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More "Poltroon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... safety and a great advantage for the commonwealth. It was an honor to them to be selected for such an enterprise. To show cowardice now would be an eternal shame for them, and he would be the man to strike dead with his own hand any traitor or poltroon. But if, as he doubted not, every one was prepared to do his duty, their success was assured, and he was himself ready to take the lead in ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... his friends to lead him into the very hottest of the conflict. Elmham records his address: whether they are the very words he (p. 175) uttered, or such only as he was likely to have used, they certainly suit his character: "My lords, far be from me such disgrace, as that, like a poltroon, I should stain my noviciate in arms by flight. If the Prince flies, who will wait to end the battle? Believe it, to be carried back before victory would be to me a perpetual death! Lead me, I implore you, to the very face of the foe. I may not say to my friends, 'Go ye on first to the fight.' ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... to you, I would say before him, were he not skulking in his cabin, afraid of justice. He is a pig of a poltroon!" cried his Excellency. "I wish he were here now, and I would tell ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... thou not comfort the poor man about the rencounter between him and that poltroon Metcalfe? He acted in that affair like a man of true honour, and as I should have acted in the same circumstances. Tell him I say so; and that what happened he could ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... indeed, accidents, such as will happen even at football. Of course duels can never be defended, but for keeping up good manners, also for bringing out a man's character, these academic duels seem useful. However small the danger is, it frightens the coward and restrains the poltroon. For all that, what has taken place in England may in time take place in Germany also, and men will cease to think that it is impossible to defend their honour without a piece of steel or a pistol. The last thing that a German student desires ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... exactly, Master Fritz; they would say that Willis was a poltroon or a deserter, whichever he likes; they would very likely condemn him to the yard-arm by default, and carry out the operation when they get hold of him. But I will not endanger any one else; all I want is the use of ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... systematic treatment of naval evolutions. But with Tourville's name is associated not only a high level of professional management, but a caution in professional action not far removed from timidity, so that an impatient Minister of Marine of his day and nation styled him "poltroon in head, though not in heart." His powers were displayed in the preservation and orderly movement of his fleet; in baffling, by sheer skill, and during long periods, the efforts of the enemy to bring him to action; in skilful disposition, when he purposely accepted battle under disadvantage; ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... Prodigal Sons, To-day is a prodigious coxcomb, but To-morrow is a very poltroon, taking fright at the big words of his predecessor. To-day is the truculent captain of old world comedy, To-morrow the ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... is clear that nations must fight, and ought to fight. Not being convinced, it is base to pretend that you are convinced; and failing to be convinced by your neighbor's arguments, you confess yourself a poltroon (and moreover you invite injuries from every neighbor) if you pocket your wrongs. The only course in such a case is to thump your neighbor, and to thump him soundly for the present. This treatment is very serviceable to your neighbor's optics; he ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... whose olfactory nerves were more familiarized to magical odors, readily conjecturing that Carathis was engaged in her favorite amusements, strenuously exhorted them not to be alarmed. Him, however, they treated as an old poltroon; and forbore not to style him a rascally traitor. The camels and dromedaries were advancing with water, but no one knew by which way to enter the tower. Whilst the populace was obstinate in forcing the doors, a violent east wind drove such a volume of flame ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... highwaymen in England surrounded him. "D—n my blood! what are you afraid of?" continued he; at the same time trembling with such agitation that the whole carriage shook. This singular piece of behaviour incensed Miss Ramper so much that she cried, "D—n your pitiful soul, you are as arrant a poltroon, as ever was drummed out of a regiment. Stop the waggon, Joey—let me out, and by G—d, if I have rhetoric enough, the thief shall not only take your purse, but your skin also." So saying she leaped out with great agility. ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... said he, "that little Prosper Leclere! He thinks himself one of the strongest—a fine fellow! But I tell you he is a coward. If he is clever? Yes. But he is a poltroon. He knows well that I can flatten him out like a crepe in the frying-pan. But he is afraid. He has not as much courage as the musk-rat. You stamp on the bank. He dives. He swims ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... to loot and enrich themselves at our expense. Now, if 13 this conduct were to be the rule, general ruin would be the result. I do not deny that I have given blows to this man or the other who played the poltroon and refused to get up, helplessly abandoning himself to the enemy; and so I forced them to march on. For once in the severe wintry weather I myself happened to sit down for a long time, whilst waiting for a party who were ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... starvation or surrender to the Iroquois. Throwing down his weapons, he gave himself up to what he knew would be certain torture. Had he winced or whined as they tore the nails from his fingers and the hair from his head, the Iroquois would probably have brained him on the spot for a poltroon; but the young man, bound to a stake, pointed to a gathering storm as sign of Heaven's displeasure. The high spirit pleased the Iroquois. They unbound him and took him with them in their wanderings for ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... in the army shook hands with a gallant lieut.-colonel (who had distinguished himself in the Peninsula) at one of the West End gaming houses, and Lieut. N—, who was present, upbraided the colonel with the epithet of "poltroon." On a fit opportunity the colonel inflicted summary justice upon the lieutenant with a cane or horse-whip. This produced a challenge; but the colonel was advised that he would degrade himself by combat with the challenger, ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... very man who shares our blanket and tent-cover, who draws rations from the same kettle, who drinks from the same canteen, and with whom we are compelled to come in contact daily, may be the veriest poltroon, whose diploma shows graduation at the Five Points, and whose presence alone is morally miasmatic. Consequently our camp is infested more or less with gambling, drunkenness, and profanity, and all their train of attending ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... "I see you are no poltroon. It is for my own sake—I could not bear to have you slain ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of course I do! nobody but a coward and poltroon would think of anything else. But ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... proceeds from confounding together two sets of feelings which are entirely distinct—personal fear and political fear. If I am afraid of voting against this bill, because a mob may gather about the House of Lords—because stones may be flung at my head—because my house may be attacked by a mob, I am a poltroon, and unfit to meddle with public affairs. But I may rationally be afraid of producing great public agitation; I may be honourably afraid of flinging people into secret clubs and conspiracies—I may be wisely afraid of making the aristocracy ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... to entitle us to the rewards bestowed upon it by the fair sex, who value it above all others, is so wholly out of our control, that when suffering under sickness or disease, it deserts us; nay, for the time being, a violent stomach-ache will turn a hero into a poltroon. ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... asked. "When that door falls, this point enters my heart. There is nothing beyond that door, with thou, poltroon, to which death in this little chamber ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... do you?" he said. "I have a mind, then, to thrash you where you stand, you canting poltroon! Do you ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... creatures," says Arthur Symons, "have in them a touch of honour, of honesty, or of heroism; his heroes have always some error, weakness, or mistake, some sin or crime, to redeem." What is Lord Jim, scoundrel and poltroon or gallant knight? What is Captain MacWhirr, hero or simply ass? What is Falk, beast or idealist? One leaves "Heart of Darkness" in that palpitating confusion which is shot through with intense curiosity. Kurtz is at once ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... evaporated at once, at this sudden inlet of cold air into the conversation. He perceived that he had made a terrible blunder; and as it was not his business at that moment to vindicate the British constitution, but to serve Leonard Fairfield, he abandoned the cause of the aristocracy with the most poltroon and scandalous abruptness. Catching at the arm which Mr. Avenel had withdrawn from him, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... always be at one's best. Twice before in my life I have lost my nerve and behaved like a poltroon. But I warn you not to judge my quality by ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... unacquainted with the grounds of my complaint against you, but he is satisfied of my honour: your second will, I presume, be the same with respect to yours. It is for me only to question the latter, and to declare you solemnly to be void alike of principle and courage, a villain, and a poltroon. ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... me, dear Miss Featherstone. I am such a confounded poltroon"—and he seized her hands again—"that I dare not risk my fate; but that person is"—and he looked down upon her, his heart beating so violently that he could scarcely ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... The base-hearted poltroon went and made his complaint to Captain Reud, who ordered him to leave the ship immediately he came ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... coward," she said, gathering her skirts as though she intended to take her departure instantly. "But it will be a fine story that Signor Fenshawe cables from Aden when he tells how the Governor of Massowah aided and abetted this half-crazy poltroon in onslaughts on defenseless women. It was not enough that Italian law should be misused to further his ends, but the scum of the bazaar is enlisted under his banner, and he is supported by the authorities in an act that would be reprobated by any half-savage ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... to the lawyer's attack, pronouncing him to be "destitute of delicacy, decency, good manners, sound judgment, honesty, manhood, and humanity; a poltroon, a cat's-paw, the infamous tool of a party, a partisan, a political ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... laughed. "What Fourier's afternoon visit has to do with Mme. d'Agen's journey?" he retorted, "I'll tell you, my good Clyffurde. Fourier went to see M. le Comte de Cambray this afternoon because he is a poltroon. He is terrified at the thought that the unfortunate Empress' money and treasure are still lying in the cellars of the Hotel de Ville and he went out to Brestalou in order to consult with the Comte what had best be ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... fear I should have totally forgotten Miss Eliza. But that was no part of her plan: at least it was no part of her practice. Our knees soon became very intimate, and had frequent meetings of a very sentimental kind: for, she being courageous enough to advance, could I be the poltroon to retreat? They were however very good and loving neighbours, and the language they spoke was peculiarly impressive. The whole subject before us was love, and intrigue, and the way to torment the jealous. Whenever a significant passage occurred, and that was very often, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... place and, retiring from active service, rule the estate in accordance with Challoner traditions and perhaps exert some influence in politics. Clarke had, however, shown him that Bertram, from whom so much was expected, had proved himself a poltroon and, what was even worse, had allowed an innocent man to suffer ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... old; that you have been discharged from all the Texas dailies for incompetency, and are the author of editorials in the Chicago Inter-Ocean slandering the South; that you are a big over-grown bully who abuses weaker people, and a miserable little poltroon who has been kicked by every cripple between New York and Denver. All this is doubtless correct as far as it goes; now will you please inform me whether you have been guilty of ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... became conventionalized. There is always a very bad and a very good woman, a very generous and noble man and one so bad as to seem a monster. There is the type of the "love-lorn maiden," of "the lily-livered" hero, of the faithful friend, of the poltroon. It is supposed by many that such types repeated in play after play do not mark the highest original power, but rather poverty of invention, weak and shadowy conception, indistinctness of coloring. Professor Thorndike, however, cannot too much commend this style, because it ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... head carefully away from her hearer, lowered her eyes, and, looking the picture of guilt and shame all the time, sang an ancient ditty. The poltroon's voice was rich, mellow, clear, and sweet as honey; and she sang the notes for the sake of the words, not the words for the sake of the notes, as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... ship, commanded by a Frenchman, infamous in his own navy, and obnoxious in the service to which he at present belonged; this ship, foremost in insurgency to Paul hitherto, and which, for the most part, had crept like a poltroon from the fray; the Alliance now was at hand. Seeing her, Paul deemed the battle at an end. But to his horror, the Alliance threw a broadside full into the stern of the Richard, without touching the Serapis. Paul called to her, for God's sake ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... J.A. Willey, says, in one of his letters, "Being a magistrate, under a solemn oath to do all in my power to keep the peace," &c., and yet this personification of Georgia justice superscribes his letter as follows: "To the Liar, Puppy, Fool, and Poltroon, Mr. John A. Willey" The ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... "Coward, lache, poltroon, runaway!" he hissed through his clenched teeth, and was about to make a thrust in tierce which must infallibly have been fatal, when the Princess Jaqueline, in her shape as a wasp, stung him fiercely ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... of spirits. "He is a vile poltroon, this master of yours," said he, "consorting with these bloody pirates and leaving his daughter to pine away her days and nights within a little sail of him, while he struts about at the heel of a dirty freebooter dressed like a monkey! He doesn't deserve the daughter he possesses. ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... me to do it. What I have said above was with a view of showing how difficult it may ordinarily be to bring prison facts to light; and if, by chance, some individual should find means to his hand to open a window, he would be a poltroon if he forbore to do it. I am under no illusions as to the obstacles in my way, nor do I anticipate that what I am trying to do will result in prompt or vital changes for the better in prison management. The facts I adduce ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... privilege of judiciously matching their children. Were daughters left to choose for themselves, there are those who would prefer their father's serving-man, or throw themselves away on some fellow they might chance to see in the street, mistaking, perhaps, an impostor and swaggering poltroon for a gentleman, since passion too easily blinds the understanding, so indispensably necessary in deciding on that most important point, matrimony, which is peculiarly exposed to the danger of a mistake, and therefore ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... on the wild and sudden campaign would reinstate him in their good graces, but it failed utterly. "Any man would seek that," was the verdict of the informal council held by the officers. "He would have been a poltroon if he hadn't sought to go; but, while he isn't a poltroon, he has done a contemptible thing." And so it stood. Rollins had cut him dead, refused his hand, and denied him a chance to explain. "Tell him he can't explain," was the savage ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... said the captain, clenching his teeth and his fists; "let them kill you; die, you rascal, but go!" Then he uttered a horrible oath. "Ah, the infamous poltroon! he has sat down!" In fact, the boy, whose head he had hitherto been able to see projecting above a field of grain, had disappeared, as though he had fallen; but, after the lapse of a minute, his head came ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... malice; may that generous compassion which often preserves from ruin, even a guilty villain, forever actuate the noble bosoms of Americans! But let not the miscreant host vainly imagine that we feared their arms. No, those we despised; we dread nothing but slavery. Death is the creature of a poltroon's brains; 'tis immortality to sacrifice ourselves for the salvation of our country. We fear not death. That gloomy night, the pale-face moon, and the affrighted stars that hurried through the sky, can witness that we fear not death. Our hearts, ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... and brave; whilst we are reduced to the unprogressive Kru-man, who is, moreover, a model coward, a poltroon on principle. ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... Cowardice — N. cowardice, pusillanimity; cowardliness &c adj.; timidity, effeminacy. poltroonery, baseness; dastardness^, dastardy^; abject fear, funk; Dutch courage; fear &c 860; white feather, faint heart; cold feet [U.S.], yellow streak [Slang]. coward, poltroon, dastard, sneak, recreant; shy cock, dunghill cock; coistril^, milksop, white liver, lily liver, nidget^, one that cannot say 'boo' to a goose; slink; Bob Acres, Jerry Sneak. alarmist, terrorist^, pessimist; runagate &c (fugitive) 623. V. quail &c (fear) 860; be cowardly &c adj., be a coward ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... peaceful sleep when the imbroglio began downstairs. He sat up and listened. Yes; undoubtedly burglars! He switched on his light and jumped out of bed. He took a pistol from a drawer, and thus armed went to look into the matter. The dreamy peer was no poltroon. ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... Every Englishman I ever knew was a liar, and a sneaking poltroon. I was brought up to hate the race, and always have. I can't say that I like you any better than the others. By God! I don't, for the matter of that. But just now you can be useful to me if you are of that mind. This is a business proposition, and it makes ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... no," she said, "I see you are no poltroon[8]. It is for my own sake—I could not bear to have you slain for such ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... 'twas even so; partly to mark the movements of the English, an they make a movement, which, till Pembroke come, they are all too much amazed to do; partly to see if in truth that poltroon Duncan of Fife yet hangs back and still persists in forswearing the loyalty of his ancestors, and leaving to better hands the proud task of placing the crown of Scotland on ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... to meet the bravery of true champions of the pit, stood for a little while and stared at this shifty foe. He must have decided that he was dealing with a poltroon with whom science and prudence were not needed. He stuck out his neck and ran at Long-legs, evidently expecting that Long-legs would turn and flee in a panic. Long-legs jumped to let him pass under, and came down on the unwary P.T. with ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... his hand is the best who gets his horse to do what he wishes with the least force, whose indications are so clear that his horse cannot mistake them, and whose gentleness and fearlessness alike induce obedience to them. The noblest animal will obey such a rider, as surely as he will disregard the poltroon, or rebel against the savage. I say the noblest, because it is ever the noblest among them which rebel the most. For the dominion of man over the horse is an usurped dominion. And in riding a colt, or a restive horse, we should never forget that he has by nature the right ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... executed the plan. He paraded the cavalry in view of the block house and mounted the trunk of a pine tree upon three prongs, instead of a field piece, and which he manned with dismounted dragoons, then summoned Rugely to surrender, which the poltroon did, without hearing a report of this new invented piece of ordnance, and submitted himself with about 100 officers and men to be taken as prisoners ...
— A sketch of the life and services of Otho Holland Williams • Osmond Tiffany
... past, I suffer intolerable apprehension in regard to my future, lest my good intentions should fail or my self-control not hold out. But the knowledge that you are acquainted with my resolve, and regard it with an undeserved sympathy, may suffice to sustain me, and I should certainly be a base poltroon if I should disappoint you ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... no enemy fell. As, half choked with grief and rage, I looked around for the cause, behold! my brave lieutenant Scott, at the head of his riflemen, came stooping along with his gun in his hand, and the black marks of shame and cowardice on his sheepish face. "Infamous poltroon," said I, shaking my sword over his head, "where is that hetacomb of robbers and murderers due to the vengeance of ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... his State Room to weep over the Situation, and the British Subject said: "The American is a Poltroon, for he will not defend his ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... rich, and it ranked among the unwritten crimes against blood for one offshoot of a great house wantonly to thwart another in the wooing of her by humbling him in her presence, doing his utmost to expose him as a schemer, a culprit, and a poltroon. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... brute Bernardone, broker, worthless goldsmith, and by the Duke's grace purveyor to the mint, passed by me. No sooner had he got outside the church than the dirty pig let fly four cracks which might have been heard from San Miniato. I cried: "Yah! pig, poltroon, donkey! is that the noise your filthy talents make?" and ran off for a cudgel. He took refuge on the instant in the mint; while I stationed myself inside my housedoor, which I left ajar, setting a boy at watch upon the street to warn me when the pig should leave the mint. ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... bridle; there was young Allan Ravenswood, that was then Master, wi' a bended pistol in his hand—it was a mercy it gaed na aff!—crying to me, that had scarce as much wind left as serve the necessary purpose of my ain lungs, 'Sound, you poltroon!—sound, you damned cowardly villain, or I will blow your brains out!' and, to be sure, I blew sic points of war that the scraugh of a clockin-hen was music ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... and when day broke the two vessels were near enough to each other to readily make out each other's character. The stranger proved to be a small English cruiser of fourteen guns. Her captain was no poltroon; for as soon as he discovered that the ship from which he had been trying to escape was but little larger than his own, he came about, and, running down upon the "Cerf," opened fire. The action was a sharp one. The two vessels ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... springing to his feet. "Stand off; my lords! Far be from me such disgrace as that, like a poltroon, I should stain my arms by flight. If the prince flies, who will wait to ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... escape gave me fresh strength and served as a spur to me. I ran and laid hold of the bridle, which was fast in the hand of a man lying on the ground, whom I supposed dead; but, what was my surprise when the cowardly poltroon, who was suffering from nothing but fear, dared to remain in the most horrible fire to dispute the horse with me, at twenty paces from the enemy. All my menaces could not induce him to quit the bridle. Whilst we were disputing, a discharge from a cannon loaded ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... courage leaped up in him, a certain violence of resolve which cleared away clouds and braced his whole being. He had to fight. There was no way out. Well, then, he would fight. He had played the villain, perhaps, but he would not play the poltroon. He did not know what he was going to do, what he could do, but he must act, and act decisively. His wild youth responded to this call made upon it. There was a new light in his eyes as he went down to the cottage, as he came upon ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... are the guardian who would have married her for her estates; you are the cousin who played the poltroon and outraged her pride of family; you are the lover who abandoned her,—abandoned her to torture and the tomahawk. Is it strange that it is her wish never to see you? You will spare your pride some hurts if you avoid her in the ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... precepts will lead you to happiness, though he uses neither flattery, nor bribery, nor intrigue, nor deceit; instead of loading you with praise, he will point you to the better way. I scoff at Cleon's tricks and plotting; honesty and justice shall fight my cause; never will you find me a political poltroon, a prostitute ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... A drunken poltroon of a bargeman was coming up from Liffey-side, lurching and yawing like a Dutch hooker in a gale; and seeing them in a little bunch on the cobblestones, he took an anger at them in his wooden head, and, whether purposely or not ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... his sword, Spoons, liquors, and furniture went by the board; He saw—at a distance, the rebels appear, And "rode to the front," which was strangely the rear; He conquered—truth, decency, honor full soon, Pest, pilferer, puppy, pretender, poltroon; And was fain from the scene of his triumphs to slope. Sure there never was fortunate ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... the French of that day, neutralized the defects and more than compensated the blunders of Napoleon. But these were advantages that could not be depended on: a glass of brandy extraordinary might have emboldened the greatest poltroon to do that which, by once rousing a movement of popular enthusiasm, once making a beginning in that direction, would have precipitated the whole affair into hands which must have carried it far beyond the power of any party to control. Never, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... and torn his leprous hide from his dehauched and whiskey- poisoned frame, and polluted our fence with it, but he did not. True to his low, currish nature, he crept upon us unawares. Our back was toward him as he entered, perceiving which the cowardly poltroon seized us and threw us through our own window. Having accomplished his fiendish work, the miscreant left, justly fearing our wrath. The Stinging Lizard's exposure of this scoundrel as a drunkard, embezzler, wife-beater, jail-bird, ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... close to the side of the house when, in an instant, without the slightest notice, my hat was struck off to the distance of several yards by a soldier, or rather a poltroon in a soldier's costume, and this courteous manoeuvre was performed with his gun and bayonet, accompanied with curses and taunts and the expression of a demon in ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... motherhood is as low a creature as a man of the professional pacifist, or poltroon, type, who shirks ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... leaving Cappy to grit his teeth and curse himself for a poltroon. "It's certainly hell when a man of my age and financial rating stands between his love and duty," he mourned. "Darn that fellow Skinner. If my bluff should fail to work and he got on his high horse and quit, I'd have to climb off my high horse and ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... at the shrine of our hardihood, for we were in no peril. Among carnivorous beasts there is not a more contemptible poltroon than the hyaena, even when wounded. A friend of mine once tied up a billy goat as a bait for a panther and sat up over it in a tree. In the middle of the night a hyaena nosed it from afar, and came sneaking up in the rear, for hyaenas love the flesh ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... thought it all over. I had made up my mind to go for a week or so until I saw this place, and then I determined I would stop with Jemima. I could eke out an existence here on what I had left and still feel like a gentleman, but I couldn't settle down on dear Peggy Coston and be anything but a poltroon. As to my making a living at the law—that was pure moonshine. I haven't opened a law book for twenty years and now it's too late. People of our class"—here he looked away from his companion and talked straight at the foot of the bed—"People of our class my boy," he ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... I do?" whimpered the photographer, a brave bully before the girl, when safe; a stricken poltroon now. "I'll do anything you say, ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... cowardly Mexican man had, on his leaving, pulled off from her horse Mrs. Carson and her child, and having mounted the animal himself, was making good his escape. The Indians wished to keep up the ruse, pursue, Attempt to overtake and punish the poltroon; but Kit Carson was too thankful that matters had gone so well; therefore, he said that he felt that he could excuse such dastardly conduct, and requested the Indians to let it pass unnoticed. It is hardly necessary to add that with his faithful body-guard who had come to watch over him from feelings ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... takes his chances,' I remarked. 'It is only the poltroon who reckons always upon ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... mention of my guilt; of the hand-writing on the wall; of a legal prosecution, if he meet his fate from my hand; of his skill, coolness, courage, and such-like poltroon stuff; what can you mean by it? Surely you cannot believe that such insinuations as those will weaken either my hands or my heart.—No more of this sort of nonsense, I beseech you, in any of ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... the tent by my side that I could induce him to try and sleep. The abject cowardice of this youth on subsequent occasions gave me but a poor impression of the modern Dalmatian—an idea which was confirmed by the conduct of his successor, who was, if possible, a more pitiable poltroon than Michaele. That the position of a servant whose master was without bed or coverlet was not particularly enviable, I am ready to admit, and many a time did he come to complain of incipient starvation; but at the moment it was difficult ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... I such a tyro at fence, or such a poltroon as to be afraid to meet him? No, Hyacinth, I go with you to Dover, or I stand ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... St. Petersburg after the delivery of his temperate and dispassionate address in New York, the handful of "true Russians" in the third Duma attacked him with violent and insulting abuse, and Mr. Vladimir Purishkevich, one of their most influential leaders, said to him in open session: "You are a poltroon and traitor, in whose face I would willingly spit!" Such is the spirit of the "true Russians" whom the Czar has asked to help him in bringing about "the peaceful regeneration of our ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... heard before he recovered sufficiently from the shock to move a limb. The officers were urging their prisoner forward, grinning and nodding to each other, whilst several voices from the crowd shouted abusively at the poltroon whose first instinct was to betray his associate. Bob turned his face away and walked on. He did not dare to run, yet the noises behind him kept his heart leaping with dread. A few paces and he was out of the alley. Even yet he durst not run. He had turned in the ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... the General, looking scornfully at his son, whom terror had robbed of strength to stand. "You have the courage to plan cold-blooded murder, but when the time comes to face your own death you show yourself a miserable poltroon. Fear nothing: you shall not die. I have passed a sleepless night, struggling between duty and parental affection. But were it known in St. Petersburg that I had shown you mercy, I would answer for it with ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... declare with certainty, whether mirth or anger prevailed at the clap-trap trick of this dramatic denouement. I am quite sure, however, that if I laughed at first, I very soon swore; for I have a distinct recollection of dashing my fist in the poltroon's face before he could extemporize ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... unlamented. For his character, in all respects in nature, feature and manners, he resembled the tyrant Tiberius; and for all the numerous brood of bastards begot on other men's wives, he died a childless poltroon, having no legitimate heir to succeed him of his own body, according to the divine malediction, Write this man childless: for no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting on the throne of David, and ruling ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... to be found out, I know from my own experience, must be painful and odious, and cruelly mortifying to the inward vanity. Suppose I am a poltroon, let us say. With fierce moustache, loud talk, plentiful oaths, and an immense stick, I keep up nevertheless a character for courage. I swear fearfully at cabmen and women; brandish my bludgeon, and perhaps knock ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... teach you what of that," said Mr. Rousseau, who then proceeded to strike Mr. Grinnell about the head and shoulders with a rattan, stopping occasionally to lecture him, and saying, "Now, you d——d puppy and poltroon, look ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... during the war; and that, in that action, an officer had proposed to haul down the stars and stripes, and a common sailor threatened to cut him to pieces, if he should do so. He spoke of Bainbridge as a sot and a poltroon, who wanted to run from the Macedonian, pretending to take her for a line-of-battle ship; of Commodore Elliot as a liar; but praised Commodore Downes in the highest terms. Percival seems to be the very pattern of old integrity; taking as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... left unmolested, I fear I should have totally forgotten Miss Eliza. But that was no part of her plan: at least it was no part of her practice. Our knees soon became very intimate, and had frequent meetings of a very sentimental kind: for, she being courageous enough to advance, could I be the poltroon to retreat? They were however very good and loving neighbours, and the language they spoke was peculiarly impressive. The whole subject before us was love, and intrigue, and the way to torment the jealous. Whenever a significant passage occurred, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... and a heart-breaking discovery of the fatal mistake she had committed. Poor Jane Campbell soon wakened up to the discovery that she had exchanged the name and the family of a brave and noble house for the name and the house of a poltroon. No wonder that Rutherford's letters to her are so often headed: 'To Lady Kenmure, under illness and depression of mind.' Could you have kept quite well had you been a Campbell with John Gordon for a husband? ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... hand is the best who gets his horse to do what he wishes with the least force, whose indications are so clear that his horse cannot mistake them, and whose gentleness and fearlessness alike induce obedience to them. The noblest animal will obey such a rider, as surely as he will disregard the poltroon, or rebel against the savage. I say the noblest, because it is ever the noblest among them which rebel the most. For the dominion of man over the horse is an usurped dominion. And in riding a colt, or a restive horse, we should never forget that he has by nature ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... hazel bushes, trying to slink into the earth. "No," he thought; "no; I am not for public life. I have failed at the first test. Was ever so squeamish an exhibition? I have betrayed my country and the honour of public life. These Germans are now full of beer and pigeon-pie. What am I but a poltroon, unworthy to lace the shoes of the great leaders of my land? The sun ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith." The luxurious breakfast at Roselands was partaken of with very little enjoyment that morning; by Walter especially, who had to bear contempt and ridicule; threats also: he was called a Yankee, coward, poltroon, traitor; and threatened with disinheritance and denouncement unless he would declare himself for the Confederacy and enlist in ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... great advantage for the commonwealth. It was an honor to them to be selected for such an enterprise. To show cowardice now would be an eternal shame for them, and he would be the man to strike dead with his own hand any traitor or poltroon. But if, as he doubted not, every one was prepared to do his duty, their success was assured, and he was himself ready to take the lead in ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... tent by my side that I could induce him to try and sleep. The abject cowardice of this youth on subsequent occasions gave me but a poor impression of the modern Dalmatian—an idea which was confirmed by the conduct of his successor, who was, if possible, a more pitiable poltroon than Michaele. That the position of a servant whose master was without bed or coverlet was not particularly enviable, I am ready to admit, and many a time did he come to complain of incipient starvation; but at the moment it was difficult to make allowance for these little inconveniences, ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... compassion which often preserves from ruin, even a guilty villain, forever actuate the noble bosoms of Americans! But let not the miscreant host vainly imagine that we feared their arms. No, those we despised; we dread nothing but slavery. Death is the creature of a poltroon's brains; 'tis immortality to sacrifice ourselves for the salvation of our country. We fear not death. That gloomy night, the pale-face moon, and the affrighted stars that hurried through the sky, can witness that ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... himself among his women, and ordered the cable instantly to be cut, and the yacht to be pulled out to sea by the oars. They were soon beyond the reach of the guns. It was now night, serene and beautiful; the sea was smooth as glass, and the stars shone with unusual splendor in the clear sky. The poltroon monarch of all the Russias had not yet ventured upon deck, but was trembling in his cabin, surrounded by his dismayed mistresses, when the helmsman entered the cabin and ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... were your age, as beautiful and attractive as you, and I had dared a man to kiss me, I should feel slighted, to say the least of it, and regard him as a poltroon, if he failed to take up my challenge," commented Lady Fermanagh drily. "You can't mean to say you did not expect Don Carlos to carry out the threat or promise he made in his note, particularly as you made no protest against his having entered ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... poltroon of a bargeman was coming up from Liffey-side, lurching and yawing like a Dutch hooker in a gale; and seeing them in a little bunch on the cobblestones, he took an anger at them in his wooden head, and, whether purposely or not I know not, but he elbowed ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... beneath a packet of unpaid Boston tailors' bills and a note from my landlady asking if I would let her aunt do my washing while I was on shore. Oh! what would they all think of me? Would they brand me as a deserter, a poltroon, and a thief, letting my name presently sink down in shame and mystery in the shadowy realm of the forgotten? Dreadful thoughts! I would think ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... clenching his teeth and his fists; "let them kill you; die, you rascal, but go!" Then he uttered a horrible oath. "Ah, the infamous poltroon! he has sat down!" In fact, the boy, whose head he had hitherto been able to see projecting above a field of grain, had disappeared, as though he had fallen; but, after the lapse of a minute, his head came into sight again; finally, it was lost ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... years old; that you have been discharged from all the Texas dailies for incompetency, and are the author of editorials in the Chicago Inter-Ocean slandering the South; that you are a big over-grown bully who abuses weaker people, and a miserable little poltroon who has been kicked by every cripple between New York and Denver. All this is doubtless correct as far as it goes; now will you please inform me whether you have ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... is a madman in pursuit of me, and he threatens my life. An hour ago he got me to swear solemnly, and to put my hand to the oath, that I would renounce all pretensions to you, and never even speak to you again. I was a poltroon to submit to it. I know that well enough, and you cannot despise me more than I despise myself. But there is this to be said: until I consented to that declaration I never knew that I loved you. Perhaps, indeed, I had not done so. At any rate, now I know that ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... strongly-flavored parlance of the camps than could otherwise have demanded reproduction in literature. The bold strokes with which such an amusing and heroic reprobate as Van Zandt and such a pitiful poltroon as Gazaway are painted, are no less admirable than the nice touches which portray the Governor of Barataria, and some phases of the aristocratic, conscientious, truthful, angular, professorial society of New Boston, with its young college beaux and old ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... mistaken) that the cowardly Mexican man had, on his leaving, pulled off from her horse Mrs. Carson and her child, and having mounted the animal himself, was making good his escape. The Indians wished to keep up the ruse, pursue, Attempt to overtake and punish the poltroon; but Kit Carson was too thankful that matters had gone so well; therefore, he said that he felt that he could excuse such dastardly conduct, and requested the Indians to let it pass unnoticed. It is hardly ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... presently take his place and, retiring from active service, rule the estate in accordance with Challoner traditions and perhaps exert some influence in politics. Clarke had, however, shown him that Bertram, from whom so much was expected, had proved himself a poltroon and, what was even worse, had allowed an innocent man to suffer for ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... do I. Every Englishman I ever knew was a liar, and a sneaking poltroon. I was brought up to hate the race, and always have. I can't say that I like you any better than the others. By God! I don't, for the matter of that. But just now you can be useful to me if you are of that mind. This is a business proposition, ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... interrupted, slapping his knee with delight. "Sneak-livered poltroon, eh? Well, well, well. ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... retired, leaving Cappy to grit his teeth and curse himself for a poltroon. "It's certainly hell when a man of my age and financial rating stands between his love and duty," he mourned. "Darn that fellow Skinner. If my bluff should fail to work and he got on his high horse and quit, I'd have to climb off my high horse and beg him to return ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... from the Persians, and then, when the Persians were broken, turned upon them and won the battle, misapplies to them the term [Greek: thrasy/deiloi] (Arist., Eth. Nic., iii. 9.7)—men, that is, who affect the hero, but play the poltroon.] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... where he lay with his wife, after having boasted of the murder of her husband, whose blood he shewed her upon his sword, as a trophy of his prowess. But this very duke of Buckingham was little better than a poltroon at bottom. When the gallant earl of Ossory challenged him to fight in Chelsea fields, he crossed the water to Battersea, where he pretended to wait for his lordship; and then complained to the house of lords, that Ossory ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... being bound over to keep the peace. To keep the peace, however, in those days was to be wanting in the very first element of chivalry, and, accordingly, Mr. Stuart was pronounced by the Sentinel a 'bully,' a 'coward,' a 'dastard,' and a 'sulky poltroon.' Furthermore, he was 'a heartless ruffian,' 'a white feather,' and 'afraid of lead.' To vindicate his character Mr. Stuart raised an action of damages, and, curiously enough, he was twitted in the very court of justice to which ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... leaped in a sudden wild rage. "You—told them?" he stuttered. "You poltroon! 'Twas ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... the end of it!" cried Dame Zudar, gnashing her teeth. "The poltroon is betraying us himself. Let him perish if he does not ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... have said to you, I would say before him, were he not skulking in his cabin, afraid of justice. He is a pig of a poltroon!" cried his Excellency. "I wish he were here now, and I would tell ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... the little bare dressing-room; my throat was parched as fever, my hands were hot and tremulous; I felt my heart sag. How the rumble of expectant feet in the audience-room shook me! I called myself a poltroon, and fingered my neck-tie, and smoothed my hair before the mirror. Another burst of impatient expectation made me start; I opened the door, and stood before ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... yet able to escape gave me fresh strength and served as a spur to me. I ran and laid hold of the bridle, which was fast in the hand of a man lying on the ground, whom I supposed dead; but, what was my surprise when the cowardly poltroon, who was suffering from nothing but fear, dared to remain in the most horrible fire to dispute the horse with me, at twenty paces from the enemy. All my menaces could not induce him to quit the bridle. Whilst we were disputing, a discharge from a cannon loaded ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... conflict. Elmham records his address: whether they are the very words he (p. 175) uttered, or such only as he was likely to have used, they certainly suit his character: "My lords, far be from me such disgrace, as that, like a poltroon, I should stain my noviciate in arms by flight. If the Prince flies, who will wait to end the battle? Believe it, to be carried back before victory would be to me a perpetual death! Lead me, I implore you, to the very face of the foe. I may not say to my friends, 'Go ye on first to the ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... you, are the faintest creatures in the world when you cry in your agony, "Come and help me!" Oh, assuredly Wellington was infamously used at that time, especially by your traders in Radicalism, who howled at and hooted him; said he had every vice—was no general—was beaten at Waterloo—was a poltroon—moreover, a poor illiterate creature, who could scarcely read or write; nay, a principal Radical paper said bodily he could not read, and devised an ingenious plan for teaching Wellington how to read. Now this was too bad; and the writer, being a lover of justice, frequently spoke ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... them, and are fascinated by them. They know how to show their teeth charmingly; the more enlightened of them have perfected a superb technique of fascination. It was Nietzsche who called them the recreation of the warrior—not of the poltroon, remember, but of the warrior. A profound saying. They have an infinite capacity for rewarding masculine industry and enterprise with small and irresistible flatteries; their acute understanding combines with their capacity for evoking ideas of beauty to make them ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... them—young London swells with white waistcoats, pretty painted women, old men and young girls, and all of them watching, all contemptuously amused, all grinning because they understood that, though so big and strong, he was at heart a pitiful sort of poltroon, and that his companion was showing him up publicly. "Yes, you shall take my boots off for me. That's all you're fit for." And in spite of his anguish of resentment, Dale dared not refuse. The man had ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... Bababalouk, whose olfactory nerves were more familiarized to magical odors, readily conjecturing that Carathis was engaged in her favorite amusements, strenuously exhorted them not to be alarmed. Him, however, they treated as an old poltroon; and forbore not to style him a rascally traitor. The camels and dromedaries were advancing with water, but no one knew by which way to enter the tower. Whilst the populace was obstinate in forcing the doors, a violent east wind drove such a volume of flame against them, as at first forced them ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... "abdicate the privileges of equal citizenship? Will you give up this continent, territory, Free States and all, to our predaceous, blood-eating system? Will you sell into slavery the elective franchise itself? Will you sell the elective franchise itself into slavery, and take for pay barely the poltroon's price, that of being scornfully spared by the sword we stand ready to draw?" The North excused itself politely. In the softest voice, but with a soft-voicedness that did not wholly conceal an iron thread of resolution, it declined to comply with that most ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... gradually weaving a common standard of international appeal, it is clear that nations must fight, and ought to fight. Not being convinced, it is base to pretend that you are convinced; and failing to be convinced by your neighbor's arguments, you confess yourself a poltroon (and moreover you invite injuries from every neighbor) if you pocket your wrongs. The only course in such a case is to thump your neighbor, and to thump him soundly for the present. This treatment is very serviceable to your neighbor's optics; he sees things in a new light after a sufficient ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... the clansmen mustered at Inneraora. They never mustered at all, indeed, for the chieftains of the small companies that came from Glen Finne and down the country no sooner heard that the Marquis was off than they took the road back, and so Montrose and Colkitto MacDonald found a poltroon ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... thing is settled," Perion agreed. "I know that nothing save your love for Melicent could possibly induce you to decline a proffered battle. When Demetrios enacts the poltroon I am the most hasty of all men living to assert that the excellency of his reason is indisputable. Let us get on! I have only five hundred sequins, but this will be enough to buy your passage back to Quesiton. And inasmuch as we are near ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... madman in pursuit of me, and he threatens my life. An hour ago he got me to swear solemnly, and to put my hand to the oath, that I would renounce all pretensions to you, and never even speak to you again. I was a poltroon to submit to it. I know that well enough, and you cannot despise me more than I despise myself. But there is this to be said: until I consented to that declaration I never knew that I loved you. Perhaps, indeed, I had not done so. At any rate, now ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... Khujistah Akhtar Jahan-Shah and Rafi-ash-Shan, and placed the surviving of the four sons of Bahadur [i.e. Mu'izz-ud-din] on the throne with the title of Jahandar ("World-owner"). The new Emperor was an irredeemable poltroon and an abandoned debauchee.' (The History of the Moghul Emperors of Hindustan illustrated by their Coins, Constable, 1892, and in Introd. to B. M. Catal. of ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... it after it is done? Let the other fellows do that if they want to. I've no use for monuments." Poor fellow, his cynical ideas were his ruin. Better a thousand times had he been "planted" at the front, manfully doing his duty, than to save a worthless life and return with the record of a poltroon, despised by ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... he, "that little Prosper Leclere! He thinks himself one of the strongest—a fine fellow! But I tell you he is a coward. If he is clever? Yes. But he is a poltroon. He knows well that I can flatten him out like a crepe in the frying-pan. But he is afraid. He has not as much courage as the musk-rat. You stamp on the bank. He dives. ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... Mr. Welch replied to the lawyer's attack, pronouncing him to be "destitute of delicacy, decency, good manners, sound judgment, honesty, manhood, and humanity; a poltroon, a cat's-paw, the infamous tool of a party, a partisan, a political weathercock, ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... poisoned in Naples, but how? He was enamored of a Duchess, whose rightful lover became jealous, and sent three or four fellows to give him his choice between drinking poison out of a cup and being assassinated. He chose the former, but being an Italian poltroon he died ALONE, and allowed his murderers to live on in peace and quiet. I would at least (in my own room) have taken a couple with me into the next world, if absolutely obliged to die myself. Such an admirable singer is a ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... than the angels, and beheld in the end,—with besmirched brow and debased mien, a disgraced sensualist, not merely a deceiver of another woman's innocent confidence, and her tempter to dishonor and wretchedness, but a poltroon—a whipped coward who had not dared to lift voice or pen in denial ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... the conference which Fimbria requested Sulla did not make his appearance, but contented himself with suggesting to him through one of his officers a means of personal escape. Fimbria was of an insolent temperament, but he was no poltroon; instead of accepting the vessel which Sulla offered to him and fleeing to the barbarians, he went to Pergamus and fell on his own sword in the temple of Asklepios. Those who were most compromised in his army resorted to Mithradates or to the pirates, with whom ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... gets his horse to do what he wishes with the least force, whose indications are so clear that his horse cannot mistake them, and whose gentleness and fearlessness alike induce obedience to them. The noblest animal will obey such a rider, as surely as he will disregard the poltroon, or rebel against the savage. I say the noblest, because it is ever the noblest among them which rebel the most. For the dominion of man over the horse is an usurped dominion. And in riding a colt, or a restive horse, we should never forget that he has by nature the right ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... days after, this poltroon was in his turn superseded by a brave veteran, General Dugommier, and Napoleon could at last count on having his efforts backed. But, for the second time, the Representatives did their best to ruin his undertaking. The siege had now lasted four months, provisions were scarce in the ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... Larry, with a beating heart, "is too much of a gintleman to hould a poor man hard to every word he may say of an evening, and therefore"—"I was thinking so," said the saint, "I guessed you'd prove a poltroon when put to the push. What do you think, my brethren, I should do to this fellow?" A hollow sound burst from the bosoms of the unanimous assembly. The verdict was short and decisive:—"Knock out his brains!" And in order to suit the action to the word, the whole four-and-twenty ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 342, November 22, 1828 • Various
... Koran, or some less ascetic tome. Don't be gulled by a plausible slave, who wants nothing more than to multiply professors of his theory. Why don't you read the Bible, you miserable, puling poltroon, before you hug it as a treasure? Why don't you read it, and learn out of the mouth of the founder of Christianity, that there is one sin for which there is no forgiveness—blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, hey?—and that sin I myself have heard you commit ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Persians, and then, when the Persians were broken, turned upon them and won the battle, misapplies to them the term [Greek: thrasy/deiloi] (Arist., Eth. Nic., iii. 9.7)—men, that is, who affect the hero, but play the poltroon.] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... young Harry, springing to his feet. "Stand off; my lords! Far be from me such disgrace as that, like a poltroon, I should stain my arms by flight. If the prince flies, who will wait to end ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... I stared at this poltroon, who had worked himself into a fit of rage without knowing why, perhaps, owing to an obscure presentiment, the instinct of the deceived male who does not like closed doors. He had talked about her to me in a tender strain; now assuredly he was ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... of the hopes of a lifetime?" demanded Peregrine. "I, who have waited as long as Jacob, to be defrauded now I have you; and for the sake of the fellow who killed me in will if not in deed, and then ran away like a poltroon leaving ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the same time trembling with such agitation that the whole carriage shook. This singular piece of behaviour incensed Miss Ramper so much that she cried, "D—n your pitiful soul, you are as arrant a poltroon, as ever was drummed out of a regiment. Stop the waggon, Joey—let me out, and by G—d, if I have rhetoric enough, the thief shall not only take your purse, but your skin also." So saying she leaped out with great agility. By this time the horseman came up and happened to be a gentleman's ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... swore away our liberty, and all our work has been turned to naught by the cowardly traitor. Listen to me, Haight, listen well, and when you see the poltroon tell him that Jim Cummings swore he would cut his heart out. Aye! I WILL DO IT, though he were guarded behind double bars. I'll search him out and tear the traitor heart from his breast and make him eat it, by God—make ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... was willing to believe him, though she had been satisfied to the contrary; and the conduct of the Queen, who had the courage of a heroine, and the temper of La Riviere, who was the most notorious poltroon of his time, furnished me with this remark: That a blind rashness and an extravagant fear produce the same effects while the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... his relative, threatened the Duke of La Rochefoucauld; whereupon the latter said that, if he had them outside, he would strangle them both; to which the coadjutor replied, "My dear La Franchise (the duke's nickname), do not act the bully; you are a poltroon and I am a priest; we shall not do one another much harm." There was no fighting, and the Parliament, supported by the Duke of Orleans, obtained from the queen a declaration of the innocence of the Prince of Conde, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... enough that she was no coward, but even the brave turn poltroon when they fight without a sense of justification. Her pride told her that she ought to cross over to Lady Clifton-Wyatt and demand that she speak up. But her sense of guilt robbed her of her courage. And that oath she had given to Mr. Verrinder without the least reluctance now loomed ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... the army shook hands with a gallant lieut.-colonel (who had distinguished himself in the Peninsula) at one of the West End gaming houses, and Lieut. N—, who was present, upbraided the colonel with the epithet of "poltroon." On a fit opportunity the colonel inflicted summary justice upon the lieutenant with a cane or horse-whip. This produced a challenge; but the colonel was advised that he would degrade himself by combat with the challenger, and he therefore declined it, but promised similar chastisement to that ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... his fate was undoubtedly sealed, for he had invoked this very test—this meeting was to vouch for his sincerity. His mind went rapidly back over the whole period of his acquaintance with the Krovitch nobleman, to recall if there had been any indication of such a poltroon trait in Paul Zulka's character. He was, in justice, forced to deny the existence ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... ever. Men fear them, and are fascinated by them. They know how to show their teeth charmingly; the more enlightened of them have perfected a superb technique of fascination. It was Nietzsche who called them the recreation of the warrior—not of the poltroon, remember, but of the warrior. A profound saying. They have an infinite capacity for rewarding masculine industry and enterprise with small and irresistible flatteries; their acute understanding combines with their capacity for evoking ideas of beauty to make them incomparable companions ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... vagabond, knave, rogue, scoundrel, caitiff, miscreant, scapegrace, villain, rascal, renegade, reprobate, rake, scullion, poltroon, varlet, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... father for daring to marry him! High temper may be dangerous, and the rough hand something to be avoided and reprobated; but there is something worse in the extreme opposite, and humanity worse sickens at the sight of an abject poltroon, than at any other worthless fungus that springs as an ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... not comfort the poor man about the rencounter between him and that poltroon Metcalfe? He acted in that affair like a man of true honour, and as I should have acted in the same circumstances. Tell him I say so; and that what happened he could ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... The poltroon! Ah, poor stranger, why did you not leave the house at once and throw yourself upon the protection of the minister of your parish ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... "You have a kind heart, Jean Paulet," she mocked. "But I think perhaps you are right. You are too much of a poltroon to be ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... leading men either to good or to evil, takes, in this case, the evil part. Mere animal bravery has, unfortunately, such charms in the female eye, that a successful duellist is but too often regarded as a sort of hero; and the man who refuses to fight, though of truer courage, is thought a poltroon, who may be trampled on. Mr. Graves, a member of the American Legislature, who, early in 1838, killed a Mr. Cilley in a duel, truly and eloquently said, on the floor of the House of Representatives, when lamenting the unfortunate issue of that encounter, that society was more to blame than ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... if it would, then, it's Carver that would quake like the aspin leaf—I know that. It's no malice at all in him; only just he's a mighty great poltroon. ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... were questioned without result, until the German was reached whom Frank had arrested at the point of his pistol. All his insolence and braggadocio had vanished. He was evidently a poltroon at heart, for he showed every evidence of being willing to betray his comrades and tell all that he knew on condition that his own lot ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall
... choose between starvation or surrender to the Iroquois. Throwing down his weapons, he gave himself up to what he knew would be certain torture. Had he winced or whined as they tore the nails from his fingers and the hair from his head, the Iroquois would probably have brained him on the spot for a poltroon; but the young man, bound to a stake, pointed to a gathering storm as sign of Heaven's displeasure. The high spirit pleased the Iroquois. They unbound him and took him with them in their ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... crowd found her bashful fear so irresistibly funny, that it roared again. Also, when the little cow-herd with a crown on his head, lifted his hand or foot toward his partner, and then shrank trembling away, it roared yet more at the poltroon manner of the thing. ...
— The Field of Clover • Laurence Housman
... over this incident. The widow was rich, and it ranked among the unwritten crimes against blood for one offshoot of a great house wantonly to thwart another in the wooing of her by humbling him in her presence, doing his utmost to expose him as a schemer, a culprit, and a poltroon. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... his leaving, pulled off from her horse Mrs. Carson and her child, and having mounted the animal himself, was making good his escape. The Indians wished to keep up the ruse, pursue, Attempt to overtake and punish the poltroon; but Kit Carson was too thankful that matters had gone so well; therefore, he said that he felt that he could excuse such dastardly conduct, and requested the Indians to let it pass unnoticed. It is hardly necessary to add that with his faithful body-guard who ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... her head carefully away from her hearer, lowered her eyes, and, looking the picture of guilt and shame all the time, sang an ancient ditty. The poltroon's voice was rich, mellow, clear, and sweet as honey; and she sang the notes for the sake of the words, not the words for the sake of the notes, as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... no," she said; "I see you are no poltroon. It is for my own sake—I could not bear to have you slain for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her, when that poltroon of an Anderson Walkley, who had stolen back into the house after running from it, crept behind me and struck me back of the ear with a shaving mug. I dropped unconscious. In the resulting confusion, your very existence was as forgotten as your whereabouts was unknown. ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... be helped now; can it?' said he, with a peevish malignity. But she was right; there was something of the poltroon in ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... presently left the hut. On the threshold I looked back, past the poltroon whom I had flung into the river one midsummer day, to that prone and bleeding figure. As I looked, it groaned and moved. The Indians behind me forced me on; a moment, and we were out beneath the stars. They shone so very brightly; there was one—large, steadfast, golden—just over ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... "His meanest creatures," says Arthur Symons, "have in them a touch of honour, of honesty, or of heroism; his heroes have always some error, weakness, or mistake, some sin or crime, to redeem." What is Lord Jim, scoundrel and poltroon or gallant knight? What is Captain MacWhirr, hero or simply ass? What is Falk, beast or idealist? One leaves "Heart of Darkness" in that palpitating confusion which is shot through with intense curiosity. Kurtz is at once the most abominable of rogues and the most fantastic ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... rush forward to loot and enrich themselves at our expense. Now, if 13 this conduct were to be the rule, general ruin would be the result. I do not deny that I have given blows to this man or the other who played the poltroon and refused to get up, helplessly abandoning himself to the enemy; and so I forced them to march on. For once in the severe wintry weather I myself happened to sit down for a long time, whilst waiting for a party who were getting their kit together, and I discovered how difficult it was ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... clearly seen what he was capable, and what he was incapable, of doing. And the correction of England's error was among his incapacities. He could not face the Dean. He could not face any one. He was a poltroon in all these things; a poltroon. No use arguing! ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... usual poltroon contrasted with the manly and masterful girl, a conjunction of the lioness and the lamb sometimes seen in ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... enemy fell. As, half choked with grief and rage, I looked around for the cause, behold! my brave lieutenant Scott, at the head of his riflemen, came stooping along with his gun in his hand, and the black marks of shame and cowardice on his sheepish face. "Infamous poltroon," said I, shaking my sword over his head, "where is that hetacomb of robbers and murderers due to the vengeance of your ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... quiet, and in private correspondence he vented his rage in terms similar to those used of the Danish commodore after Copenhagen. "You will have seen Monsieur La Touche's letter of how he chased me and how I ran. I keep it; and, by G—d, if I take him, he shall eat it." He is a "poltroon," a "liar," and a "miscreant." It may be added that no admiral, whether a Nelson or not, could have abandoned the ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... fight Concombre Bateese yet!" he howled. "Non, you have cheat me, you have lie, you have run lak cat from Concombre Bateese, ze stronges' man on all T'ree River! You are wan' gran' coward, wan poltroon, an' you 'fraid to fight ME, who ees greates' fightin' man in all dees countree! Sapristi! Why you no hit Concombre Bateese, m'sieu? Why you no hit ze greates' fightin' man ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... age, as beautiful and attractive as you, and I had dared a man to kiss me, I should feel slighted, to say the least of it, and regard him as a poltroon, if he failed to take up my challenge," commented Lady Fermanagh drily. "You can't mean to say you did not expect Don Carlos to carry out the threat or promise he made in his note, particularly as you made no protest against his having ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... likewise approached and retreated. This ship, commanded by a Frenchman, infamous in his own navy, and obnoxious in the service to which he at present belonged; this ship, foremost in insurgency to Paul hitherto, and which, for the most part, had crept like a poltroon from the fray; the Alliance now was at hand. Seeing her, Paul deemed the battle at an end. But to his horror, the Alliance threw a broadside full into the stern of the Richard, without touching the Serapis. Paul called to her, for God's sake ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... battle which we won during the war; and that, in that action, an officer had proposed to haul down the stars and stripes, and a common sailor threatened to cut him to pieces, if he should do so. He spoke of Bainbridge as a sot and a poltroon, who wanted to run from the Macedonian, pretending to take her for a line-of-battle ship; of Commodore Elliot as a liar; but praised Commodore Downes in the highest terms. Percival seems to be the very pattern of old ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... robbed him near Hyde Park. Yet a more pitiful rascal never showed the white feather. Not once was he known to take a purse with his own hand, the summit of his achievement being to hold the horses' heads while his accomplice spoke with the passengers. A poltroon before his arrest, in Court he whimpered and whinnied for mercy; he was carried to the cart pallid and trembling, and not even his preposterous finery availed to hearten him at the gallows. Taxed with his timidity, he attempted to excuse himself on the inadmissible plea of moral rectitude. 'I have ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... Ratman his brother, Fastnet his brother's friend! At what a cost to the good name of his house was this wrong to be put right, this self-sacrifice to be accomplished. But ere he slept the honest man gained a victory over the poltroon. Providence had sent him stumbling into the track. It was not for him to ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... be found out, I know from my own experience, must be painful and odious, and cruelly mortifying to the inward vanity. Suppose I am a poltroon, let us say. With fierce mustache, loud talk, plentiful oaths, and an immense stick, I keep up nevertheless a character for courage. I swear fearfully at cabmen and women; brandish my bludgeon, and perhaps knock ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... stood in the empty hall; before me was the breakfast-room door, and I stopped, intimidated and trembling. What a miserable little poltroon had fear, engendered of unjust punishment, made of me in those days! I feared to return to the nursery, and feared to go forward to the parlour; ten minutes I stood in agitated hesitation; the vehement ringing of the breakfast-room bell decided me; ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... his brutal or tyrannical instincts were questioned or thwarted, and become insensible, for a time, even to physical danger. Ignorance, folly and self-conceit not seldom make a man seem fearless who is a poltroon at heart. Braddock's death was a better one than he deserved; he raged about the field like a dazed bull; fly he could not; he was incapable of adopting any intelligent measures to save his troops; on the contrary he kept reiterating conventional orders in a manner that showed ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... the imbroglio began downstairs. He sat up and listened. Yes; undoubtedly burglars! He switched on his light and jumped out of bed. He took a pistol from a drawer, and thus armed went to look into the matter. The dreamy peer was no poltroon. ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... supported Mr. Wilson as long as they believed him determined to redeem his promises—"the governments have acquiesced in the Fourteen Points.... Hypocrisy. Each one cherished mental reservations. Virtue was exalted and vice practised. The poltroon eulogized heroism; the imperialist lauded the spirit of justice. For the past month we have been picking up ideas about the worth of the adhesions to the Fourteen Points, and never before has a more sinister or a more ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... such a tyro at fence, or such a poltroon as to be afraid to meet him? No, Hyacinth, I go with you to Dover, or I stand my ground ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... a perfect right, if he chooses, to submit to tyranny on his own account, he has no right to stand tamely by and see gross oppression and cruelty exercised towards his family, and neighbours, and country. At least, if he does so, he earns for himself the character of an unpatriotic poltroon. True patriotism consists in a readiness to sacrifice one's-self to the national well-being. As far as things temporal are concerned, the records of the Scottish Covenanters prove incontestably that those long-tried men and women submitted with unexampled patience ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... was too clever and too good a woman not to make a speedy and a heart-breaking discovery of the fatal mistake she had committed. Poor Jane Campbell soon wakened up to the discovery that she had exchanged the name and the family of a brave and noble house for the name and the house of a poltroon. No wonder that Rutherford's letters to her are so often headed: 'To Lady Kenmure, under illness and depression of mind.' Could you have kept quite well had you been a Campbell with John Gordon for a husband? Think of having to nurse your humbug ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... not surprise me," returned the Doctor; "all your opinions are contemptible." What is worthless or weak is contemptible. Despicable is a word that expresses a still more intense degree of the contemptible. A traitor is a despicable character, while a poltroon is only contemptible. ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... named Irus, gluttonous and big-boned but a coward. Encouraged by the winkings and noddings of the suitors he bade Odysseus begone. A quiet answer made him imagine he had to deal with a poltroon and he challenged him to a fight. The proposal was welcomed with glee by the suitors, who promised on oath to see fair play for the old man in his quarrel with a younger. But when they saw the mighty limbs and stout frame of Odysseus, ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... eastern division, which struck to him, after having lost a large proportion of men, and, at the instant that brave officer was boarding her to take possession, he was (p. 139) treacherously shot through the head by the captain of the boat that had surrendered, which base conduct enabled the poltroon (with the assistance he received from the other boats) to escape. The third boat of Captain Somers' division kept to windward, firing at the boats and shipping in the harbour; had she gone down to his assistance, ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... of resolve which cleared away clouds and braced his whole being. He had to fight. There was no way out. Well, then, he would fight. He had played the villain, perhaps, but he would not play the poltroon. He did not know what he was going to do, what he could do, but he must act, and act decisively. His wild youth responded to this call made upon it. There was a new light in his eyes as he went down to the cottage, as he came ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... metaphorically speaking, instead of walking off at the end in a sneaking, mincing sort of way, with no more than a little momentary twinge of discomfort at the wreck and ruin he has wrought, for having acted as a selfish, snivelling poltroon and coward, though in fine clothes and with fine ways and fine manners, which only, from our point of view, make matters worse. It is, with variations I admit, much the same all through: R. L. Stevenson felt it and confessed it about ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... suffer intolerable apprehension in regard to my future, lest my good intentions should fail or my self-control not hold out. But the knowledge that you are acquainted with my resolve, and regard it with an undeserved sympathy, may suffice to sustain me, and I should certainly be a base poltroon if I should ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... publish you as a coward!" cried Denis, in a towering rage; "a poltroon who has insulted a lady and ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... who would have married her for her estates; you are the cousin who played the poltroon and outraged her pride of family; you are the lover who abandoned her,—abandoned her to torture and the tomahawk. Is it strange that it is her wish never to see you? You will spare your pride some hurts if you avoid her ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... a poltroon though," he said to himself as he finished dressing. "I don't care a fig about Camille. It's absurd to think that this poor devil is under my bed. I shall, perhaps, have the same idea, now, every night. ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... then, was a knave who held, somehow, the keys to a courtlier and nobler world. These tales made living seem a braver business, for all that they were written by a poltroon. Was it pure posturing? Patricia, at least, thought it was not. At worst, such dexterous maintenance of a pose was hardly despicable, she considered. And, anyhow, she preferred to believe that Charteris had by some miracle ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... "The poltroon!" he said. "A fellow like that to marry a girl like cousin Helen's girl! A grand creature, by George! The grandest creature I ever saw in my life! Why, rather than wet his clothes the sneak would have let us both drown after I had got him to the bank! Calling to me ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... ever heard Washington swear," Lafayette once remarked, "was when he called General Charles Lee a 'damned poltroon,' after the arrest of that officer for treasonable conduct." Nor was Washington the only person of self-restraint and good manners whose temper and angry passions were roused by this same erratic ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... for a white-livered poltroon!" he cried, as the chill sweat of fear ceased to break out upon him, and he rallied his courage and ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... looked at the man lying at his feet—who had stretched himself out and passed, quietly enough, a minute before—and stood dubious, the most pitiable picture of cowardice and malice—he being ordinarily a stout man—I ever saw. I called him poltroon and white-feather, and was considering whether I had not better go down to him, seeing that our time must be up, and Simon would be quitting his post, when a cry behind me caused me to turn, and I saw that mademoiselle was no longer ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... every name in the poltroon's calendar," cried Murray, seeing by the countenance of Wallace that his resolution was not to be moved; "yet I must gallop off from your black-eyed Judith, as if chased by the ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... uses neither flattery, nor bribery, nor intrigue, nor deceit; instead of loading you with praise, he will point you to the better way. I scoff at Cleon's tricks and plotting; honesty and justice shall fight my cause; never will you find me a political poltroon, a prostitute to the ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... frigate, are you? Shame on you, coward and poltroon! Stay and fight like a man for your ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... replied, 'over fifteen paces is "poltroon distance," and, besides, our pistols do not carry effectively more than twenty paces. We will not, however, under any circumstances, fight on ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... to be cut, and the yacht to be pulled out to sea by the oars. They were soon beyond the reach of the guns. It was now night, serene and beautiful; the sea was smooth as glass, and the stars shone with unusual splendor in the clear sky. The poltroon monarch of all the Russias had not yet ventured upon deck, but was trembling in his cabin, surrounded by his dismayed mistresses, when the helmsman entered the cabin ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... them by coming out only in school hours. This didn't help his trade. But then his trade had dwindled to the vanishing point anyway. Even Madame Tallafferr had dropped him. She preferred not to deal with a poltroon, as ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... and furniture went by the board; He saw—at a distance, the rebels appear, And "rode to the front," which was strangely the rear; He conquered—truth, decency, honor full soon, Pest, pilferer, puppy, pretender, poltroon; And was fain from the scene of his triumphs to slope. Sure there never was fortunate hero ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... intelligent, and brave; whilst we are reduced to the unprogressive Kru-man, who is, moreover, a model coward, a poltroon on principle. ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... freeman, nor moral nor physical courage, and he is, therefore, an improper person (possibly infamous) for such a high and responsible position, and my rights as a citizen are not safe in the keeping of such a poltroon and conniving attorney, and he is probably disqualified to hold the high and responsible office of Senator of the United States—that he improperly accepts fees from clients, possibly in part for the influence ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... expected that his eagerness to go with them on the wild and sudden campaign would reinstate him in their good graces, but it failed utterly. "Any man would seek that," was the verdict of the informal council held by the officers. "He would have been a poltroon if he hadn't sought to go; but, while he isn't a poltroon, he has done a contemptible thing." And so it stood. Rollins had cut him dead, refused his hand, and denied him a chance to explain. "Tell him he can't explain," was the savage reply he sent by the ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... news was too sudden for my self-possession to remain. But when I saw that the little English angel began to weep afresh at this exclamation, I longed for one moment to be able to get out of my own body, that I might chastise a poltroon so un-philosophical. I took her by the hand instead, and led her into this room and made her sit down, and, whilst I sponged the picture with cold water, made her tell me how the accident had happened. For I thought, in my Machiavellian Italian way, ...
— The Romance Of Giovanni Calvotti - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... said to you, I would say before him, were he not skulking in his cabin, afraid of justice. He is a pig of a poltroon!" cried his Excellency. "I wish he were here now, and I would ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... word. Yet pride whispered, that to speak that word now, would be ascribed to a motive which would degrade him more low than even the most injurious reasons that could be assigned for his silence. Every one, Miss Wardour included, must then, he thought, account him a mean dishonoured poltroon, who gave to the fear of meeting Captain M'Intyre the explanation he had refused to the calm and handsome expostulations of Mr. Lesley. M'Intyre's insolent behaviour to himself personally, the air of pretension which ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... they may be considered as a brave race of men; but occasionally there is a poltroon, and, like all cowards, he brags ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... fires up and exclaims, "Coward! Mind, gentlemen, he calls me a 'coward,' coward by my valor!" and when dared by Sir Lucius, he replies, "I don't mind the word 'coward;' 'coward' may be said in a joke; but if he called me 'poltroon,' ods, daggers and balls——" "Well, sir, what then?" "Why," rejoined Bob Acres, "I should certainly think him very ill-bred." Of course, he resigns all claim to the ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... his place and, retiring from active service, rule the estate in accordance with Challoner traditions and perhaps exert some influence in politics. Clarke had, however, shown him that Bertram, from whom so much was expected, had proved himself a poltroon and, what was even worse, had allowed an innocent man to suffer ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... one thing well done. We're better off without a coward like that. He'd be getting under our feet all the time, or else opening the doors to the Caesars, with the idea of currying favor with them. Where did you ever pick up such an arrant little poltroon? Most Japs are ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... French of that day, neutralized the defects and more than compensated the blunders of Napoleon. But these were advantages that could not be depended on: a glass of brandy extraordinary might have emboldened the greatest poltroon to do that which, by once rousing a movement of popular enthusiasm, once making a beginning in that direction, would have precipitated the whole affair into hands which must have carried it far beyond the power of any party to control. Never, according to all human calculation, were eloquence ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... far from it—easy for them to dismiss this bitter truth for a mere sentimentalism; but there is a virginity of the soul which evil custom cannot deflower. Woe to him who knows it, the chaste in wish and the unchaste in act, the rogue who values honour, the poltroon who would fain be brave! Ah, the goat-hoofed Satyr dancing there, drunk and leering, goatish in odour, unwashed and foul! Is it I? Is it I? And the anguished angel who weeps to look upon him. Is it I? Woe, woe is me, for I am each and both ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... so-called victim. Who was he? what motive had induced him to surrender his body to the scalpel of the master, his life to the realization of the master's idea? A slave, a debtor, from whom the ingenious savant had thus exacted a pound of flesh? A trembling poltroon, forced to the sacrifice more reluctantly than Isaac to the altar? I preferred rather to believe that it was a favorite pupil, burning with enthusiasm for the master, joyful to participate in his mighty labors at the cheap expense of his own lesser life. Had Vesalius been a general, and he an aide-de-camp ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... and the vintaging. Moon and Sun, Selene and Helios, appear as quite distinct from Artemis and Apollo; Gaea, the Earth, is equally distinct from Demeter. The Hymn to Ares is quite un-Homeric in character, and is oddly conceived in the spirit of the Scottish poltroon, who cries to his friend, "Haud me, haud me, or I'll fecht!" The war-god is implored to moderate the martial eagerness of the poet. The original collector here showed lack of discrimination. At no time, however, was Ares a popular God in Greece; in Homer ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... been slaughtered and are smoking on the fire. The night is drawing on and now the meal is over. Twelve o'clock strikes, and in one moment every bell from every belfrey clangs out its summons. Poltroon were he who had gone to bed before twelve on Noche-buena. From every house the inmates hurry to the gaily-lit church and throng its aisles, a dark-robed crowd of worshippers. The organ peals out, the priests and choir chant at this midnight hour the Christmas hymn, and ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... for her!" she said, in fierce impatience. "You are a poltroon and a carpet-knight, like the rest—ready with plenty of fine words, and nothing else! You asked her to marry you, and you don't care whether she is ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... evolutions. But with Tourville's name is associated not only a high level of professional management, but a caution in professional action not far removed from timidity, so that an impatient Minister of Marine of his day and nation styled him "poltroon in head, though not in heart." His powers were displayed in the preservation and orderly movement of his fleet; in baffling, by sheer skill, and during long periods, the efforts of the enemy to bring ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... dear Miss Featherstone. I am such a confounded poltroon"—and he seized her hands again—"that I dare not risk my fate; but that person is"—and he looked down upon her, his heart beating so violently that he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... told him not to be afraid. He rose up, kissed my hand, and went out to prepare my food. Not long after, I heard lamentable cries and howls in the kitchen. I hastened thither, and to my great astonishment, saw the humble and trembling Monsieur poltroon engaged, very valiantly, in beating his wife and servant girls. When he perceived me he took to flight. I turned to the weeping wife and girls and demanded what could have excited such terrible anger in my lamb-like host. They stood for some ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... as a companion, friend and fellow-tourist, came Peter de Peyster, who hailed from the banks of the Hudson, and of what Roddy called "one of our ancient poltroon families." At Yale, although he had been two classes in advance of Roddy, the two had been roommates, and such firm friends that they contradicted each other without ceasing. Having quarrelled through two years of ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... such a brutal eagerness in seizing it with his filthy hands, and making not the least acknowledgment, that when they got out of the house, Morgante was ready to fell him to the earth. He called him scoundrel and poltroon, and said he had ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... been above it. If you entertained an idea that war was imminent, would it not have been far better to have made your preparations in quiet, and when you found the war rumor blown over, to have said nothing about what you intended to do? Fie upon such cheap Lacedaemonianism! There is no poltroon in the world but can brag about what he WOULD have done: however, to do your Royal Highness's nation justice, they brag ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")
... the bones of his body," I promised in a tone entirely new to me. And then to him—"The truth now, poltroon!" I admonished him. ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... greater poet than Wordsworth just as it made Peter a greater king than George III; but as it was, after all, only a negative qualification, it did not prevent Peter from being an appalling blackguard and an arrant poltroon, nor did it enable Byron to become a religious force like Shelley. Let us, then, leave Byron's Don Juan out of account. Mozart's is the last of the true Don Juans; for by the time he was of age, his cousin Faust ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... standing close to the side of the house when, in an instant, without the slightest notice, my hat was struck off to the distance of several yards by a soldier, or rather a poltroon in a soldier's costume, and this courteous manoeuvre was performed with his gun and bayonet, accompanied with curses and taunts and the expression of a demon ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... stood in no little awe of his bellicose spouse. What, though a hero in other respects; what, though he had slain his savages, and gallantly carried his craft from their clutches:—Like the valiant captains Marlborough and Belisarius, he was a poltroon to his wife. And Annatoo was worse than either Sarah ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... said I (though, I confess, my mind was considerably relieved at the thoughts of not having killed him). 'And did the Bradys of Castle Brady consent to admit a poltroon like that into one of the most ancient and honourable ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... me, without a rider. The idea of being yet able to escape gave me fresh strength and served as a spur to me. I ran and laid hold of the bridle, which was fast in the hand of a man lying on the ground, whom I supposed dead; but, what was my surprise when the cowardly poltroon, who was suffering from nothing but fear, dared to remain in the most horrible fire to dispute the horse with me, at twenty paces from the enemy. All my menaces could not induce him to quit the bridle. Whilst we were disputing, a discharge from a cannon loaded with ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... what if it be my vice, My pleasure to displease—to love men hate me! Ah, friend of mine, believe me, I march better 'Neath the cross-fire of glances inimical! How droll the stains one sees on fine-laced doublets, From gall of envy, or the poltroon's drivel! —The enervating friendship which enfolds you Is like an open-laced Italian collar, Floating around your neck in woman's fashion; One is at ease thus,—but less proud the carriage! The forehead, free from mainstay or coercion, Bends here, there, everywhere. ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... Sons, To-day is a prodigious coxcomb, but To-morrow is a very poltroon, taking fright at the big words of his predecessor. To-day is the truculent captain of old world comedy, To-morrow the ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... Buckingham, elated with his exploit, set out immediately for the earl's seat at Cliefden, where he lay with his wife, after having boasted of the murder of her husband, whose blood he shewed her upon his sword, as a trophy of his prowess. But this very duke of Buckingham was little better than a poltroon at bottom. When the gallant earl of Ossory challenged him to fight in Chelsea fields, he crossed the water to Battersea, where he pretended to wait for his lordship; and then complained to the house of lords, that Ossory had given ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... challenge rose erect in his stirrups. His countenance, noble and defiant, presented a strange contrast to the aspect of vulgar ferocity that characterised the features of the man thus addressed. The insult was point blank, and would have aroused the veriest poltroon; but Arroyo possessed only the courage ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... did not speak. (Aside, boxing his own ears, and thumping himself to raise his courage). Ah! I am enraged at my own cowardice! Chicken-hearted poltroon! ...
— Sganarelle - or The Self-Deceived Husband • Moliere
... sans peur et sans reproche," said the bold little fellow. "I was determined not to return home a poltroon who was afraid of the water." When Fritz was gone, I tried the bridge, and soon found there was not sufficient water over it to risk my being drowned. I took off my boots, which might have made me slip, and my cloak, which ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... you cry in your agony, "Come and help me!" Oh, assuredly Wellington was infamously used at that time, especially by your traders in Radicalism, who howled at and hooted him; said he had every vice—was no general—was beaten at Waterloo—was a poltroon—moreover a poor illiterate creature, who could scarcely read or write; nay, a principal Radical paper said boldly he could not read, and devised an ingenious plan for teaching Wellington how to read. Now this was too ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... Ailie could be brave, but what a poltroon she was also! Three calls did she make on dear friends, ostensibly to ask how a cold was or to instruct them in a new device in Shetland wool, but really to announce that she did not propose keeping school after the ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... literary fragments he has left, and that is found to be the character of a pusillanimous and ill-bred usurer, wholly lacking in foresight, in generous enterprise, and chivalrous enthusiasm—in matters of the Faith a prig or a doubter, in matters of adventure a poltroon, in matters of Science an ignorant Parrot, and in Letters a wretchedly bad rhymester, with a vice for alliteration; a wilful liar (as, for instance, 'The longest way round is the shortest way home'), a startling miser (as, 'A penny ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... regiment who survived the carnage of Waterloo. And yet this man, who had been familiar with death more than half his life, and who at times talked as though he were a perfect tornado in the field, was as arrant a poltroon as ever skulked. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... Launcelot) would not suffer to pass unpunished. Accordingly, he insisted on the combat, on pain of treating Sycamore as a craven, and a recreant. This declaration was reinforced by Dawdle, who told him, that, should he now decline the engagement, all the world would look upon him as an infamous poltroon. ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... have a bad heart," said the poet. "You have laughed insolently at a man whose misfortune is none of his own making. You are a poltroon ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... undertook to keep the register in her memory alone, she would not lose a word of it—not a syllable of it. Knitted, in her own stitches and her own symbols, it will always be as plain to her as the sun. Confide in Madame Defarge. It would be easier for the weakest poltroon that lives, to erase himself from existence, than to erase one letter of his name or crimes from the knitted register ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... the fact that she was not a coward for herself, but through a slowly formulating and struggled—against fear, which chilled her very heart, and which she could best cover by a pretence of being a poltroon. ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... stung him not to resistance. Never shone moonlight on more of a poltroon, the glitter and grandeur of his warlike dress in striking contrast ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... instant the game of this vile creature. Why should he risk his skin in climbing walls when he might be sure of a free pardon from the English for having prevented the escape of one so much more distinguished than himself? I had recognized him as a poltroon and a sneak, but I had not understood the depth of baseness to which he could descend. One who has spent his life among gentlemen and men of honour does not think of such ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... from motherhood is as low a creature as a man of the professional pacifist, or poltroon, type, who shirks his duty ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... "is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith." The luxurious breakfast at Roselands was partaken of with very little enjoyment that morning; by Walter especially, who had to bear contempt and ridicule; threats also: he was called a Yankee, coward, poltroon, traitor; and threatened with disinheritance and denouncement unless he would declare himself for the Confederacy and enlist in ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... always a very bad and a very good woman, a very generous and noble man and one so bad as to seem a monster. There is the type of the "love-lorn maiden," of "the lily-livered" hero, of the faithful friend, of the poltroon. It is supposed by many that such types repeated in play after play do not mark the highest original power, but rather poverty of invention, weak and shadowy conception, indistinctness of coloring. Professor Thorndike, however, cannot too much commend this style, because ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... the fair sex, who value it above all others, is so wholly out of our control, that when suffering under sickness or disease, it deserts us; nay, for the time being, a violent stomach-ache will turn a hero into a poltroon. ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... before the actual trial. Many a man has been unable to discover, till the critical moment, whether he himself possessed it or not. It is often denied to the healthy and strong, and given to the weak. The pugilist may be a poltroon, and the bookworm a hero. We have seen the most purely ideal philosopher in this country face the black muzzles of a dozen loaded revolvers with his usual serene composure. And on the other hand, we have known a black-bearded backwoodsman, whose mere voice ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... heart a poltroon or a palterer, cruel, dull, envious, full of hate? Then Nature, the mother of the strong and generous, will have no pity, but will turn and rend you with claws. 'Trust her with your whole heart,' says Mr. Meredith, 'and go ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Englishman I ever knew was a liar, and a sneaking poltroon. I was brought up to hate the race, and always have. I can't say that I like you any better than the others. By God! I don't, for the matter of that. But just now you can be useful to me if you are of that mind. This is a business proposition, and it ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... not afford to stultify itself by the choice of a candidate who favored monopolies. He had given his promise, the word of a man of honor, and a business man. What escape was there from the predicament? If he vetoed the bill, would he not be a liar and a poltroon? If he signed it, the senatorship would slip through his fingers. The thought occurred to him to send for Elton and throw himself on his mercy, but he shrank from such an interview. Elton was a business ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... shooting down their comrades and leaders, and never offering to hide or fly, Slade showed that he was a man of peerless bravery. No coward would dare that. Many a notorious coward, many a chicken-livered poltroon, coarse, brutal, degraded, has made his dying speech without a quaver in his voice and been swung into eternity with what looked liked the calmest fortitude, and so we are justified in believing, from the low ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... prison-yard? or stupendously to play the fool and swear even to himself (while his own judgment shrieks and proves a flat denial), that he is at will omnipotent? You have chosen long ago, my poor proud Ysabeau; and I choose now, and differently: for poltroon that I am! being now in a cold drench of terror, I steadfastly protest I am not very much afraid, and I choose ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... he said. "I have a mind, then, to thrash you where you stand, you canting poltroon! Do you hear me?—here, where ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... now torn this legend to shreds. Under his pitiless analysis of the facts, nothing is left but the story of a contemptible adventurer, who was "a robber, a murderer, and a poltroon," mated to a grasping, heartless courtesan. Both were alike infamous. The ignoble careers of both from the cradle to the grave do not, in reality, present ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... Fourier's afternoon visit has to do with Mme. d'Agen's journey?" he retorted, "I'll tell you, my good Clyffurde. Fourier went to see M. le Comte de Cambray this afternoon because he is a poltroon. He is terrified at the thought that the unfortunate Empress' money and treasure are still lying in the cellars of the Hotel de Ville and he went out to Brestalou in order to consult with the Comte what had best be ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... has no law, you know. Now—let me consider—there is one thing more to be done before we leave; what is it? It was in my mind a moment ago! Ah, yes, of course, that is it; we have to put this miserable poltroon of a steward back into his pantry, lock the door upon him, and—yes, that is all, I think. Come ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... Bravery, and at the Hazard of Friends, and never fail'd to be ungrateful; that if ever he committed a Murther, did it in cold Blood, because no body could prove he ever had any hot; who possess'd with a Poltroon Devil, was always wickeder in the Dark, than he durst be by Day-light; and who, after innumerable passive Sufferings, has been turned out of human Society, because he could not be kick'd or cuff'd either into ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... disturbed. He was no poltroon, and had proved the fact on many occasions during the days when the entire German army seemed to be picking on him personally, but he hated and shrank from anything in the nature ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... hands on him before were he so notable a miscreant. He was not in hiding when I saw him first; he appeared to go about the city fearlessly. Doubtless it is but some new panic on the part of the King. God help us all now that we be ruled over by such a poor poltroon!" ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... back you, are the faintest creatures in the world when you cry in your agony, 'Come and help me!' Oh! assuredly Wellington was infamously used at that time, especially by your traders in Radicalism, who howled at and hooted him; said he had every vice—was no general—was beaten at Waterloo—was a poltroon—moreover a poor illiterate creature, who could scarcely read or write; nay, a principal Radical paper said bodily he could not read, and devised an ingenious plan for teaching Wellington how to read. Now this ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... sound and peaceful sleep when the imbroglio began downstairs. He sat up and listened. Yes; undoubtedly burglars! He switched on his light and jumped out of bed. He took a pistol from a drawer, and thus armed went to look into the matter. The dreamy peer was no poltroon. ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... army in the same year that you were four years old; that you have been discharged from all the Texas dailies for incompetency, and are the author of editorials in the Chicago Inter-Ocean slandering the South; that you are a big over-grown bully who abuses weaker people, and a miserable little poltroon who has been kicked by every cripple between New York and Denver. All this is doubtless correct as far as it goes; now will you please inform me whether you have been guilty ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... our forbearance rather more of the highly colored and strongly-flavored parlance of the camps than could otherwise have demanded reproduction in literature. The bold strokes with which such an amusing and heroic reprobate as Van Zandt and such a pitiful poltroon as Gazaway are painted, are no less admirable than the nice touches which portray the Governor of Barataria, and some phases of the aristocratic, conscientious, truthful, angular, professorial society of New Boston, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... Colonel at last; "that will do. I see you turned poltroon and shrank back, to leave them to go on by themselves. Man, man! if you hadn't the honest British pluck in you to go, ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... said U-Thor in his deep voice. "I bring you a new jeddak for all of Manator. No lying poltroon, but a courageous ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... not resist one exclamation of sorrow. The news was too sudden for my self-possession to remain. But when I saw that the little English angel began to weep afresh at this exclamation, I longed for one moment to be able to get out of my own body, that I might chastise a poltroon so un-philosophical. I took her by the hand instead, and led her into this room and made her sit down, and, whilst I sponged the picture with cold water, made her tell me how the accident had happened. ...
— The Romance Of Giovanni Calvotti - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... found her bashful fear so irresistibly funny, that it roared again. Also, when the little cow-herd with a crown on his head, lifted his hand or foot toward his partner, and then shrank trembling away, it roared yet more at the poltroon manner ...
— The Field of Clover • Laurence Housman
... my second shot to his third," said Griffith, sternly; "he will not decline, unless he is a poltroon, as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... individual man has a perfect right, if he chooses, to submit to tyranny on his own account, he has no right to stand tamely by and see gross oppression and cruelty exercised towards his family, and neighbours, and country. At least, if he does so, he earns for himself the character of an unpatriotic poltroon. True patriotism consists in a readiness to sacrifice one's-self to the national well-being. As far as things temporal are concerned, the records of the Scottish Covenanters prove incontestably that those long-tried men and women submitted with unexampled ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... said; "I see you are no poltroon. It is for my own sake—I could not bear to have you ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... General, looking scornfully at his son, whom terror had robbed of strength to stand. "You have the courage to plan cold-blooded murder, but when the time comes to face your own death you show yourself a miserable poltroon. Fear nothing: you shall not die. I have passed a sleepless night, struggling between duty and parental affection. But were it known in St. Petersburg that I had shown you mercy, I would answer ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... once, at this sudden inlet of cold air into the conversation. He perceived that he had made a terrible blunder; and, as it was not his business at that moment to vindicate the British constitution, but to serve Leonard Fairfield, he abandoned the cause of the aristocracy with the most poltroon and scandalous abruptness. Catching at the arm which Mr. Avenel had withdrawn ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... nothing of the fact that she was not a coward for herself, but through a slowly formulating and struggled—against fear, which chilled her very heart, and which she could best cover by a pretence of being a poltroon. ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... has been too kind to me! I disobey him, I offend against his laws.... I repent, and he accepts my prayer! I relapse into sin—and he forgives me! Decidedly, the good God is a very poltroon!" ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... of "true Russians" in the third Duma attacked him with violent and insulting abuse, and Mr. Vladimir Purishkevich, one of their most influential leaders, said to him in open session: "You are a poltroon and traitor, in whose face I would willingly spit!" Such is the spirit of the "true Russians" whom the Czar has asked to help him in bringing about "the peaceful regeneration of our ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... be a brave man than a coward, even in a bad cause. Fortune often favors brave men in the wrong in preference to aiding cowards in the right, for Fortune loves not a poltroon. John Winch felt at that moment that nobody henceforth would love or favor him, and he began to frame excuses ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... it. If you entertained an idea that war was imminent, would it not have been far better to have made your preparations in quiet, and when you found the war rumor blown over, to have said nothing about what you intended to do? Fie upon such cheap Lacedaemonianism! There is no poltroon in the world but can brag about what he WOULD have done: however, to do your Royal Highness's nation justice, they brag ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")
... or surrender to the Iroquois. Throwing down his weapons, he gave himself up to what he knew would be certain torture. Had he winced or whined as they tore the nails from his fingers and the hair from his head, the Iroquois would probably have brained him on the spot for a poltroon; but the young man, bound to a stake, pointed to a gathering storm as sign of Heaven's displeasure. The high spirit pleased the Iroquois. They unbound him and took him with them in their wanderings for ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... reference to those articles. Carnivorous I am not, nor is Mrs. Pryor, nor is Mrs. Gill herself, yet I only hemmed and opened my eyes a little wide when I saw butchers' bills whose figures seemed to prove that fact—falsehood, I mean. Caroline, you may laugh at me, but you can't change me. I am a poltroon on certain points; I feel it. There is a base alloy of moral cowardice in my composition. I blushed and hung my head before Mrs. Gill, when she ought to have been faltering confessions to me. I found it ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... standard of international appeal, it is clear that nations must fight, and ought to fight. Not being convinced, it is base to pretend that you are convinced; and failing to be convinced by your neighbor's arguments, you confess yourself a poltroon (and moreover you invite injuries from every neighbor) if you pocket your wrongs. The only course in such a case is to thump your neighbor, and to thump him soundly for the present. This treatment is very serviceable to ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... flattery, nor bribery, nor intrigue, nor deceit; instead of loading you with praise, he will point you to the better way. I scoff at Cleon's tricks and plotting; honesty and justice shall fight my cause; never will you find me a political poltroon, a prostitute to the ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... lost a large proportion of men, and, at the instant that brave officer was boarding her to take possession, he was (p. 139) treacherously shot through the head by the captain of the boat that had surrendered, which base conduct enabled the poltroon (with the assistance he received from the other boats) to escape. The third boat of Captain Somers' division kept to windward, firing at the boats and shipping in the harbour; had she gone down to his assistance, it is probable several of the enemy's boats would ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... bitter truth for a mere sentimentalism; but there is a virginity of the soul which evil custom cannot deflower. Woe to him who knows it, the chaste in wish and the unchaste in act, the rogue who values honour, the poltroon who would fain be brave! Ah, the goat-hoofed Satyr dancing there, drunk and leering, goatish in odour, unwashed and foul! Is it I? Is it I? And the anguished angel who weeps to look upon him. Is it I? Woe, woe is me, for I am each ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... captain releasing a prisoner confined by his colonel commandant, and see the consequence!" The negro fell into the hands of the British, and conducted them upon the steps of our partisan. It so happened that the same Captain Clarke, who seems to have been a sad simpleton, and something of a poltroon, had been sent in front with five horsemen as an advanced guard. Near the great Waccamaw road, the bugles of the British were heard sounding the charge. Horry was fortunately prepared for the enemy, but such was not the case with Clarke. He confounded the martial tones of the bugle with the ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... out of spirits. "He is a vile poltroon, this master of yours," said he, "consorting with these bloody pirates and leaving his daughter to pine away her days and nights within a little sail of him, while he struts about at the heel of a dirty freebooter dressed like a monkey! He doesn't ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... wish I had a chance to open school here and teach manners," and without more deliberation he set his horse to an amble, designed to betray neither complacency nor a poltroon's terrors. ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... Woman, than, overcome with a false shame that he had made terms with a woman, he violated his noble word, and condemned to death all the men, except one, who was spared on condition that he should be the executioner of the others. And the poltroon compelled the brave woman to witness the execution, with the added indignity of a rope round her neck,—or as De Charlevoix much more neatly expresses it, "obligea sa prisonniere d'assister a l'execution, la ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the choice of a candidate who favored monopolies. He had given his promise, the word of a man of honor, and a business man. What escape was there from the predicament? If he vetoed the bill, would he not be a liar and a poltroon? If he signed it, the senatorship would slip through his fingers. The thought occurred to him to send for Elton and throw himself on his mercy, but he shrank from such an interview. Elton was a business man, and a promise was a promise. He had enjoyed the consideration for his promise; ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... Terror, with Robespierre the king. The struggles between the boa and the lion are past: the boa has consumed the lion, and is heavy with the gorge,—Danton has fallen, and Camille Desmoulins. Danton had said before his death, "The poltroon Robespierre,—I alone could have saved him." From that hour, indeed, the blood of the dead giant clouded the craft of "Maximilien the Incorruptible," as at last, amidst the din of the roused Convention, it choked his voice. ("Le sang de Danton t'etouffe!" (the blood of Danton chokes thee!) said ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of that," said Mr. Rousseau, who then proceeded to strike Mr. Grinnell about the head and shoulders with a rattan, stopping occasionally to lecture him, and saying, "Now, you d——d puppy and poltroon, look at yourself." ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... Tartuffe and a Pinto. In that judgment, as we shall show, there is naught save a stupid incapacity to understand an unlike man—in brief, no more than the dunderheadedness which makes a German regard every Englishman as a snuffling poltroon, hiding behind his vassals, and causes an Englishman to look upon every German as a fiend in human form, up to his ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... those types are repeated until they became conventionalized. There is always a very bad and a very good woman, a very generous and noble man and one so bad as to seem a monster. There is the type of the "love-lorn maiden," of "the lily-livered" hero, of the faithful friend, of the poltroon. It is supposed by many that such types repeated in play after play do not mark the highest original power, but rather poverty of invention, weak and shadowy conception, indistinctness of coloring. Professor Thorndike, however, cannot too ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... nodded and retired, leaving Cappy to grit his teeth and curse himself for a poltroon. "It's certainly hell when a man of my age and financial rating stands between his love and duty," he mourned. "Darn that fellow Skinner. If my bluff should fail to work and he got on his high horse and quit, I'd have to climb off my high horse ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... naval evolutions. But with Tourville's name is associated not only a high level of professional management, but a caution in professional action not far removed from timidity, so that an impatient Minister of Marine of his day and nation styled him "poltroon in head, though not in heart." His powers were displayed in the preservation and orderly movement of his fleet; in baffling, by sheer skill, and during long periods, the efforts of the enemy to bring him to action; in skilful disposition, ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... Geneva; I easily comprehended this man would cause a revolution there, and that I should find in my country the manners, which drove me from Paris; that I should be under the necessity of incessantly struggling hard, and have no other alternative than that of being an unsupportable pedant, a poltroon, or a bad citizen. The letter Voltaire wrote me on my last work, induced me to insinuate my fears in my answer; and the effect this produced confirmed them. From that moment I considered Geneva as lost, and I was not deceived. I perhaps ought to have met the storm, had I thought myself ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... could never be of any use to us, and necessity has no law, you know. Now—let me consider—there is one thing more to be done before we leave; what is it? It was in my mind a moment ago! Ah, yes, of course, that is it; we have to put this miserable poltroon of a steward back into his pantry, lock the door upon him, and—yes, that is all, ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... Master Fritz; they would say that Willis was a poltroon or a deserter, whichever he likes; they would very likely condemn him to the yard-arm by default, and carry out the operation when they get hold of him. But I will not endanger any one else; all I want is the use ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... you?" he said. "I have a mind, then, to thrash you where you stand, you canting poltroon! Do you hear me?—here, where ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... roared; no enemy fell. As, half choked with grief and rage, I looked around for the cause, behold! my brave lieutenant Scott, at the head of his riflemen, came stooping along with his gun in his hand, and the black marks of shame and cowardice on his sheepish face. "Infamous poltroon," said I, shaking my sword over his head, "where is that hetacomb of robbers and murderers due to the vengeance of your ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... her hollow grandeur, so lonely amongst a nation of curs whom she strove in vain to save, and should she escape destruction with them, doomed to so sad and repulsive a fate, namely to become the wife of a fat poltroon who was her own uncle. Well, we know to what emotion pity is akin, and the catastrophe had occurred a little sooner than I ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... will happen even at football. Of course duels can never be defended, but for keeping up good manners, also for bringing out a man's character, these academic duels seem useful. However small the danger is, it frightens the coward and restrains the poltroon. For all that, what has taken place in England may in time take place in Germany also, and men will cease to think that it is impossible to defend their honour without a piece of steel or a pistol. The last thing ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... faintest creatures in the world when you cry in your agony, "Come and help me!" Oh, assuredly Wellington was infamously used at that time, especially by your traders in Radicalism, who howled at and hooted him; said he had every vice—was no general—was beaten at Waterloo—was a poltroon—moreover, a poor illiterate creature, who could scarcely read or write; nay, a principal Radical paper said bodily he could not read, and devised an ingenious plan for teaching Wellington how to read. Now this was too bad; and the writer, being a lover ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... scruples about accepting credit and gratitude for the deed performed by the ladies, and, though he is the veriest poltroon, he boasts inordinately about the gigantic strength which had enabled him to strangle the serpent. He is punished for his mendacity when the ladies return and place a padlock upon his mouth, closing his lips to the things of which he is most fond—speech and food. To Tamino they give a miniature ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... know is as good, any day, as a nod—at least, to a blind horse." "I'm sure, your reverence," said Larry, with a beating heart, "is too much of a gintleman to hould a poor man hard to every word he may say of an evening, and therefore"—"I was thinking so," said the saint, "I guessed you'd prove a poltroon when put to the push. What do you think, my brethren, I should do to this fellow?" A hollow sound burst from the bosoms of the unanimous assembly. The verdict was short and decisive:—"Knock out his brains!" And in order ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 342, November 22, 1828 • Various
... strikes me as the epitome of her sex—fond, lively, sad, tender, teasing, humble, haughty, beautiful, the devil!—coquettish to the last, as well with the "asp" as with Antony. After doing all she can to persuade him that—but why do they abuse him for cutting off that poltroon Cicero's head? Did not Tully tell Brutus it was a pity to have spared Antony? and did he not speak the Philippics? and are not "words things?" [2] and such "words" very pestilent "things" too? If he had had a hundred heads, they deserved (from Antony) a rostrum (his was stuck ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... do you want? Out with it. Dogs are loth to quit their kennels when they can dream of the game they never catch when awake. Come, Henderson, I sha'n't parley any longer. I suppose you are come to beg, like a poltroon, to be taken back to that precious office in Corn Street. Get Lambert to ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... a disagreeable fellow—and "The Christian Hero," by his own words, appears to have fought off several fool-hardy geniuses who were for "trying their valour on him," supposing a saint was necessarily a poltroon. Thus "The Christian Hero," finding himself slighted by his loose companions, sat down and composed a most laughable comedy, "The Funeral;" and with all the frankness of a man who cares not to hide his ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... overdrawn narratives, began to look upon them as the friends of the boy who shouted out "wolf!" did upon the veracity of his alarms. He set down his intrepid and courageous proctor as nothing else than a cowardly poltroon, whose terrors exaggerated everything, and whose exaggerated accounts of fraud, threats, and violence had existed principally in his own imagination. Such were the circumstances under which Purcel ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... he swore away our liberty, and all our work has been turned to naught by the cowardly traitor. Listen to me, Haight, listen well, and when you see the poltroon tell him that Jim Cummings swore he would cut his heart out. Aye! I WILL DO IT, though he were guarded behind double bars. I'll search him out and tear the traitor heart from his breast and make him eat it, by ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... correspondence he vented his rage in terms similar to those used of the Danish commodore after Copenhagen. "You will have seen Monsieur La Touche's letter of how he chased me and how I ran. I keep it; and, by G—d, if I take him, he shall eat it." He is a "poltroon," a "liar," and a "miscreant." It may be added that no admiral, whether a Nelson or not, could have abandoned the ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... to fear from a poltroon like him; but let the Provincial Directory of Ulster deal with the matter. Meanwhile we want to know that Donegal is as ready as other parts. We have some good men there surely. Order a return of all secretaries and officers in a month," said he to ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... friends to lead him into the very hottest of the conflict. Elmham records his address: whether they are the very words he (p. 175) uttered, or such only as he was likely to have used, they certainly suit his character: "My lords, far be from me such disgrace, as that, like a poltroon, I should stain my noviciate in arms by flight. If the Prince flies, who will wait to end the battle? Believe it, to be carried back before victory would be to me a perpetual death! Lead me, I implore you, to the ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... I were your age, as beautiful and attractive as you, and I had dared a man to kiss me, I should feel slighted, to say the least of it, and regard him as a poltroon, if he failed to take up my challenge," commented Lady Fermanagh drily. "You can't mean to say you did not expect Don Carlos to carry out the threat or promise he made in his note, particularly as you made no protest against his having ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... slaughtered and are smoking on the fire. The night is drawing on and now the meal is over. Twelve o'clock strikes, and in one moment every bell from every belfrey clangs out its summons. Poltroon were he who had gone to bed before twelve on Noche-buena. From every house the inmates hurry to the gaily-lit church and throng its aisles, a dark-robed crowd of worshippers. The organ peals out, the priests and choir chant at this midnight hour the Christmas hymn, and at last ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... and perhaps exert some influence in politics; he remembered that Mrs. Chudleigh had laid some stress on this. She had, however, told him that Bertram, from whom so much was expected, had shown himself a poltroon and, what was even worse, had allowed an innocent man to suffer for his baseness. Challoner had spent the last few days pondering the evidence she had offered him and had seen one or two weak points in it. By making the most ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... considered as a virtue, and to entitle us to the rewards bestowed upon it by the fair sex, who value it above all others, is so wholly out of our control, that when suffering under sickness or disease, it deserts us; nay, for the time being, a violent stomach-ache will turn a hero into a poltroon. ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... undoubtedly sealed, for he had invoked this very test—this meeting was to vouch for his sincerity. His mind went rapidly back over the whole period of his acquaintance with the Krovitch nobleman, to recall if there had been any indication of such a poltroon trait in Paul Zulka's character. He was, in justice, forced to deny the existence ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... is going to turn tail, as I always thought he would,—the cursed cowardly traitor!" replied the latter, gnashing his teeth. "But let him, and that pitiful poltroon of a Redding, go where they please. We will see to matters ourselves. I don't believe it is any thing more than a mere mob, who will scatter at the first fire. So follow me, Gale; and all the rest of ye, that aint ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... in no little awe of his bellicose spouse. What, though a hero in other respects; what, though he had slain his savages, and gallantly carried his craft from their clutches:—Like the valiant captains Marlborough and Belisarius, he was a poltroon to his wife. And Annatoo was worse ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... millionaire father for daring to marry him! High temper may be dangerous, and the rough hand something to be avoided and reprobated; but there is something worse in the extreme opposite, and humanity worse sickens at the sight of an abject poltroon, than at any other worthless fungus that springs as an excrescence ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... the side of the house when, in an instant, without the slightest notice, my hat was struck off to the distance of several yards by a soldier, or rather a poltroon in a soldier's costume, and this courteous manoeuvre was performed with his gun and bayonet, accompanied with curses and taunts and the expression of a demon in ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... (Icel. doestr exhausted, breathless; O. Dut. dasaert a fool) is very appropriately used here, after the description above, St. xxii, to designate the poltroon that quails only before death. ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... before he recovered sufficiently from the shock to move a limb. The officers were urging their prisoner forward, grinning and nodding to each other, whilst several voices from the crowd shouted abusively at the poltroon whose first instinct was to betray his associate. Bob turned his face away and walked on. He did not dare to run, yet the noises behind him kept his heart leaping with dread. A few paces and he was out of the alley. Even yet he ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... what is best—I alone!" Westerling continued, driving home his point. "Tell our commanders to hold. Neither general nor man is to budge. They are to stick to the death. Any one who does not I shall hold up to public shame as a poltroon. Who knows but Lanstron's attack may be a council of desperation? The Browns may be worse off than we are. Hold, hold! If are are tired, they are tired. Frequently it takes only an ounce more of resolution to turn the tide of battle. Hold, hold! To-morrow ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... lives of Prodigal Sons, To-day is a prodigious coxcomb, but To-morrow is a very poltroon, taking fright at the big words of his predecessor. To-day is the truculent captain of old world comedy, To-morrow the clown ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... Akhtar Jahan-Shah and Rafi-ash-Shan, and placed the surviving of the four sons of Bahadur [i.e. Mu'izz-ud-din] on the throne with the title of Jahandar ("World-owner"). The new Emperor was an irredeemable poltroon and an abandoned debauchee.' (The History of the Moghul Emperors of Hindustan illustrated by their Coins, Constable, 1892, and in Introd. to B. M. Catal. of Moghul Emperors, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... nature were constantly subverted, her ordeals must have operated at random when they were not regulated by fraud. The hand of guilt might be harder than that of innocence, and more likely to bear a moment's contact with hot iron or boiling oil. Besides, as Montesquieu observes, the poltroon stood the poorest chance in the judicial combat, and the poltroon was more likely to be guilty than the man of courage. The weak, of course, were at the mercy of the strong; but in one point, at least, the combat had an obvious advantage over the ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... war and so well able to appreciate courage, one day sharply rebuked a colonel for having punished a young officer just arrived from school at Fontainebleau because he gave evidence of fear in his first engagement. "Know, colonel," said he, "none but a poltroon (the term was oven more strong) will boast that he never ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... little poltroon," snarled Kramer. "I'll call you out myself if you have the nerve to talk back!" ...
— Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point • H. Irving Hancock
... meanness. It discovers a want of heart, and an infinite littleness of soul. We can hardly conceive him to have possessed a drop of the blood of Hampden or Cromwell in his veins, and cease to wonder why two high-spirited ladies of rank should have spurned the homage of a poetic poltroon, whom instinctively they seem to have known to be such, even before he ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... letter is still urged upon me, and well as I know what penance its acceptance would entail in some points, I also know the advantage it would bring in others. My conscience tells me it would be the act of a moral poltroon to let the fear of suffering stand in the way of improvement. But suffer I shall. ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... fellow may think himself fortunate. Had it been Monsieur Dampierre it would not have been a fist but a bullet through his head that would have punished him. Now mark me, Jean Diantre," and she moved a pace forward, so suddenly that the man started back, "you are a known assassin and poltroon. If at any time harm befalls Monsieur Dampierre I will stab you with my own hand. If you ever dare to speak to me again I will hold you up to the scorn of the women of the quarter. As it is, your comrades have heard how mean and cowardly ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... to call her, when that poltroon of an Anderson Walkley, who had stolen back into the house after running from it, crept behind me and struck me back of the ear with a shaving mug. I dropped unconscious. In the resulting confusion, your ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... leaving, pulled off from her horse Mrs. Carson and her child, and having mounted the animal himself, was making good his escape. The Indians wished to keep up the ruse, pursue, Attempt to overtake and punish the poltroon; but Kit Carson was too thankful that matters had gone so well; therefore, he said that he felt that he could excuse such dastardly conduct, and requested the Indians to let it pass unnoticed. It is ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... the relations which exist between himself and his Maker, and his rational hope of immortality—if he have one—for the negative animal content, and frivolous enjoyments of a child, he does not deserve the name of a man;—he is a weak, unhealthy, broken-down creature, or a base poltroon. ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... it be my vice, My pleasure to displease—to love men hate me! Ah, friend of mine, believe me, I march better 'Neath the cross-fire of glances inimical! How droll the stains one sees on fine-laced doublets, From gall of envy, or the poltroon's drivel! —The enervating friendship which enfolds you Is like an open-laced Italian collar, Floating around your neck in woman's fashion; One is at ease thus,—but less proud the carriage! The forehead, ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... Neither of them understood much about the cause of the trouble. But that did not matter. They had heard the call, "Your King and Country need you," and that was enough. To remain quietly at home after that was the act of a poltroon and a coward. ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... intolerable apprehension in regard to my future, lest my good intentions should fail or my self-control not hold out. But the knowledge that you are acquainted with my resolve, and regard it with an undeserved sympathy, may suffice to sustain me, and I should certainly be a base poltroon if I should disappoint you or ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... "What a poltroon!" he cried contemptuously. "But I'll see you get no harm by this right-about face. He is mistaken if he thinks his treachery will give him a hold on ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... Odysseus, at that time in more or less open revolt against the provisional government, but an adventurer of fierce and reckless spirit, in manner and appearance a romantic outlaw, a man after his own heart. Henceforth Byron is reckoned at best a dupe, and at worst a sluggish poltroon; while Trelawny, it is said, imitated his hero so loyally that "he ate, dressed, and even spat in his manner." When the poet died Trelawny spoke with ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... the hands of the Prussians, and flight, therefore, more dangerous. Persuasion was in vain with men determined to risk nothing, but, if they went, to go in safety. Will, indeed, was not wanting in Glotin and Sonntag; but the first was a poltroon, and the latter a man of scruples, who thought this step might likewise be the ruin of ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... lose a word of it—not a syllable of it. Knitted, in her own stitches and her own symbols, it will always be as plain to her as the sun. Confide in Madame Defarge. It would be easier for the weakest poltroon that lives, to erase himself from existence, than to erase one letter of his name or crimes from the knitted register of ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... that he wouldn't have confided himself alone by night with two people who had an interest in getting him under the ground—my faith! not even in a respectable house like this—unless he was bodily too strong for them. Bah! What a poltroon, my Flintwinch! Eh?' ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... as the overt events of his life. "His meanest creatures," says Arthur Symons, "have in them a touch of honour, of honesty, or of heroism; his heroes have always some error, weakness, or mistake, some sin or crime, to redeem." What is Lord Jim, scoundrel and poltroon or gallant knight? What is Captain MacWhirr, hero or simply ass? What is Falk, beast or idealist? One leaves "Heart of Darkness" in that palpitating confusion which is shot through with intense curiosity. Kurtz is at once the most abominable of rogues ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... symbol in it; Aeschylus would have done so, somehow; though I do not quite see how. Sophocles would have been aware of nothing wrong in it; he would have taken it quite as a matter of course. Euripides saw clearly that Admetus was a selfish poltroon, and rubbed it in for all he was worth. And he could not leave it at that, either; but for pity's sake must bring in Hercules at the end to win back Alcestis from death. So the play is great-hearted and tender, and a covert lash for conventional callousness; ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... service with the biggest and most inveterate old coxcomb who ever stuffed himself with macaroni, to the patched Carnival fool who strutted about like a satisfied old hen after a shower of rain, to the snarling skinflint, the love-sick old poltroon, who infected the air of the Via Ripetta with the disgusting bleating which he ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... never have shown my face again—neither in the settlement of Swampville, nor elsewhere. Even among my polished friends of more fashionable circles, I should have been taunted—branded as a coward and poltroon! The rude character of my adversary would have been no excuse especially after the manner in which he was acting. "Backed out" would have been the universal verdict! Moreover, notwithstanding the apparently calm demeanour the squatter had now ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... neutralized the defects and more than compensated the blunders of Napoleon. But these were advantages that could not be depended on: a glass of brandy extraordinary might have emboldened the greatest poltroon to do that which, by once rousing a movement of popular enthusiasm, once making a beginning in that direction, would have precipitated the whole affair into hands which must have carried it far beyond the power of any party to control. Never, according to all human calculation, were eloquence ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... sense, inherited from generations of Puritans. It was now a religious instinct, and she was almost a fanatic with him, because she loved him, or had loved him. If he sinned, she tortured him. If he drank, and lied, was often a poltroon, sometimes a knave, she ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... sense, study the Koran, or some less ascetic tome. Don't be gulled by a plausible slave, who wants nothing more than to multiply professors of his theory. Why don't you read the Bible, you miserable, puling poltroon, before you hug it as a treasure? Why don't you read it, and learn out of the mouth of the founder of Christianity, that there is one sin for which there is no forgiveness—blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
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