"Braggadocio" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cleverly, putting in her word always at the last moment, and again refusing to see his hand; but again it was the boy who helped to waste his own golden opportunity, this time through an indefensible bit of boyish braggadocio. ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... amusing caricatures with a bold and vigorous pencil. All this, however, had been often done before his time; and I cannot see how, in this department, he can stand alone, as a creative and altogether original artist: for example, is Plautus' braggadocio soldier less meritorious in grotesque characterization than the Bourgeois Gentilhomme? We shall immediately examine briefly whether Molire has actually improved the pieces which he borrowed, in whole or in part, from ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... to sit on his throne, and all the world was governed and at peace. The child began by assuming that astounding title: Ts'in Shi Hwangti, the First August Emperor: peace to the ages that were past; let them lie in their tomb; time now should begin again!—Childish boyish swank and braggadocio, said the world; but very soon the world found itself mistaken. Hwangti;—but no sitting on his throne in meditation, no letting the world be governed ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... heard him in his talk with his street-corner companions they would not have credited their ears. A mouthy braggart in company is often silent in his own home, and Buzz was no exception to this rule. Fortunately, Buzz's braggadocio carried with it a certain conviction. He never kept a job more than a month, and his own account of his leave-taking was always as vainglorious as ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... smile to one's lips to see the nonchalance and almost braggadocio of his gait as he stepped out boldly, covering the ground at a speed which was itself a luxury to one so long cut off from that joie de vivre of a strong man. And more, it brought a smile to one's soul to see the joy of victory flashing in the features of the upturned face—the ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... carriage-drivers; could tell anecdotes of dinners where Washington was a guest; and had been familiar with certain titled people from abroad, whose shoes he had had the honor of polishing. The only person in whose presence he restrained his braggadocio style was Phillis. Her utter contempt for nonsense was too evident. Bacchus was the same size as his master, and often fell heir to his cast-off clothes. A blue dress-coat and buff vest that he thus inherited, had a great effect upon ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... Silas Lapham is a story of the home life and business career of a self-made merchant, who has the customary braggadocio and lack of culture, but who possesses a substantial integrity at the root of his nature. The little shortcomings in social polish, so keenly felt by his wife and daughters, as they rise to a position due to great wealth, the small questions of decorum, and the details of ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... sand. As we—the quartermaster-sergeant and I—stroll down the avenue that afternoon according to our wont, we hear the news of Ellsworth's death, of the occupation of Alexandria by our forces, and of the flight of the enemy's handful of silly, braggadocio Virginia militia, hastily collected to brag and drink the town safe from the pollution of the vile Yankee's invading foot. Ah! V'ginia; as thou art easily pleased to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... armies, and of the immense force that it had in the field, and succeeded in persuading the English cabinet and the English people that with the help of a little money they could alone and unaided drive the French right across the frontier. The emptiness of this braggadocio, and the utter incapacity of the Spanish authorities and generals was now speedily exposed, for Napoleon's newly arrived armies scattered the Spaniards before them like sheep, and it was only on one or two occasions that anything like severe fighting took place. ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... being found out must haunt and depress many a bold braggadocio spirit. Let us say it is a clergyman, who can pump copious floods of tears out of his own eyes and those of his audience. He thinks to himself, "I am but a poor swindling, chattering rogue. My bills are unpaid. I have jilted ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Military braggadocio, political and literary humbug, and slave-holding, are the three great butts at which Hosea Biglow and Parson Wilbur shoot, at point-blank range, and with shafts drawn well to the ear. The fringe of its seaboard (itself consisting chiefly of unapproachable swamp or barren sand wastes), ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... Braggadocio, is as remarkable a Character as this, and there you may see another too in the same place, one who wheadles as much as the other boasts, and plays the Knave as much as the other does the Fool. For the Reader's Satisfaction, here follows a Translation of the first Act of ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... the braggadocio spirit about him, but no rightly constituted young man is entirely devoid of the desire to "show off" in the presence of timid and interesting ladies. Without that spirit of "show-off," what would induce our knights to meet in glorious tournaments? Without it, what ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... to the south, sent up a faint yellow glow to the sky. It seemed very far away, and Gallegher's braggadocio grew cold within him at the loneliness of his adventure and the thought of ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... near to being in the dim Ulster period; and patriotism, which it is his object to encourage, is like to remain unaffected by a play in which our sympathies are fairly distributed between rebel and royalist. In the second place I cannot believe that the glorification of drunkenness and braggadocio in the person of Falstaff can directly assist the cause (which at this moment needs all the help it can ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 25, 1914 • Various
... of Peace. I believe that War is Murder. I believe that armies and navies are at bottom the tinsel and braggadocio of oppression and wrong, and I believe that the wicked conquest of weaker and darker nations by nations whiter and stronger but foreshadows the death of ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... miles. It was ten at night when they pulled up the earth-bank and flew along the main street of Circle City; and the young Indian, though it was his spell to ride, leaped off and ran behind the sled. It was honorable braggadocio, and despite the fact that he had found his limitations and was pressing desperately against ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... the various incidents of the Russian War was lost in admiration. To me the most pleasing feature of that war was the ease with which the soldier, on coming back to Japan, returned to the peaceful pursuits of civil life. The bumptious braggadocio that European military nations have developed has no counterpart in Japan. The war was, in the estimation of the people, a sacred duty. The burdens which it entailed were cheerfully borne. The Japanese soldier bore his hardships or gave up his life equally cheerfully. ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... Walpole described Hillsborough as nothing more than a pompous composition of ignorance and want of judgment. He certainly was hopelessly ignorant of America, and he certainly showed a hopeless want of judgment in his dealings with the Americans. Hillsborough backed up Bernard in his blunders and his braggadocio with the light heart that comes of an empty head. He backed up Bernard with a steady zeal that would have been splendid if it could have been made to serve any useful purpose. Where Bernard was bellicose and blustering, Hillsborough blustered and was bellicose in his turn. It was Hillsborough's ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... day the baronet was sufficiently recovered to be able to resume his braggadocio airs. He swore at Janet; insisted on being served by his own man; demanded in a loud voice, but in vain, that his liqueur-case should be restored to him; and desired that post-horses might be ready for ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... of the great city, he saw a mysterious and hopeful hieroglyph. But although the elements of adventure were streaming by him as thick as drops of water in the Thames, it was in vain that, now with a beseeching, now with something of a braggadocio air, he courted and provoked the notice of the passengers; in vain that, putting fortune to the touch, he even thrust himself into the way and came into direct collision with those of the more promising demeanour. ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... ease; for, even if it had not been inspired by good-will towards me, I could never have brought myself to understand that it might be something very different from real goodness. It bore so little resemblance to the facetious braggadocio of the Mauprats, that it seemed to me like an entirely new language, which I ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... something beckons; a phantom finger-post, a will o' the wisp, a foolish challenge writ in big letters on a brand. And twisting his red moustaches, braggadocio Virtue takes the perilous way where dim rain falls ever, and sad winds sigh. And after him, on his white ass, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... shows about the time when Nolan's braggadocio must have broken down. At first, they said, he took a very high tone, considered his imprisonment a mere farce, affected to enjoy the voyage, and all that; but Phillips said that after he came out of his state-room he never was the same man again. ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... pride, and braggadocio of Honorius, or rather of his miserable court, brought Alaric a second time to Rome in 409. The city capitulated, and he raised Attalus to the purple as a rival to Honorius. But Attalus proved utterly incompetent, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... of it?" he demanded, his tone not entirely free from braggadocio. "A girl can't make expairaments the way I do, because if one of these good ole bumblebees or hornets of mine was to give 'em a little sting, once in a while, while they was catchin' 'em and puttin' 'em in a jar, all they'd know how to do'd ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... distinction and difference. What he is, what he has done, where he has been, his acquaintances, his intentions, his prospects, his capabilities, his possessions, are the subjects of his talk in such a braggadocio spirit and style as disgusts the intelligent, and imposes upon ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... thoroughly frightened at the thought of having been seen there, and fully determined, even before Bramble's threat, never again to cross its threshold. After all, Stephen knew he had little enough to fear from that small braggadocio; Bramble had neither the wit nor the skill to use his discovery to any advantage. For a day or two he followed his adversary up and down the passages with cries of "Potboy!" till everybody was sick ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... and would any journalist have been silly enough to talk of "the noble voice that could thus speak to the throne," and the noble throne that could return such a noble answer to the noble voice? You get nothing done here gravely and decently. Tawdry stage tricks are played, and braggadocio claptraps uttered, on every occasion, however sacred or solemn: in the face of death, as by Barbes with his hideous Indian metaphor; in the teeth of reason, as by M. Victor Hugo with his twopenny-post poetry; and of justice, as by ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... among men who know the facts, so that I shall not falsify