"Bumptious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... told me," explained Alfred, and Jimmy remembered guiltily that he had been very bumptious with the fellow. "You know the place," continued Alfred, "the LaSalle—a restaurant where I am known—where she is known—where my best friends dine—where Henri has looked after me for years. That shows how desperate she is. She must be mad about the fool. She's ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... Portsmouth, his visits home, with their gaiety and greatness of life, his visits to Mrs. Buckner (soon a widow) at Windsor, where he had a pony kept for him, and visited at Lord Melville's and Lord Harcourt's and the Leveson-Gowers, he began to have 'bumptious notions,' and his head was 'somewhat turned with fine people'; as to some extent it remained throughout ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fitted into his niche in the business as naturally as the kernel of a healthy walnut fits its shell. Mr. Skinner was a man still on the sunny side of middle life, smart, capable, cold-blooded, a little bumptious, and, like the late Julius ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... the middle class who seldom or never voted before will vote now, and the greater part of the new voters will in the main be wiser as to their electoral responsibilities and more seriously desirous to discharge them for the common good than the bumptious singers of "Rule Britannia," "Our dear old Church of England," and ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... smoking room, in a comfortable corner of which they were lazily continuing their conversation. It turned by chance on a certain barrister of Sydney's inn, a Mr. Barrington Baynes, whom one of the party not incorrectly described as "that beautiful, bumptious, ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... in London had the right to be bumptious and didactic, Henry had. And yet he remained simple, unaffected, and fundamentally kind. But he was very serious. His mother and aunt strained every nerve, in their idolatrous treatment of him, to ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... and tinny sound, on which we were supposed to play our scales and exercises for an hour, though we often slyly indulged in the 'Russian March,' 'Napoleon Crossing the Rhine,' or our national airs, when, as slyly, Mr. Powell, our music teacher, a bumptious Englishman, would softly open the door and say in a stern voice, 'Please practice the lesson I just ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... high-mettled[obs3], high-handed, high-plumed, high-flown, high-toned. haughty lofty, high, mighty, swollen, puffed up, flushed, blown; vainglorious; purse-proud, fine; proud as a peacock, proud as Lucifer; bloated with pride. supercilious, disdainful, bumptious, magisterial, imperious, high and mighty, overweening, consequential; arrogant &c. 885; unblushing &c. 880. stiff, stiff-necked; starch; perked stuck-up; in buckram, strait- laced; prim &c. (affected) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... such a bewildering lot of them, now that I had pried open my eyes. Would-be painters, sculptors, poets, dramatists, novelists, rich and poor, tragic ones and comic ones, with the meanest pettiest jealousies, the most bumptious self-conceits, the blindest worship of masters, the most profound humility, ambition so savage it made men inhuman. Many were ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... enthusiasts, who remembered only the services of France, forgot that their friends had been confined entirely to the royalty and aristocracy that the mob was murdering, and were intoxicated by the extreme democracy of the famous Secretary of State, Genet arrived in Philadelphia, inflated and bumptious, his brain half crazed by the nervous excitement of the past two years, and was received with frigid politeness by Washington, Hamilton was not long discovering that Jefferson was in secret sympathy and intercourse with this dangerous fire-brand. The news had preceded and followed ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... shot. Lord Cromer is a Junker. Mr. Winston Churchill is an odd and not disagreeable compound of Junker and Yankee: his frank anti-German pugnacity is enormously more popular than the moral babble (Milton's phrase) of his sanctimonious colleagues. He is a bumptious and jolly Junker, just as Lord Curzon is an uppish Junker. I need not string out the list. In these islands the Junker is ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... looked as fit as a dray horse the last time I saw him—somehow seems to have hammered a certain amount of sense into me. Odd it never struck me before; but I suppose I have been about the most bumptious, conceited fool ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... of the workhouse where Oliver Twist was born and brought up. A stout, consequential, hard-hearted, fussy official, with mighty ideas of his own importance. This character has given to the language the word bumbledom, the officious arrogance and bumptious conceit of a parish authority or petty dignitary. After marriage the high-and-mighty beadle was sadly henpecked and reduced to a Jerry Sneak.—C. Dickens, Oliver ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... in a way, that the rule might be proved, the greater part of this bumptious paragraph was true. Furthermore, as had not been said, Ivan's name was to appear twice on the programme of the first orchestral concert of the season, over which the two Rubinsteins were now working busily. It had been by main force that Nicholas kept two spaces blank ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... were contested by three chiefs—Kofi Blay-chi, Kwako Bukari, who brought an acute advocate, Ebba of Axim, and Kwako Jum, a fine specimen of the sea-lawyer; this bumptious black had pulled down the board which marked the Abeseba reef, and had worked the pits to his own profit. After many meetings, of which the present was our last, the litigants decided that hire and 'dashes' should be shared by only two, Sensense and Kofi ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... bumptious young owl, it is, and that too;" and a tolerably smart slap on the face followed—leaving a red mark on a cheek already aflame with, anger and indignation,—"should you like ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... the brothers Stolberg, for their narrow religiosity; Friedrich Schlegel, for his bumptious self-conceit; and various small fry ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... everything come his way ever since he entered High School," growled Phin. "And now the mucker is going off to West Point, and the government is going to stamp him 'gentleman.' A gentleman? Pooh! I'd like to show him up, as a bumptious upstart. Phin scowled fiercely for a ...
— The High School Captain of the Team - Dick & Co. Leading the Athletic Vanguard • H. Irving Hancock
... going to be turned from the door—not he; and presently I heard him and Deb at it hammer and tongs in the drawing-room, and she came up to me afterwards simply in flames. She WAS wild. My dear, she has left off crying and started to fight. Papa Breen (I am afraid he is a bit bumptious for what she calls his class in life) turned the scale, and now she is as implacable as Francie. She says she will NOT have the house of Pennycuick disgraced (or words to that effect) while she is alive ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... question for a strong affirmation, as, "Oh, yes, indeed I do;" a piece of popular rhetoric, pithy and forcible and consequently almost sure to be adopted—especially by the pathetic writers. 18. "Bolt," ran away. Syn. 19. "Bumptious," fearless, bold, and spirited; a very energetic expression such as those rejoice in who would fair "DENHAM'S strength with Waller's sweetness join." 20. "That won't pay," that plan will never answer. Metaph. ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... the world file past, one with the odd word 'Russia' on its banner; another boasting itself 'Germany'—this with a particularly bumptious and self-important young man walking backward in front of it, in the manner of a Salvation Army captain, and imperiously waving an iron wand; still another 'nation' calling itself 'France'; and yet ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... (or was it an hour or eternity?), I recall as containing some of the most exciting and, when all is said, amusing incidents in my whole life. And I got quite a new glimpse of that sometimes bumptious person known as ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... am artificial. I cringe or am bumptious or immobile. I am intellectually dishonest, art-blind, and I ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... at Beg House, they found the company more mixed than Dan had anticipated. Dr. and Mrs. Carne were there, Mr. and Mrs. Jeffreys, and Mr., Mrs., and Miss Petterick. Mr. Petterick was a solicitor of bumptious manners and doubtful reputation, whom the whole county hated, but tolerated because of his wealth and shrewdness, either of which they liked to be in a position to draw upon if necessary. But besides these townspeople, there were Sir George and Lady Galbraith, ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... activities of the creature are such as to establish the delusion that it is not altogether amicable in its attitude towards even such a bumptious and authoritative product of Nature as man. Its agitated demonstrations—whatever their vital purpose may be—to the superficial observer are danger signals, a means of self-preservation, as a substitute for the hard calcareous armour ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... stuck-up; he had feared the fellow was bumptious, and felt there was no knowing what he might say next, but by this time had ceased to imagine his dignity in danger. The young blacksmith's admiration of the books and of the hall pleased him, and ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... feet 5 inches in height, is a gamekeeper near Strafford. One hot day last summer he was accompanying a bumptious sportsman, of very small stature, when he was greatly troubled by gnats. ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... could be called somewhat martial. Hydraulics was his branch, and his frequent absences on missions about which he assumed an important and mystifying air, such as is, for that matter, usual in bumptious young men, never caused any comment or visible interest on the part of the others. He gave himself out to be close to the militaire, familiar with its secrets, as he freely blew his cigarette smoke across the meal table; and to him the ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... sent the expedition to sea with the names of the Council sealed up in a box, not to be opened till it reached its destination. Consequently there was no recognized authority. Smith was a young man of about twenty-eight, vain and no doubt somewhat "bumptious," and it is easy to believe that Wingfield and the others who felt his superior force and realized his experience, honestly suspected him of designs against the expedition. He was the ablest man on board, and no doubt was aware of it. That he ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... that we should not get on shore to-day," Harry said as they neared the landing-place. "What with three hours' waiting for the medical officer, and another three for that bumptious official whom they call the port officer, and without whose permission no one is allowed to land, I think everyone on board was so disgusted that we should have liked nothing better than to pitch the fellow overboard. It was rather amusing to watch all those boatmen ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... and I am sure, in spite of the bouleversement of the bachelor regime, it is a great pleasure to the men we are here. Our Winnipeg acquaintances tell us that A—— is quite a changed man, so cheery and even bumptious, and that everything is now "What we do ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... unlike the broad-smiling Santals with their cheerful johar? There are four trees before this bungalow, and at present two vultures are perching on each—horrible creatures, with long, scraggy necks. I pointed them out to Boggley, who was immediately reminded of a tale of a bumptious young civilian, new to the country, who was told, by one who had suffered many things at his hands, that the birds were wild turkeys, a much-valued delicacy; hearing which the youth promptly shot some and sent them round to the ladies ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... well. They told us long stories of the courts, and of what was to be seen in actual service in the camp of the Egyptian viceroy. Above all, they did us good by showing how thoroughly happy the whole party had been rendered by our coming. We were only afraid that they might become a little too bumptious on the strength of it, and be after giving us another job. But they did more than simply bear us company; they bore us to the cool grove, which I have said we could descry from the deck of our ship, there to be introduced to certain worthies, and to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... to the paper, complaining of the charge of affectation and insufficient culture, and was promptly rebuked as a "bumptious correspondent," and told that his letter convinced the critic that he was one of those affected persons whose misdirected zeal the writer deplored. This attitude is not a novelty. Many of the critics, at one period, charged the professed admirers of ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... and Stillwater had put Craig forward as the conductor of this furious sham battle, had armed him with a poor gun, loaded with blanks. "We'll lose the case," calculated Stillwater; "we'll save our friends, and get rid of Craig, whom everybody will blame —the damned, bumptious, ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... his best to be civil, and to listen to all the bumptious talk of his visitor patiently, and Sam rattled away greatly to his own satisfaction, fully believing he was impressing his hearer with a sense of his importance, and cheering his heart by the promise of ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... of Shakespeare's method—noticed by Maurice Morgann—of making a character act and speak from those parts of the composition which are inferred only and not distinctly shown; but to the initiated, including Southampton and his friends, who knew the bumptious self-sufficiency of Shakespeare's living model, and who followed the developing characterisation from play to play, the effect of such bold dramatic strokes must have ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... Pete,' yells a bumptious young cow-puncher who belongs on the Red Dog-English side. 'Which we can wipe up the plains with that ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... Mrs. Sumfit; "and do be good creatures, and begin about my Dahly, and where she got that Bumptious gownd, and the bonnet with blue flowers lyin' by ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... deal with the rich and great. If you treat them as the rest of the world does, you are a tuft-hunter; if you treat them as the rest of the world pretends to, you are a hypocrite; whereas, if you deal with them truly, it is hard not to seem, even to yourself, a bumptious person. I remember trying to tell myself on the launch-trip that I was not in the least excited; and then, standing on the platform of the railroad station, saying: "How can you expect not to be excited, when even the railroad is ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... unnecessary. How could I afford to move? Why should we move? The dear old house where we had passed so many joyous years and which Josephine used to say was extraordinarily convenient! I remember that I became successively irate, pathetic, and bumptious in my secret soul. I said to myself stoutly that it was all nonsense, and that by means of a little fresh paint and new coverings for the dining-room chairs, we should be happy where we ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... brat if he behaves himself and doesn't get bumptious. Likely enough he'll be fast asleep. Boys at his age generally ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger
... ago this question would have been considered the bumptious presumption of flamboyant fancy. It isn't so considered to-day. Rather than a flight of fancy, the question is forced on thinking minds by the hard facts of the multiplication table. Between 1897 and 1911 there came to Canada 723,424 British colonists; ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... newspapers, not even a simple announcement of his death. "My actions," he wrote, "have been so inconsiderable in the world, that the most durable monument will not perpetuate my folly while it lasts." It is evident that Gouverneur did not inherit from him the almost bumptious self-confidence which was to mar more than help him. That inherent defect came from his mother, who gave him, also, a brilliancy and versatility that other members of the family did not share, making him more conspicuously active in high places ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... opinions of mine. One comfort for you is that if I ever do come home again to reign at Vale Leston, I shall have seen the outcome of various theories of last year, and proved what is the effect of having no class to raise a standard or to look up to. I don't think I shall be quite so bumptious, and I am quite sure I shall value my Cherie's tenderness much better than I have ever done, more shame for me! Love to the bride and all at Vale Leston. There is an old age of novelty about these eastern states, quite disgusting in comparison with the reverend dignity of such a place ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cried, his eyes suffusing with sudden passion. "Can't you! Then damn it, you must. I'm not going to have my daughter throw herself away on a penniless puppy. There, curse it all, you know what I think of you now—you're a bumptious puppy, and I swear you shall not come within ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... return," continued Karl to Anton, "this man will be as obsequious as possible. He has grown bumptious on the farm." ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... least bumptious. He began very nervously with a carefully prepared Shakespearean quotation—"'I am no orator as Brutus is,'" in compliment to Jenkinson. Then he gave me a lift. He said that my presence there was ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and "bumptious," and that class of expressions were her favorites, and the best-educated boy or girl will be able to imagine the rest. This story will show how a careless use of words brought Carrie to grief, and ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... almost out of recognition, changes in the graces and amenities of life." Making all allowances for that greater charity, tolerance, and kindliness of judgment which comes with the riper years—nobody ever could have remained as Britishly bumptious, or as bumptiously British as Dickens was in his younger days when he first came to pay us a visit—taking also into consideration the fact that a certain explanatory softening of earlier criticisms was politic, that the novelist found a city far more ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... which gave such striking freshness, such compelling strength, to the simple, forthright directness, the unaffected earnestness and modesty of the Message brought us by the Canadian preachers. The most bumptious and self-satisfied Cockney who ever heard the ringing of Bow Bells, would have found resentment impossible after George Stairs's little account of his leaving Dorset as a boy of twelve, and picking up such education as he had, while learning ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... quite unconscious of anything peculiar in his appearance and was so bumptious and offensive that most of the men were almost glad when Nimrod came back. They said that if Crass ever got the job he would be a dam' sight worse than Hunter. As for the latter, for a little while after his return to work it was said that his illness had improved ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... court-dwarfs and the weavers of the royal tapestry-factories, and all sorts of persons and subjects connected with the king and his court. But in Holland, Rembrandt and Frans Hals and Vermeer painted the barnyard of the merchant's house, and they painted his rather dowdy wife and his healthy but bumptious children and the ships which had brought him his wealth. In Italy on the other hand, where the Pope remained the largest patron of the arts, Michelangelo and Correggio continued to paint Madonnas and Saints, while in England, where the aristocracy was very rich ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... chief citizen was seized by the bumptious, gilt-braided British officials, there was a merry uproar. All the men in the shipyards quit work, and the Calkers' Club, of which Samuel Adams was secretary, passed hot resolutions and revolutionary preambles and eulogies of John Hancock, ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... board. Now, here's the idea," and he talked on in a strangely subdued voice for fifteen minutes, his enthusiasm mounting to such heights that she was fairly lifted to the seventh heaven he produced, and, for once in her life, she actually submitted to his bumptious argument without so much ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... say he has nothing,' replied Lord Scamperdale, 'I mean that he has not what Jawleyford, who is a bumptious sort of an ass, would consider sufficient to make him a fit match for one of his daughters. He may have a few hundreds a year, but Jaw, I'm sure, will ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... that it was not his business, and that, after all, passing a "stiff 'un" on to a new chum was no great crime as compared to stealing gold or robbing a camp. In this I think they showed sound judgment. The prize-fighting gent, however, became too bumptious, and was eventually ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... 