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More "Boastful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... old enough to make one wrathful! Boastful threats of arms against the Republic if she yield not obedience to the Holy Father, with secret promises of armed assistance to his Holiness to keep him firm in his course, at the very moment of her cringing attempts at mediation lest France should carry off the glory!—and ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... evidence at that time the accused could not testify. So the complainant had it all his own way. The only opportunity Mr. Lincoln had to help his client was to break down the accuser on a cross-examination. Mr. Lincoln said he saw that the accuser was a boastful and bumptious man, and so asked him: 'How much ground was there over which you and my client fought?' The witness answered proudly: 'Six acres, Mr. Lincoln.' 'Well,' said Lincoln, 'don't you think this was a mighty ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... presented so as to keep pace with the expanding mind. A French boy is taught the glory of Moliere as well as that of Turenne; a German boy is taught his own great national philosophy before he learns the philosophy of antiquity. The result is that, though French patriotism is often crazy and boastful, though German patriotism is often isolated and pedantic, they are neither of them merely dull, common, and brutal, as is so often the strange fate of the nation of Bacon and Locke. It is natural enough, and even righteous enough, under the circumstances. ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... kings became inflamed with wrath. And the down of some amongst them stood erect and some began to reprove Bhishma. And hearing those words of Bhishma, some amongst them, that were wielders of large bows exclaimed, 'This wretched Bhishma, though old, is exceedingly boastful. He deserveth not our pardon. Therefore, ye kings, incensed with rage as this Bhishma is, it is well that this wretch were slain like an animal, or, mustering together, let us burn him in a fire of grass or straw.' Hearing these words of the monarchs, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Englishman is equal to three Frenchmen!" The tendency to praise one's-self has always been regarded among Christian nations as a despicable, or at least a pitiable, quality, and we confess that we cannot see much difference between a boastful man and a boastful nation. Frenchmen have always displayed chivalrous courage, not a whit inferior to the British, and history proves that in war they have been eminently successful. The question whether they could beat us ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne
... Conwell stands steadily and strongly for good citizenship. But he never talks boastful Americanism. He seldom speaks in so many words of either Americanism or good citizenship, but he constantly and silently keeps the American flag, as the symbol of good citizenship, before his people. An American flag is prominent ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... and still the Macdonalds of Glencoe had not come in. The punctilious pride of Mac Ian was doubtless gratified by the thought that he had continued to defy the government after the boastful Glengarry, the ferocious Keppoch, the magnanimous Lochiel had yielded: but ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Notwithstanding these brave and boastful words, he was in reality very much afraid, having heard of Rasalu's renown. And learning that he was stopping at the house of an old woman in the city, till the hour for playing chaupur arrived, Sarkap sent slaves to him with trays of sweetmeats and fruit, as to an honoured guest. But ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... all the phases of Jewish life. With some it was a religion of ceremony,—of prayers and fastings, tithes and boastful alms, fringes and phylacteries. But Joseph and Mary belonged to the simpler folk, who, while they reverenced the scribes as teachers, knew not enough of their subtlety to have substituted barren rites for sincere love for the God of their fathers and childlike trust in his mercy. ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... by my vigilance, and anxiety, by the opinions which I have delivered, and by the dangers too of which I have encountered great numbers, by reason of the most bitter hatred which all impious men bear me, have at least, (not to seem to say anything too boastful,) conducted myself so as to be no injury to the republic. And as this is the case, do you think that I ought to have no consideration ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... alarm in regard to its shipping. On the southern coast of Cape Breton, there was a spacious harbor with a narrow entrance easily fortified, and here France began to build the fortress of Louisbourg. It was planned on the most approved military principles of the time. Through its strength, the boastful talk went, France should master North America. The King sent out cannon, undertook to build a hospital, to furnish chaplains for the service of the Church, to help education, and so on. Above all, ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... arrayed usurpation; against modest, single-minded, righteous, and brave resistance to encroachment is arrayed boastful, double-tongued, selfish, and treacherous ambition to possess. God ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... If, during all these downward-tending years, Edward kept well his faith with me. I know He used to tell me, in his boastful way, How he had broke the hearts of pretty maids. And that if he were single—well-a-day! The time was past for thinking upon that! And I had heart to toss the badinage Back in his teeth, with pay ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... victorious army. It had never been defeated. It had faith in its ideals. Those ideals were neither selfish nor arrogant. It wore no boastful "Gott mit uns" on its belt. It desired only the opportunity of striking low that nation which dared to dictate terms to the Almighty as well as to men. It braved three thousand miles of submarine peril to ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... old scout. And if you'll leave it to me, you'll know why and all the how and the what of it, too." Gus was never boastful; now he ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... conversation, much more so than on the previous evening, when there had been some little difficulty in extracting any account of his exploits from him. Now he was willing to talk of them, and he talked well, not exactly with modesty, but with no trace of boastful quality, such as would certainly have aroused the prejudices of his ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... been given to him by Deacon Brown, and its possession had made him very proud and boastful. It was the one thing Davie ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... there trickles down that third and darker thought,—the thought of the things themselves, the confused, half-conscious mutter of men who are black and whitened, crying "Liberty, Freedom, Opportunity—vouchsafe to us, O boastful World, the chance of living men!" To be sure, behind the thought lurks the afterthought,—suppose, after all, the World is right and we are less than men? Suppose this mad impulse within is all wrong, some mock ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... is a fear of the ultimate consequences of a Union reconstructed without Slavery; for then Mr. Bright may argue in favor of universal suffrage, uninterrupted by allusions to the arrogance and coarseness, the boastful and aggressive spirit belonging to a pro-slavery America. "Why do you desire the dissolution of the Union?" asked one Englishman of another. "Oh, I have no reason, except that the Americans are so bounceable I want to see them humbled." But we ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... quarrels and bloodshed. Tradition says that there was once a Chinese kingdom at the north of Borneo, whose chiefs married into the families of the principal Dyak chiefs; but it is the misfortune of the Chinese character to be both boastful and cowardly, and when they had irritated the Malays by their big words, they stood no chance of prevailing against them in war. If their enemies did not run away after the first attack and discharge of firearms, they were pretty sure to show them an example by doing ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... that, although now he was more careful to speak the truth than are most people, it was not his habit when a boy, and he had suffered severely in consequence. He was annoyed, therefore, at his question, set him down as a hypocritical, boastful prig, and was seized with a ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... enjoyment. Unusual bodily vigour enabled him to combine severe devotion to work with facile indulgence in sensual pleasures. His passion for wine and women was almost as well known as his learning. Versatile, light-hearted, boastful and pleasure-loving, he contrasts with the nobler and more intellectual character of Averroes. His bouts of pleasure gradually weakened his constitution; a severe colic, which seized him on the march of the army against Hamad[a]n, was checked by remedies so violent that Avicenna ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... Valles was one of the most conspicuous among the men of the 18th of March. He had been journalist, working printer, a clerk at the Hotel de Ville, editor of a newspaper, pamphleteer, and cafe orator in turn, but always noisy and boastful. Andre Gill, the caricaturist, once drew him as an undertaker's dog, dragging a saucepan behind him, and the caricature told Valles' story well enough. In face he was ugly, but energetic in expression, ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... He gave me the effect of not caring in the least whether I were there or no, whether I replied or remained silent, whether I asked questions or simply pursued my own work. And I, on my side, had soon in my consciousness his odd, irascible, nervous, pleading, shy and boastful figure painted permanently, so that his actual physical presence seemed to be unimportant. There he was, as he liked to stand up against the white stove in my draughty room, his rather dirty nervous hands waving in front of me, his thin hair ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... speaking the submarine boy realized that this must have had a boastful sound. So he ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham
... all you seek, you shall not need to go far in your quest," returned Ogilvy. "Tarry till this controversy be ended, and if I match not your Spanish blade with a Scottish broad-sword, and approve you as recreant at heart as you are boastful and injurious of speech, may Saint Andrew forever after withhold from me ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... selected some attractive spot for the night's encampment or bivouac, according to the state of the weather, near some spring or stream. Here they built a rousing fire, roasted choice cuts from the game they had taken, and feasted abundantly with jokes and laughter, and many boastful stories of their achievements. They then threw themselves upon the ground for sleep, though some one was appointed to keep a watch over their captives. But deceived by the entire contentment and friendliness, feigned by Boone, and by Stewart who implicitly followed ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... preparations made so vigorously by the United States had already begun to produce an effect upon the belligerent feelings of the French Directory. The appointment of Washington to the chief command of the American armies had filled the boastful leaders in France with alarm; and the wily Talleyrand, with a sagacity possessed by few of his compeers, had already turned his thoughts toward reconciliation, and made indirect exertions to induce the United States to offer ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... short sack coat; that his waistcoat was of a combustible plaid pattern with gaiters to match; that he had taken his fingers many times to the jeweler, but not once to the manicure; that he was beautifully jingled and alcoholically boastful of his native land and that—a crowning touch—he wore flaring from an upper pocket of his coat a silk handkerchief woven in the design and colors of his country's flag. But, praises be, it was not our flag that he wore thus. It was the Union Jack. As we passed out into the damp Viennese ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... all he visited Thor, and told him of what had passed. And the Thunderer, when he heard of Thrym's boastful words, was filled with wild wrath and wanted to start off, then and there, and wrest the hammer from the depths of the sea. But Loki pointed out the difficulties that stood in the way and, leaving the Asa to ponder over ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... a more conceited, ignorant, boastful, treacherous, cowardly, and utterly worthless bit of red humanity than he I have yet to meet. I have already warned him away from this section of country, and if he persists in remaining where he is so little wanted, I shall be obliged to ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... scolded his lieutenants, even those of the highest rank. Artillery, provisions, baggage, he insisted upon seeing all himself. He examined the equipment of every soldier; he assured himself of the health and soundness of every horse. It was plain that, light, boastful, and egotistical, in his hotel, the gentleman became the soldier again—the high noble, a captain—in face of the responsibility he had accepted. And yet, it must be admitted that, whatever was the care with which ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... live of their own? why not refuse light, because it is gratuitous, and costs them neither invention nor exertion? Let Mars, Pallas, or Mercury afford them their light by which to see, instead of Venus, Ceres, and Bacchus. These boastful humours may counterfeit some content, for what will not fancy do? But as to wisdom, there is no touch of it. Will they not seek the quadrature of the circle, even when on their wives? I hate that ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... the matter than that on himself occurred to him. At first, the fresh air had increased the heady effect of the brandy he had drunk; but afterwards his mind grew clearer than it had been since morning. And the clearer it grew, the less final did his boastful self-assurances become, and the firmer his conviction that, when all explanations had been made, there remained something that could not be explained. His hysteria of an hour before had passed; he grew steadily calmer; but the disquieting conviction ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... till the close of the day, when our valorous troops would have reaped the fruit of their gallantry without any loss if it had not been for Balchobaudes, a tribune of the legions, who being as sluggish as he was boastful, at the approach of evening retreated in disorder to the camp. And if the rest of the cohorts had followed his example and had also retired, the affair would have turned out so ruinous that not one of our men would have been left alive to ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... acting in aid of the land-forces gave the formidable spectacle of war at once pushed on by sea and land. The cavalry, infantry, and marines were frequently mingled in the same camp, and recounted with mutual pleasure their several exploits and adventures; comparing, in the boastful language of military men, the dark recesses of woods and mountains, with the horrors of waves and tempests; and the land and enemy subdued, with the conquered ocean. It was also discovered from the captives, that the Britons had ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... his sins, it supposes that he take a correspondent attitude. Were he sinless, the religion suited to him would be the mere utterance of law, and he might stand up before it with the serene brow of an obedient subject of the Divine government; though even then, not with a proud and boastful temper. It would be out of place for him, to plead guilty when he was innocent; or to cast himself upon mercy, when he could appeal to justice. If the creature's acceptance be of works, then it is no more of grace, ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... College at the darkest hour in its history marked the turning-point. We have already learned from the reminiscences of Lyman Beecher how low the college had sunk in point of religious character, when most of the class above him were openly boastful of being infidels.[243:1] How the new president dealt with them is well ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... man of his character the temptation was irresistible; for when he came to our naval war, he had to appear as the champion of the beaten side, and to explain away defeat instead of chronicling victory. The contemporary American writers were quite as boastful and untruthful. No honorable American should at this day endorse their statements; and similarly, no reputable Englishman should permit his name to be associated in any way with James' book without explicitly disclaiming ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... loud is the drums were their words and they roared like the roar of the Ha-ha. For some for Tamdka contend, and some for the fair, bearded stranger, And the betting runs high to the end, with the skins of the bison and beaver. A wife of tall Wazi-kut —the mother of boastful Tamdka— Brought her handsomest robe from the tee, with a vaunting and loud proclamation: She would stake her last robe on her son who, she boasted, was fleet as the Cbri [80] And the tall, tawny chieftain looked on, approving the boast of the mother. ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... tried to prevent the Triton's carrying off her son, since he could learn nothing but bad words and boastful bullying in the old home of the Ferraguts. And trumping up the necessity of seeing her own family, she left the notary alone in Valencia, going with her boy to spend the summer on the coast of Catalunia ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Puranas also; who is endued with devotion to his preceptors and with intellect possessed of the eight attributes, who by his abstinence, ability, origin and age, is alone capable of protecting the celestial regions like Mahavat himself; who is never boastful; who showeth proper respect to all; who beholdeth the minutest things as clearly as if those were gross and large; who is sweet-speeched; who showereth diverse kinds of food and drink on his friends and dependents; who is truthful, worshipped ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... sumacs, in lonely places, Bowed all summer with dust and heat, Like clean-clad children with rain-washed faces, Are dressed in scarlet from head to feet. And never a flower had the boastful summer, In all the blossoms that decked her sod, So royal hued as that later comer The purple chum of ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... of my first night on the Rio Pongo was my transition from pupilage to responsible independence. I do not allege in a boastful spirit that I was a man of courage; because courage, or the want of it, are things for which a person is no more responsible than he is for the possession or lack of physical strength. I was, moreover, always a man of what I may style self-possessed passion. I was ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... "We conquered America in Germany." This is a quotation from a boastful speech of Mr. Pitt's on ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... Notwithstanding his learning, he had stopped short at the ideas he had learned at school. To him the French were a clever people, skilled in practical things, amiable, talkative, but frivolous, susceptible, and boastful, incapable of being serious, or sincere, or of feeling strongly—a people without music, without philosophy, without poetry (except for l'Art Poetique, Beranger and Francois Coppee)—a people of pathos, much gesticulation, exaggerated speech, and pornography. There were not words strong ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... can put his hat on, and can say 'this hat covers the owner of this property and of the business which is transacted on this property,' I consider, Mr. Bintrey, that, without being boastful, he may be allowed to be deeply thankful. I don't know how it may appear to you, but ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... inward disposition, and this regards chiefly the passions of the soul. Wherefore Ambrose says (De Offic. i, 18) that "from these things," i.e. the outward movements, "the man that lies hidden in our hearts is esteemed to be either frivolous, or boastful, or impure, or on the other hand sedate, steady, pure, and free from blemish." It is moreover from our outward movements that other men form their judgment about us, according to Ecclus. 19:26, "A man is known by his look, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... but stumbling-blocks in council; brilliant in conception, they fail in execution; fanciful designers, they are not "builders of bridges". They are boastful, sparkling, inventive, witty, garrulous, vain and supersensitive, outraging their friends by the extravagance of their schemes; embarrassing their enemies by the subtlety of ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... of a similar kind were to be heard in the rooms of the Casino in those days. Notwithstanding this boastful talk, so common in small towns, which, for the very reason that they are small, are generally arrogant, Rey was not without finding sincere friends among the members of the learned corporation, for they were not all gossips, nor were there wanting among them persons of good sense. But our ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... that of many people who had been misled by them. So, too, there are at the present day many proud spirits. Some dare not yet publicly show themselves. Such as have perceived that they are learned, or are held in regard by men, thereupon grow boastful and, despite all their skill and learning, abide without the Spirit and without fruit, even if they do not work more harm in addition to ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... at this time but lately returned from his triumphs in South Carolina, and he was more boastful and arrogant than ever. After Washington he was second in command, but he had no doubt in his own mind that he ought to be first. Now he was not slow to let others know what he thought. And while Washington, noble and upright gentleman ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... the conduct of the man who insinuates himself into the affections of a young girl by every protestation and avowal possible, save that which would be binding upon himself, and then withdraws his attentions with the boastful consciousness that he has ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... nor boastful vow, Can e'er find favor in his sight: The humble votary, meek and low,— The ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... Christ, by the unchecked lust for fame, to drag me unexpectedly into the arena, trying to catch me in one little word concerning the primacy of the Church of Rome, which had fallen from me in passing. That boastful Thraso, foaming and gnashing his teeth, proclaimed that he would dare all things for the glory of God and for the honour of the holy apostolic seat; and, being puffed up respecting your power, which he was about to misuse, he looked forward with all certainty to victory; seeking to ...
— Concerning Christian Liberty - With Letter Of Martin Luther To Pope Leo X. • Martin Luther
... "I am sure I never wish to hear the thing mentioned again. I have taken a lot of pains to become a good shot, and it seems that I have a natural aptitude that way. There is nothing more to feel boastful about than if nature had made me a giant, and I had thereby been able to thrash a man of ordinary strength. I am very glad that I have put it out of Marshall's power to bully other men, and, as he had several times done, to force them into duels, when his skill gave him ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... before they came within my hearing, for the first words I heard were those of my brother, who was in a state of intoxication, and he was urging a reconciliation, as was his wont on such occasions. My friend spurned at the suggestion, and dared him to the combat; and after a good deal of boastful altercation, which the turmoil of my spirits prevented me from remembering, my brother was compelled to draw his sword and stand on the defensive. It was a desperate and terrible engagement. I at first thought that the royal stranger and great champion of the faith would ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... performance, that they had missed very much indeed, and had by no means seen Thespis at his best. Even nowadays, middle-aged playgoers, old enough to remember the late Mr. Macready, are trumped, as it were, by older playgoers, boastful of their memories of Kemble and the elder Kean. And these players, in their day and in their turn, underwent disparagement at the hands of veterans who had seen Garrick. Pope, much as he admired Garrick, yet held fast to his old faith in Betterton. From ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... and Hainteroh, Henry went back to his prison lodge, sad and apprehensive. This was, in truth, a formidable league, and it could have no more formidable leader than Timmendiquas. He had seen, too, the boastful faces of the renegades, and he was not willing that Braxton Wyatt or any of them should have a chance to ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and goodness knows what it may develop into later on, and what the future has in store for us. It is not a poor material! I do not say this from any foolish or boastful patriotism. But I feel sure that you are again imagining that I am joking. Or perhaps it's just the contrary and you are convinced that I really think so. Anyway, gentlemen, I shall welcome both views as an honour and ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... girls who were to come into their full week off—the names and dates were posted on the bulletin board; others were given five days, three days, down to a few whose allotment out of a possible week was one-half day. But several of the most boastful over their past irregular record, and who were receiving no vacation at all, claimed they were going to be on time every day this coming year—"Sure." This was the first year the vacation with pay had been granted. I thought of Tessie at the candy factory—Tessie who had ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... new feeling, I may refer your kindly curiosity to my Proverbial Chapters on 'The Future of Animals,' to many of my occasional poems, and to the enclosed, which I hope it may please you to accept. You may like to know also, as a kindred spirit (and pray don't think me boastful), that years ago, through a personal communication with Louis Napoleon, I have a happy reason to believe that the undersigned was instrumental in stopping the horrors of Altorf, besides other similar efforts for poor animals in America ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... American rights, made the bulk of his payments for his many years' work, and the book has not yet gone into a second edition. I think 2,000 were printed. There were between 40,000 and 50,000 copies of Croker's editions sold, so that we must not be too boastful as to the improved taste of the present age. 320 pounds is a mere bagatelle to numbers of our present writers of utterly foolish fiction. Several of them have been known to spend double that sum on a single motor-car. In connexion with this matter I cannot refrain from giving one passage ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... boastful, or vaunting, in Peter's manner while he thus announced his immunity or power, but he alluded to it in a quiet, natural way, like one accustomed to being considered a personage of consequence. Mankind, ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... philosophy of the conservatives of his time and was conscientiously studied by the genteel dilettanti and literati of Rome. Every one who displayed any intellectual vigour, opposed the Stoa or ignored it. It was principally antipathy towards the boastful and tiresome Roman Pharisees, coupled doubtless with the increasing disposition to take refuge from practical life in indolent apathy or empty irony, that occasioned during this epoch the extension of the system of Epicurus to a larger circle and the naturalization ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Light borne on active limbs, in conscious pride. To the wide pastures of the mares he flies; So Paris, Priam's son, from Ilium's height, His bright arms flashing like the gorgeous sun, Hasten'd, with boastful mien, and rapid step. Hector he found, as from the spot he turn'd Where with his wife he late had converse held; Whom thus the godlike Paris first address'd: "Too long, good brother, art then here ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... questioned. As you hope for the verdict of the jury you must prove your case. It is amazing how many correspondents fail to appreciate the necessity for arguments. Pages will be filled with assertions, superlative adjectives, boastful claims of superiority, but not one sentence that offers proof of any statement, not one logical reason why the reader should ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... the boastful Chief maintain his word, Though Heaven hath heard the wailings of the land, Though Lusitania whet her vengeful sword, Though Britons arm and WELLINGTON command! No! grim Busaco's iron ridge shall stand An adamantine barrier to his force; And from ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... my dream true? and shall I slay the Gorgon? If thou didst really show me her face, let me not come to shame as a liar and boastful. Rashly and angrily I promised; but cunningly and patiently will ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... roared it couldn't have been more surprising," saying to Little Dombey with startling suddenness, "How are you?"—every time the Reader opened his lips, as speaking in that character, there was a burst of merriment. His boastful account always called forth laughter—that his tailor was Burgess and Co., "fash'nable, but very dear." As also did his constantly reiterated inquiries of Paul—always as an entirely new idea—"I ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... age, and then anxious to train up worthy successors in the art and mystery of managing a well-appointed household. Aman evidently who knew his work in every detail, and did it all with pride; not boastful, though upholding his office against rebellious cooks[3], putting them down with imperial dignity, "we may allow and disallow; our office is the chief!" Asimple-minded religious man too,—as the close of his Treatise shows,—and one able to appreciate ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... foregoing is the observance of a due mean, in the matter of Boastfulness. The boastful lay claim to what they do not possess; false modesty [Greek: eironeia] is denying or underrating one's own merits. The balance of the two is the straightforward and truthful character; asserting just what belongs to him, neither more nor less. This ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... squires, whose talk was of dogs and horses and cattle, and the price of hay. We were north-of-England people, but not of a commercial or adventurous class, though we were within easy reach of some of the great manufacturing centres. Quiet country folk we were; old-fashioned, and boastful of our old-fashionedness, albeit it meant little more than that our manners and customs were a generation behindhand of the more cultivated folk, who live nearer to London. We were proud of our name too, which is written in the earliest registers and records ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... concealed by the ashes around him, so like they were in color to his dingy robe, and the cap that covered his matted grizzled hair. Occasionally he chuckled to himself at the thought of the discomfiture which lay in store for Curling Smoke, that boastful giant, whom he believed to be lying in wait for the Prince near to the Wizard's Cave. Such confidence had the Ash Goblin in his snare that never for an instant did he believe that the Prince could escape it and come within reach ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... transformations. Such assertions do not involve "the powerful pantheistic doctrine which is at once the glory and error of Irish philosophy," as M. D'Arbois claims,[1220] else are savage medicine-men, boastful of their shape-shifting powers, philosophic pantheists. The poems are merely highly developed forms of primitive beliefs in shape-shifting, such as are found among all savages and barbaric folk, but expressed in the boastful language in ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... competition which whips the producer into line and often makes it a matter of business life and death that one should make progress in method and quality. That his shoes wear is a matter of pride to the shoe manufacturer. "Blank tires are good tires" is not to be regarded as merely a boastful advertisement. If it was it would ...
— Creating Capital - Money-making as an aim in business • Frederick L. Lipman
... preposterously boastful and hollow; but he was manfully in earnest; every word came from his ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... till the ending When at last our soul us leaves, From hell-fires, flaming clamor Lest we fall 'neath the hammer! Too oft we've heard with tremor, How pitiably it grieves The land so pure and holy All helplessly and fearfully! Jerusalem, weep lowly, That thou forgotten art! The heathen's boastful glory Put thee in slavery hoary. Christ, by thy name's proud story In mercy take her part! And help those sorely shaken Who treaties them would maken That we may not be taken And conquered at ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... damped by the boastful manner in which the victor behaved; for it is not easy to sing the praises of a man whose looks and words show that ...
— Jeff Benson, or the Young Coastguardsman • R.M. Ballantyne
... matter that thou hast taken away my husband? and wouldst thou take away my son's dudaim also?' And Rachel said, 'See, Jacob shall be thine to-night for thy son's dudaim.' But Leah insisted, 'Jacob is mine, and I am the wife of his youth,' whereupon Rachel, 'Be not boastful and overweening. To me he was betrothed first, and for my sake he served our father fourteen years. Thou art not his wife, thou wast taken to him by cunning instead of me, for our father deceived me, and ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... the war-club of Kaheutahi and eaten by his friends, Beaten to Death was but a ghost, and Kaheutahi took his place and became father of the children of the house. He said they were his in fact, but men were ever boastful." ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... fell to talk,—he grateful, boastful,—as the distant figures grew dim; she quickly assenting, but following his expression rather than his words, with her own girlish face and brightening eyes. But what he said, or how he explained his position, with what speciousness he dwelt upon himself, his wrongs, and his manifold ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... and boastful son of Mars, at heart a bully, if not a coward, is represented as ever aching for a fight, in which his domineering spirit and rough-and-tumble ways for a time gave him the advantage over abler, ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... cries of beaten women rose, and the weird chants of incantations and of foul unclean dances were heard. Khamane called the older men together around his fire. Pots of beer passed from hand to hand. As the men grew fuddled they became bolder and more boastful. Khamane then spoke to them and said, "Why should Khama rule you? Remember he forbids you to make and to drink beer. He has done away with the dances of the young men. He will not let you make charms ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... breast, and hanging over the right shoulder like a shepherd's 'maud' or plaid. Looking at the engraving, and hearing of Paul Veronese's amiability and piety, one has little difficulty in thinking of the magnificent painter, as a single-hearted, simple-minded man, neither vain nor boastful, nor masterful save by the gift ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... depravity, greedy covetousness, maliciousness. Oozing out of every pore there are envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity. Men are whisperers, backbiters, God-haters, and self-lovers, in that they are insolent, haughty, boastful. They are inventors of evil things, without understanding, breakers of faith, without ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... intervals, M. Hector would appeal to his wife, with his mouth full of beefsteak, as to the little fellow's age at such or such a time when he had said or done something memorable; and I noticed that Madame usually pooh-poohed these inquiries. She herself was not boastful in her vein, but she never had her fill of caressing the child; and she seemed to take a gentle pleasure in recalling all that was fortunate in his little existence. No schoolboy could have talked more ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... imbued under his leadership. He has sometimes been presented as a man of flabby character whose historical part was that of intermediary between impracticable French "philosophes" and the ruffians and swindlers that Martin Chuzzlewit encountered, who were all "children of liberty," and whose "boastful answer to the Despot and the Tyrant was that their bright home was in the Settin' Sun." He was nothing of the kind. His judgment was probably unsound on the questions of foreign policy on which as Secretary of State he differed from ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... to be sure, but through the regular conventional channels of politics, and if he desired to step on a law, he stepped on it, and a court came running up behind him, and legalized his transaction. He sneered at reformers, and mocked God, did John Barclay in those days. He grew arrogant and boastful, and strutted in his power like a man in liquor with the vain knowledge that he could increase the population of a state or a group of states, or he could shrivel the prosperity of a section of the country by his whim. For by changing a freight rate he could make wheat grow, where grass had nourished. ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... me tumble," quoth Robin, "I will freely give thee back thy fifty pounds; but I tell thee, brother, if thou makest me not feel grass all along my back, I will take every farthing thou hast for thy boastful speech." ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... Whether God himself is the author of evil, Or whether that is the work of the Devil. When, where, and wherefore Lucifer fell, And whether he now is chained in hell." I think I can answer that question well! So long as the boastful human mind Consents in such mills as this to grind, I sit very firmly upon my throne! Of a truth it almost makes me laugh, To see men leaving the golden grain To gather in piles the pitiful chaff That old Peter Lombard thrashed with his brain, To have it ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Daudet in 1872, and was one of the many works which he produced. In it he pokes gentle fun at a type of Frenchman who comes from the Midi, the area where he himself was born. Tartarin has characteristics which may remind the English-speaking reader of Toad of Toad Hall, a boastful braggart, easily deceived, ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... the Austrians had not been beaten—that Napoleon had been compelled to fall back with his army and to take refuge on the island of Lobau, was regarded as a victory, which was announced in the most boastful manner. But if it was a victory, the Austrians did not know how to profit by it. Instead of uniting their forces and attacking Lobau, where the French army was encamped, huddled together, and exhausted by the long and murderous struggle—where ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... ago, one of the Lords of the English Admiralty had predicted that in the first naval battle fought between Germany and England, the German fleet would be entirely annihilated. We naturally only smiled in derision at these boastful words. The English newspapers, besides, had for many years announced that whenever German officers met together they drank a toast "To the Day." Although of course this was untrue, yet we were all burning to prove in battle ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner
... proclaimed without one riot, without one seditions outcry. From all corners of the island he received intelligence that his subjects were tranquil and obedient. His spirit rose. The degrading relation in which he stood to a foreign power seemed intolerable. He became proud, punctilious, boastful, quarrelsome. He held such high language about the dignity of his crown and the balance of power that his whole court fully expected a complete revolution in the foreign politics of the realm. He commanded Churchill ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in such a way as to promote secrecy and stealth, those being our main advantages in the conflict. Out of hundreds of outposts like the one we were just in, for example, only four others have ever been discovered, and the Zards still have no clue where our fortress is." This he said in a boastful manner, but as he did a faint spirit of sorrow spread across his face for an instant, as if in memory of one of ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... joy made me agile: I sprang up before him. A hearty kissing I got for a welcome, and some boastful triumph, which I swallowed as well as I could. He checked himself in his exultation to demand, "But is there anything the matter, Janet, that you come to meet me at such an ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... thin-blooded, white-livered creatures. Look at them! There is Bruce Browning, once called 'King of the Sophomores,' but cowed and bested by Merriwell, to be afterward dropped a class. There is Jack Diamond, a boastful Southerner. He forced Merriwell to fight, but fawned about Merriwell's feet like a cur ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... one of those feud cases, I was asked by a private if I were related to Edgar Allan Poe, "De mug what used to write poetry," and when I replied, "Yes, he was my grandmother's first cousin," he, evidently thinking I was too boastful, remarked, "Well, man, you've got a ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... center of the most nerve-racking excitement. The life of the school is reflected in the life of the community, and the throbs of excitement that vibrate from the school are felt in every home of the section. We are in the thick of preparations for a deadly contest with the insolent, benighted, boastful, but hitherto triumphant Front, in the matter of shinny. You know my antipathy to violent sports, and you will find some difficulty in picturing me an enthusiastic trainer and general director of the Twentieth team, flying about, wildly gesticulating with a club, and shrieking ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... hap—" She glanced up at the mine buildings perched above the roadway and smothered a little cry. Ford's eyes followed hers. All across the slab-built shaft-house and the lean-to ore sheds was stretched a huge canvas sign. And in letters of bright blue, freshly painted and two feet high, ran the boastful legend: ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... confidence impressed her. Cocksure he was, and before long she knew him boastful; but competence sat on him, none the less. She thought she could see why he was held to be the most deadly bloodhound on a trail that even Arizona could produce. That he was fearless she did not need to be told, any more than she needed ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... of Bombay are the finest in Asia, and when the extensions now in progress are carried out few cities in Europe can surpass them. They are planned for a century in advance. The people of Bombay are not boastful, but they are confident of the growth of their city and its commerce. Attached to the docks is a story of integrity and fidelity worth telling. In 1735 the municipal authorities of the young city, anticipating commercial prosperity, decided to improve their harbor and build piers for the accommodation ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... rivalry is hidden in the best of us, and is a helpful and inspiring power if we know how to use it. Miss Celia knew this, and tried to make the lads help one another by means of it,—not in boastful or ungenerous comparison of each other's gifts, but by interchanging them, giving and taking freely, kindly, and being glad to love what was admirable wherever they found it. Thorny admired Ben's strength, activity, and ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... the messengers returned to Queen Meav. And she, full of anger, decided to make good the boastful words of her messenger and ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... keep the delightful secret. When trade was slack she went and stood at Bogle's desk. Her eyes were shining; she tried not to let her words sound proud and boastful. ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... his own recorded voice, rubbed the sunstone on his left finger with the heel of his right palm and watched it brighten. There was, he noticed, a boastful ring to his voice—not the suave, unemphatic tone considered proper on a message-tape. Well, if anybody wondered why, when they played that tape off six months from now in Johannesburg on Terra, they could look in the cargo holds of the ship that had brought it across ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... Cilicia another Aetolia, or another Macedonia." The campaign was concluded about the middle of December, and the governor, handing over the army to his brother, made his way to Laodicea. From this place he writes to Atticus in language that seems to us self-glorious and boastful, but still has a ring of honesty about it. "I left Tarsus for Asia (the Roman province so called) on June 5th, followed by such admiration as I cannot express from the cities of Cilicia, and especially from the people of Tarsus. When I had crossed the Taurus there was a marvelous ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... season begins. She may need a secretary or a governess—or a—cook. Holy Saint Martin! but I can cook!" And Patsy clasped her hands in an ecstatic appreciation of her culinary art; it was the only one of which she was boastful. ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... liberal principles, not because they were the most consistent advocates and friends of despotism in all its forms, intellectual, religious, and political, or the writers of casuistic books, or the perverters of educational instruction, or boastful missionaries in Japan and China, or cunning intriguers in the courts of princes, or artful confessors of the great, or uncompromising despots in the schools,—but because they interfered with her ascendency. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... His tall frame boastful with that life renewed, Took with him men, and down the stone-paved hill Rode from his tower, and through the woodlands green, And bare with him an offering of those days, A brazen cauldron vast. Embossed it shone With sculptured shapes. On one side ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... asking their removal. Washington, the very day he received his credentials, set out on his perilous journey through the wilderness from Williamsburg to Lake Erie. He found the French officer at Fort Venango loud and boastful. At Fort le Boeuf the commandant, St. Pierre (sang-pe-are), treated him with great respect; but, like a true soldier, refused to discuss theories, and declared himself under orders which he should obey. It was ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... cannot fail of good results—and this quite naturally and without any toilsome effort. We shall then find that the secret of co-operation is to have faith in ourselves because we first have faith in God; and we shall discover that this Divine self-confidence is something very different from a boastful egotism which assumes a personal superiority over others. It is simply the assurance of a man who knows that he is working in accordance with a law of nature. He does not claim as a personal achievement what the Law does FOR him: but on the other hand he does not trouble himself ...
— The Dore Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... Portveldt, who now hailed the Policy in not quite so boastful a voice as when the vessels ...
— Foster's Letter Of Marque - A Tale Of Old Sydney - 1901 • Louis Becke
... This natural valor, joined to his blind confidence in himself, sometimes precipitated him into almost inextricable situations, into which he threw himself headlong, and from which he never emerged without hard blows—for if he was as adventurous and boastful as a Gascon, he was as obstinate and ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... ignorant, boastful quack petted, caressed and patronized by people of culture and refinement, wrote he, such as members of the learned professions, statesmen, philosophers, shrewd merchants and bankers, as well as ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... offers so fair and pleasant a record. One observation, however, we feel called upon to make to the entertaining Major: the youth of America should be taught to love, to live for, and, if need be, to die for their country; but they should also be taught to shun narrow exclusiveness and boastful vanity. A government of a whole people should in this respect set a noble example ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the Empire State of the American Republic the scene of their ancient Indian empire remains. It is left for the white man to commemorate the Indian who made no effort to perpetuate memorials of himself, erected no boastful monuments, and carved no inscriptions to record his many conquests. Having gained great wealth by developing the resources of a land which the Indians used only as hunting grounds, the white man may none the less appreciate the lofty qualities of a race of men who, just because ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... perfect happiness for the knight, and at its termination the King held a great feast on the occasion of Pentecost. To this feast Sir Graelent was bidden. All day the knights and barons and their ladies feasted, and the King, having drunk much wine, grew boastful. Requesting the Queen to stand forth on the dais, he asked the assembled nobles if they had ever beheld so fair a dame as she. The lords were loud in their praise of the Queen, save Graelent only. He sat with bent head, smiling strangely, for he knew of a lady fairer by far than any ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... say to each other, "and then the Scotch went and did the like of that!"—the like of that being their stupidity in living in an exposed situation. Millreagh does not admit that it has suffered any more than a temporary diminishment of its greatness, and it makes optimistic and boastful prophecies of the fortune and repute that will come to it when the engineers make a tunnel between Scotland and Ireland. Sometimes an article on the Channel Tunnel will appear in the Newsletter or the Whig, and for weeks afterwards Millreagh lives in a fever of expectancy; ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... the man who discovered and described Niagara Falls (in 1678), and he also assisted greatly to clear up the geography of the time by the information he collected from the Amerindians as to the vast extent of the North-American continent; but he was a boastful, unscrupulous man. ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... Berlin, and his efforts to lead my officers into insubordination and revolt. But when I ordered investigations to be made into these matters, and the count should have justified his actions, the boastful lord showed himself to be ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... us to another element in heroism: its simplicity. Whatsoever is not simple; whatsoever is affected, boastful, wilful, covetous, tarnishes, even destroys, the heroic character of a deed; because all these faults spring out of self. On the other hand, wherever you find a perfectly simple, frank, unconscious character, there you have the possibility, ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... father and son, were travelling, selling holy images. They put up in the inn not far from here that is now kept by Ignat Fomin. The old man had a drop too much, and began boasting that he had a lot of money with him. We all know merchants are a boastful set, God preserve us. . . . They can't resist showing off before the likes of us. And at the time some mowers were staying the night at the inn. So they overheard what the merchants said ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... pardon his sins, it supposes that he take a correspondent attitude. Were he sinless, the religion suited to him would be the mere utterance of law, and he might stand up before it with the serene brow of an obedient subject of the Divine government; though even then, not with a proud and boastful temper. It would be out of place for him, to plead guilty when he was innocent; or to cast himself upon mercy, when he could appeal to justice. If the creature's acceptance be of works, then it is no more of grace, otherwise work is ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... hospital, the diplomat of quackery, his shoulders eased of all responsibility, sat lunching early at the Hotel Dunston. His repast consisted of a sandwich and a small bottle of well-frapped champagne. To him, lunching, came a drummer of the patent medicine trade; a blatant and boastful fellow, from whose methods the diplomat in Mr. Belford Couch revolted. Nevertheless, the newcomer was a forceful person, and when, over two ponies of brandy ordered by the luncher in the way of inevitable hospitality, ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... and Dick told of his sufferings during the sand-storm, not in a boastful way, but as if it were his purpose to give the prospectors the ...
— Dick in the Desert • James Otis
... the Government is an avowal that prostitution is a Sphinx to modern society, the riddle which society can not solve: it considers necessary to tolerate and superintend prostitution in order to avoid greater evils. In other words, our social system, so boastful of its morality, its religiousness, its civilization and its culture, feels compelled to tolerate that immorality and corruption spread through its body like a stealthy poison. But this state of things betrays something else, besides the admission by the Christian ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... by the fire, had increased with every move the hovering hands made. She had been familiar with political parties and their leaders, she had met heroes and statesmen; she had seen an unimportant prince become an emperor, who, from his green and boastful youth, aspired to rule the world and whose theatrical obsession had been the sly jest of unwary nations, too carelessly sure of the advance of civilization and too indifferently self-indulgent to realize that a monomaniac, even if treated ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... The Reformatory, a boastful, brick building set in grounds that seemed freshly starched and ironed, had a discoloured door that would have frowned and threatened of its own accord, even without the printed warnings pasted to its panels stating that no application for ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... tender little smile, as she quietly made this announcement. There was no hint of boastful pride in her tones; nothing save becoming modesty ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... much," went on Olaf. "He was boastful. The Russian pressed him to show this thing. After a while the red one went out and came back with a little golden box. He and the Russian went into the garden. I followed them. There was a lille Hoj—a mound—of stones ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... speech relative to the circumstance which has called them together; and which is always more or less interlarded with boastful reference to his own deeds, past, present, and prospective, eulogistic remarks on those of his forefathers, and a general condemnation of all other Indian tribes whatever. These speeches are usually delivered ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... once their emulation and their condemnation of each other. He seized the opportunity, but—for some reason, he knew not why—awkwardly and clumsily, with a simulated pathos that was lachrymose, a self-assertion that was boastful, and a dramatic manner that was unreal. Suddenly the girl ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... then wrote his famous "Veni, vidi, vici," if those words were ever written. Surely he could not have written them and sent them home! Even the subservience of the age would not have endured words so boastful, nor would the glory of Caesar have so tarnished itself. He hurried back to Italy, and quelled the mutiny of his men by a masterpiece of stage-acting. Simply by addressing them as "Quirites," instead of ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... way This foolish tale he told, That his daughter could spin from bits of straw Continuous threads of gold! So boastful had he grown, forsooth, That he cared but little for the truth: But since this was a curious thing It came to ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... excitement. The life of the school is reflected in the life of the community, and the throbs of excitement that vibrate from the school are felt in every home of the section. We are in the thick of preparations for a deadly contest with the insolent, benighted, boastful, but hitherto triumphant Front, in the matter of shinny. You know my antipathy to violent sports, and you will find some difficulty in picturing me an enthusiastic trainer and general director of the Twentieth team, flying about, wildly ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... to-morrow. I think I should not mind it much myself, for I am very old and have not a great while longer to live in any case, but for the time that is left it will mar my usefulness. I have been able to help the people here and they have come to depend upon me—that is my life. I trust I am not boastful if I say my greatest joy has been ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... firesides of the Dakotas of today, we recognize the very texture of the thought of a simple, grave, and sincere people, living in intimate contact and friendship with the big out-of-doors that we call Nature; a race not yet understanding all things, not proud and boastful, but honest and childlike and fair; a simple, sincere, and gravely thoughtful people, willing to believe that there may be in even the everyday things of life something not yet fully understood; a race that can, without any loss of native dignity, gravely consider the simplest things, ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin
... acquainted with him and trembled at the sight of him; and asserted that one half of them must be guillotined, and the other half transported, the next time there was "a flare-up." His violent political creed found food in boastful, bragging talk of this sort; he displayed all the partiality for a lark and a rumpus which prompts a Parisian shopkeeper to take down his shutters on a day of barricade-fighting to get a good view of the corpses of the slain. When Florent returned from Cayenne, Gavard opined that he had ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... it is? Or would you prosecute it in future with elder-stalk squirts charged with rose water? Would you deal lighter blows rather than heavier ones? Would you give up the contest, leaving any available means unapplied? I am in no boastful mood. I shall not do more than I can, and I shall do all I can, to save the government, which is my sworn duty as well as my personal inclination. I shall do nothing in malice. What I deal with is too vast ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... Narfi, a noisy, foolish fellow, boastful, and yet of little account. Said he to Thorkel, "If Cormac's coming likes thee not, I can ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown
... manhood. But he was prematurely old, worn down with care, toil and disappointment. He attended the assembly accompanied by his son Philip. Tottering beneath infirmities, he leaned upon the shoulders of a friend for support, and addressed the assembly in a long and somewhat boastful speech, enumerating all the acts of his administration, his endeavors, his long and weary journeys, his sleepless care, his wars, and, above all, his victories. In ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... Cocksure he was, and before long she knew him boastful; but competence sat on him, none the less. She thought she could see why he was held to be the most deadly bloodhound on a trail that even Arizona could produce. That he was fearless she did not need to be told, any more than ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... our return home, washed the soot and dirt from our hands and faces, and while we were thus employed a modest rap was heard at the door, and who should enter but Mr. Steel Spring, looking as important, defiant, and boastful ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... of the earth, with their varied productions, to the full and free enjoyment of their habits at home, and in return exhibit to them the results of our growth and industry. In no boastful spirit this new and marvelous city, which has sprung into existence within the life of men who hear me, has, with the aid of the general government and the states that comprise it, built these great palaces, adorned these lately waste ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... hell-fires, flaming clamor Lest we fall 'neath the hammer! Too oft we've heard with tremor, How pitiably it grieves The land so pure and holy All helplessly and fearfully! Jerusalem, weep lowly, That thou forgotten art! The heathen's boastful glory Put thee in slavery hoary. Christ, by thy name's proud story In mercy take her part! And help those sorely shaken Who treaties them would maken That we may not be taken And conquered at ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... foolish as it was, has a meaning to us, for it was essentially true. Washington had the fierce fighting temper of the Northmen. He loved battle and danger, and he never ceased to love them and to give way to their excitement, although he did not again set down such sentiments in boastful phrase that made the world laugh. Men of such temper, moreover, are naturally imperious and have a fine disregard of consequences, with the result that their allies, Indian or otherwise, often become impatient and finally useless. The campaign was perfectly ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... English are a wise people. While they praise themselves, and affect to undervalue all other nations, they leave us, luckily, trap-doors and back-doors open, by which we strangers, less favoured by nature, may arrive at a share of their advantages. And thus they are in some respects like a boastful landlord, who exalts the value and flavour of his six-years-old mutton, while he is delighted to dispense a share of it to all the company. In short, you, whose proud family, and I, whose hard fate, made us soldiers ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... driven by some hostile deity, Such words I said, and with my gifts hard won, But little valued now, set out upon My homeward way: but nearer as I drew To mine abode, and ever fainter grew In my weak heart the image of my love, In vain with fear my boastful folly strove; For I remembered that no god I was Though I had chanced my fellows to surpass; And I began to mind me in a while What murmur rose, with what a mocking smile Pelias stretched out his hand to take the ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... resplendent in the midst of a sheet of water, which acts as a reflector beneath the burning tropical sun." So are explained those massive domes of gold, those obelisks of silver, and all those marvels of which the boastful and enthusiastic minds of the Spaniards afforded them a glimpse. Did Raleigh believe really in the existence of this city of gold, for the conquest of which he was about to sacrifice so many lives? Was he thoroughly convinced ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... Hecker to inactivity, a favorite solace is picking up fragments of work or recalling high ideas from the crowded memory of their former zeal, often with much profit to those who listen. And this was no idle-minded or boastful trait in him, as we see from ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... never dreamed it would be the ovation it was. It becomes difficult to write of these personal courtesies, as I find them increasing in the progress of my life from now on. I trust the casual reader will not construe anything in these pages into a boastful desire to spread myself in too large letters ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... Emmet's claim of social equality with the bishop, based upon his position as mayor. Not that office, but only the fact that he was Felicity's husband, would give him an entrance into the bishop's house, and the claim seemed to him boastful and vulgar. He rose abruptly to his feet, every ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... the bee, but when he departs it is to his lips that the honey clings," replied the woman cautiously; for after Yan's boastful words on entering she had a fear lest haply this person might be one on behalf of some guardian of the night whom her son had flung across the street (as he had specifically declared his habitual treatment of them to be) come to ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... watchful of all things, Absolute was his sway and in this authority he gloried, Conforming it much to the Spartan rule, and the code of Solomon, Showing no mercy to idleness, or wrong uses of the slippery tongue: Yet to diligent students kind, and of their proficiency boastful, Exhibiting their copy-books, to committee-man and visitant, Or calling out the declaimers, in some stentorian dialogue. Few were the studies then pursued, but thoroughness required in all, Surface-work not being in vogue, nor rootless blossoms regarded. Especially well-taught was the orthography ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... figure, the burnished crown of hair, and the surprisingly modish frock she wore. He had seen no other like it since leaving the older, more advanced towns along the Ohio,—not even in the thriving settlements of Wayne and Madison Counties or in the boastful village of Crawfordsville. He was startled. In all his journeyings through the land he had seen no one arrayed like this. It was with difficulty that he overcame a quite natural impulse to stare at her as if ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... of three and sixpence, and lived a shining light ever afterwards. (Note, that the benefactor came to no good.) Several swaggering sinners had written their own biographies in the same strain; it always appearing from the lessons of those very boastful persons, that you were to do good, not because it WAS good, but because you were to make a good thing of it. Contrariwise, the adult pupils were taught to read (if they could learn) out of the New Testament; and by dint of stumbling over the syllables and keeping ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... best of the proud English nobles with whom they wage war. I am told they speak their very language with a grace which the haughty Islanders who oppress them never attained. They are independent, yet never insolent; elegant, yet always respectful; and brave, but not in the least boastful." ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sections, each division taking a different part of the town. Negroes of the household were called together and were informed of their freedom. It is remembered by Willis that the slaves were jubilant but not boastful. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... as to which was the most beautiful. When their strife was at its height, a Bramble from the neighboring hedge lifted up its voice, and said in a boastful tone: "Pray, my dear friends, in my presence at least cease from such ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... seen to be extremely lucky and at the same time full of wise counsel in dealing with the enemy. As an illustration: he was not cowardly or heedless in waging war against Perseus, but afterward did not assume a pompous or boastful air toward him. (Valesius, p. ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... thus, by an extraordinary fortune, a grave Iroquois lawgiver of the fifteenth century has become, in modern literature, an Ojibway demigod, son of the West Wind, and companion of the tricksy Paupukkeewis, the boastful Iagoo, and the strong Kwasind. If a Chinese traveller, during the middle ages, inquiring into the history and religion of the western nations, had confounded King Alfred with King Arthur, and both with Odin, he would not have ...
