"Boast" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... off by ourselves for a couple of nights in search of game, of which we were much in need. The men were easily persuaded to halt and rest. Samson had become a sort of nonentity. Dysentery had terribly reduced his strength, and with it such intelligence as he could boast of. We started at daybreak, right glad to be alone together and away from the penal servitude to which we were condemned. We made for the Sweetwater, not very far from the foot of the South Pass, where antelope and ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... his examinations. In the eleventh investigation before various bishops, and Mr. Morgan, of Oxford, the latter was so driven into a corner by the close pressure of Mr. Philpot's arguments, that he said to him, "Instead of the spirit of the gospel which you boast to possess, I think it is the spirit of the buttery, which your fellows have had, who were drunk before their death, and went I believe drunken to it." To this unfounded and brutish remark, Mr. Philpot indignantly replied, "It ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... and boast and who like to show off are almost sure to come to grief. And when they do, very few people are sorry for them. None of the little meadow and forest people liked Reddy Fox, anyway, and they were getting so tired of his boasting that they just ached to see him get into trouble. Yes, Sir, they ...
— The Adventures of Reddy Fox • Thornton W. Burgess
... own beloved country, we can boast of many sincere patriots and heroes besides our 'paternal chief,' the revered WASHINGTON, "who was first in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen;" others will be recollected, who devoted themselves to the cause of liberty and their country, with a sincerity and zeal ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... Hulot dated her Hector's first infidelities from the grand finale of the Empire. Thus, for twelve years the Baroness had filled the part in her household of prima donna assoluta, without a rival. She still could boast of the old-fashioned, inveterate affection which husbands feel for wives who are resigned to be gentle and virtuous helpmates; she knew that if she had a rival, that rival would not subsist for two hours under a word of reproof from herself; but she shut her eyes, she stopped her ears, she ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... me?" Allen demanded, in genuine astonishment. "Haven't you gotten things a little mixed? That doesn't sound like the pater at all. He didn't boast any of my record in my studies, ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... exstincta. The Cornelii were a distinguished gens in early times and included 7 patrician families (e.g. the Lentuli and Scipios). Of these the Sullae were the least known. 2-3. litteris Graecis ... eruditus. Contrast the proud boast of Marius:—'I have learnt no Greek: in the knowledge, however, which is far the most important for the State, Iam a master.' —Sall. Jug.85. 9. ante civilem victoriam, i.e. before 81 B.C. 10-11. fortior ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... For Jobson's good Nose Was led by the savory smell He caught up the roast Tho 'tis nothing to boast And carried it safe ...
— The Entertaining History of Jobson & Nell • Anonymous
... Anglicize and Europeanize her son so that he might ornament those which were already his. Those little spread eagles, the corpuscles in his blood, folded their wings a trifle as he grew older, and weren't always so ready to scream and boast; but they remained eagles, and no amount of Eton and Oxford could turn them into little unicorns or lions. You may wonder why Fitz's father, a strong, sane man, permitted such attempts at denationalization upon his son and heir. Fitz so wondered—once. ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... days and early Reconstruction, was simple as compared to present day togs. Cloth woven from homespun thread was the only kind Negroes had. Every house of any note could boast of a spinning wheel and loom. Cotton, picked by slaves, was cleared of the seed and spun into thread and woven into cloth by them. It was common to know how to spin and weave. Some of the cloth was dyed afterwards with dye made from indigo and polk ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... Henry did not boast much of his triumph, although he noticed with secret pride the awe of the children. His best friend, Paul Cotter, openly expressed his admiration, but Braxton Wyatt, a boy of his own age, whom he ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... yet been able to decide! See over in England to-day how the Church, clinging to its establishment, has to dodge and shuffle over the changes in the moral law arising out of national habit. Is the Church of Jingalo so greatly superior, think you, that it can boast?" ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... crystal, and the sable spruces and white pines, powdered and glittering with the frost, have assumed an icy brilliancy. The eaves of the house, the door knocker, the pickets of the fence, the honeysuckles and seringas, once the boast of summer, are all alike polished, varnished, and resplendent with their winter trappings, now gleaming in the last rays of the ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... professes to be—must be made with a full recognition that, if accepted, the process of "capturing" the College would be effected before long, thus modifying the Protestantism which is its proudest boast. If, on the other hand, the expense of life in Trinity College would prove prohibitive to any but a small section of the four thousand matriculated students in the Royal University, the much-vaunted ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... portion of the city had been so thoroughly bombarded that Gortschakov could no longer hold out. "It is not Sebastopol that we have left to them, but the burning ruins of the town, to which we ourselves set fire," wrote the Russian commander after his brave defence. He could indeed boast that later generations would "recall with pride" the great siege and its stirring events. The investment had lasted eleven months. It involved the construction of seventy miles of trenches and the employment of 60,000 fascines, ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... it has always been the Indians' boast, and I have heard it many times, that no white man could go from Groswater Bay to Ungava alive without Indians to help him through. "Pete" was a Lake Superior Indian and had never run a rapid in his life. He was to spend the night with ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... always an empty business, which pleases nobody but the boaster, and I have no disposition to boast of what the Democratic Party has accomplished. It has merely done its duty. It has merely fulfilled its explicit promises. But there can be no violation of good taste in calling attention to the manner in which those promises have been carried out or in adverting to the interesting fact that many ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... fast runner," replied the little brown beetle politely. Her mother had taught her always to be polite and had often said to her that a really polite beetle never boasts about her own accomplishments. The little brown beetle never boasted a single boast about the things she could do. She just went on slowly crawling ...
— Fairy Tales from Brazil - How and Why Tales from Brazilian Folk-Lore • Elsie Spicer Eells
... also in other directions. In the matter of business Jadwin's economy was unimpeachable. He would cavil on a half-dollar's overcharge; he would put himself to downright inconvenience to save the useless expenditure of a dime—and boast of it. But no extravagance was ever too great, no time ever too valuable, when bass were to ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... in the merry month of June, when all is green and gay, because the poor muse, whose slave the author is, has been more capricious then the love of a queen, and has mysteriously wished to bring forth her fruit in the time of flowers. No one can boast himself master of this fay. At times, when grave thoughts occupy the mind and grieve the brain, comes the jade whispering her merry tales in the author's ear, tickling her lips with her feathers, dancing sarabands, and making the house echo with ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... and bright, and calm as May, The birds, conceiving a design To forestall sweet St. Valentine, In many an orchard, copse, and grove, Assembled on affairs of love, And with much twitter and much chatter, Began to agitate the matter. At length a Bullfinch, who could boast More years and wisdom than the most, Entreated, opening wide his beak, A moment's liberty to speak; And, silence publicly enjoin'd; Deliver'd briefly thus his mind: 'My friends! be cautious how ye treat The subject upon which we meet; ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... will get to tellin' things, and finally tell 'em so much, that finally they will get to believin' of 'em themselves—boastin' of bein' rich, etc., or bad. Now I have seen folks boast over that, act real haughty because they had been bad and got over it. I've seen temperance lecturers and religious exhorters boast sights and sights over how bad they had been. But they wuzn't tellin' the truth, though they had told the same ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... sport with grace along the velvet lawns. Nature's most delicate and final birth, Mankind perfected shall possess the earth. But ah, not yet! For still the Giants' race, Huge, though diminish'd, tramps the Earth's fair face; Gross and repulsive, yet perversely proud, Men of their imperfections boast aloud. Vain of their bulk, of all they still retain Of giant ugliness absurdly vain; At all that's small they point their stupid scorn And, monsters, think themselves divinely born. Sad is the Fate of those, ah, sad indeed, The rare precursors of the nobler ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... no boast of battles that have been; But, so God help me, days unborn shall tell What manner of heart my ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... to-day and a great deal more. For instance (a third and last idea out of the thousand that Ely arouses), Ely is dumb and yet oracular. The town and the hill tell you nothing till you have studied them in silence and for some considerable time. This boast is made by many towns, that they hold a secret. But Ely, which is rather a village than a town, has alone a true claim, the proof of which is this, that no one comes to Ely for a few hours and carries anything away, whereas no man lives in Ely for a year without beginning to write a book. I ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... to believe what is said by the poets concerning the effects of magic, and what the magicians boast of being able to perform by their spells, nothing would be more marvelous than their art, and we should be obliged to acknowledge that the power of the demon was greatly shown thereby. Pliny[168] relates that Appian evoked the spirit of Homer, ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... rulers and ruled the ground and purpose of their privileges. They prided themselves on these as their own, but they were only tenants. They made their 'boast of the law'; but they forgot that fruit was the end of the divine planting and equipment. Holiness and glad obedience were what God sought, and when He found them, He was refreshed as with 'grapes in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... other settlements although it was weak in livestock and poultry when viewed in comparison with Jamestown and some of the upriver communities. Although strong in small arms, it had a major allotment of ordnance. It did boast of six boats. Excepting Jamestown, this was the largest fleet in the Colony although the Eastern Shore was ...
— The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624 • Charles E. Hatch
... know well how to adjust themselves to conditions wherein food is more plentiful by day. And their accustomed performance is very much a matter of keen eye, keener scent, quick ear, and a better memory of sights and sounds than man dares boast. Watch a coyote come out of his lair and cast about in his mind where he will go for his daily killing. You cannot very well tell what decides him, but very easily that he has decided. He trots or breaks into short gallops, with very perceptible ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... will go farther with his 'sabots' than yours with their cast-iron contrivances that turn out mass books all day long," he would boast. "He is trying to find out a secret that will lick all the printing offices ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... not, Athene, nor does my heart shake at the gloomy warning of a foolish old crone." And turning to the nymphs who, half afraid, listened to her daring words, she said: "Fair nymphs who watch me day by day, well do ye know that I make no idle boast. My skill is as great as that of Athene, and greater still it shall be. Let Athene try a contest with me if she dare! Well do I know ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... London yesterday for a few hours with Falconer, and he gave me a magnificent lecture on the age of man. We are not upstarts; we can boast of a pedigree going far back in time coeval with extinct species. He has a grand fact of some large molar tooth in ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... at stating this amount in the treaty: he would be blamed for having betrayed the honor of Spain by selling the Floridas for a paltry five millions. To which Adams replied dryly that he ought to boast of his bargain instead of being ashamed of it, since it was notorious that the Floridas had always been a burden to the Spanish exchequer. Negotiations came to a standstill again when Adams insisted that certain royal grants of land in the Floridas ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... will reveal the true number of the martyrs. They all suffered and died just as we would expect, in case they knew the facts of our religion. Twenty-two books of the New Testament were written before the martyrdom of the Apostles Paul and Peter. Infidels often boast, in their ignorance, that the books of the gospels were not written by ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 8, August, 1880 • Various
... half-pleased girl, "he might give thee less credit for wit than thou seemest willing to yield to others. I hear his heavy foot among the cattle, and ere long we shall be sure to see a face that hath little more of lightness to boast." ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... time till now the legal succession of their kings hath never been interrupted, and that the supreme power hath always continued in the same family. An authentic genealogy traced up so high could not but be extremely curious; and with good reason might the Emperors of Abyssinia boast themselves the most illustrious and ancient family in the world. But there are no real grounds for imagining that Providence has vouchsafed them so distinguishing a protection, and from the wars with which this empire hath been shaken in these latter ages we may justly believe that, like ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo
... cruelty, that she declared she had some hope of preserving her affairs still, in case she could kill the Jews, though it were with her own hand; to such a degree of barbarity and perfidiousness had she arrived. And doth any one think that we cannot boast ourselves of any thing, if, as Apion says, this queen did not at a time of famine distribute wheat among us? However, she at length met with the punishment she deserved. As for us Jews, we appeal to the great Caesar what assistance ...
— Against Apion • Flavius Josephus
... pale and haggard. On this she dashed into singularly easy and cheerful conversation with him; told him that this morning walk was her custom—"My substitute for rouge, you know. I am always the first up in this languid house; but I must not boast before you, who, I dare say, turn out—is not that the word?—at daybreak. But, now I think of it, no! you would have crossed my hawse before, Mr. Dodd," using ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... another argument of the false apostles. "What reason have the false apostles to boast that the Gospel of Peter was mighty, that he converted many, that he wrought great miracles, and that his very shadow healed the sick? These reports are true enough. But where did Peter acquire this power? ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... gaiety. It was his boast that he could fall in love with every pretty girl whom he saw without committing himself to any. "That is, boys," he said, "I can hover on the brink without ever falling over, and it is the most delightful sensation to know that you are always in danger and ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... for to-day. Now thou knowest who I am, I am well assured that all thou couldst do would be perforce; but, so God grant me grace, I will yet cause thee suffer want thereof, and I know not what hindereth me from sending for Ricciardo, who hath loved me more than himself and could never boast that I once even looked at him; nor know I what harm it were to do it. Thou thoughtest to have his wife here and it is as if thou hadst had her, inasmuch as it is none of thy fault that the thing hath miscarried; wherefore, were I to have himself, thou ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... came that they might have the privilege to work and pray, to sit upon hard benches and listen to painful preachers as long as they would, yea, even unto thirty-seventhly, if the spirit so willed it. And surely, if the Greek might boast his Thermopylae, where three hundred men fell in resisting the Persian, we may well be proud of our Plymouth Rock, where a handful of men, women, and children not merely faced, but vanquished, winter, famine, the wilderness, and the yet more invincible ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... so," he admitted. "No doctor was ever able to control his patients' tongues. Sometimes they boast of their diseases." ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... I will take the consequences," she answered. "I will save Claridge Pasha, if it is possible. It is no boast. I will do it, if it can be done at all, if it is God's will that it should be done; and in doing it I shall be conscious that you and I will do nothing together again—never! But that will not stop me; it will make me do it, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... weeping, and the cold, proud demon was struggling to regain his lost ascendency. Every sob of the fair, inspired child who had been speaking to him seemed to shake his heart,—he felt as if he could have fallen on his knees to her; and yet that stoical habit which was the boast of his life, which was the sole wisdom he taught to his only and beautiful daughter, was slowly stealing back round his heart,—and he pressed his lips together, resolved that no word should escape till he had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... they die of wounds and exhaustion. It is a cruel sport, and a worthy pendant to bull-fighting. The first Coliseo was erected in 1762, by Don Juan Garrial. The present building, in the Plazuela de Santa Catalina, is a very handsome structure, and Lima may fairly boast of possessing the finest circus for ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... friends in other lands, known to him only by that wireless intuitional telegraphy whereby kindred souls know each other, though hands have not met nor eyes looked into eyes. Many might voice the thought expressed by one: "I may boast that Paul Hayne was my friend, though it was never my good fortune to meet him." Many a soul was upheld and strengthened by him, as was that of a man who wrote that he had been saved from suicide by reading the "Lyric of Action." His album held autographed photographs of many ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... when he finds them. There was something in the notion, he thought, for surely remorse was rather a provincial sensation; it implies that a man has really done something wrong, or that he thinks he has; in either case, what was there to boast of? He had little time for studies, nowadays, but it seemed to him that the trend of feeling was in the direction of Old Testamentary ideals. Men were growing tired of offering their other cheek ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... would boast with tales outlandish, Of his valor and renown; And his cutlass he would brandish ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... save himself from disgrace; the twenty-four hours seemed to offer him a sure means of doing this. He had not the remotest doubt but that he could find friends who would come to his aid; for he had something of which he could boast: a blameless past and the reputation of ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... demur about receiving Will's little foundling of the hut-circle. His heart's desire was usually her amibition also, and though Timothy, as the child had been called, could boast no mother's love, yet Phoebe proved a kind nurse, and only abated her attention upon the arrival of her own daughter. Then, as time softened the little mound in Chagford churchyard with young green, so before another baby ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... "for her head announces no propensity to theft?" The answer was, "She is the inspectress of this room." One prisoner had the organs of benevolence and of religion as strongly developed as those of theft and cunning; and his boast was, that he never had committed an act of violence, and that it was repugnant to his feelings to rob a church. In a man named Fritze, detained for the murder of his wife, though his crime was not proved, the organs of cunning and firmness were fully developed; and it was by these ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various
... them with His gracious approbation, and to proportion the cities ruled in that future world to the talents faithfully used here. We need not be afraid of obscuring the truth that we are saved 'not of works, lest any man should boast,' though we insist that a Christian man is rewarded ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... "Wahpetonwans, you boast that you run down the elk; you can outrun the Ojibways. Before you all, I dedicate to you this red ball. Kaposias, you claim that no one has a lighter foot than you; you declare that you can endure running a whole day without water. To you I dedicate this black ball. Either ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... {HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} I confess that I both boast and with all my strength strive to be found a Christian; not because the teachings of Plato are different from those of Christ, but because they are not in all respects similar, as neither are those of others, Stoics, poets, and historians. For each man spoke well ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... all others his mind fixed on Poggin—Poggin the brute, the executor of Cheseldine's will, but mostly upon Poggin the gunman. This in itself was a warning to Duane. He felt terrible forces at work within him. There was the stern and indomitable resolve to make MacNelly's boast good to the governor of the state—to break up Cheseldine's gang. Yet this was not in Duane's mind before a strange grim and deadly instinct—which he had to drive away for fear he would find in ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... in possession of half a gallon of gin and water; and, however either may have enjoyed the mixture, it is historically recorded at Hillmorton that the landlady was never again heard unnecessarily to boast that no ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... stands ... deserves the love of man and woman." Happily for America there were many who kept the faith, who fought the good fight, during these dark days. Yet one is apt to think that the Declaration must have proved a vain boast of rebels but for that Virginia colonel whom the Congress appointed, on June 17, 1775, to be "General and Commander in Chief of the armies of the United Colonies"; that man so modest that he thought himself ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... the widow Gamelin gave a good account of her son, yet without making much boast of him before a lady of high station, for she had been taught in her childhood that the first duty of the lowly is humility towards the great. She was of a complaining bent, having indeed only too good cause and finding in such ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... the present engagement, you will not only conquer your opponents most easily, few as they are and Greeks,[140] but will also punish them forthwith for the injustice and insolence with which they, without provocation, have treated us. For although we boast that we are their superiors in valour, in numbers, and in every other respect, the boldness which they feel in confronting us is due merely to elation at our misfortunes; and the only asset they have is the indifference ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... always been a boor. He could boast of a somewhat higher condition—that is, he could boast of a better education than the mere Cape farmer usually possesses, as well as some experience in wielding the sword. He was not a native of the colony, ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... the date-tree," says Dr. Clarke, "is one of the most curious objects to which a traveller can direct his attention. A considerable part of the inhabitants of Egypt, of Arabia, and Persia, subsist almost entirely upon its fruit. They boast also of its medicinal virtues. Their camels feed upon the date stone. From the leaves they make couches, baskets, bags, mats, and brushes; from the branches, cages for their poultry, and fences for their gardens; from the fibres of the boughs, thread, ropes, and rigging; from the ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... he had to do with clever men, ceased to boast, and turning to Lord Evandale, he said to him, "Well, my lord, does the ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... verses to him: "It eases my heart a good deal, as rhyme is the coin with which a poet pays his debts of honor and gratitude. What I owe to the noble family of Athole, of the first kind, I shall ever proudly boast; what I owe of the last, so help me God, in my hour of need I ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... bareheaded and without shoes or stockings. One squad of the company was particularly noted for their tardiness at reveille. I don't think this was owing to any neglect on the part of the sergeant in charge; for Sergeant Hammond was wont to boast that he had "the banner squad," and he exacted of them everything in the line of duty. But two of his men appeared to be impressed with the notion that the nights in that latitude were too short to satisfy their ...
— History of Company F, 1st Regiment, R.I. Volunteers, during the Spring and Summer of 1861 • Charles H. Clarke
... be disputed by many men who have quit drinking and who beat themselves on the chests and boast: "I never think of it! Never, I assure you! I quit; and after a few days the thought of drinking never entered my mind." I have only one reply for these persons; and, phrasing it as politely as I can, I say to them that they are all liars. Moreover, they are the worst sort ...
— The Old Game - A Retrospect after Three and a Half Years on the Water-wagon • Samuel G. Blythe
... to candour or modesty in me, to acknowledge an extreme inexperience and want of judgment on matters, in which, without guidance from practice, or spur from success, a young man should scarcely boast of being an adept. If it be said, that under such disadvantages no one should attempt to write a play, I must beg leave to dissent from the position, while the first point of experience that I have gained on the subject is, a knowledge of the candour and judgment with which an impartial ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... in the lake of the water-dragons, and there plunged in. The dark waves closed over him and he sank to his home. Loud were the songs of triumph in Hart Hall, great the rejoicing, for Beowulf had made good his boast. He had cleansed the hall of the ogre. A splendid feast was made and much treasure given to Beowulf by the ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... can get people to go to the dentist at Blickley. Mrs Grey used to boast to you of my popularity; but I never liked it much. I had to be perpetually on the watch to avoid confidences; and you see how fast the stream is at present running the contrary way. I can hardly get on my horse now, without being insulted ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... we may have eliminated one-half of his phrases and terms we nevertheless obtain in the other half all the riches of which we boast and of which we make a display."—Compare together a lexicon of two or three writers of the sixteenth century and one of two or three writers of the seventeenth. A brief statement of the results of the comparison is here given. Let any one, with pen in hand, note the differences on a hundred pages ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... alone, in peace and quietness with the great spirit, as becomes a chief of a long line of chiefs, but he, who will soon he chief, will travel quickly on gathering together my people. With them he will return, and of the twelve who murder from behind trees not one shall return to boast of his deeds. When the buzzards are feeding off their bones, then, may you return and secure that which you have buried, the ponies, and all of that which is yours. That is the counsel of one of a race of chiefs. What is the answer of ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... monarch from William the Conqueror to Napoleon could boast of such a realm. People are fond of tracing ancestry back to feudal barons of the Middle Ages. What feudal baron of the Middle Ages, or Lord of the Outer Marches, was heir to such heritage as Canada ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... will understand me only to mean, that I am something deficient in the practical knowledge of the ordinary details of justice-business. I was indeed educated to the bar, and might boast perhaps at one time, that I had made some progress in the speculative, and abstract, and abstruse doctrines of our municipal code; but there is in the present day so little opportunity of a man of family and fortune rising ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... party. He began by saying that he would state his position on that question frankly and fully. "But first," said he, "let me say that I am a Democrat." This brought out a storm of applause. Then he went on to boast of his services to the party, and then he stopped without having said a word on the great question. He was easily nominated. The witch persecutions rested on suggestion. "Everybody knew" that there were ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... than many particular grounds which you are laying down for yourselves. God hath so disposed and contrived the work of our salvation, that in this life he that hath gathered much, in some respect, hath nothing over—that is to say, hath no more reason to boast than another, but will be constrained to sit down and mourn over his own evil heart, and the emptiness of it, and he that hath gathered less hath, in some sense, no want. I mean, he is not excluded and shut out from the right to these glorious privileges which may express ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... need them. Dwelling amid nations who are almost universally destitute of veracity, the Parsees are eminently truthful; surrounded by polygamists and sensualists, they maintain habits of purity and virtue; and accustomed to every-day association with those who make a boast of cheating, my memory fails to recall the case of a single Fire-worshiper who was not strictly upright ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... good come to a man who went to a tavern. Nice companions he picks up there! Yes! people who make it a boast to treat their wives like slaves, and ruin their families. There's that wretch Harry Prettyman. See what he's come to! He doesn't get home now till two in the morning; and then in what a state! He begins quarrelling with the door-mat, that his poor wife may be afraid to speak to ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold
... to the south of the Danube; but the more powerful nations that had followed their emigration repelled all return to the north and all progress to the west. Yet in the obscure catalogue of their exploits, they might boast an honor which had hitherto been appropriated to the Goths: that of slaying in battle one of the successors of Augustus and Constantine. The emperor Nicephorus had lost his fame in the Arabian, he lost his life in the Sclavonian, war. In his first operations he ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... with a slate roof a perpetual lease of the land it stood upon and the adjoining garden for a nominal rent of four shillings and fourpence per annum, without other important conditions. The result has been that Killarney can boast of as filthy lanes as any in London or Liverpool. The ordinary process, the same as that which formed the hideous slums between Drury-lane and Great Wild-street, now happily demolished, has gone on in Killarney. Tenants under no restrictions gradually ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... irrelevantly in the preface to "Mother Goose's Melodies," but with the apology that it was a favorite with the editor. There is also the often quoted remark of Miss Hawkins as confirming Goldsmith's editorship: "I little thought what I should have to boast, when Goldsmith taught me to play Jack and Jill, by two bits of paper on his fingers." But neither of these statements seems to have more weight in solving the mystery of the editor's name than the evidence of the whimsically satirical notes themselves. How like the author of the "Vicar ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... affirm that there is no security for liberty in a Constitution which expressly establishes the trial by jury in criminal cases, because it does not do it in civil also; while it is a notorious fact that Connecticut, which has been always regarded as the most popular State in the Union, can boast of no constitutional provision ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... to red the cumber,[150] Which would not be for all his boast;— What could we doe with sic a number? Fyve thousand men into a host. Then Henry Purdie proved his cost,[151] And very narrowlie had mischiefed him, And there we had our warden lost, Wert not the grit God ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... directed my route to Leon by the Palencia road; the greatest part of the way was barren and uninteresting to a high degree, consisting of wide dusty plains scantily sown with barley, but unrelieved with trees or waters. The people are ignorant and brutal, though they boast themselves to be Old Castilians, which is however not the fact, as these desolate and benighted regions belong to what was once the kingdom of Leon. Their inhospitality is so great that I have been refused a glass of water in their villages, though I asked it ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... king that Ben-hadad II of Damascus picked a quarrel with him, and marched against Samaria. It was on this occasion that Ahab sent the famous message to Ben-hadad: "Let not him that girdeth on his harness (armour) boast himself as he that putteth it off". The Israelites issued forth from Samaria and scattered the attacking force. "And Israel pursued them: and Ben-hadad the king of Syria escaped on a horse with the horseman. And the king of Israel went out, and smote the ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... his own. Here was his son's wife stepping high, and compelling his son to step high. So far as Grandsir Kendrick was concerned, however, it was merely a spectacle. To the day of his death, he never ceased to higgle over a thrip, and it was his constant boast that in his own experience it had always been convenient to give prudence ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... awe of profound marvelling." He has given to her such a glorious exaltation that after Rachel and Eve she of all women is enthroned in the glowing Rose of Heaven next to the Virgin Mother, "our tainted nature's solitary boast," and so enthroned, Beatrice is at once his beloved and the symbol of revelation, the heavenly light that discloses to mankind both the true end of our being ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... warning given, if not with regard to all these, at least with regard to a great part of them. And, for probation, there needs none, their deeds being notour and public, and the most of them such as themselves do avow and boast of. And as the causes are just, so, being done by a minister of the Gospel, and in such a way as the present persecution would admit of, the sentence is just, and there is no king, nor minister on earth, ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... preposterous tales that he told, I should have spanked un warmly, then an' there, an' bade un off ashore to cleanse his wee tongue o' the false inventions. There was no great deed that his father hadn't accomplished, no virtue he lacked, no piety he had not practiced; an' with every reckless, livin' boast o' the man's courage an' cleverness, his strength an' vast adventures, no matter how far-fetched, went a tale to enlighten an' prove it. The sea, the ice, the timber—'twas all the same; the father o' this lad was bolder an' wiser an' more ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... sensation of awe; curiosity induced them to remain, though their misgivings prompted them to fly from the spot which had been fixed upon for the execution. The flowers of Florentine loveliness—and never in any age did the republic boast of so much female beauty—were present: but bright eyes flashed forth uneasy glances, and snowy bosoms beat with alarms, and fair hands trembled in the lover's pressure. In the midst of the square was raised a high platform covered with black cloth, and presenting an appearance so ominous ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... truth," Piero confessed, "upside down, and not to boast of, for whoever tries it would wish it less. The bancali are 'like asses who carry wine and drink water,' for the good of the clouts, ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... you made free with their silver and jewels; you have sandbagged citizens in the glare of Broadway's electric lights; you have killed and robbed with superb openness and absolute impunity—but when you boast that within forty-eight hours after committing a murder you can run down and actually bring me face to face with the detective assigned to apprehend you, I must beg leave to express my doubts—remember, you are in ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... in. I don't say this to boast sir, but I can handle the average plane as accurately as most men handle their ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... to the shop by a large crowd of admirers, chiefly consisting of working men, whose enthusiasm was kept in order by three policemen. Outside the bookseller's several hundred people gathered, and they were not disappointed in their wish to see the Grand Old Man, for Mr. Garratt's shop does not boast of a back-door through which fame can escape its penalties. On coming out, Mr. Gladstone, looking, as a working man standing on the kerb expressed it, 'as straight as a new nail,' received quite an ovation, the people waving their hats and cheering vigorously as he drove ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... Pan with his rude pipe began the country wealth t' advance, To boast of cattle, flocks of sheep, and goats on hills that dance, With much more of this churlish kind, That quite transported Midas' mind, And ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... playgoers would not now tolerate. When we long for anything that is past, we long, it may be, for a little good which we seem to have lost; but we long also for real and fearful evil, which, thanks be to God, we have lost likewise. We are not, indeed, to fancy this age perfect, and boast, like some, of the glorious nineteenth century. We are to keep our eyes open to all its sins and defects, that we may amend them. And we are to remember, in fear and trembling, that to us much is given, and of us much is required. But we are to thank God that our ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... enthusiastic heralding of the newer aspects of psychology. It had been supposed that our science would soon revolutionize education; indeed, taking the wish for the fact, we began to talk about the new and the old education (both mythical) and boast of our millennium. I would not underrate the real progress, the expansion of educational activities, the enormous gains made in many ways; but the millennium! The same old errors meet us in new forms, the old problems are yet unsolved, the waste is so vast that we sometimes feel thankful that we ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... it remained the most pretentious edifice in the row, being large and flaunting a half-defaced coat of arms over the door. Such a house might well boast two entrances. I hoped it did, for there was no use in trying to batter down this door with the eye of the Rue Coupejarrets upon me. I turned along the side street, and after exploring several muck-heaped alleys found one that led me into a small square court bounded on ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... to be very strict, I suppose it would be wrong to give the name of "village" to the parish dealt with in these chapters, because your true village should have a sort of corporate history of its own, and this one can boast nothing of the kind. It clusters round no central green; no squire ever lived in it; until some thirty years ago it was without a resident parson; its church is not half a century old. Nor are there here, in the shape of patriarchal ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... of Fyri's rivulet, where the street forms a declivity, where red-painted, wooden houses boast their living grass roofs, as fresh as if they were planted terraces, lies Linnaeus's garden. We stand within it. How solitary! how overgrown! Tall nettles shoot up between the old, untrimmed, rank hedges. No water-plants appear ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... too, that he does not speak of himself as the disciple who loved Jesus,—this would have been to boast of himself as loving the Master more than the other disciples did,—but as the disciple whom Jesus loved. In this distinction lies one of the subtlest secrets of Christian peace. Our hope does not rest in our love for Jesus, but in his love ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... "character," worship of strenuous force and contempt of truth; for the sake of such men and things as these, we must abandon in fact, if not in appearance, that empty domination. Had we great schools and a powerful teaching, could we boast great men, had we the spirit of truth and creation in our lives, then indeed it might be different. But a race that bears a sceptre must carry ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... many foreigners were crowding in; and down below, Houston Street and Avenue A. were filling up with them. We felt so large and grand then, with our great stretches of unoccupied land, that we invited the oppressed from everywhere. It was our boast that,— ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... People boast a good deal about Alpine thunderstorms; but the storms which I have had the luck to see in the Alps were not the equals of some which I have seen in the Mississippi Valley. I may not have seen the Alps do their best, of course, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... distressed mother's. I pity her from my heart, and lament my inability to alleviate her sorrows. I invoke a better aid. May her "afflicted spirit find the only solace of its woes"—Religion, Heaven's greatest boon to man; the only distinction he ought to boast. In this, he is lord of the creation; without it, the most pitiable of ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... prices were fairly high, a girl who could boast good looks and who had reached an age when her charms were naturally the strongest fetching the alarming amount of three hundred taels. This was the highest figure reached, whilst small children could be had for anything up to twenty. This wholesale ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... courage. Remember thy boast that thy valor shall never fail thee in thy lifetime, and defend thyself now with all thy might, and I will ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... dear Lecour, accept every honour to your family your son may bring, and pay for it in the station fitted to your great means, that I may be proud of all the Lecour family when I go to Quebec and boast about my parish at the dinner-table of the Bishop. Come," exclaimed he, at length, pushing aside his plate with the ruins of the duck, "bring out that game of draughts, and let us see if the honours of Germain have not put new skill into the play of ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... carried everything. The ruler of the district was therefore the Democratic boss, a little Irishman named Mike Scully. Scully held an important party office in the state, and bossed even the mayor of the city, it was said; it was his boast that he carried the stockyards in his pocket. He was an enormously rich man—he had a hand in all the big graft in the neighborhood. It was Scully, for instance, who owned that dump which Jurgis and Ona had seen the first day of their arrival. Not only did he own the dump, ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... principles of "moral theology," were such as raise no presumption against them even in unfriendly minds. But we must be content with thankfully acknowledging that divine change which has made it impossible longer to boast of or even justify such deeds, and which leaves no ground among neighbor Christians of the present day for harboring mutual suspicions which, to the Christian ministers of French and English America of two hundred years ago and less, it ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... if God did not spare the first world, the generation of the holy patriarchs, which had the promise of the seed as its very own—if he saved only a very small remnant—the Turks, Jews and Papists shall boast in vain of the name of God. According to Micah 2, 7, the Word of God promises blessings to those who walk in uprightness. But those who do not walk in uprightness are cursed. Those he threatens, those he destroys. Neither does he take account ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... They boast of Ormuz's milk-white pearls, The ruby's magic art, And proudly wear the crystal drop That fires the ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris
... pale sky over which twilight was slowly stealing, and which seemed to broaden the thoroughfares, throw back the edifices, and lend them the quivering, soaring aspect of the palaces of dreamland. No other capital in the world could boast a scene of such aerial pomp, such grandiose magnificence, at that hour of vagueness, when falling night imparts to cities a dreamy semblance, the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... might threaten her dominion of the seas. The silver-pewter streak of channel kept her safe from invasion by any continental power, yet she could land troops across the Channel and throw the weight of her forces in the balance when her dominion was threatened. It is her boast that she has always won the "last battle," which is sufficient. She had only 30,000 troops in the allied army under Wellington, which delivered the finishing blow ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... "Prince Shan, for all his wonderful statesmanship and his grip upon world affairs, is reputed to be almost an anchorite in his daily life. No woman has ever yet been able to boast of having exercised the slightest influence over him. At the same time, he is an extraordinarily human person, and success with him would mean the end of ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... say to you, fellow citizens, I say not in idle boast, but from the soul of a man who reverences truth in all its simplicity. Think of it—a price for a man's proffered friendship. On my soul, I do not even now comprehend so monstrous a proposition, and, believe me, even the unfortunate creatures ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... ancients, as we boast, were really entire men, they must, as they found all happiness in themselves and the world, have learned to know the relations of human beings in the widest sense; they could not therefore be lacking in that delight which arises from ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Anecdotes of Painting written in 1762, Horace Walpole observes that this country had not a single volume to show on the works of its painters. "In truth," he continues, "it has very rarely given birth to a genius in that profession. Flanders and Holland have sent us the greatest men that we can boast. This very circumstance may with reason prejudice the reader against a work, the chief business of which must be to celebrate the art of a country which has produced so few good artists. This objection is so striking, that instead ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... were satisfied to boast their victory; regardless of the fact that they had been the assailants in superior numbers, and had been repulsed with fearful slaughter, and that the only fruit of their boasted victory was a few guns and colors, as an offset for ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... a person so beautiful as you are, can be so sorrowful as you seem to be; for tho' I can boast of having seen infinite numbers of ladies exquisitely charming, I can say that I never beheld any one ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... MAXIMA or MINIMA—oh, then, thrice happy is Quisquilius! With a well-furnished purse, the strings of which are liberally loosened, he devotes no small portion of wealth to the accumulation of Prints; and can justly boast of a collection of which few of his contemporaries are possessed. But his walk in book-collecting is rather limited. He seldom rambles into the luxuriancy of old English black-letter literature; and cares still less for a variorum Latin classic, stamped in ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... one of a historic clan, granddaughter of George Grenville, the minister of American taxation, and niece of William, Lord Grenville, head of the cabinet of All the Talents in 1806. She was first cousin therefore of the younger Pitt, and the Glynnes could boast of a family connection with three prime ministers, or if we choose to add Lord Chatham who married Hester Grenville, with four.[138] 'I told her,' Mr. Gladstone recorded on this occasion of their engagement (June 8th), ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... "Boast not thyself of tomorrow for thou knowest not what the day may bring forth," says the Word of God, and that truly. Even at the sheepfolds they did not dream what the next day would bring to them, the serious illness ...
— The Three Comrades • Kristina Roy
... intrigue. He told the king every thing that came into his head: he told him one day, that the Choiseuls boasted that he, the king of France, never dared introduce his mistress into the state apartments at Versailles. "Yes," added the duke, "they boast so loudly, that nothing else is talked of in the province; and at Bordeaux, for instance, there is one merchant who, on the strength of the enemies of the comtesse, has made a bet that she will never be presented." "And why do you not imprison ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... boast of being a hundred years old, or more, brought fabulous prices, and the girls were amazed to hear names that they had read of in the columns of the New York papers, called out by the cashier, but never dreamed they would come face to face with ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... implied compliment. "I ain't much to boast of ag'in a delicate young 'ooman as you," he said at last; "but, sartenly, I can carry a little shaver like this; and, besides, look how the snow's a ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... my ignorance, but I have seen so little of you this long while—that your boast is that no woman influenced, changed, or modified ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... saw them, were they, that though sometimes their shot would go by their ears with a whiz, yet they did them no harm. By these two guns the townsfolk made no question but greatly to annoy the camp of Shaddai, and well enough to secure the gate; but they had not much cause to boast of what execution they did, as by what follows will ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... boast myself Rebel, sing "Dixie," shout Southern Rights, pray for God's blessing on our cause, without ceasing, and would not live in this country if by any possible calamity we should be conquered; I am only a woman, and ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... long as his paths are peace he has the right to walk therein, exhorting as he goes. The French Communist who does not preach Petroleum and It rectified is to be regarded with more than amusement, more than compassion. There is room for him and his fad; there are hospitable ears for his boast that Jesus Christ would have been a Communist if there had been Communes. They really did not "know everything down in Judee." But for the Anarchist, whose aim is not amendment, but destruction—not welfare to the race, but mischief to a part of it—not happiness for the future, ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... fiery and high-souled Moor uttered his boast, than, from some unseen hand amidst the groves, a javelin whirred past him, and as the air it raised came sharp upon his cheek, half buried its quivering shaft in the trunk ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... contrast one may note the frequent boast that a king 'fears not even the gods,' e.g., ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... that next year is just the season for the triennial examinations, and you should start for the capital with all despatch; and in the tripos next spring, you will, by carrying the prize, be able to do justice to the proficiency you can boast of. As regards the travelling expenses and the other items, the provision of everything necessary for you by my own self will again not render nugatory ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... pleasantly upon him that speaks to you; and be sure not to speak till you are spoken to. If any Thing that is obscene be said, don't laugh at it, but keep your Countenance, as though you did not understand it; don't reflect on any Body, nor take place of any Body, nor boast of any Thing of your own, nor undervalue any Thing of another Bodies. Be courteous to your Companions that are your Inferiors; traduce no Body; don't be a Blab with your Tongue, and by this Means you'll get a ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... not boast, it is but just to say that he felt considerable satisfaction in his triumph, and rejoiced in the possession of so powerful a frame, as he continued his walk to Miss Millet's house. It did not occur to him, however, to thank God for his strength of body, because at that time "God was ...
— Jeff Benson, or the Young Coastguardsman • R.M. Ballantyne
... what ill-chances to-day, good turns up to-morrow. I confess that I bring on myself the ill, and Providence sends me the good.' We met accidentally more than once, and his conversation was always of the same strain—his luck and his rascality: he had no other theme, and no other boast. And did not this stir into gloomy speculation the depths of my mind? Was it not an ordination that called upon men to take fortune in their own hands, when Fate lavished her rewards on this low and creeping thing, that could only enter even Vice by its sewers ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Every hill-garden can boast of one or two flower-peckers. These are among the smallest birds in existence. They are as restless as they are diminutive. So restless are they that it is very difficult to follow their movements through field-glasses, and they are so tiny that without the aid of field-glasses it is difficult to ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... armed league, officered by Piedmontese, and commanded by Garibaldi—that Garibaldi, who, having been vanquished by French troops ten years ago, now avails himself of our recent hard-won victories, to boast that he will 'soon make an end ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... Boast as you will of your mateship now — crippled and mean and sly — The lines of suspicion on friendship's brow were traced since the days gone by. There was room in the long, free lines of the van to fight for it side by side — There was beating-room for the heart ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... both of Alcibiades and Socrates in the Symposium, should have treated them in so thin and superficial a manner in the Alcibiades, or that he would have ascribed to the ironical Socrates the rather unmeaning boast that Alcibiades could not attain the objects of his ambition without his help; or that he should have imagined that a mighty nature like his could have been reformed by a few not very conclusive ...
— Alcibiades I • (may be spurious) Plato
... reading La Grammaire des Grammaires—I could think of nothing but the pretty foot-track in the snow. No such foot, I was quite sure, could be seen in the dirty Rue de Seine—not even the shop-girls of the Rue de la Paix, or the tidiest Llorettes could boast of one so pretty. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... I'm a sort of criminal who has instigated this new devilish system which runs everything so close and cuts it so fine—as if they hadn't made this inevitable by their shameless carelessness and wastefulness in the past. He may well boast of his forty ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... does not seem to belong properly to an atlas. This is not my idea of geography at all. When I open my atlas I open it to look at maps—to find out where Tripoli is—not to acquire information about flax and things; yet I cannot forego the boast that if I wanted I could even speak ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... make him drunk, and then cast him headfirst into the swallowing sand? It seemed preposterous to be harbouring such thought against the cheerful and most respectable farmer at his side. What foundation had he for it? None but the hearing of an idle boast that the man had made one day to his wife, and that she in ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... mention of words; as: "You can tell by his actions whether he is good or not." "If he acts nice he is nice." "Actions show for themselves." Group (2) contains about 25 per cent of the correct responses. (3) Emphasis on unreliability of words; as: "You can't tell by his words, he might lie or boast." "Because you can't always believe what people say." (Group (3) contains 15 per cent of the correct responses.) (4) Responses which state that a man's deeds are sometimes better than his words; as: "He might talk ugly and still not do bad ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... said. 'I won't bother you. Sure,' she continued lightly, we weemin 're niver contint wid the throubles of the day. We're that curious we must be wonderin' how much more's comin'. We may boast iv bein' sensible an' sthrong, but we're alwiz pushin' our tentacles out to feel the sorrow iv to-morrow. I reckoned you'd be hatin' me in a ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... the niggers instead? I'll tell you what, I'm sick of that shallow fallacy—the glory of America! Do you mean by America, the country, or the people? You boast, all of you, of your country, as if you had made it yourselves; and quite forget that God made America, and America has ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... were looking, a few minutes gone, For rare wild storms: I hope we'll have them too; I want to see you work that talisman You boast about: I've a great love ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... most enlightened century the world has yet seen should be thus darkened by one of the bloodiest and most calamitous wars that have ever spread their awful wings over the life of man? Where is all the optimism of yesterday? Must we reconsider our reasoned boast that our civilisation has lifted the life of man to a level hitherto unattained? Is there something entirely and most mischievously wrong with the ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... it is written (Prov. 28:25): "He that boasteth and puffeth up himself, stirreth up quarrels." Now strife is apparently the same as quarrel. Therefore it seems that strife is a daughter of pride or vainglory which makes a man boast and puff ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas |
