"Cower" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Through passions that still enticed; Through station that came unsought, To dazzle me, snare, betray; Through the baits the Tempter brought To lure me out of the way; Through the peril and greed of power (The bribe that he thought most sure); Through the name that hath made me cower, "The holy bishop of Tours!" Now, tired of life's poor show, Aweary of soul and sore, I am stretching my hands to go Where nothing can tempt ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... in the hearts of the Natchez! A hunter is born to them—a hunter of the race of the Suns. Ask of the bears, of the buffaloes, of the tigers, and of the swift-footed deer, whose arrows they fear most! They tremble and cower when the footstep of the hunter with the beard on his chin is heard on the heath. But I was born with brains in my head as well as a beard on my chin, and I pondered on my mother's words. One day, when a panther which I slaughtered had torn my breast, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... the man with the bag; 'from Mr. Cower's, the solicitor's. Mr. Tuggs, I congratulate you, sir. Ladies, I wish you joy of your prosperity! We have been successful.' And the man with the bag leisurely divested himself of his umbrella and glove, as a preliminary to shaking hands ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... wife, why then should man fear any more The voice of Pytho's dome, or cower before These birds that shriek above us? They foretold Me for my father's murderer; and behold, He lies in Corinth dead, and here am I And never touched the sword.... Or did he die In grief for me who left him? In that ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles
... who cower mean and small In the frequent interval When wisdom not with me resides. [Footnote: ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... hovers still, and ne'er takes wing, But with a silent charm compels the stern 30 And tort'ring Genius of the bitter spring, To shrink aback, and cower upon his urn. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... New Calendar, with Messidors, Pluvioses, and such like;—and having given it well forth, shall depart by the death they call Roman. Sieyes old-Constituent comes; to make new Constitutions as many as wanted: for the rest, peering out of his clear cautious eyes, he will cower low in many an emergency, and find silence safest. Young Saint-Just is coming, deputed by Aisne in the North; more like a Student than a Senator: not four-and-twenty yet; who has written Books; a youth of slight stature, with mild mellow voice, enthusiast olive-complexion, and long dark hair. ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... domain disparagingly, "and they say they may have to have me out here next Sunday—somebody's sick or missing. But they won't," he continued darkly. It was a threat, we felt—a threat that would make some presumptuous superior cower and conform. "I really belong at our branch in Dellwood Park, where there is something; not out here, beyond the last of everything." And he said more to indicate that his energies and abilities were ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... clans of savage men, Untamed by arts, untaught by pen; Or cower within some squalid ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... anointed. Afterward, in the churchyard, between the services, the more timorous began to tell of divers portents which they had observed, and to recount old tales of how the savages distressed us in the Starving Time. The bolder spirits laughed them to scorn, but the women began to weep and cower, and I, though I laughed too, thought of Smith, and how he ever held the savages, and more especially that Opechancanough who was now their emperor, in a most deep distrust; telling us that the red men watched while we slept, that ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... otherwise worthy man cannot be vain and arrogant? I think most of us have some interest in arguing the contrary. And it is of the nature of vanity and arrogance, if unchecked, to become cruel and self-justifying. There are fierce beasts within: chain them, chain them, and let them learn to cower before the creature with wider reason. This is what one wishes for Mordax—that his heart and brain should restrain the ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... are not cowards," said they. "We have never been foiled in battle; never have we been the vassals of a stranger. Why, then, shall we cringe and cower before such ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... louder ever and louder and yet more loud Till night be shamed of morn [Ant. 7. Rings the Black Huntsman's horn Through darkening deeps beneath the covering cloud, 260 Till all the wild beasts of the darkness hear; Till the Czar quake, till Austria cower for fear, Till the king breathe not, till the priest wax pale, Till spies and slayers on seats of judgment quail, Till mitre and cowl bow down And crumble as a crown, Till Caesar driven to lair and hounded Pope Reel breathless and ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Josh leaped from his couch, "I'll never surrender, nor cower, nor crouch To cowardly villains that plunder the poor, In the guise of the law; who crosses my door, Had best make his peace with the angels above; By my life I'll protect the darlings I love." Like a lion at bay, the flash of his eye, Told the brave mountaineer would shield ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... slogging at its pleasures under the pale sun, might read one morning of an affray in Yorkshire, of a magistrate assaulted, or undergardener in arms, and forget it in half-an-hour; but to Sanchia, unaccustomed to cower, some such chance paragraph seemed one spot the more upon her vesture, which contact with the Fulham Road had smirched already. She had never taken cover before—and how could one be in such a place but to hide in it? With contracted brows and bosom oppressed, she ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... sees the sullen pass, high-crowned with snow, Where Afghans cower with eyes of gleaming hate. He hurls himself against the hidden foe. They try to rally — ah, too late, too late! Again, defenseless, with fierce eyes that wait For death, he stands, like baited bull at bay, And flouts the Boers, ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... her hands across her eyes as if to shut out some dreadful vision, and seemed to cower and shrink as if some one was smiting her with ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... seemed to cower beneath the weight of these sad, earnest words, and for a little while there was silence. Then he ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... mist, but whence and how it is impossible to say, there come other angels dark of hue and foul smelling. But the white angels carry swords, and they wave these swords, and the scene is reflected in them as in a mirror; and the dark angels cower in a corner of the cemetery, but they ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... is sinking low, Dusky red the embers glow, While above them still I cower,— While a moment more I linger, Though the clock, with lifted finger, Points beyond the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... vocal cords departing), unearthly harps and bugles and double basses, rasping often and groaning like a broken-down organ, above which warbles the hautboy quaver of the sopranos. And the huge things on the ceiling, with their prodigious thighs and toes and arms and jowls crouch and cower and scowl, and hang uneasily on arches, and strain themselves wearily on brackets, dreary, magnificent, full of inexplicable feelings all about nothing: the colossal prophetic creature in green and white over the altar, on the keystone of the vault, striking out his arms—to pull it all down or ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... and resigns that office. One of the finest of the characters in the ranks of his admirable fiction is that old manageress of the narrow things of the house whose daughter is dying insane. I have called the dialect a shelter. This it is; but the poor lady does not cower within; her resigned head erect, she is shut out from that homely refuge, suffering and inarticulate. The two dramatists in their several centuries also recognized the inability of the dialect. They laid none but light loads upon it. They ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... salvation of a race. Of course, there are in the South men of liberal thought who do not approve lynching, but I wonder how long they will endure the limits which are placed upon free speech. They still cower and tremble before "Southern opinion." Even so late as the recent Atlanta riot those men who were brave enough to speak a word in behalf of justice and humanity felt called upon, by way of apology, to preface what they said with a glowing rhetorical tribute to the Anglo-Saxon's superiority ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... arrow-shaped, Wrote thereon, he knows what, prodigious words; Has peeled a wand and called it by a name; Weareth at whiles for an enchanter's robe The eyed skin of a supple oncelot; And hath an ounce sleeker than youngling mole, A four-legged serpent he makes cower and couch, Now snarl, now hold its breath and mind his eye, And saith she is Miranda and my wife: 'Keeps for his Ariel a tall pouch-bill crane He bids go wade for fish and straight disgorge; Also a sea-beast, lumpish, which he snared, Blinded the eyes ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... this same jeering band Will bite the dust—will lick the Mohawk's hand; Will kneel and cower at the Mohawk's feet; Will shrink when Mohawk war drums ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... made a quick movement at last, turned over, and picked up a half-burned, still smouldering piece of pine, painfully raked others together with it, and threw it on the top, glad to cower over the warm embers, for the heat ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... a sense of wrongs endured, and of the justness of its cause, bore away the palm, and plucked from the brow of its more aged competitor many a laurel yet green from the ensanguined fields of Europe. In scores of hotly-contested battles, the British lion, unused as it was to cower before a foe, was compelled to "lick the dust" in defeat. At York, at Chippewa, at Fort Erie, at Lundy's Lane, at New Orleans, on Lake Champlain, on Lake Erie, on the broad ocean, Great Britain and the world were taught lessons of American valor, skill, and energy, which ages ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... however, before which even Eliza herself, hardened wretch as she seemed, used to cower and shiver; and that was the great black bumble-bee, the largest and most powerful of the British bee-kind. When one of these dangerous monsters, a burly, buzzing bourgeois, got entangled in her web, Eliza, ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... and firmly decided already Stands it to build the new causeway that shall with the highroad connect us. But I am sorely afraid that will not be the way with our children. Some think only of pleasure and perishable apparel; Others will cower at home, and behind the stove will sit brooding. One of this kind, as I fear, we shall find to the last in ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... the way Tenney would let it, if he were here alone. That was it. He had had enough of threats that made him sick with the reaction of nervous violence. He had had enough of real violence that recoiled on himself and made him cower under the shadow of the law. He was going to turn her out of the house, the baby with her. And he did not seem to be suffering much over it, now he had made up his mind. Perhaps, now that the scene of the morning—three together in May sunshine—had confirmed ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... at her work—turning neither to the right nor to the left, doing her duty with the bravery and patience of a soldier on the firing-line, knowing that any moment some stray bullet might end her usefulness. She would not dodge, nor would she cower; the danger was no greater than others she had faced, and no precaution, she knew, could save her. Her lips were still sealed, and would be to the end; some tongue other than her own must betray her sister and her trust. In the meantime she would wait and bear ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... came forth from her ordeal unscathed, her worship of him might for a time be more intense, but when the idol was removed, the excellence she had first learnt to adore in him might yet lead that adoration up to the source of all excellence. All she sought NOW was shelter wherein to weep and cower unseen; but the priest believed that her tears would soon spring from profound depths of penitence such as often concluded the lives of the gay ladies of France. Mere Monique had received her tenderly, and the good priest had ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hide? The moor is flat and treeless, the forest two or three miles away in a straight line, and we can go neither straight nor fast. If we cower behind one of the smoking brimstone mounds we shall be stifled; if we jump into one of the boiling ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... is wonderful. There is perhaps nothing, of its own kind, to equal it upon the present stage. Well may the king's haughty parasites cower, and shrink aghast from the ominous voice, the finger of doom, the arrows of those lurid, unbearable eyes! But it is in certain intellectual elements and pathetic undertones that the part of Richelieu, as conceived by Bulwer, assimilates to that of Hamlet, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... Spinoza would be warned by the fate of his heretical predecessor if not counseled by the wisdom of the Fathers. But Spinoza was of a firmness they did not reckon on. He did not hearken to their censure nor cower at their threat. The thirty days or so in which he was given to reform passed without discovering in him any change. Excommunication had to be pronounced. When barely twenty-four years old, Spinoza found himself cut off from the race of Israel with all the prescribed curses of excommunication upon ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... after brother, no man for another cares. The gods in heaven are frightened, refuge they seek, Upward they mount to the heaven of Anu. Like a dog in his lair, So cower the gods together at the bars of heaven. Ishtar cries out in pain, loud cries the exalted goddess:— All is turned to mire. This evil to the gods I announced, to the gods foretold the evil. This exterminating war foretold Against my race of mankind. Not for this ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... clear drops at the end of their noses. Sometimes they stopped—their trousers legs flapping behind them—and trumpeted loudly into red silk handkerchiefs. Young Gourlay had fled the streets. It was the kind of night that made him cower. ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... little flower 'Neath a great oak tree: When the tempest 'gan to lower Little heeded she: No need had she to cower, For she dreaded not its power - She was happy in the bower Of her great oak tree! Sing hey, Lackaday! Let the tears fall free For the pretty little flower and ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... deprived women of that claim to indulgence which can only rest on acknowledged weakness—taught me but too well the meaning of this fearful, trembling anxiety to please, or rather not to offend. I suppose that even a brutal master hardly likes to see a child cower in his presence as if constantly expecting a blow; and this cowering was so evident in my bride's demeanour, that, after trying for a couple of hours to coax her into confidence and unreserved feminine fluency, ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... tender shapes in which this great promise is presented to our faith. Sometimes God is thought of as covering the weak fugitive, as the arching sides of His cave sheltered David from Saul. Sometimes He is represented as covering His beloved, who cower under His wings, 'as the hen gathereth her chickens' when hawks are in the sky. Sometimes He appears as covering them from tempest, 'when the blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall,' and 'the shadow of a great rock' shields from its fury. Sometimes He is pictured as ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... South, that lashes will hereafter be spared the backs of their emissaries. Let them send out their men to Louisiana; they will never return to tell their suffering, but they shall expiate the crime of interfering in our domestic institutions, by being burned at the stake." And Northern men cower at this, and consent to have their lips padlocked, and to be robbed of their constitutional right, aye, and their natural right, while travelling Southward; while the lordly slaveholder traverses the length and breadth of the Free States, with open mouth and impious tongue, cursing freedom ...
— No Compromise with Slavery - An Address Delivered to the Broadway Tabernacle, New York • William Lloyd Garrison
... to the Prophet, John of Leyden calmly, with great impressiveness, made them cower before ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... on that old and famous Field Where the Right is set in battle with the Wrong. 'Tis coming, with the loom of Khamsin or Simoom, The tempest that shall try if we are of God or no— Its roar is in the sky,—and they there be which cry, "Let us cower, and the storm may over-blow." Now, nay! stand firm and fast! (that was a spiteful blast!) This is not a war of men, but of Angels Good and Ill— 'Tis hell that storms at heaven—'tis the black and deadly Seven, Sworn 'gainst the Shining ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... line, but the cold was no better at the present terminus, Henchir Souatir, whither he was bound on some business connected with the big phosphate company. On such occasions the natives barricade their doors and cower within over a warming-pan filled with the glowing embers of desert shrubs; as for Europeans—a dog's life, he said; in winter we are shrivelled to mummies, in summer ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... it had not ramifications and passages unknown to her. It had. It was Mr. Pantin's dearest wish to come home boiling drunk with his hat smashed and his necktie hanging. He longed to kick the front door in and see his wife cower before him. The mental orgies in which he indulged while sitting placidly in the bow window automatically snapping his Romeo against the heel of his foot by a muscular contraction of the toes—would have curdled the blood ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... manhood—even then, You should falter, should cling to your pitiful breath; Cower down into beasts, when you might have stood men, And prefer the slave's ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Mothers, would you keep your sons? From what? for what? From the doing of the grandest duty that ever ennobled man, to the grief of the greatest infamy that ever crushed him down. You would hold him back from prizes before which Olympian laurels fade, for a fate before which a Helot slave might cower. His country in the agony of her death-struggle calls to him for succor. All the blood in all the ages, poured out for liberty, poured out for him, cries unto him from the ground. All that life has of noble, of heroic, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... chair and looked at him. Was it only or chiefly Adelaide's unforgiving anger that weighed on his broad shoulders, bent his clever brow, drove the old contented smile from his face? True, Joseph's death might well have done all this; but she knew Urbain, and he was not the man to cower under the inevitable. It was his way to meet the blows of fate with a brave front, if not a gay one; he was a Frenchman, and had lived and laughed through the great Revolution. And yet Anne was puzzled; for she respected Urbain too much to acknowledge that Adelaide's ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... reached the rock, Wotan's voice is heard: "Bruennhilde, stand!" At the sound of it, Bruennhilde's heart fails her; the hearts of the sisters, too, soften. Crowding together on the rocky peak, they let the culprit cower out of sight among them. But Wotan is not deceived; he addresses to the hidden daughter such sharp and searching reproaches that, her fear for herself losing all importance as these strike her heart, she steps forth from among the sister-Valkyries and meekly stands before ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... perfectly in keeping with the individual character, that Cleopatra, alike destitute of moral strength and physical courage, should cower terrified and subdued before the masculine spirit of her lover, when once she has fairly roused it. Thus Tasso's Armida, half siren, half sorceress, in the moment of strong feeling, forgets her incantations, and has recourse to persuasion, to prayers, ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... wadna sell her till, sae be he was o' an auld eneuch faimily, and had rowth o' siller. Haith! noo a days the last 'ill come first, an' a fish cadger wi' siller 'ill be coontit a better bargain nor a lord wantin 't: only he maun hae a heap o' 't, to cower the stink o' ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... the day grows old; The spiders of care are weaving their net; All night 'twill be blowing and rainy and cold; I cower at his door from the wind ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... been good to ye, Marcella—I think often, now, of that poor wee broken arm, and how ye used to cower away from me! I wish I'd got ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... silent and angry King and saluting him said: "The village is punished, the men are stricken to dust, and the women cower in their unlit homes afraid to ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... mate, Manliest of men in his own natural senses; But driven stark mad by the devil's drugged stuff, Storming all aboard from his run-ashore late, Challenging to battle, vouchsafing no pretenses, A reeling King Ogg, delirious in power, The quarter-deck carronades he seemed to make cower. "Put him in brig there!" said Lieutenant Marrot. "Put him in brig!" back he mocked like a parrot; "Try it, then!" swaying a fist like Thor's sledge, And making the pigmy constables hedge— Ship's corporals and ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... cower in the dust, Maryland! Thy beaming sword shall never rust, Maryland! Remember Carroll's sacred trust, Remember Howard's warlike thrust, And all thy slumberers with ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... drum-head stretch the haggard snows; The mighty skies are palisades of light; The stars are blurred; the silence grows and grows; Vaster and vaster vaults the icy night. Here in my sleeping-bag I cower and pray: "Silence and night, have pity! stoop ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... pointed out that this conception has its roots deep in primitive human nature: The Birth of Humility, Oxford, 1910, p. 17. 'It would, perhaps, be fanciful to say that man tends to run away from the sacred as uncanny, to cower before it as secret, and to prostrate himself before it as tabu. On the other hand, it seems plain that to these three negative qualities of the sacred taken together there corresponds on the part of man a certain negative attitude of mind. Psychologists class the feelings ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... here. In the crowd before him he saw scores of frightened faces. He saw men pointing and heard women cry out in terror. He saw children cower and scamper for the protection of ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... resented the spoliation. With an angry snarl he snatched the life-buoy and backed away, while the girl, surprised and a little indignant, followed with extended hands. He raised it threateningly, and though she did not cower, she knew intuitively that he was angry, and feeling the injustice, burst into tears; then, turning from him, she covered her eyes with her hands and crouched to the ground, ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... misty horizon, no lessening in the strength of the squalls, now heavy with a smashing of bitter sleet. Bunched up against the helm, a mass of oilskins glistening in the compass light, our 'lucky man' scarce seemed to be doing anything but cower from the weather. Only the great eyes of him, peering aloft from under the peak of his sou'wester, showed that the man was awake; and the ready turns of the helm, that brought a steering tremor to the weather leaches, marked him ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... moving with you; For ever some new head and breast of them Thrusts into view To observe the intruder; you see it If quickly you turn, And before they escape you surprise them. They grudge you should learn How the soft plains they look on, lean over And love (they pretend) —Cower beneath them, the flat sea-pine crouches, The wild fruit-trees bend; E'en the myrtle leaves curl, shrink and shut, All is silent and grave: 'Tis a sensual and timorous beauty. How fair! ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... brightness into its ghastly folds, and silences all song. He comes and says 'Stop'; and it stands fixed upon the spot. He arrests the march of Death. Not indeed that He touches the mere physical fact. The physical fact is not what men mean by death. It is not what they cower before. What the world shrinks from is the physical fact plus its associations, its dim forebodings, its recoilings from the unknown regions into which the soul goes from out of 'the warm precincts of the cheerful day,' and plus the possibilities of retribution, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... ashamed. God had preserved me from deadly perils, but not that I might cower in some shelter. I had a mission as clear as Laputa's. For the first time I became conscious to what a little thing I owed my salvation. That matter of the broken halter was like the finger of Divine Providence. I had been saved ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... cower in the duet, Maryland! Thy beaming sword shall never rust Maryland! Remember Carroll's sacred trust, Remember Howard's warlike thrust— And all thy slumberers with the just, ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... consequences; or that there still lingered in his heart some spark of humanity; or, perhaps—but least possible of all he was beginning to be ashamed of his foul play. By which of of these three motives, or by what other inspired, I could not guess; but he seemed to cower under the imputation. ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... What room for hope? Such wrath is child of hell. Before his righteous ire I shrink, I cower; Revenge I dread—and vengeance linked with power Unnerves ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... better for his strength, he really does not object to a moderate amount of weakness on my part, which is unaffected and not to be helped. When animal magnetism becomes a science, it will be seen why some spirits revel and soar, and some cower and shrink, at the same amount of electricity. So the Dominie says now; and then—he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... a firmness which was very gentle, and yet he could see that Bulstrode seemed to cower under that gentleness, his face looking dried and his eyes swerving away from the glance which rested on him. Caleb felt a deep pity for him, but he could have used no pretexts to account for his resolve, even if they would have been of ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... roused to an unexpected burst of wrath. His eyes kindled with rage, and he darted a glance at the intruders which made them cower and shrink from his rebuke. In a moment he grew calm, relapsing into his usual moody and thoughtful attitude. Taking courage, they again ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... of the old woman's from the wall, and threw it round him. He also took one of her caps that hung there and put it on his head. It was large, with frills, and almost covered his face. He had but just time to reseat himself by the fire and cower over it, as if warming his hands, when the door opened and a French officer entered. At the sight of the two apparently old women bending over the fire, and the ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... be convenient to goat's milk.... Like other carnivorous animals, an Englishman is always surly over his meals. Morose at all times, he becomes unbearably so at that interesting period of the day, when his soul appears to cower among plates and dishes; ... though he gorges his food with the silent deliberation of the anaconda, yet, in descanting upon the delicacies of the last capital dinner, he makes an approach to animation altogether unusual to him; ... when, upon such auspicious occasions, he does go off ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... all these questions in the negative, we must go a step farther, and ask if we have gained a state of independence of our own selfish passions, as well as of the world; for our most inveterate foes, and those before whom we cower most abjectly, are often those that dwell within the household of our own hearts. If the love of ease or of sensual indulgence rules there, we need to summon our moral courage to a stern strife, for there is no conquest more difficult ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... finished their packing. About the house hovered the profound silence of the cold night, such a night as makes all living things, men and beasts, cower away for warmth into the depths of sleep. Antoinette's teeth were chattering: she was ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... actually afraid, I am bound to admit that a certain weakness came over me and that I felt that strange disinclination for action which is probably the beginning of the horrible paralysis of real terror. I should have been glad to hide myself, if that had been possible, to cower into a corner, or behind a door, or anywhere so that I could not ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... who wrote it word by word, And back unto the King its threatenings bore, Whereof there came that grief and mourning sore, Of which ye wot; thereby is Psyche laid Upon the mountain-top; thereby, afraid Of some ill yet, within the city fair Cower down the people ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... aunt Hannah absented herself from family prayer that night? Why did she, as the voice of that young girl rose to her ears, cower down in the bed, and nervously draw up the coverlet to shut those sweet tones out ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... I saw nothing—though I doubt not he observed my troop. For doubtless he would be with his master—aged now, soured, and prone to cower about behind his guard, fearing the dagger or the poisoned bowl, seeing an enemy in every shadowy corner, and hearing the whistle of the assassin's ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... should be admitted, tremulously she awaited his sentence upon her mother's peace, and, as she thought of all he must have heard, all he must believe, she felt as if she must flee; or, if that were impossible, cower in shrinking dread of the glance of ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the toil, and the life seemingly dreary, to those who cower by ingle-nooks or stand over registers. But there is stirring excitement in this bloodless war, and around plenteous camp-fires vigor of merriment and hearty comradry. Men who wield axes and breathe ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... which Adam Bogardus had submitted to be clothed in as a burial garment was now become a thing for the living to flee from. He had seen a woman in full health whiten and cower before it;—she who stood beside his bed and looked at him with dreadful eyes, eyes of his girl-wife growing old in the likeness of her father. Hard, reluctant eyes forced to own the truth which the ashen lips denied. Are we responsible for ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... methods. Two lions fight until one is laid low; the lioness looks calmly on until the little problem of superiority is settled, and then she goes off with the victor. The horses on the Pampas have their set battles until one has asserted his mastery over the herd, and then the defeated ones cower away abjectly, and submit themselves meekly to their lord. All the male animals are given to issuing challenges in a very self-assertive manner, and the object is the same in every case. But we are far above the brutes; we have that mysterious, immaterial ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... familiar with our native legends and tales, the willows and alders in the fields and by the brooks are peopled with hidden beings, fairies, and witches. They stretch out ghostly arms, as their veils wave over their loose hair, they bow, cower, raise themselves, become as big as giants or as little as dwarfs. They seem to lie in wait for the weak, to fill them ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann
... burst above it or in front of it or behind it with a deafening explosion. Yet, despite the frantic efforts of the nuns and soldiers, the women would not be hurried. When a shell burst some of them would scream and cower or start to run, but more of them would stop in their tracks and gibber and laugh and clap their hands like excited children. Then the soldiers would curse under their breath and push them roughly forward and the nuns would plead ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... on the wheel, and his eyes were misty. Eben never saw him look at him in such a way before. Had he stormed and raged it would have but increased his defiance. But that look of silent reproach smote his very soul, causing him to cower conscience stricken. Without a word, he left his father's side and went forward. And there he stood with his hands behind his back, staring straight before him. The captain watched him anxiously. His mind was greatly confused over the confession he had just ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... would hear it yelling outside, or perhaps there would be deathlike stillness—and that would be worse yet. They could feel the cold as it crept in through the cracks, reaching out for them with its icy, death-dealing fingers; and they would crouch and cower, and try to hide from it, all in vain. It would come, and it would come; a grisly thing, a specter born in the black caverns of terror; a power primeval, cosmic, shadowing the tortures of the lost souls flung out to chaos and destruction. It was cruel iron-hard; and hour after ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... not be cast down. You, I trust, are not the man to cower at such a moment. Do not be afraid to stand up your whole length in defence ...
— The American Prejudice Against Color - An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily The Nation Got - Into An Uproar. • William G. Allen
... and the congregated night caps; with horror of the nocturnal prowesses of clerks and students, of hot theatres, and passkeys and close rooms. I have not often enjoyed a more serene possession of myself, nor felt more independent of material aids. The outer world, from which we cower into our houses, seemed after all a gentle, habitable place; and night after night a man's bed, it seemed, was laid and waiting for him in the fields, where God keeps an ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... go to bed? You, with your crimes, go to bed? Why, you couldn't sleep! You would cower all night! Go to bed! Oh, my dear Struboff, think better of it. No, no, we'll none of us go to bed. Bed's a hell for men like us. For you above all! Think again, ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... can long depress the youthful and the loving when they dream that they are entirely beloved? Lands and thrones may perish, plague and devastation walk abroad with death, misery and beggary crawl naked to the doorway, and crime cower in the hedges; but to the egregious egotism of young love there are only two identities bulking in the crowded universe. To these immensities all other beings are audacious who dream of being even comfortable and obscure—happiness would be a presumption; ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to one of the opposite sex. When it became absolutely necessary to change a woman's preconceived notions as to what she should do—as, for instance, discouraging her riding through quicksand—he would persuade somebody else to issue the advice. And he would cower in the background blushing his absurd little blushes at his second-hand temerity. Add to this narrow, sloping shoulders, a soft voice, and a diminutive ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... thought; but all that day she was never in the same mind for long together. She would burst out into joy that he was really alive, and she should see his face once more. Then she would cower with terror, and say she dared not look him in the face; she was not worthy. Then she would ask wildly, who was to tell him? What ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... track, with turn-outs at established points, where the drivers of the sleighs waited to be sure that the stretch beyond was clear before going forward. In the country, the winter which held the village in such close siege was an occupation under which Nature seemed to cower helpless, and men made a desperate and ineffectual struggle. The houses, banked up with snow almost to the sills of the windows that looked out, blind with frost, upon the lifeless world, were dwarfed in the drifts, and seemed to founder in a white sea blotched with strange ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... stalwart and seasoned passenger, to spend his time on the open deck. To stand out on the front (one can hardly call it a prow, where the periphery is that of an average wash-tub) or at the stern is to be drowned by rain or sawn asunder by icy winds or broiled like an oyster, and to cower under the upper deck is to get a lively sense of the Cave of the Winds. One with a healthy sense of smell and an instinct for oxygen may well shrink from entering the cabin, and prefer the perils and discomforts of too much ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... life Courtrey, the bully, felt a premonitory chill down his spine—because for the first time that promising glance of his failed of its effect! Only here and there along the rows of faces did one cower. There were faces, many faces, that looked back at him with steady eyes and tight lips.... Verily it was time he conquered the riding, shooting, beautiful she-devil who had made this thing possible! The sooner he got Tharon Last away from this bunch of spawn ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... of womanhood; I will uphold and obey the just laws of my country and of the community in which I live, and will encourage others to do likewise; I will not allow prejudice, injustice, insult or outrage to cower my spirit or sour my soul; but will ever preserve the inner freedom of heart and conscience; I will not allow myself to be overcome of evil, but will strive to overcome evil with good; I will endeavor to ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... for the sycophants of Louis XIV. to flatter more dexterously. For my part, I am persuaded that in all governments, whatever their nature may be, servility will cower to force, and adulation will cling to power. The only means of preventing men from degrading themselves, is to invest no one with that unlimited authority which is the surest method ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... stout horse, and thronging upon the heels of the Captains and the Prefect, pounding down the heavy doors with stones, and with deep shouts for every heavy blow, while white-robed John and his frightened priests cower together within, expecting death. Down goes the oak with a crash like artillery, that booms along the empty corridors; a moment's pause, and silence, and then the rush, headed by the Knight and the leaders who mean no murder, but ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... the season, say in July or August, the fiat goes forth that the drones must die; there is no further use for them. Then the poor creatures, how they are huddled and hustled about, trying to hide in corners and by-ways. There is no loud, defiant humming now, but abject fear seizes them. They cower like hunted criminals. I have seen a dozen or more of them wedge themselves into a small space between the glass and the comb, where the bees could not get hold of them or where they seemed to be overlooked in the general slaughter. They will also crawl ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... and dirt disfigured, elbows peeped from out his sleeves. Rat-tat-tat, upon the entrance, brought Aunt Hannah to the door; Parched lips humbly plead for water, as she scanned his misery o'er; Wrathful came the dame's quick answer; made him cower, shame, and start Out of sight, despairing, saddened, hurt and angry to the heart. "Drink! You've had enough, you rascal. Faugh! The smell now makes me sick, Move, you thief! Leave now these grounds, ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... saw an astonishing thing. Suddenly Mr. Ricardo seemed to shrivel—to cower back into himself. His fierce, triumphant energy had gone as at a blasting touch of magic. He ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... fire and two tallow candles that gutter'd on the mantelshelf. The remaining candlesticks lay in a pool of wine on the floor, amid broken glasses, bottles, scattered coins, dice boxes and pewter pots. In the corner to my right cower'd a potboy, with tankard dangling in his hand, and the contents spilling into his shoes. His wide terrified eyes were fix'd on the far end of the room, where Anthony and the brute Settle stood, with a shattered chair between them. Their swords were cross'd in ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... Rama from his home expel An exile in the woods to dwell. The plan, O Queen, which I advise Secures thy weal if thou be wise. So we and all thy kith and kin Advantage from thy gain shall win. Shall Bharat, meet for happier fate, Born to endure his rival's hate, With all his fortune ruined cower And dread his brother's mightier power! Up, Queen, to save thy son, arise; Prostrate at Rama's feet he lies. So the proud elephant who leads His trooping consorts through the reeds Falls in the forest ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... has got a powerful muscle into his arms, sed he'd bet 5 dollars he could lick the Crisis in a fair stand-up fight, if he wouldn't draw a knife on him. So it went—sum was for war, and sum was for peace. The skoolmaster, however, sed the Slave Oligarky must cower at the feet of the North ere a year had flowed by, or pass over his dead corpse. "Esto perpetua!" he added! "And sine qua non also!" sed I, sternly, wishing to make a impression onto the villagers. "Requiescat in pace!" sed ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 2 • Charles Farrar Browne
... had made Grisell so much worse that her mind hardly awoke again to anything but present suffering from fever, and in consequence the aggravation of the wounds on her neck and cheek. She used to moan now and then "Don't take me away!" or cower in terror, "She is coming!" being her cry, or sometimes "So foul and loathly." She hung again between life and death, and most of those around thought death would be far better for the poor child, but the Countess and the Chaplain still held to the faith that ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... disadvantages of a broken life is, that what a person may do with a kind of conscience in the one part, he feels compelled to blush for in the other. The despotism exercised in the school, even though exercised with a certain sense of justice and right, made the autocrat, out of school, cower before the parents of his helpless subjects. And this quailing of heart arose not merely from the operation of selfish feelings, but from a deliquium that fell upon his principles, in consequence of their sudden exposure to a more ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... the salt spray against the window, when, lo! there came a sharp rap at the house door. Mr Englefield unbarred it cautiously, and started as he encountered a very tall and slight figure wrapped in a shepherd's plaid, and seeming to cower under the ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... sins of the fathers upon the children even to the third and fourth generation. I—Baird—" his voice dropping, his face pallid, "I have hated Him. I keep His laws, it is my fate to preach His word—and I cower before Him as a slave before a tyrant, with hatred in ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the Christ of power, Thou need'st not before me cower; An unknown knight thou see'st in me, Sent forth by three ...
— Ulf Van Yern - and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise
... and the fiery fountains of squibs at that point!), then through Leadenhall Street and Cornhill, by the Royal Exchange, along Cheapside and on to Temple Bar, where the bonfire awaited the puppets. In a torrent of fire the noisy Protestants passed through the exulting City, making the Papists cower and shudder in their garrets and cellars, and before the flaming deluge opened a storm of shouting people. This procession consisted of fifteen groups of priests, Jesuits, and friars, two following a man on a horse, holding up before him a dummy, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... if struck by a thunderbolt, released his hold, and, staggering back a few paces, seemed to cower, abashed and humbled, before the eye of the priest, as it glared upon him through ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... she can be. She used no arts on me. Her purpose was to cower me. She found she could not do that, but she did a thing which helped her more: she proved that she was honest, perfectly sincere in what she thought. She believes that if she merely beckons to Philip, he will go to her. So I am giving her the opportunity to learn from ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... Selfless God, we worship the great selfless oneness in the spirit, oneness in service of the great humanity, that which is Not-Me. This selfless God is He who works for all alike, without consideration. And His image is the machine which dominates and cows us, we cower before it, we run to serve it. For it ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... ghostly—the thoughts of vanished men, which still haunted rather than participated in the world of to-day. But with an effort I sent such thoughts to the right-about. The long, draughty subterranean passage was chilly and dusty, and my candle flared and made the shadows cower and quiver. The echoes rang up and down the spiral staircase, and a shadow came sweeping up after me, and one fled before me into the darkness overhead. I came to the landing and stopped there for a moment, listening to a rustling that I fancied I heard; then, satisfied of the absolute silence, ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... is the same as to cower over the coals, as a gipsy over a fire. Thus Hodge says of Gammer ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various
... fill it with life, to move at ease in it, to press it into soft and rounded lines. Her linked companions also were beauties of their day—that sleek and sleepy Nicoletta, that ruddy Guglielmotta; but they seemed to cower in their rigid clothes, and they ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... to hug the honey to its heart; While in the barnyard, under shed and cart, Brood-hens have housed.—But I, who scorned thy power, Barometer of the birds,—like August there,— Beneath a beech, dripping from foot to hair, Like some drenched truant, cower. ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... serpent, and with languid arm, Delicate, put to proof the lythe Caducean charm. So done, upon the nymph his eyes he bent, Full of adoring tears and blandishment, And towards her stept: she, like a moon in wane, Faded before him, cower'd, nor could restrain Her fearful sobs, self-folding like a flower That faints into itself at evening hour: But the God fostering her chilled hand, She felt the warmth, her eyelids open'd bland, And, like new flowers at morning song of bees, Bloom'd, ...
— Lamia • John Keats
... dead girl cringe and whine, And cower in the weeping air— But, oh, she was no kin of mine, And so I ...
— Nets to Catch the Wind • Elinor Wylie
... dogs never fight hyenas; never even to defend their own lives. They may bark or howl while the hyena is some distance away, but as soon as it comes near they are silent; and when it approaches them, they simply cower and submit. Not only that, but it is beyond question that hyenas have the power to call dogs to them. . . . For five weeks I have been alone in this tent six nights in every week all night, with two children and the spartan ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... it must be the Queen Sudarshana who is approaching near. [Aside to SUVARNA.] Suvarna, you must not hide and cower behind me like that. Mind, the umbrella in your ...
— The King of the Dark Chamber • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... abruptness there came a sound which could only be likened to rolling thunder by one uninitiated, but which caused Ixtli to shrink and almost cower, ere gasping: ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... of intenseness. The South Carolinians are attempting to govern the Union as they govern their slaves, and there are too many indications that, abetted as they are by all the slave-driving interest of the Union, the free portion will cower before them, and truckle to their insolence. This ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... array all our force in the field, We'd teach these usurpers of power That their bodily safety demands they should yield, And in the presence of manhood should cower; But, alas! for our tethered and impotent state, Chained by notions of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... heart flourisheth and bourgeoneth, for as the season is lusty to behold and comfortable, so man and woman rejoice and gladden of summer coming with his fresh flowers: for winter with his rough winds and blasts causeth a lusty man and woman to cower and sit fast by the fire. So in this season, as in the month of May, it befell a great anger and unhap that stinted not till the flower of chivalry of all the world was destroyed and slain; and all was long upon two unhappy ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... her brow. She had, from the first, exhibited great signs of fear of the chief, and did she catch his eye resting on her she would hurriedly gather her child in her arms, and with a wild look of terror cower away into the corner of the room farthest from him she could get, and there sit murmuring in wailing tones to the babe nestling ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... dingy festoons of pink and white paper disappeared from the garish mantel. Still desolate and cheerless shows the noble edifice. The gaunt chimney yawns still in sick anticipation of deferred smoke. The "irons," innocent of coal, and polished to the tip, skulk and cower sympathetically into the extreme corner of the fender. The very rug seems ghastly and grim, wanting the kindly play of the excited flame. We have no comfort in the parlour yet: even the privileged kitten, wandering in vain in search of a resting-place, deems it but ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various |