— Hiawatha and the Iroquois Confederation • Horatio Hale
... Everything to admire but the water supply, the sanitation, the Huns and Hunnesses and a few other beastlinesses. One can admire even the statue of Wissmann, the great explorer, that looks with fixed eyes to the Congo in the eye of the setting sun. He is symbolical of everything that a boastful Germany can pretend to. For at his feet is a native Askari looking upward, with adoring eye, to the "Bwona Kuba" who has given him the priceless boon of militarism, while with both hands the soldier lays a flag—the imperial flag of Germany—across a prostrate lion at his feet. ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... has got his twenty-two colours. These are the things that make a boy respected by his younger brothers, and admired by his still younger sisters. They of course have a good deal to tell him. The setter puppies must be inspected. A match is being got up with the village eleven, who are boastful and confident in the possession of a bowling curate. To this the family hero rejoins that "he will crump the parson," a threat not so awful as it sounds. There is a wasps' nest which has been carefully preserved for this eventful hour, and which ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... own notions. Far from taking the scrupulous care to be exact which distinguishes modern editors, he exaggerated facts; and, dwelling too much on the personal qualities of the traveller, he gave to the narrative of the journey a boastful tone very prejudicial ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... to the foregoing is the observance of a due mean, in the matter of Boastfulness. The boastful lay claim to what they do not possess; false modesty [Greek: eironeia] is denying or underrating one's own merits. The balance of the two is the straightforward and truthful character; asserting just what belongs to him, neither more nor less. This is a kind of truthfulness,—distinguished ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... himself a venturesome highwayman, a brave writer, and a profound scholar. Indeed, so far did his pride carry him, that he would have the world believe him the same Charles Johnson, who wrote The Gentleman Cully and The Successful Pyrate. Thus with a boastful chuckle he would quote: ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... him positively not to give Hannibal battle, nor expose his troops to any danger, but to pursue steadily the same policy which he himself had followed. He had, however, been in Rome only a short time before tidings came that Minucius had fought a battle and gained a victory. There were boastful and ostentatious letters from Minucius to the Roman senate, lauding the exploit which he ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... with fish, while almost every member of the animal creation has in turn been considered either sacred or unclean, mankind, in all climes and in all countries, the Hindoo and the Hebrew, the Egyptian and the Greek, the Roman and the Frank, have, in some degree, made good their boastful claim to reason, by universally feeding upon those delightful productions of Nature which are nourished with the dews of heaven, and which live ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... I really must beg your permission to leave you, that I may return to my sermon. I give much time to my sermons; and I am cheered by the conviction—you must not think me boastful—that it is time well employed. When I look around me and perceive the lawless, and even outrageous, conditions which obtain in so many other towns in the Territory, and contrast them with the orderly rectitude of Palomitas, I rejoice that my humble toil in the vineyard has brought so ...
— Santa Fe's Partner - Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town • Thomas A. Janvier
... believed him. They did not stop to ask whether the story was probable. They formed their opinion upon the manner of the young chief—upon his grave dignity, and upon the absence of a boastful spirit. ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... severely tried on one occasion. My older brother had a falling out with a neighbor, and we three were alone in the woods. I had a dislike for the man, as much as my brother had. He was boastful, bigoted and disagreeable. But in this particular case I saw clearly that my brother was in the wrong, I felt compelled, therefore, to take sides with the other man. At this my brother was deeply offended, and it took him a long time to get over it. He did not see his wrong, and thought my ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... deg.. Mr. Crittenden followed in the same vein, and in a reply to Senator William Allen of Ohio, chairman of Foreign Affairs, made a speech abounding in sarcasm and ridicule. The Whigs having in the campaign taken no part in the boastful demand for 54 deg. 40', were not subjected to the humiliation of retracing imprudent ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... the old overseer cordially, in a half drunken endeavor to be natural. The old man glanced sadly up at the bloated, boastful face, and thought of the beautiful one it once had been. He thought of the fine, brilliant mind and marveled that with ten years of drunkenness it still retained its strength. And the Bishop remembered that in spite of his drinking no one had ever accused ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... Perseus, who was hastening homeward after a perilous adventure with the snaky-haired Gorgons. Filled with pity at the story of Andromeda, he waited for the dragon, met and slew him, and set the maiden free. As for the boastful queen, the gods forgave her, and at her death she was set among the stars. That ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... found Neamathla seated in his wigwam, in the center of the village, surrounded by his warriors. The governor had brought him some liquor as a present, but it mounted quickly into his brain and rendered him quite boastful and belligerent. The theme ever uppermost in his mind was the treaty with the whites. "It was true," he said, "the red men had made such a treaty, but the white men had not acted up to it. The red men had received none of the ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... reflection, no doubt, will. But right observation and reflection in regard to children will make any one modest and fearful on the subject of their right government, rather than bold and boastful. Those who, like you, think themselves so well qualified to manage children, usually make ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... a big, boastful bully," he said. "Just wait there until I get a stick. I hope I may give you as good a ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... from the house," he informed her with a boastful air. "I had need to begin to feel my feet again. You are pampering me here, and to pamper an invalid is bad; it keeps him an invalid. Now I am ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... the fearful confession, and in boastful emphasis, he bends lower to observe its effect. Not in her face, still covered with the serape, but her form, in which he can perceive a tremor from head to foot. She shudders, and not strange, ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... to accost Erik thus: "O thou, wantoning in insolent phrase, in boastful and bedizened speech, whence dost thou say that thou hast ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... their lordships were humbly of opinion that the said petition ought to be dismissed." Moreover, the sympathy which Franklin met with from some of the leading members of the opposition, tended still further to embitter the passions which had been roused in the mind of the philosopher. That boastful patriot himself—the great Earl of Chatham—hastened to express his sympathy with Franklin, and his detestation of the treatment he had received from Wedderburne and the government. It is due to the character of Chatham, however, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... "Many a boastful sailor has been caught. The breeze that is good for the light of draught, and the breeze that is good for the deep keel, are different. You may live to learn what a stout spar, a wide arm, and a ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... Denmark, writes as follows: "Whether it be the relation of cause and effect, or only what logicians call a "mere coincidence," the fact remains that in Rome, Russia, France, and England, political corruption, cruelty of government, sexual immorality—nay, downright, impudent, open, boastful indecency—have culminated, for the most part, in the eras of the influence of viragints on government or ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... and he was standing, in considerable perplexity, to receive Corey, when the young man opened his painted glass door. It was a hot afternoon, and Lapham was in his shirt sleeves. Scarcely a trace of the boastful hospitality with which he had welcomed Corey to his house a few days before lingered in his present address. He looked at the young man's face, as if he expected him to despatch whatever unimaginable affair he ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... unannounced With half a score of swarthy faces came. His own, tho' keen and bold and soldierly, Sear'd by the close ecliptic, was not fair; Fairer his talk, a tongue that ruled the hour, Tho' seeming boastful: so when first he dash'd Into the chronicle of a deedful day, Sir Aylmer half forgot his lazy smile Of patron 'Good! my lady's kinsman! good!' My lady with her fingers interlock'd, And rotatory thumbs on silken knees, Call'd all her vital spirits into ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... the good citizens of a good town, parading, hustling, loafing—sturdy patricians, wretched plebeians, stern centurios, boastful soldiers, scheming politicians, crafty law-clerks, timid scribes, chattering barbers, bullying gladiators, haughty actors, dusty travelers, making for Albinus', the famous host at the Via della Abbondanza or, would he give preference to Sarinus, the son of Publius, who advertised so ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... Congress had more or less to do with this matter. Gates and Mifflin had taken offense at not receiving certain appointments during the siege of Boston, and were at no time well disposed toward Washington; Conway, a restless, boastful, and intriguing character, had always been distrusted by Washington, and he knew it. Some of the New England members do not seem ever to have cordially liked Washington's appointment as Commander-in-Chief, ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... eyes and goaded on his servant John Eccius, that notorious adversary of Christ, by the unchecked lust for fame, to drag me unexpectedly into the arena, trying to catch me in one little word concerning the primacy of the Church of Rome, which had fallen from me in passing. That boastful Thraso, foaming and gnashing his teeth, proclaimed that he would dare all things for the glory of God and for the honour of the holy apostolic seat; and, being puffed up respecting your power, which he was about to misuse, ...
— Concerning Christian Liberty - With Letter Of Martin Luther To Pope Leo X. • Martin Luther
... words, was a little too boastful. He had very much augmented the imposts without assembling the estates, and without caring for the old public liberties. If he frequently repressed local tyranny on the part of the lords, he did not deny himself the practice of it. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... The same thing may be seen in nations. To this day the lower classes in Belgium bear traces of the long period of subjection, and the race has not recovered from the time when the Spaniards turned so many famous towns into dens of thieves and beggars. They are very often cunning, timid though boastful, and full of the small tricks and servile ways which are natural in a people which once had all manliness and courage crushed out ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Belgium • George W. T. Omond
... present which we may not forget, for in it our thankfulness, if it is real, must culminate. What a change has a century wrought for us! How unlike is 1884 to 1784! I do not much believe, my brethren, in numbering the people. I am sure that any boastful or vain-glorious numbering is but an evil thing. But surely when "a little one" has "become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation," we may gratefully recognize the merciful guidance and blessing of the Lord, Who has "hastened it in ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... to whistle for us to get out of their way. If I may do so, without appearing boastful, I think I can honestly say that our one small boat, during that week, caused more annoyance and delay and aggravation to the steam launches that we came across than all the other craft on the river ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... indeed, was news. Here was a weapon by which the Queen might be destroyed. Richelieu considered. If he could but obtain possession of the studs, the rest would be easy. There would be an end—and such an end!—to the King's obstinate, indolent faith in his wife's indifference to that boastful, flamboyant English upstart. Richelieu held his peace for the time being, ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... grass; strange birds carolled joyously from the orchard by the road, and near at hand the old, brown Jersey lowed lovingly to her ungainly calf. From the more distant chicken coop came the cackle of hens and the boastful crowing ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... with a resolve to think clearly, closely, to some determination of her life. But Jim's note, which had so roused her amusement, began to force itself in another fashion upon her. She discovered that it was an insufferable note. It insinuated everything, it suggested—everything. It was a boastful messenger. It swaggered male-ishly. It threw out its chest and smacked its lips. "See what a sad dog my master is," it said; "a regular devil of a fellow." Sheila found her thoughts confused by anger. ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... third day after Law's entry into Paris, and the first time for more than two long years that he found himself alone with the Lady Catharine Knollys. His eagerness might have excused his impetuous and boastful speech. ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... Oh, boastful, wicked land, that once was beautiful and great, How bitter and how black must be your self-invited fate, While Time goes down the centuries and sings ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the said persons with several letters, informations and documents, which they had secretly made and composed, they are attempting to underrate my good service and seek for him the reward. I have not wished to set down in a boastful way anything more than the naked truth, which your Majesty now has before your eyes. I most humbly beseech your Majesty to be pleased to look upon my good intentions and labors with the clemency and benevolence which they deserve, extending to me ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various
... No boastful splendour round thy bier, No blazon'd trophies o'er thy grave; But thou had'st more, the soldier's tear, The heart—warm offering of ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... fix'd sentinels almost receive The secret whispers of each other's watch; Fire answers fire, and through their paly flames Each battle sees the other's umber'd face; Steed threatens steed, in high and boastful neighs Piercing the night's dull ear; and from the tents The armourers, accomplishing the knights, With busy hammers closing rivets up, Give dreadful note of preparation. The country cocks do crow, the clocks do toll, ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... these Memoirs of La Grande Mademoiselle. Unfortunately the Duchesse de Montpensier was so self-centred that her witness is not dispassionate. She disliked Frontenac, without concealment. As seen by her, he was vain and boastful, even in matters which concerned his kitchen and his plate. His delight in new clothes was childish. He compelled guests to speak admiringly of his horses, in contradiction of their manifest appearance. Worst of all, he tried to stir up trouble between the duchess ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... the wicked Aswatthaman's destructive intentions, Dwaipayana and Krishna pronounced curses on him which the latter returned. Pandava then deprived the mighty warrior-in-chariot Aswatthaman, of the jewel on his head, and became exceedingly glad, and, boastful of their success, made a present of it to the sorrowing Draupadi. Thus the tenth Parva, called Sauptika, is recited. The great Vyasa hath composed this in eighteen sections. The number of slokas also composed (in this) by the great reciter of sacred truths is eight hundred and seventy. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... life of the Italians, though much reduced in vigor, was therefore still, as formerly, concentrated in cities marked by distinct local qualities and boastful of their ancient glories. The courts of Ferrara and Urbino continued to form centers for literary and artistic coteries. Venice remained the stronghold of mental unrestraint and moral license, where thinkers uttered their thoughts with tolerable freedom and libertines ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... and they were experiencing a very common and natural reaction. Their courage had been put to the most severe test and had not given way. It was not difficult to understand their elation, and one could forgive their boastful talk of bloody deeds. One highly strung lad was dangerously near to nervous breakdown. He had bayoneted his first German and could not forget the experience. He told of it over and over as the ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... his son Sennacherib was proclaimed king. Sennacherib was a different man from his father. Sargon had been an able and energetic general, rough perhaps and uncultured, but vigorous and determined. His son was weak and boastful, and under him the newly-formed Assyrian empire met with its first check. It is significant that the Babylonian priests never acknowledged him as the successor of their ancient kings; he revenged himself by razing the city and sanctuary of Bel to ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... only that we understand how much we ought to allow them. It is, however, the part of a philosopher, who seeks not so much for what is specious as for what is true, neither utterly to disregard those things which those very boastful men used to admit to be in accordance with nature; and at the same time to see that the power of virtue, and the authority, if I may say so, of honourableness, is so great that all those other things appear to be, I will not say nothing, but so trivial as to be little better than nothing. This ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... battles which had subjected their own countries to the iron rule of conquest. They stood by columns on which the history of their defeat was cast from their captured cannon, and by arches whose friezes told a boastful tale of their subjugation. They passed over bridges whose names reminded them of fields which had witnessed their headlong rout. They strolled through galleries where the masterpieces of art hung as memorials that their political existence had been dependent on the will of a victorious ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... Cambridge, in Maryland; spoiled boys who had taken to the flesh trade, and they stole men and gambled the proceeds away, and Brereton was their leader. One day a traveller came by from Carolina, hunting contraband slaves, and he was of your boastful sort, and dropped the hint that he had fifteen thousand dollars on his body to be invested. No later had he spoken than he felt his folly, from the burning eyes around him and watering mouths telling him to sleep there and ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... offered they would find a passage at the point of the sword. Gallus hesitated, but his men induced him to risk an engagement. Three thousand legionaries, some hastily recruited Belgic auxiliaries, and a mob of peasants and camp-followers, who were as cowardly in action as they were boastful before it, came pouring out simultaneously from all the gates, hoping with their superior numbers to surround the Batavians. But these were experienced veterans. They formed up into columns[298] in deep formation that defied assault on front, flank, or rear. They thus pierced our thinner line. ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... in the Union, Mr. President, (and I say it not in a boastful spirit,) that may challenge comparison with any other for a uniform, zealous, ardent, and uncalculating devotion to the Union, that State is South Carolina. Sir, from the very commencement of the Revolution up to this hour, there is no sacrifice, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... Blake, his blue eyes very fierce, "be no great danger, after all." And then dismissing that part of the subject as if, like a brave man, the notion of being thought boastful were unpleasant, he passed on to the discussion of ways and means by which the coming duel might be averted. But when they came to grips with facts, it seemed that Sir Rowland had as little idea of what might be done ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... this boastful speech was. But then he had been utterly unlike himself for several days. What did he mean? She knew him well enough by now to know that he never acted without meaning. But directness was one of his most admirable characteristics. It was unlike him to be devious, as he was ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... all the dearer to me, not only because it has pillowed the dying heads of my father and my mother, but because it has been the sure guide of a hundred generations of Christians before them. When the boastful innovators offer me a new system of belief (which is really a congeries of unbeliefs) I say to them: "the old is better." Twenty centuries of experience shared by such intellects as Augustine, Luther, ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... America as revealed in the initial number of the brave new venture was that America was crude, blatant, boastful, vulgar, and money-grubbing. We were without ideals beyond the dollar; without desires save those to be glutted by material wealth. It was the high aim of the New Dawn—said the associate editor, Merle Dalton Whipple—to dethrone the dollar, to hasten ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... This boastful avowal by James B. Steedman of his own crime in making reports which were false and slanderous to his commanding general must doubtless be accepted as conclusive proof of his own guilt. But a statement by such a witness cannot be regarded as proof that any other ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... Apes, With laughter wild and gay; They tried to catch that boastful one, But he always got away; So they yelled at him in chorus, Which he minded not a whit; And they pelted him with cocoanuts, Which didn't seem to hit; And then they gave him reasons, Which they thought ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... picture on his own accord—unless he was a dealer. And then usually he was not really a true-born Briton. He waits to see what is being hung. He has these things now because he thinks they are right, not because they are beautiful, just as he used to have the Stag at Bay and the Boastful Hound. It is Leighton now; it was Landseer then. Really I believe that very soon the ladies' papers will devote a column to pictures. Something in this style. 'Smart people are taking down their Rossetti's Annunciations now, and are hanging Gambler Bolton's new Hippopotamus in the place of it. This ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... you," he continued to the Sentry, who, with his boastful spirit crushed, stood trembling in the Sentry-box; "as for you, you have seen too much of the world and its ways. It would be better for you to see a little less of it for ...
— Adventures in Toyland - What the Marionette Told Molly • Edith King Hall
... The spirit of intolerance which once pervaded all slaveholding communities, in whatever State of the Union, was here rampant to an unusual degree. The rural inhabitants were marked by the strong characteristics of the frontier,—fondness of adventure, recklessness of exposure or danger to life, a boastful assertion of personal right, privilege, or prowess, a daily and hourly familiarity with the use of fire-arms. These again were heightened by two special influences—the presence of Indian tribes whose reservations lay just across the border, and ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... probably an old god of poetic inspiration confused with the sixth century poet of the same name, perhaps because this boastful poet identified himself or was identified by other bards with the gods. He speaks of his "splendid chair, inspiration of fluent and urgent song" in Caer Sidi or Elysium, and, speaking in the god's name or identifying ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... now; there was a ferocious gleam. It died away quickly, however; the squared shoulders drooped, and there was a deprecating shrug. "Pardon, signore; this is far away from the matter of boots. I grow boastful; I am an old man and should know better. But does the signore return to Italy ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... in a boastful way To his anxious parents told That while he was young he thought he'd play, And he'd ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... Montrevel listened to Edouard's slightly boastful account of his prowess. Then she looked at him with that deep and holy sorrow of mothers to whom fame is no compensation for the blood it sheds. Oh! ungrateful indeed is the child who has seen that look bent upon him and does not eternally remember it. Then, after a few seconds of this ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... white-livered creatures. Look at them! There is Bruce Browning, once called 'King of the Sophomores,' but cowed and bested by Merriwell, to be afterward dropped a class. There is Jack Diamond, a boastful Southerner. He forced Merriwell to fight, but fawned about Merriwell's feet like a cur ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... this pair of pariahs—pariahs so far as her world was concerned. And soon she found it. The New Day was taking subscriptions for a fund to send sick children and their mothers to the country for a vacation from the dirt and heat of the tenements—for Remsen City, proud though it was and boastful of its prosperity, housed most of its inhabitants in slums—though of course that low sort of people oughtn't really to be counted—except for purposes of swelling census figures—and to do all the rough and dirty work ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... water's edge, with a lofty range of mountains in the rear. It seemed a sad deserted place, as far as I could judge at the distance of half a mile. In the harbour, however, lay a Spanish frigate and French war brig. As we passed the former, some of the Spaniards on board our steamer became boastful at the expense of the English. It appeared that, a few weeks before, an English vessel, suspected to be a contraband trader, was seen by this frigate hovering about a bay on the Andalusian coast, in company with an English frigate, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... lofty Fancy, which one course to run Permits not, calls me hence in sudden wise; And thither I return, where paynims stun Fair France with hosile din and angry cries, About the tent, wherein Troyano's son They holy empire in his wrath defies, And boastful Rodomont, with vengeful doom, Gives Paris to the ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... vanquished the strong in fight, The eagle hath fled from the dove. [Footnote: Reference is here made to A-tos'sa's dream, as given by AEschylus in his tragedy of The Persians.] Great Jove, that reigns in the starry plains, To the heart of the king hath shown That the boastful parade of his pride was ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... in a manner so sheepish, that "if a lamb had roared it couldn't have been more surprising," saying to Little Dombey with startling suddenness, "How are you?"—every time the Reader opened his lips, as speaking in that character, there was a burst of merriment. His boastful account always called forth laughter—that his tailor was Burgess and Co., "fash'nable, but very dear." As also did his constantly reiterated inquiries of Paul—always as an entirely new idea—"I say—it's not of the slightest consequence, you know, but I should ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... trembled all over; his clear eyes lighted up; his white hair was like a glory about his face; and he seemed like one of the Hebrew Prophets, in his terrible denunciations of the heartless manslayer, and the shameless, boastful profligate. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... it. In law you always have a chance to get into politics and be the president of your ward club or something like that, and from that on it's an easy matter to go on up. You can trust me to know the wires." And so the tenor of his boastful talk ran on, his mother a little bit awed and not altogether satisfied with the new 'Rastus ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... one distasteful both to Montfichet and to this boastful youth," said the demoiselle Monceux, eagerly. "Send Ford, or one of the scullions from our kitchen, that they may know our contempt for them. And bid the young archer to us here; he should be whipped and put in the ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... sprang up from his chair, caught her in his arms, and drew her passionately to his breast. But Cicily avoided the kiss he would have pressed on her lips. With her mouth at his ear, she whispered, plaintively now, no longer boastful, only a timid, ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... psychological moment when of all things a contestant most desires silence. Major Jennings was determined to triumph over his boastful companion. And he was full of courage and resolve. They had reached the seventeenth green in the same number of strokes from the first tee. That is to say, each had used up ninety-five of his allotted ninety-eight. ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... at Aspern half a victory; and the fact that the Austrians had not been beaten—that Napoleon had been compelled to fall back with his army and to take refuge on the island of Lobau, was regarded as a victory, which was announced in the most boastful manner. But if it was a victory, the Austrians did not know how to profit by it. Instead of uniting their forces and attacking Lobau, where the French army was encamped, huddled together, and exhausted by the long and murderous struggle—where ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... become tired of the boastful talk he heard from the other engine drivers at his boarding-house. One evening ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... frankly, tho' you may not believe it, that I am not entirely in a sober mood. Yesterday I planted bulbs with a lady who was not bulbous. The day before I shot pigeons for a lark. And I am boastful! fair boastful, my Lady! My secretary and my confidential clerk and my many dark-hued messengers are solemnly impressed with my prowess with gun and spade. The truth shall not be heard in the land. I am my own talebearer and my ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... his heel, he walked away, conscious, however, half an instant afterwards, that he had drawn himself up too high, and that for a moment his temper had spoiled his tone, and betrayed him into a look and manner too boastful, bordering on the ridiculous. He was in haste to ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... share her brother's boastful triumph. "Do you suppose," she said, wistfully, "that he is like that to ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... part with O'Neal, in spite of the poor fellow's entreaties to be allowed to remain with him. Miss Macdonald had only passports for three and the danger was urgent. He was a faithful and affectionate friend, this O'Neal, if a little boastful and muddle-headed. He could shortly afterwards have escaped to France—as O'Sullivan did—in a French ship, if he had not insisted on going to Skye to try to fetch off the Prince. He missed the Prince, and fell into the ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... scene I should love to dwell, and there end my days. Nor was I alone in these transports of delight. All my fellow-travellers seemed equally affected: and from the native Palmyrenes, of whom there were many among us, the most impassioned and boastful exclamations broke forth. 'What is Rome to this?' they cried: 'Fortune is not constant. Why may not Palmyra be what Rome has been—mistress of the world? Who more fit to rule than the great Zenobia? A few years may see great changes. ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... going to her to get something to do before the season begins. She may need a secretary or a governess—or a—cook. Holy Saint Martin! but I can cook!" And Patsy clasped her hands in an ecstatic appreciation of her culinary art; it was the only one of which she was boastful. ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... continued, with a furtive scowl at Johnson, whose face beamed with gratification, "you have had your day, and, blind bat as you are, you were beginning to see it just for a moment, but this fine speech of yours has thrown you off your guard again. You doubtless think that with a few empty boastful words you have recovered your lost position, but you are mistaken, my good friend, as you will find out when you return from your next cruise—if indeed you ever return at all. Well, enjoy your own opinion while ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... Xerxes declared war against Greece, all his courtiers encouraged his boastful temper, which forgot how unsubstantial his grounds for confidence were. One declared that the Greeks would not endure to hear the news of the declaration of war, and would take to flight at the first rumour of his approach; another, that with ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... investigation made in advance by any competent war staff of the elements of strength and weakness, on both sides, in a possible campaign. A popular idea of Edison that dies hard, pictures a breezy, slap-dash, energetic inventor arriving at new results by luck and intuition, making boastful assertions and then winning out by mere chance. The native simplicity of the man, the absence of pose and ceremony, do much to strengthen this notion; but the real truth is that while gifted with unusual imagination, Edison's march ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... chance to climb aboard our wheels again, and strike out for France!" said Josh. "Here's hoping we may run across a corner of the big fight that's taking place north of Paris. I'd be a happy fellow if I could actually see those brave Frenchmen, backed up by the British troops, meet the boastful Germans who believe they can clean up the ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... kill a murderer, an actual and intending murderer, on condition of accepting the penalty. She told no one of the resolution in her mind, and said nothing that was pathetic, and nothing that was boastful. She only replied to Petion's clumsy pleasantries: "Citizen, you speak like that because you do not understand me. One day, you will know." Under a harmless pretext she went to Paris, and saw one of the Girondin deputies. In return for some civility, she advised him to leave at once ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... the beginning my admiration was spent on more concrete embodiments of the splendors of America; such as fine houses, gay shops, electric engines and apparatus, public buildings, illuminations, and parades. My early letters to my Russian friends were filled with boastful descriptions of these glories of my new country. No native citizen of Chelsea took such pride and delight in its institutions as I did. It required no fife and drum corps, no Fourth of July procession, to set me tingling with patriotism. ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... I muse what this young fox may mean, False, wily, boastful, are these Tartar boys. 345 For if I now confess this thing he asks, And hide it not, but say—Rustum is here— He will not yield indeed, nor quit our foes, But he will find some pretext not to fight, And praise my fame, and proffer courteous gifts. ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... sentiments of the braves, were received with a storm of "Ho's," "How's," "Hi's," and "Hee's," which effectually drowned the cheeky one's "Hum's," and greatly encouraged the chief, who thereafter broke forth in a flow of language which was more in keeping with his name. After a few boastful references to the deeds of himself and his forefathers, he went into an elaborate and exaggerated description of the valorous way in which they had that day stormed the fort of their pale-face enemies and driven them out; after which, losing somehow the thread of ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... identifications, including a boastful and entirely untruthful declaration that he and Hoddan, together, had slaughtered twenty men in one place and thirty in another, and left them lying in ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... highly imaginative sort is entertaining, but it is not edifying." One would be glad to get at the other side of the Aztec story, which, we suspect, would place the chivalric invaders in a very different light from that of their own boastful records, and also enable us to form a more just and truthful opinion of the aborigines themselves. That their numbers, religious sacrifices, and barbaric excesses are generally overdrawn is perfectly ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... rather than a bitter smile. She had often heard her father talk like this before. She had often heard these oracular hints of some grand event looming mighty in the immediate future; but she had never seen the vague prophecy accomplished. Always a schemer, and always alternating between the boastful confidence of hope and the peevish bewailings of despair, the Captain had built his castle to-day to sit among its ruins to-morrow, ever since she had ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... acres of land, and a cow-house with three stalls and a stall for the new calf, and a pigsty, and a house for my bones and a barn for my hay and straw, and a loft for my hens: why should men pray for more?" She ambled to Moriah, diverting passers-by with boastful tales of Joseph, and loosened her imaginings to ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans
... so;—but no one, I believe, ever experiences any shock at Romeo's forgetting his Rosaline, who had been a mere name for the yearning of his youthful imagination, and rushing into his passion for Juliet. Rosaline was a mere creation of his fancy; and we should remark the boastful positiveness of Romeo in a love of his own making, which is never shown where love is ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... stout-hearted people by its grand performances. This little David had fought the Goliath of England most valiantly for seven years, and in the might of right its "pebbles from the brook" had been equal in efficiency to the huge "spear" of the boastful oppressor. Divine help gave final ...
— Harper's Young People, July 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
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