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... Erh arrived, she obtained a fair insight (into lady Feng's designs), so when she heard the present remarks, she grasped a still more correct idea of things. But perceiving an angry look about T'an Ch'un's face, she did not have the temerity to behave towards her as she would, had she found her in the high spirits of past days. All she did therefore was to stand aloof with her arms against her sides and to wait in rigid silence. Just at that ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... capture. She saw the fort surrounded by the "deputies." She saw the Padre shackled before he could rise from his blankets. She saw Buck, under cover of ruthless firearms, hurl himself to the rescue and pay for his temerity with his life. In a sudden overwhelming passion of appeal she flung herself on her knees ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... were heard that the Sawtooth had on its pay roll men who were paid to kill and to leave no trace. So many heedless ones crossed the Sawtooth's path to riches! Fred Thurman had been one; a "bull-headed cuss" who had the temerity to fight back when the Sawtooth calmly laid claim to the first water rights to Granite Creek, having bought it, they said, with the placer claim of an old miner who had prospected along the headwaters of Granite at the base of ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... Xepakay Seated on the roots, under the shade of a ceiba tree, they ate chile, and had shellfish and fish, as they liked. Then the people of the place, coming above the plain, sought to hang the sons of the king for their temerity; for they aimed to surpass the greatness of their father, and for that reason the chiefs wished their death. But these princes, making a night attack, routed the people at Panah, at Chiholom and at Xepakay, under the ceiba tree. The Akahals rejoiced at the arrival of the princes on ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton
... stroke of four, the earth still trembling with the incessant concussions of the guns, the French scrambled out of their trenches and went forward. But no sudden blast of lead and iron challenged their temerity. A few shells, but all from field pieces, fired perfunctorily as it were, fell near them and occasionally among them. It looked as if ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... to his allegiance, had been so great, in restoring the prince to his liberty, and assisting him in his victories against the rebellious barons, that it was almost impossible to content him in his demands; and his youth and temerity as well as his great power, tempted him, on some new disgust, to raise again the flames of rebellion in the kingdom. The mutinous populace of London at his instigation took to arms; and the prince was obliged to levy an army of thirty thousand men in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... occupation or pleasure but in war, and the greatest rewards did then attend personal valor and prowess. All that professed arms became in some sort on an equality. A knight was the peer of a king, and men had been used to see the bravery of private persons opening a road to that dignity. The temerity of adventurers was much justified by the ill order of every state, which left it a prey to almost any who should attack it with sufficient vigor. Thus, little checked by any superior power, full of fire, impetuosity, and ignorance, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... founded upon a Spanish Tradition, bearing, in general, that Don Roderick, the last Gothic King of Spain, when the invasion of the Moors was depending, had the temerity to descend into an ancient vault, near Toledo, the opening of which had been denounced as fatal to the Spanish Monarchy. The legend adds, that his rash curiosity was mortified by an emblematical representation of those Saracens who, in the year 714, ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... end at a time, just as a ship gets up over a wave; and after that, as he strides monstrously about, his motion is much like a ship's motion. The mahout bores into the back of his head with a great iron prod and you wonder at his temerity and at the elephant's patience, and you think that perhaps the patience will not last; but it does, and nothing happens. The mahout talks to the elephant in a low voice all the time, and the elephant ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Vista, the marshal's residence, Driscoll the next day received a personage, and offered him a cigar. Declined, with bow from shoulder. Hoped he would have a nip of peach brandy? Declined, with sweep from hips. He was a personage. Driscoll noted regalia, medals, cordon; and apologized for the temerity of ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... But I did think that there was more than trust in the eyes that now melted into mine; there was liking at least, and gratitude enough to inspire one to win infinitely more. I went so far as to take in mine the hand to which I had dared to aspire in the temerity of my youth; nor shall I pretend for a moment that the old aspirations had not already mounted to their old seat in my brain. On the contrary, I was only wondering whether the honesty of voicing my hopes would ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... the autumn fixed by popular mandate when the straw hat is to be discarded for the season is hilariously celebrated in Wall Street by the destruction by the affronted populace of the straw hats of those who have had the temerity or the thoughtlessness to wear them. Coloured men in livery stables, however, sometimes wear straw hats the year round. To the habit generally of wearing a hat baldness is attributed by some. And the luxuriant hair of Indians and ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... gone, the day to come, and existence grows as timid and trivial as the petty griefs and pleasures that intersperse it. The days drip past, one by one, like water from a spout after a rain-shower; and the dull monotony of them benumbs all wholesome temerity at its core. Maurice Guest had known days of this kind. For before the irksomeness of the school-bench was well behind him, he had begun his training as a teacher, and as soon as he had learnt how to instil his own half-digested knowledge into the minds of ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... attracted the notice of police and night watchmen. "In person he was agreeable, likable, agile, of clear understanding, sanguine temperament inclined to violence; of a petulant, merry disposition, of courage rash even bordering upon temerity, and more inclined to bodily exercise than to sedentary study." The two friends were much influenced by Caldern at this time. The height of their ambition was to be like the gallants of a cape-and-sword play, equally ready for a love passage or a fight. Lista's influence upon his pupils was not ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... venture to differ from Jebb on such a question without a sense of great temerity. But perhaps the truth is that one who had lived all his life, as Jebb had, in the closest intimacy with the Greek drama, would be apt to feel small differences from {243} it too much and broad resemblances ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... these favors Gainsborough promised to paint a portrait of Thicknesse, but never got beyond washing in the background. During ten years he made thirty-seven excuses for not doing the work, and as for Mrs. Gainsborough, she once had the temerity to hand the redoubtable Thicknesse his cocked hat and cane and show him the door. From this, Thicknesse is emboldened to make certain remarks about Mrs. Gainsborough's pedigree, and to suggest that if Thomas Gainsborough had married a different woman he might have been a different painter. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... instructor and asked him if I might not have another lesson by the man who had taught me the first. He remembered the occasion and laughed, laughed at the memory of it, and laughed at the brogue and what he supposed to be the temerity of my asking. In asking, I had made my brogue just a little thicker, and my manner just as diffident and ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... that you're too good and generous, That you will pardon my temerity, Excuse, upon the score of human frailty, The violence of passion that offends you, And not forget, when you consult your mirror, That I'm not blind, and man is ...
— Tartuffe • Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere
... needs a multitude of subterfuges to guard against dreaded contingencies. So when the society in the Virginia Colony had made up its mind that the Negroes in their midst were mere heathen,[142] they stood ready to punish any member who had the temerity to cross the line drawn between the races. It was not a mitigating circumstance that the white servants of the colony who came into natural contact with the Negroes were "disorderly persons," or convicts sent to Virginia by an order of the king ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... those under the influence of the clergy, put forth the most energetic remonstrances. In the Cortes the most violent debates took place on the same subject, and appeals were made to the cabinet; nay, there were symptoms of an approaching vote of censure on the ministers, in case they should have the temerity to think of abolishing the obnoxious practice. Senor Madoz, who afterwards became minister of Hacienda, put himself at the head of this opposition, and displayed great ardour; and in spite of the religious periodicals accusing him of inconsistency, and quoting a passage ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... who but a very rash, indiscreet person will affirm that God has not made choice of this?"—when every one must perceive that the bare propounding of the question concerning evil calls upon us to exercise this temerity and commit this indiscretion.—Chap. iv. s. I, div. 7. He then goes into more detail as to particular cases of natural evil; but all are handled in the same way. Thus death is explained by saying that the bodies of animals are a kind of vessels which contain fluids in motion, and being broken, ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... rather chewing the cud of constant meditation. At last the door opened to my insistent knocking, and the truth which I found cleared out of my way all the clouds of the Eutychian error. And with this discovery a great wonder came upon me at the vast temerity of unlearned men who use the cloak of impudent presumption to cover up the vice of ignorance, for not only do they often fail to grasp the point at issue, but in a debate of this kind they do not even understand their own statements, forgetting that the case of ignorance is all the worse ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... "No!" The United States Senate had been ever reserved for gentlemen, and Patrick Henry Hanway was a clod. The fiat went forth; Patrick Henry Hanway should not go to the Senate; a wide-eyed patrician wonder was abroad that he should have had the insolent temerity to harbor such a dream—he who was of the social reptilia and could not show an ancestor who ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... to lay Quebec in ruins if he could not defeat the army that protected it. To land from boats and attack Montcalm in front, through the mud of the Beauport flats or up the heights along the neighboring shore, was an enterprise too rash even for his temerity. It might, however, be possible to land below the cataract of Montmorenci, cross that stream higher up, and strike the French army in flank or rear; and he had no sooner secured his positions at the points of Levi and ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... telegrams despatched in order that the subsidiary financial luminaries and the watch-dogs of the various local treasuries might come and, as it were, put their seal on this secret decision, which it was obviously presumed no minor official or luminary would have the temerity to gainsay. ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... to the rawboned sorrel mare, and jogged off down the road, followed by the frisky colt, whose long, slender legs when in motion seemed so fragile that it was startling to witness the temerity with which he kicked up his frolicsome heels. The dogs, with that odd canine affectation of having just perceived the intruders, pursued them with sudden asperity, barking and snapping, and at last came trotting nimbly ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... her hands down, but since she hadn't, there was no use in worrying about it. By the time supper was over that evening, the stock of the Brimfield Football Team had risen to close to par, and anyone who had had the temerity to even suggest the possibility of a victory for Claflin would have been ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... could not truthfully be called ideal, viewed from any angle, since there was no shade and the sand, sizzling hot, reflected the glare of the mid-day sun as painfully as a mirror. None, however, had the temerity to offer any criticism to Mr. Hicks personally, for his vitriolic tongue had long since properly subjugated even ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... to public schools not only leaves undone remedial work necessary for the health of public school children but neglects entirely the still large numbers who go to parochial, private pay, and private free schools; no one has had the temerity to suggest that the public shall force upon nonpublic schools a system of free operations, ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... course, will accompany me to the Faujdar. He will be incensed, I make no doubt, at your temerity, and not unjustly; but I will intercede for you, and you will be treated ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... dared to visit the island of the dead after dark? The bravest warriors were not capable of such temerity. Old men told how, away back in the past, some braves had ventured upon the island after nightfall, and had paid the awful forfeit. They were struck by unseen hands. Weapons that had lain for years beside the decaying corpses of forgotten warriors wounded them in the dark. Fleeing ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... the opportunities offered, and the splendid results so far realized; and when the further facts are borne in mind that the improvement of one class of the population never fails to inure to the benefit of the entire community, it may not, after all, require unusual temerity in one to venture upon the suggestions which are to follow in this article. When it is noted, too, with what care, discrimination and rare judgment such contributions have been directed in the effort to lift the ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... their reception is owing to a mere matter of a few hundred years. Truth is a question of time and place. Bruno was banished for his temerity, and Satolli wears the red hat. Verily, yesterday's ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... discover if he was much hurt. They needed not, however, a second order, for volley after volley came rattling over us; while the foremost and more daring Reefians in their rage rushed into the water, in the hope of seizing us. Some who grasped the gunnel had reason to repent their temerity; for we dealt them such blows with our cutlasses, that they were compelled to let go, every wound they received increasing their fury. Others waded after us up to their arm-pits, firing their pistols, and cutting at us with ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... of young life, we would say that in the same—year we have lost the two dearest friends we have known on earth. One of them perished in the wild course of civil war. Unfortunate and valiant hero! He fell with his burning courage unsubdued, his intrepid calmness undisturbed, his chivalric temerity unabated, through the endurance of the horrible tortures of a fearful death. He was a Prince of rare intelligence, of great activity, of eminent faculties, through whose veins the young blood circulated with the glittering ardor of ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... indubitably directed at little Sammy, as though, God save us! the lad had no right to be anything but well, and ought to be, and should be, birched on the instant if he had the temerity to admit the smallest ache or pain from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet. But Sammy looked frankly into the flashing eyes, grinned, chuckled audibly, and lisped that he ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... you," said the Rector, considerably relieved to find that his own temerity in asking the Bishop might now be considered as condoned. "Our party must above all things be select; indeed, I do not know how we could make it anything but very small; there are so few people whom we could ask ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... courtyard gate at dawn, with an ample pack of all things needed for a month's absence properly girthed on a led mule. If any of you dare to disobey I shall find some effective means to make him smart for his temerity." ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... the address made to the Qu[een] about three years ago, to desire that her M[ajest]y would not consent to a peace, without the entire restitution of Sp[ai]n.[10] A proceeding, which to people abroad, must look like the highest strain of temerity, folly, and gasconade. But we at home, who allow the promoters of that advice to be no fools, can easily comprehend the depth and mystery of it. They were assured by this means, to pin down the war upon us, consequently to increase their own power and wealth, and multiply difficulties ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... eleventh hour, that he might recall their lost allegiance. Alone, with a cross uplifted in his hand, he stood at the door of the monastery to meet the Norsemen. The fierce band paused in amazement at the sight of his temerity; it was something those savage men had not known before. The swift rush through the battlefield of the warrior who hoped by slaughter to gain Valhalla, they could understand; but this calm courage in the face of death was ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... hurried on. The rest of the party, deserting their posts, had already gone to drive back our assailants. The overseer and clerk, Sinnet and Chaffey, were encountering them bravely. Two had already paid dearly for their temerity, when Mr Talboys, springing forward, attacked them furiously. I kept with him, and did my best with my hanger, cutting and slashing at the woolly pates of the fellows, who evidently were not prepared for so determined ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... third voyage to India, Mr Conyers," she answered, with an air of surprise at my temerity in addressing her, and such proud, stately dignity and lofty condescension that I ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... and she like a good wife reported the matter to her husband, the chief. The intelligence was entirely unexpected, and by no means very agreeable to his feeling of pride, so, after the savage method of disciplining refractory daughters, Ni-ar-gua was not only roughly reproved for her temerity, but received a good lodge-poling from her irate father, besides. He also threatened to shoot an arrow through the heart of Do-ran-to for his impudent pretensions. The result, however, of the attempt to break the match, as in similar ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... however, were an evidence of a battle unfavorable to the allies. My father, whose party feelings made him quite certain that these would come off victorious, had the violent temerity to go forth to meet the expected victors, without thinking that the beaten party must pass over him in their flight. He first repaired to his garden before the Friedberg gate, where he found every thing lonely and quiet; then ventured to the Bornheim heath, where he soon ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... ourselves for a few hours from the comforts of home, the society of the fair, in some instances the embraces of our loved ones, and embark upon an element which, to-night propitious, might in other moods have engulfed, if it did not actually force us to postpone, our temerity—" (Here a voice said, "Well done, Major; give ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
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