in the least degree, for I should be caught in the very act, nor heap up exaggerated praises, for then I should obtain the opposite results of what I wish. If I do anything of the kind, I shall be suspected with the utmost justice of braggadocio, and it will be thought that I am making his excellence less than the reputation which already exists in your own minds. Every utterance delivered under such conditions, in case it admits even the smallest amount of falsehood, ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... besought him to make out the bill for my little entertainment as quickly as possible. Then I dismounted from my chair and beckoned to the dwarf, still sitting white and piteous, to join me. He obeyed like a frightened child who had been naughty. All his swagger and braggadocio were gone. His bosom heaved with suppressed sobs. He sat down on the chair I had vacated and buried his face on the ecarte table. We remained thus aloof from the crowd who were intent on the calculation at the baccarat table. At last the raven in the dinner-jacket arrived with a note of the ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... a fellow at the rendezvous, as the Fair among the mountains was called, known as captain Shunan. He was of unknown nationality, of very powerful frame, a bully and a braggadocio. Totally devoid of principle, and conscious of his muscular superiority, he was ever swaggering through the camp, dealing blows and provoking quarrels. He was universally detested and also feared. Every one in the camp desired to see ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... magniloquence, teratology^, heroics; Chauvinism; exaggeration &c 549. vanity &c 880; vox et praeterea nihil [Lat.]; much cry and little wool, brutum fulmen [Lat.]. exultation; gloriation^, glorification; flourish of trumpets; triumph &c 883. boaster; braggart, braggadocio; Gascon [Fr.], fanfaron^, pretender, soi-disant [Fr.]; blower [U.S.], bluffer, Foxy Quiller^; blusterer &c 887; charlatan, jack-pudding, trumpeter; puppy &c (fop) 854. V. boast, make a boast of, brag, vaunt, Puff, show off, flourish, crake^, crack, trumpet, strut, swagger, vapor; blague^, blow, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Burgo. It's downright braggadocio. Men do not fight now; nor at any time would a man be called upon to fight, because you simply wanted to take his wife from him. If ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... been the only speaker to indulge in braggadocio and boasting. In all the debates in Congress, Canada was to be invaded on the northern boundary and rolled up at each end. In vain the conservatives showed the neglected condition of the national defences. Jefferson's policy of economy had reduced the regular ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... bandages for his ankle. In leaping a ditch, the master has hurt himself against a stake; he has dislocated and twisted his ankle, broken his head by falling on a stone, while his Gorgon shot far away from his buckler. His mighty braggadocio plume rolled on the ground; at this sight he uttered these doleful words, "Radiant star, I gaze on thee for the last time; my eyes close to all light, I die." Having said this, he falls into the water, gets out again, meets some runaways ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... Hicks, Jr.'s, inveterate habit, whenever a baffling situation, or what the French call an "impasse" presented itself, to state with the utmost confidence, "Oh, just leave it to Hicks!" On most occasions, when he made this remark, accompanied by a swaggering braggadocio that never failed to make good Butch Brewster wrathful, the happy-go-lucky youth possessed not the slightest idea of how the problem was to be solved. He just uttered his rash promise, and then trusted to his needed inspiration to illuminate a way out! And, as the Bannister campus well ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... near passers-by. He had never during our acquaintance manifested any sense of the dandified; on our travels he had worn the casual, unnoticeable dress of the peasant, save when he had masqueraded in the pearl-buttoned velveteens; in London a swaggering air of braggadocio had set off his Bohemian garb: but never had the demoralised disreputability of Paragot struck me until I saw ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... merest drunken braggadocio at such a stage, and might have lost us a valuable prize; but I thought it no part of mine to reason, and I ran up the black flag with my ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of Lochbuy's being a great roaring braggadocio, a kind of Sir John Falstaff, both in size and manners; but we found that they had swelled him up to a fictitious size, and clothed him with imaginary qualities. Col's idea of him was equally extravagant, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... suffer more sorely, he did not wince more tenderly under the lash of his own terrors, than Flavia suffered; than she winced, seeing him thus, seeing at last her idol as he was—the braggadocio stripped from him, and the poor, cringing creature displayed. If her pride of race—and the fabled Wicklow kings, of whom she came, were often in her mind—if that pride needed correction, she had it here. If she had thought too much of her descent—and the more in proportion as fortune had straitened ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... you're going to write up the country," said Grylls; exhibiting that curious blend of suspicion, contempt and respect his kind has for the fellow who writes. "I can tell you quite a bit about the country myself," he added with a braggadocio air. ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... his co-defendants into the witness-box. We were formally tendered as witnesses, Mr. Bradlaugh going no further, and leaving Sir Hardinge Giffard to do as he would. Of course he was obliged to interrogate us, or look foolish after his braggadocio, and in doing so he ruined his own case by giving us the opportunity! of declaring that Mr. Bradlaugh was never in any ...
— Reminiscences of Charles Bradlaugh • George W. Foote
... Louis was his model; and he felt that no rashness, no braggadocio, no challenging, no casting down the gage of battle to the pirate who had already outlawed himself, no holding out of a temptation to cross swords with him, would be justified or palliated when he came to render an account of his ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... and odorous, and the stars came peeping shyly forth. Fabiani, who for all his braggadocio did not lack a certain magnificence, had insisted that the visitors remain in camp for the night. Madame should sleep in the house-wagon with the Signora Fabiani, Stella and the baby. Were there not two beds? As for Monsieur Philidor—he ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... prohibiting me to have anything to do with Paul Mayhew, she let me see all I wanted to of him, particularly in my own home. She let me go out with him, properly chaperoned, and she never, by word or manner, hinted that she didn't admire his conceit and braggadocio. ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter
... and champagne-cup,—he had announced his intention of coming in for his native county, and had absolutely returned thanks in a fine speech as the future member; yet Mr. Pynsent's manner was so frank and cordial, that Pen hoped Pynsent might have forgotten his little fanfaronnade, and any other braggadocio speeches or actions which he might have made. He suited himself to the tone of the visitors, then, and talked about Plinlimmon and Magnus Charters, and the old set at Oxbridge, with careless familiarity and high-bred ease, as if he lived with marquises ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... finger money for the one as for the other. With white people 't is different, for they've a nat'ral avarsion to being scalped; whereas your Indian shaves his head in readiness for the knife, and leaves a lock of hair by way of braggadocio, that one can lay hold of ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... English periodicals, even those most favorable to America, undertook to doubt his statements of fact, to sneer at his prophecies of the future as ludicrous exaggerations, and to term them striking and whimsical instances of Yankee braggadocio, and of the love of building castles in the air. Cooper could not well overstate the material prosperity and progress of the country, nor the inability of men trained under different conditions either to believe it or to comprehend ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... There was no real braggadocio about this. As Sut could not hide his personality, the best plan for him was to make an open avowal, backed up by a rather high-sounding vaunt. This was more pleasing to the Indians, who were addicted to the ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... Snaggs shiver—all his coarse, bullying manner and braggadocio deserting him, as Jan Steenbock's accents rang through the ship, like those of an accusing judge; the index finger of the second-mate's right hand pointing at him, as he leant over the poop rail, like the finger ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... to share Maria's seat. They talked incessantly—an utterly foolish gabble like that of young birds. An old gentleman across the aisle cast an impatient glance at them from time to time. Finally he arose stiffly and went into the smoker. Their youth and braggadocio of innocence and ignorance, and the remembrance of his own, irritated him. He did not in the least regret his youth, but the recollection of the first stages of his life, now that he was so near the end, was like looking backward over a long road, which had ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... came another,—a more uneasy one. He remembered how that vision had been interrupted by the strange voices in the road, and their vague but ominous import to his host. A feeling of self-reproach came over him. The threats had impressed him as only mere braggadocio,—he knew the characteristic exaggeration of the race,—but perhaps he ought to privately tell Peyton of the ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... with a change from the tone of braggadocio with which he had begun to speak, "remember her, sir, when I married her, twelve years ago. She was Henry Holman's daughter, he who owned the San Iago Ranch and the triangle brand. I took her from the home she had with her father against that gentleman's wishes, sir, to live with me over ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... odious. To paste in each book an invitation to steal it, as Grolier seems to have done, is foolish; but so also is it to invoke, as some book-plates do, curses upon the heads of all subsequent possessors—as if any man who wanted to add a volume to his collection would be deterred by such braggadocio. But this is a digression. Public libraries can never satisfy the longings of book-collectors any more than can the private libraries of other people. Whoever really cared a snap of his fingers for the contents of another man's library, unless he is known to be ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... thousands of unfortunate fellow-creatures; and this excited in them, who held man to be the most sacred and the highest of all things, an unspeakable repugnance. Had this been told me before the battle, I should not have understood it, and should have held it to be braggadocio; now, after what I have shudderingly passed through, I find it intelligible. For I must confess that a column advancing against the Freeland lines, and torn to pieces by their fire, is a sight which ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... our North American Indians, constitutionally lazy, are intensely selfish, and seem to care nothing for their dead; they have a quick sense of insult, but cannot as a rule be called pugnacious; they excite themselves to fight by indulging in strange war-dances and by singing songs full of braggadocio; and, after having been thus wrought up to a state of frenzy, they are perfectly reckless as to personal hazard. The Maori is not, however, a treacherous enemy; he gives honorable notice of his hostile intent, warring only in an open manner, thus exhibiting a degree of chivalry ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... braggadocio about Buffalo Bill. He is known far and wide, and his reputation has been earned honestly and by hard work. By a combination of circumstances he was educated to the life of a plainsman from his youth up; and not the least interesting ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... forbid!' whispered Sallust to Julia. 'If Vespius were made immortal, what a specimen of tiresome braggadocio would be transmitted ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... duels before, through women who were but his despised playthings, through braggadocio, through drunken folly, through vanity and spite—but never as he fought this night on the broad heath, below the paling stars. This man he hated, this man he would have killed by any thrust he knew, if the devil had helped him. There ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett |
