FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • More 'Fire-eater' Quotes from Famous Books

... aloud. Oh, well, he simply couldn't act a part, couldn't step out of his skin suddenly, even though there was a world war a thousand times over. He used to let his nephews and nieces twist him round their fingers, and laughed good-naturedly when they did it. In a single day he could not change into a fire-eater and go merrily upon the man-hunt. What an utterly mad idea it was, too, to try to cast all people into the same mould! No one dreamed of making a soft-hearted philanthropist of Weixler; and he was ...

— Men in War • Andreas Latzko

... right. My brother-in-law knows Ratcliffe, but I've never had the good luck to meet him. Something of a fire-eater, isn't he?" ...

— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell

... a small, wiry, supple-limbed fire-eater, with a skin like a coal and eyes that sparkled like the live coal's flame; a veteran of the Joyeux; who could discipline his roughs as a sheepdog his lambs, and who had one curt martial law for his detachment; brief ...

— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... his father. "An' shore that reminds me of the uncle you're named after. Jean Isbel! ... Wal, he was my youngest brother an' shore a fire-eater. Our mother was a French creole from Louisiana, an' Jean must have inherited some of his fightin' nature from her. When the war of the rebellion started Jean an' I enlisted. I was crippled before we ever got to the front. But Jean went through three Years before he was killed. ...

— To the Last Man • Zane Grey

... "Hello, old fire-eater!" cried Cressey. "Some little hero, aren't you! Bully work, my boy. I'm proud to know you.... What; quarters? Easiest thing you know. I've got the very thing—just like a real-estate agent. Let's see; this is your Monday at Sherry's, isn't it? All ...

— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... fire-eater, I know," the Congressman admitted. "But Uncle Tom's Cabin is the most serious blow the South has received from the Abolitionists. And what makes it so difficult is that its appeal is not to reason. It is to sentiment. ...

— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon

... oaths, and an immense stick, I keep up nevertheless a character for courage. I swear fearfully at cabmen and women; brandish my bludgeon, and perhaps knock down a little man or two with it: brag of the images which I break at the shooting gallery, and pass among my friends for a whiskery fire-eater, afraid of neither man nor dragon. Ah me! Suppose some brisk little chap steps up and gives me a caning in St. James's Street, with all the heads of my friends looking out of all the club windows. My reputation is gone. I frighten no man more. My nose is pulled by ...

— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... chance, I fell in with a company of tumblers and gleemen. I sang them the old hunting- song, and they said I did it tunably, and, whereas they saw I could already dance a hornpipe and turn a somersault passably well, the leader of the troop, old Nat Fire-eater, took me on, and methinks he did not repent—nor I neither—save when I sprained my foot and had time to lie by and think. We had plenty to fill our bellies and put on our backs; we had welcome wherever ...

— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... prevent you from taking liberties with his good nature. The best-tempered fellow in the world, and blessed with the keenest sense of humour, he can be as uncompromising a martinet as the sternest fire-eater of old days—when there is real ...

— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie

... in any such business on a 'we'll see.' The young man is a fire-eater who might kill me; I ought to be rough-shod and as good a hand with a sword or a pistol as he is. Set me up in business, ...

— Ursula • Honore de Balzac

... course I had rather landed you here, and been off for home rather than to carry you further and be burdened with your queasy fancies," retorted Jones brutally. "I'm no man's fool I'd have thee to know my little fire-eater, and thou 'lt be no gladder to say good-by when the time comes ...

— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... depend upon circumstances," was the non-committal reply. Amos Radbury was no "fire-eater," and, like Austin, preferred a settlement without ...

— For the Liberty of Texas • Edward Stratemeyer

... before, not wholly believing them, poured like a red torrent into his mind, and he found that now he believed them with a passionate sincerity. Why had he ever attempted (and with such small success) to call this fire-eater a hippopotamus? ...

— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson

... the refuge of silence. Though this was only a bit of the conversation, we soon found out that he was an avowed pacifist. Garretson, on the other hand, was an ardent militarist, a good deal of a fire-eater. I wondered whether there might not be a good deal of the poseur about ...

— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve

... a population of over 20,000. Many of his subjects were natives of Seistan, Kharan, and Shotrawak, all Afghan border districts, and gave him at times no little trouble. The Jebri fort had been attacked only a year previous to my visit, but Chabas (who I afterwards heard at Kelat is a renowned fire-eater) gave the rebels such a warm reception that there has been no outbreak since. My genial old host had himself given a good deal of trouble to the Kelat Government in his younger days, and told me with evident pride that he had led many a chupao in the ...

— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt

... it appears that this young man is a fire-eater," said Louis, in order to sharpen the sentiment which he mistook ...

— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... old chap," he said, "let's get out before we're torn to bits. There's no pleasure in staying with such a disagreeable fire-eater, anyhow. Come up to my room, and ...

— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour

... Hunter, who had cried for peace and compromise, standing forth at last in the true light of traitors, and thereby proclaiming their past life a game of hypocrisy. Toombs, therefore, who was an original fire-eater, and hence could not be called a hypocrite, has become less an object of hatred to us of the loyal States, than those who, while they sat at the cabinet councils, or were admitted to the confidence of the Executive, or were sent ...

— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... answered, "God take away your alms"; and, on their protesting, reminded them that such peace was the last thing he required, since should their pious wish come true he would die of hunger. One of the daughters of this fire-eater married John Shelley, and thus became an ancestress of Shelley the poet, who, as it chances, also found a home for a while in this city, almost within hailing distance of his ancestor's tomb and portrait, and here wrote not only his "Ode to the West ...

— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas

... lived on wild rice; for days we fought with nothing but water in our bellies," declaimed Jaffir in the tone of a true fire-eater. ...

— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad

... a fire-eater," declared Dalzell with dignity. "I'm a business man, Davy. Our business, just now, is to win the war by killing Germans, and I've embarked upon that career with all the enthusiasm that goes ...

— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock

... be conceived by the citizen of any community where the sense of individual responsibility is less rigid and exacting. They naturally outweighed all others in the mind of Alfred Stevens; and, though no fire-eater, he not only resolved on fighting with Hinkley, but, smarting under the strokes of the cowskin—heavily laid on as they had been—his resolution was equally firm that, in the conflict, they should not separate until blood ...

— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... called) of the poor conscience-haunted nun. Whether these in Kate's original MS. were entitled "Autobiographic Sketches," or "Selections Grave and Gay," from the military experiences of a Nun, or possibly "The Confessions of a Biscayan Fire-Eater," is more than I know. No matter: confessions they were; and confessions that, when at length published, were absolutely mobbed and hustled by a gang of misbelieving (that is, miscreant) critics. And this fact is ...

— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... neighborhood; the Marquis de Coutelier, the head of the Normandy aristocracy; the Vicomte and Vicomtesse de Briseville, people who were very well-born but held themselves rather aloof; and lastly, the Comte de Fourville, a sort of fire-eater who was said to be worrying his wife to death, and who lived in the Chateau de la Vrillette, which was built on a lake, passing his time in hunting and shooting. A few parvenus had bought property in the neighborhood, but the ...

— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893

... view-hallo, for us to "come awa doon the brae an' tak' a dram o'speerits," and so we did, and in true Highland style; he met us at the door and gave us a drain from the bottle, first gulping a glass himself of that double-strong like & fire-eater, without a twink of the eye or a wince of the mouth; and then with a grip o' the daddle, which made the fingers crack, he pulled us into his bonnie wee bit shooting box of a house, with a "Come awa ben ye'll be the better o' a bite o' venison pasty;" so in we went, and were introduced to his bonnie ...

— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various

... George, you had better look to your sauce.' Couchant means squatting, you know. That's heraldry! Well, that wasn't bad sparring of Mel's. But, bless you! he was never taken aback, and the gentlefolks was glad enough to get him to sit down amongst 'em. So, says Mr. George, 'I know you're a fire-eater, Marquis,' and his dander was up, for he began marquising Mel, and doing the mock polite at such a rate, that, by-and-by, one of the ladies who didn't know Mel called him 'my lord' and 'his lordship.' ...

— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... tolerated with gentle smiles. On one occasion, however, things did not go smoothly. Daniel Sickles was Consul to London and James Buchanan, afterwards our punkest President, was Ambassador. Sickles was a good man, but a fire-eater, and a gentleman of marked jingo proclivities. Sickles had asked that Buchanan preside, in which case Buchanan was to call on Sickles for the first toast, and this toast was to be, "The President of the United States." At the same time Sickles intended to give the British ...

— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... by-and-by, from the quotations we shall make from the Captain's Log, that he is as little the hungry fire-eater which many of his admirers suppose him to be, as he is the Black Pirate of the New York press. Captain Semmes is a native of Charles county, in Maryland, a State that has furnished numerous patriotic citizens ...

— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes

... "What a fire-eater you are, Tom! I wasn't thinking of fighting. But if I have to fight, I'd rather these merchantmen were a hundred miles away. Fighting in convoy must make one feel as does the father of a family, whom he has to defend against ...

— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables