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Fear has no brains; it is an idiot. The dismal witness that it bears and the cowardly counsel that it whispers are unrelated.
”
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Ambrose Bierce (The Moonlit Road and Other Ghost and Horror Stories (Dover Thrift Editions: Gothic/Horror))
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I am an Imperial commissar. I will enflame the weak, support the wavering, guide the lost. I will be all things to all men who need me. But I will also punish without hesitation the incompetent, the cowardly, and the treasonous. --Ibram Gaunt
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Dan Abnett (Necropolis (Gaunt's Ghosts, #3))
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The thing is… I was a very proud girl. I never wanted to take the chance I might get hurt. Isn’t that funny? I was game for any exciting adventure that came my way, but when it came to risking my heart, I was a coward.
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Nicole Christie (Falling for the Ghost of You)
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They thought he was scared all the time because he was a coward. The truth was, only he could see the world clearly enough to know how truly scary it was.
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Simon R. Green (Ghost of a Chance (Ghost Finders, #1))
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I was a coward. I used to be haunted by the fear of thieves, ghosts and serpents. I did not dare to stir out of doors at night. Darkness was a terror to me. It was almost impossible for me to sleep in the dark, as I would imagine ghosts coming from one direction, thieves from another and serpents from a third. I could not therefore bear to sleep without a light in the room.
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Mahatma Gandhi (All Men Are Brothers: Autobiographical Reflections)
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And that's why, when they want to get rid of anyone, they usually bring him down here (like they were doing with me) and say they'll leave him to the ghosts. But I always wondered if they didn't really drown 'em or cut their throats. I never quite believed in the ghosts. But those two cowards you've just shot believed all right. They were more scared of taking me to my death than I was of going.
”
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C.S. Lewis (Prince Caspian (Chronicles of Narnia, #2))
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And, when the whim changes, it is most easy and delightfully disconcerting to play with the respectable and cowardly bourgeois fetishes and to laugh and epigram at the flitting god-ghosts and the debaucheries and follies of wisdom.
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Jack London (John Barleycorn: Alcoholic Memoirs)
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The ghost of the generous poet replied: ‘If I have understood your words correctly, your spirit is attacked by cowardly fear, that often weighs men down, so that it deflects them from honourable action, like a creature seeing phantoms in the dusk.
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Dante Alighieri (The Divine Comedy)
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It passed through his mind that if he missed this chance of talking to Katharine, he would have to face an enraged ghost, when he was alone in his room again, demanding an explanation of his cowardly indecision. It was better, on the whole, to risk present discomfiture than to waste an evening bandying excuses and constructing impossible scenes with this uncompromising section of himself.
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Virginia Woolf (Night and Day)
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Ghosting is the most cowardly way to end a relationship,” I once said to a male friend in a room with a guy who had ghosted me years before.
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Daniel Jones (Modern Love, Revised and Updated: True Stories of Love, Loss, and Redemption)
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That there's no such thing as a coward, or a brave man—not out there. There's no man's will stronger than the war.
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Katherine Arden (The Warm Hands of Ghosts)
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I told you before--you mustn’t let Edward scare you. He’s a bully and a coward. What would Frank Merriwell do if he were you?”
Frank Merriwell--I was thoroughly sick of hearing that name.
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Mary Downing Hahn (Time for Andrew: A Ghost Story)
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It is not cowardly to flee temptation, and nobody whose opinion is worth having will ridicule any brave attempt to conquer one's self. Don't mind it, Charlie, but stand fast, and I am sure you will succeed.
”
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Louisa May Alcott (Louisa May Alcott Ultimate Collection: 16 Novels & 150+ Short Stories, Plays and Poems (Illustrated): Little Women, Good Wives, Little Men, Jo's Boys, ... The Abbot's Ghost, A Garland for Girls…)
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The impulse which had driven Ralph to take this action was the result of a very swift little piece of reasoning, and thus, perhaps, was not quite so much of an impulse as it seemed. It passed through his mind that if he missed this chance of talking to Katharine, he would have to face an enraged ghost, when he was alone in his room again, demanding an explanation of his cowardly indecision. It was better, on the whole, to risk present discomfiture than to waste an evening bandying excuses and constructing impossible scenes with this uncompromising section of himself.
”
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Virginia Woolf (Night And Day)
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The unreal is the illogical. And this age seems to have a capacity for surpassing even the acme of illogicality, of anti-logicality: it is as if the monstrous reality of the war had blotted out the reality of the world. Fantasy has become logical reality, but reality evolves the most a-logical phantasmagoria. An age that is softer and more cowardly than any preceding age suffocates in waves of blood and poison-gas; nations of bank clerks and profiteers hurl themselves upon barbed wire; a well-organized humanitarianism avails to hinder nothing, but calls itself the Red Cross and prepares artificial limbs for the victims; towns starve and coin money out of their own hunger; spectacled school-teachers lead storm-troops; city dwellers live in caves; factory hands and other civilians crawl out on their artificial limbs once more to the making of profits. Amid a blurring of all forms, in a twilight of apathetic uncertainty brooding over a ghostly world, man like a lost child gropes his way by the help of a small frail thread of logic through a dream landscape that he calls reality and that is nothing but a nightmare to him.
The melodramatic revulsion which characterizes this age as insane, the melodramatic enthusiasm which calls it great, are both justified by the swollen incomprehensibility and illogicality of the events that apparently make up its reality. Apparently! For insane or great are terms that can never be applied to an age, but only to an individual destiny. Our individual destinies, however, are as normal as they ever were. Our common destiny is the sum of our single lives, and each of these single lives is developing quite normally, in accordance, as it were, with its private logicality. We feel the totality to be insane, but for each single life we can easily discover logical guiding motives. Are we, then, insane because we have not gone mad?
”
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Hermann Broch (The Sleepwalkers (The Sleepwalkers, #1-3))
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—I have been understood. At the opening of the Bible there is the whole psychology of the priest.—The priest knows of only one great danger: that is science—the sound comprehension of cause and effect. But science flourishes, on the whole, only under favourable conditions—a man must have time, he must have an overflowing intellect, in order to “know.”... “Therefore, man must be made unhappy,”—this has been, in all ages, the logic of the priest.—It is easy to see just what, by this logic, was the first thing to come into the world:—“sin.”... The concept of guilt and punishment, the whole “moral order of the world,” was set up against science—against the deliverance of man from priests.... Man must not look outward; he must look inward. He must not look at things shrewdly and cautiously, to learn about them; he must not look at all; he must suffer.... And he must suffer so much that he is always in need of the priest.—Away with physicians! What is needed is a Saviour.—The concept of guilt and punishment, including the doctrines of “grace,” of “salvation,” of “forgiveness”—lies through and through, and absolutely without psychological reality—were devised to destroy man’s sense of causality: they are an attack upon the concept of cause and effect!—And not an attack with the fist, with the knife, with honesty in hate and love! On the contrary, one inspired by the most cowardly, the most crafty, the most ignoble of instincts! An attack of priests! An attack of parasites! The vampirism of pale, subterranean leeches!... When the natural consequences of an act are no longer “natural,” but are regarded as produced by the ghostly creations of superstition—by “God,” by “spirits,” by “souls”—and reckoned as merely “moral” consequences, as rewards, as punishments, as hints, as lessons, then the whole ground-work of knowledge is destroyed —then the greatest of crimes against humanity has been perpetrated.—I repeat that sin, man’s self-desecration par excellence, was invented in order to make science, culture, and every elevation and ennobling of man impossible; the priest rules through the invention of sin.
”
”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“
I told you before--you mustn’t let Edward scare you. He’s a bully and a coward. What would Frank Merriwell do if he were you?”
Frank Merriwell--I was thoroughly sick of hearing that name. “I don’t care what some dumb guy in a story would do. I’m not going to fight Edward.”
“Fight me then.” Hannah raised her fists and danced around on her bare feet, bouncing, ducking, and swinging at the air around my head. “Pretend I’m Edward!”
I ducked a punch, and she swung again. “Put up your dukes,” she ordered, “defend yourself, sir.”
This time Hannah clipped my chin hard enough to knock me down. Her shirtwaist was completely untucked, her face was smudged, her hair was tumbling down her back and hanging in her eyes.
“On your feet, sir,” she shouted. “Let’s see your fighting spirit!”
Hannah was making so much noise she didn’t hear John Larkin push aside the branches and enter the grove. When he saw her take another swing at me, he started laughing.
Hannah whirled around, her face scarlet, and stared at John. “What do you mean by sneaking up on us like a common Peeping Tom?”
“With the noise you’ve been making, you wouldn’t have noticed a herd of rampaging elephants.” John was still laughing, but Hannah was furious.
Putting her fists on her hips, she scowled at him. “Well, now you know the truth about me. I’m no lady and I never claimed to be one. I suppose you’ll start taking Amelia Carter for rides in your precious tin lizzie and treating her to sodas at your father’s drugstore. I’m sure she’d never brawl with her brothers.”
Theo and I looked at each other. We were both hoping Hannah would make John leave. Before he came along and ruined everything, we’d been having fun.
To my disappointment, John didn’t seem to realize he was unwanted. Leaning against a tree, he watched Hannah run her hands through her hair. “I don’t know what you’re so fired up about,” he said. “Why should I want to take Amelia anywhere? I’ve never met a more boring girl. As for her brothers--a little brawling wouldn’t hurt them. Or Amelia either.”
Hannah turned away, her face flushed, and John winked at me. “Your sister’s first rate,” he said, “but I wager I know a sight more about boxing than she does. Why not let me show you a thing or two?”
Happy again, Hannah smiled at John. “What a grand idea! But go slow, Andrew’s still weak.”
When John took off his jacket, I edged closer to Hannah. “I like your lessons,” I said to her, scowling at John. He was rolling up his sleeves, probably to show off his muscles. Next to him, I was nothing but a skinny little baby. He’d knock me flat and everyone would laugh at me.
”
”
Mary Downing Hahn (Time for Andrew: A Ghost Story)
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While Papa talked about his day in court, I relived my fight with Edward. What a lousy, stinking, ungrateful coward he was. Hateful. Underhanded. Sly and dishonest. A tattle-tale. What branch of the family tree had produced a rotten apple like him?
”
”
Mary Downing Hahn (Time for Andrew: A Ghost Story)
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Say something,” she forced out, already bracing for an unfavorable reaction. Annoyance. Or amusement. Or worst of all, pity. Ewan still looked odd, as if he hadn’t quite understood what she’d said. “You love me?” She supposed she could pretend it was a joke. By now, he must be used to her sarcastic ways. He might almost believe her. And if he did, it would salve her pride, if not the gaping wound inside her. But she’d ventured this far. She wasn’t coward enough to retreat. With shaking hands, she dragged the sheet up to cover her nakedness, hoping the fragile linen might armor her against the hurt she’d invited. She pressed back against the bedhead. “Yes.” The blue eyes continued to measure her with almost detached curiosity. “I’m….I’m astonished.” Better than pity, she supposed. At least it should be. “You don’t have to love me back. After all, it’s absurd to fall in love in the space of a few days.” To her chagrin, a ghost of a smile played around his lips. “Absurd.” Anger came to her aid. Thank goodness. She’d much rather feel angry than vulnerable. “This doesn’t have to make you feel uncomfortable. I won’t cling, or pine, or make scenes.” “I’m not uncomfortable,” he said steadily. His expression remained enigmatic. “Well, good,” she said, at a loss. Her fingers tightened on the sheet. What on earth happened now? Had she expected him to tell her he loved her too? The shaming truth was that somewhere deep inside her, she’d hoped that if she was henwitted enough to crash headlong in love with him, he might love her back. If only a little. “Charlotte, I didn’t fall in love with you in a couple of days.” He spoke deliberately, making every word count. She flinched at his honesty. Although she supposed the truth was kinder in the long run. Even if right now, she felt like he stuck a knife into her. “You don’t have to—” He raised his hand to silence her. “I fell in love with you at first sight. Before I met you.” Bewildered,
”
”
Anna Campbell (Stranded with the Scottish Earl)
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I’ll provide some templates and strategies for what to say, but first, let’s address the choice to say nothing at all. I want you to commit to rejecting “the coward’s no”—ghosting.
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Juliet Funt (A Minute to Think: Reclaim Creativity, Conquer Busyness, and Do Your Best Work)
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Have you sat on the leaf splattered bench, mid-way between skid-row and the rosy nose down death in the well-kept garden? Felt the wind’s blue grey call unbutton your coat as you squelch the rain from your rotten socks, persisted blurry eyed to know all of the forever far mystery of the countless towns, grimacing at something unspeakable, something buried in the beauty of all those lives, trying, striving, loving and dying running away to the coast to doom to the tomb and the sea, dreamt winter and the candles burning, put your knapsack behind your head and dwelt skyward, feeling the sweet heavy lull of those million lives never known? Have you known your great winding road, those two feet upon the brown earth and smelt the ghost of chance and time riding by relentlessly in the golden fields? Busted your nose in fisticuffs and let some coward have it, then picked him back up and bought him a drink? Forever believed in the sweet sad lonely expression of Man’s days? Of death as nothing, just a cool and bitter forlorn Wednesday in October, the end, but the old brown earth forever there. Have you picked up a pebble and sent it seaward, back upon the endless circle of tide and moon high, moon glad, stirrings of mad nights and lonely fate, lonesome be all our days, ephemeral but joyful for it.
”
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Samuel J Dixey
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No. I’m not going to sleep with you. You think I want to sleep with a guy who’s too much of a damn coward to kiss me on the mouth?”
His grip tightens on me. “I’m not a coward,” he says, his voice dangerously low.
“So prove it! Pull yourself together and move on! Let yourself get out of this relationship with a ghost! There are people all over the planet who would want you in their family. Who would love you, Cole, if you just let them in—”
He cuts me off with his mouth.
”
”
Lily Gold (Three Swedish Mountain Men)
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When I look up from my book, the wind has gained its full voice. This storm is the mad child of Father Time and Mother Nature. Wailing away in no predictable rhythm, their monstrous offspring’s throwing a hackle-raising temper tantrum. Underscoring the hideous howl, I detect another, quieter sound, a pitiable, weak whimper which has been all but completely drowned out by the epic volume of the screaming wind. With slowly dawning terror, I realize this cowardly voice is my own; escaping through the narrow opening of my barely parted lips. Where’s my dad? Why is he taking so long?
The weather ignores my whining questions and continues to whip itself into a raging convulsion. The windows rattle and the wind screams. But the sounds are no longer random.
In the midst of the chaos, the howling begins to form an elongated word. Horrified, I recognize the stretched out syllables of my own name.
“Aaaaannaaaaabelle.
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Alyson Larrabee (Her Evil Ways)
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On December 29, 1890, Big Foot and two hundred or more unarmed Minnecojou men, women, and children, with a few fugitives from Sitting Bull's Hunkpapa band, were slaughtered by the Seventh Cavalry at Wounded Knee. Custer's former regiment, decimated by Indians at the battle of The Greasy Grass (Little Big Horn), was avenged. For this barbarous and cowardly act, 20 soldiers received Congressional Medals of Honor.
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Antoinette Nora Claypoole (Ghost Rider Roads: Inside the American Indian Movement: 1971-2012)
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A man who is cowardly at heart and has not emancipated his mind will be afraid of non-existent ghosts and gods.
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Chi-fang Ho (Stories About Not Being Afraid of Ghosts)
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Cowards!"Tamyr screamed at the killers. Wind gusted around her.
One of the nearer ghosts carried an ax. "Put up the blade, bitch, and come with us," he said as he started for her.
The three King's Guard lay in their own blood. These told the truth. Tirr, Neil, and the boys were in danger of lying in their own blood if she didn't do something.
Val had worked hard to prepare her for this day. It was time to see what she'd learned.
The ghost with the ax was almost on her. He held his ax loose in one hand. He expected no trouble from her.
Her sabre was held low to her right side. She turned her wrist to bring the cutting edge up and attacked.
”
”
Tony Jaehrling
“
he knew that Penrae was right. He just kept putting himself in a position where he doubted himself. Heroes had to continuously face challenges always with a “can do” spirit. It’s the cowards of the world that constantly forget their own greatness.
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Sarah Noffke (Ghost Galaxy Omnibus (Ghost Squadron #1-7; Precious Galaxy #1-4))
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We’re still inside the Tower, remember?” Roy said. “Now come on. We won’t get our answers if our cowardly soldiers all escape.” “More torture, you say?” Geon asked excitedly.
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Aaron Oster (Ghost (Buryoku #11))
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Many ghosts are cowards.
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Seanan McGuire (Angel of the Overpass (Ghost Roads, #3))