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 ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... one can be of anything that comes from the streets. He is an excitable, bumptious, quarrelsome man; but he has a certain influence with those beneath him, although it seems hard to realise that there ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... diffidence was due to the fact that the men used to make audible remarks in reference to his 'lovely black eyes,' but as soon as the tint of these gradually merged from green to yellow and then buck to their normal tone, the first-mate grew bumptious and endeavoured to resume his old position of chief officer in the absence of the skipper, when the latter frequently went off alone, as it was his habit now, in solitary search of the buccaneers' buried hoard like all the rest of us—notwithstanding that in public he utterly ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... of Europe thought Copernicus, and Bruno, and Galileo, and Luther very bumptious sorts of persons. With "an intelligent public opinion," such as existed in England and America thirty years ago, on the subject of the origin of species, what would have become of Darwin—provided that, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... thunder—in which blazes true Promethean fire instead of smolders the sulphurous caloric of the nether world—when its metes and bounds are irrevocably fixed for it—when it can only grow in certain prescribed directions, painfully mapped out for it by bumptious pismires who imagine that their little heads constitute ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... troubles for some little time, when, just as it came down the slide, one of them was grabbed and pulled under. The mink had arrived and decided to settle accounts with the youngsters. He had probably been thinking it over, and come to the conclusion that they were getting too bumptious. Darting up through the water, he had snapped savagely at the ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... of having attained to a position which was his by nature and by right. He had never suffered from undue diffidence, and his success had naturally increased his sense of his own value, which, however, he did not display in any bumptious or aggressive manner as one who would force reluctant acknowledgment of his merits, but quietly and naturally, seeing that he received full and voluntary recognition from all sides. He believed in himself, and was ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... admittedly dominant. And they have always been ready to maintain that their kingdom is better governed than ours, because (in the logical and legal sense) it is not governed at all. "Whenever you have a real difficulty," they say, "when a boy is bumptious or an aunt is stingy, when a silly girl will marry somebody, or a wicked man won't marry somebody, all your lumbering Roman Law and British Constitution come to a standstill. A snub from a duchess or a slanging from a fish-wife are much more likely to put things ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... as bumptious as I was a few years ago," he commented. "I'd have said 'yes' then undoubtedly. ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... provisions and comforts, and with orders to make the necessary arrangements for a boat and crew with fisherman Piotr. But, for reasons which seemed too voluble and complicated for adequate expression, Piotr had been as slow of movement as my bumptious yamtschik of the posting-station, and nothing was ready. Piotr, like many elderly peasants, might sit for the portrait of his apostolic namesake. But he approved of more wine "for the stomach's sake" ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... that's flat," declared Blix; "the idea, 'matrimony if suitable'—patronizing enough! I know just what kind of an old man B. P. T. is. I know he would want K. D. B. to warm his slippers, and would be fretful and grumpy. B. P. T., just an abbreviation of bumptious. No, he ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... not purpose clothing you in Mackintosh, and dragging you with trembling steps along the slimy pathway between the Falls and the rock, to gaze on the sun through the roaring and rolling flood; nor will I draw upon your nerves by a detail of the hair-breadth escapes of Mr. Bumptious and Mrs. Positive, who, when they got half-way along the said path, were seized with panic, and only escaped a header into the boiling caldron by lying flat on their stomachs until the rest of the party had lionized the whole distance, when the guide returned ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... landed the championship of the various basket-ball teams of the academies. But just before they played their last triumphant game in the League, and when they were feeling their oats and acting as rambunctious and as bumptious as a crowd of almost undefeated boys sometimes chooses to be, they received a challenge that caused them to laugh long and loud. At first it looked like a huge joke for the high-and-mighty Kingston basket-ball ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... George Inn," said Grosvenor, "and you can argue it out there. Old England likes to see this healthy rivalry among her children. She doesn't mind your being bumptious." ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... yet I can quite imagine people who don't know him thinking that it is. He is cocksure of himself, but of nothing else; that seems to me to be the difference. No one could possibly be more simple in himself. He may have the assurance of a man of fifty, yet it isn't put on; it's neither bumptious nor affected, but just as natural in Mr. Evers as shyness and awkwardness in the ordinary youth one meets. And he has the savoir ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... found himself at Portsmouth, his visits home, with their gaiety and greatness of life, his visits to Mrs. Buckner (soon a widow) at Windsor, where he had a pony kept for him and visited at Lord Melville's and Lord Harcourt's and the Leveson-Gowers, he began to have "bumptious notions," and his head was "somewhat turned with fine people"; as to some extent it remained throughout his innocent ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... like most little men, he is as vain as he can stick, bumptious, and fidgety," said ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... passions to conceal; And likewise to regard your friends As creatures sent to serve your ends. Be prompt to lie: there is no wit In telling truth, to lose by it. And knock down worth, bespatter merit: Don't stint—all will your scandal credit. Be bumptious, bully, swear, and fight— And all ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... proudly, for the word "bumptious" had a ring of importance in it, and I had every reason to believe that the Malcolms were ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... did the most abrupt change. I had never seen her furiously angry. She's a typical high echelon Washington secretary, cool, extremely well-mannered, cheerful without being bumptious. But this time she ...
— Tinker's Dam • Joseph Tinker
... of the state committee uttered the colonel's rising fears. The chairman had lost his sneer and his bumptious confidence. His face was red, he was sweating, he was staring out over the convention and snapping his ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... to find his old schoolfellow ungrammatical and bumptious, but he was not prepared to find him peevish. Athletes, he believed, were simple, straightforward people, cruel and brutal if you like, but never petty. They knocked you down and hurt you, and then went on their way rejoicing. ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... their eyes they saw her spirit leap into ineffable pride. "My Father gave it to me," she announced briskly. "And my Father said that, when I came home in June, if I could honestly say that I'd never once been bumptious—all my three years here,—he'd ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... heard that word before," said the Parson, laying down his knife and fork. "Bumptious, indeed, though I believe it is not in the dictionary, has crept into familiar parlance, especially amongst young ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... was the end of the rhinoceros. That bumptious animal retained its unamiable spirit to the last. Fortunately it did not possess the powers or sagacity of the elephant. It could not untie knots or pick its cage to pieces, so that it was effectually restrained during the greater part of the voyage; but there came a tempest ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... "Ya—as, brother Bumptious," replied Titmouse, (who could never bear to hear his name mispronounced,) and raised his glass to his eye; "was just going to ask you!" All this was done in such a loud and impudent tone and manner, as made Gammon still more uneasy for his young companion. But his sally had been received ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... A bumptious colored person wearing a derby tipped over one eye, and a cigar in his mouth pointing to the northwest, walked into a hardware-store and remarked, "Lemme see ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... still ruled by Diaz, the struggle in which Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and Salvador had been engaged was soon renewed between the first two belligerents. Since diplomatic interposition no longer availed, American marines were landed in Nicaragua, and the bumptious Zelaya was induced to have his country meet its neighbors in a conference at Washington. Under the auspices of the United States and Mexico, in December, 1907, representatives of the five republics signed a series of conventions providing for peace and cooperation. An arbitral court of ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... debate are wearying monotony, over-hammering—too frequent, too hard, too uniform an emphasis—too much, or too continued heat, too much speed, especially in speaking against time, a loss of poise in the bearing, a halting or jumbling in speech, nervous tenseness in action, an overcontentious or bumptious spirit. Bodily control, restraint, good temper, balance, are the saving qualities. A debater must remember that he need not be always in a heat. Urbanity and graciousness have their place, and the relief afforded by humor is often ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... cat," "An arrogant cat," and "An attractive cat," will follow. A is kept up until no one can think of any more; or—if you play in that way—until no one can think of any more while ten is being counted. Then B: "A bushy cat," "A bruised cat," "A bellicose cat," "A bumptious cat," and so on. ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... next, and after him Halstead, who assumed a somewhat bumptious air, which was to an extent ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... generalities," she jeered at him, "then listen to this: A man's job, first, last, and all the time, is to be chivalrous to a woman! And not a bumptious boor!" ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... Les Trois Poissons.' But what is this writ up? I mind not this;" and he pointed to an inscription that ran across the whole building in a single line of huge letters. "Oh, I see. 'Ici on loge a pied et a cheval,'" said Denys, going minutely through the inscription, and looking bumptious when ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... but the risk that he can successfully impose upon the world such an atrocious creed, intimidating into imitation those cowardly souls whom he does not care to conquer. If Germany were to win this war, it would not be her bumptious aggression that the world ought to fear so much as the enormous impulse it would give to her detestable creed, to the principle of evil in the world. The danger for us Americans is greater than for others, not because of exposed coasts and an unprepared army, but because we are already ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... of the Scotland Yard official (for he tells his stories in propria persona) is not to some extent justified. "Dora" is very sensitive and six months ago would never have permitted Mr. COPPLESTONE to reveal to our enemies either the bumptious egoism of a nameless First Lord or the platitudinous vacillations of an anonymous Premier, even in the interests of popular fiction. Though we concede his audacity in allowing his superlative sleuth to stop a general strike ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... of the most notorious of all the Simeonites. Not only was he ugly, dirty, ill-dressed, bumptious, and in every way objectionable, but he was deformed and waddled when he walked so that he had won a nick-name which I can only reproduce by calling it "Here's my back, and there's my back," because the lower parts of his back emphasised themselves demonstratively as though about to fly off in ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... one-eyed king Is, not unnaturally, bumptious. That Poulterer with a swaggering swing Strides to his door, the stock looks "scrumptious" In his eyes; but thrasonic diction To BULL will ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 23, 1890. • Various
... they arrive at the depots, are given out personally by the officers, and this as much as the genuine democracy of the men in command has served to break down the suspicious or surly spirit of the French peasant on his first service, to win over the bumptious industrial, and even to subdue the militant anarchist and predatory Apache. This was Mlle. Javal's idea, and has solved a problem for many an ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... next I flung the shutter, when, with a prodigious flutter, In there stepped a bumptious Raven, black as any blackamoor. Not the least obeisance made he, not a moment stopped or stayed he, But with scornful look, though shady, perched above my Office-door, Perched upon BRITANNIA's bust that stood above my Office-door— ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Volume 101, October 31, 1891 • Various
... "Indifferent and bumptious actors," said Handy to a friend, "are always looking for what they call big money. Their seasons, therefore, are short. They learn nothing from experience. They know it all. Yet they will hang on the ragged edge of starvation for weeks rather than come down in what they ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... begun the adventure in the strength of the desire born of his visit to the scene of his father's work at Hankow to do a little good. True, it was an impulse of which he was more than half ashamed. Its mere formulation in words rendered it bumptious and presumptuous. Beyond the confession made to Rodney Temple on the night of his arrival no force could have induced him to avow it. Better any imputation of craft than the suspicion of wanting to confer benefits on his fellow-men. It was ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... got back to Hampshire, worn out by my ordeal and feeling as though I'd aged ten years, there was a message from Miss Francis on my desk. Even her bumptious rudeness could not conceal the jubilation ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... have been directed to preserve the Cantonese from the evils of a military occupation; but their stupid apathetic arrogance makes it almost impossible to effect this object. Yeh's tone when he was taken was to be rather bumptious. The Admiral asked him about an old man of the name of Cooper, who was kidnapped. At first he pretended that he knew nothing about him. When pressed he said, 'Oh! he was a prisoner of war. I took him when I drove you away from the city last winter. I ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... the principle of "rats and mice, and such small deer." The Madras term of "goat-antelope" is more appropriate. I remember once, when out on field service with the late Dr. Jerdon during the Indian Mutiny, a few chikara crossed our line of march. A young and somewhat bumptious ensign, who knew not of the fame of the doctor as a naturalist, called out: "There are some deer, there are some deer." "Those are not deer," quietly remarked Jerdon. "Oh, I say," exclaimed the boy, thinking he had got a rise ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... of accomplishing a universal revolution in a country possessing the most perfect secret service system in the world?... a country with eyes in the back of its head? True, the Socialists in her confidence had been noisy and bumptious of late in order to concentrate attention upon their sex, and at the same time careful to refrain from definite statements or overt acts.... It would never enter the stupid official head that German women could conceive, much less precipitate, ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... a bumptious-looking man, with a bald head, whom I remember. He took up his position just over the clock in the gallery. He listened critically, talked a good deal, and made remarks. I began to speak straight at him, without looking at him, ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... peasants whom he sees. You cannot be very conceited about a game in which the first clodhopper you meet can give you ten minutes' start in an hour. Still a man writing in a humorous vein naturally adopts a certain bumptious tone, just as our friend "Punch" ostentatiously declares himself to be omniscient and infallible. Nobody takes him at his word, or supposes that the editor of "Punch" is really the most conceited man in all England. But we poor mountaineers are occasionally fixed ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... enable him to understand Wagner's aims at this period, and we shall presently see how far he was able to attain them, and to what extent they refused to be, and could not be, attained. The most valuable of his writings are those on conducting and on Beethoven. The latter has some bumptious and comical allusions to "world conquerors," the Germans suffering badly at the time from an attack of swelled head, subsequent to their defeat of the unhappy, ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... been a man of the world he would have divined that the present was a rare opportunity for catching his bumptious young friend by the ear, and making him carry out his threat then and there. But, being a simple-minded new boy, unlearned in the ways of the world, he merely said "Pooh!" and walked on, leaving his assailant in possession of the field, calling out "coward!" and "sneak!" ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... to Dad, uttering my reflections aloud. "What could have made him act so foolishly as to go up there only to be turned away by that bumptious porter? How very shabby he is, Dad; and with such a noble face, too! May I give him that shilling you made me a present of this morning to buy himself some more snuff? He must have exhausted all he had in his waistcoat pocket by now; he does use ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... bumptious, sir," said the former, "but there's only room on board a craft for one captain. Those fellows jump at any chance to get ashore, and when they are there, there's no knowing when you'll get them on board again, besides ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... a brave though somewhat bumptious soldier, who had fought under the Prince of Orange in the War of the Netherlands, and had been employed as temporal drill-master in the church-militant in New England. He did good service for the colonists in the war with the Pequot Indians, and ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... bumptious, foolish Pest of two months ago had vanished. In his place, by a very normal process of nature-magic, stood a ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... like oil on the waters. The moment the resignation was named, Tom's thoughts had turned to Hardy. Now was the time—he had such confidence in the man, that the idea of getting him in for next race entirely changed the aspect of affairs to him, and made him feel as "bumptious" again as he had done in the morning. So with this idea in his head, he hung about till the Captain had made his toilet, and joined himself to him and Miller ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... is meant of course—not Conceit, Snobbishness and Bumptiousness, which are all very damnable, and signs of a weak, base mind. One gathers that Lucifer, Son of the Morning, was not conceited, snobbish, nor bumptious. Nor was Moussa, son of Isa, Somali—but, like Lucifer, Son of the Morning, Devil, he fell, through Pride, and came to ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... ridiculous whims and fancies of a capricious mistress, her lips rarely relax from their ordinary grave expression. Yet, humiliating as her posi- tion must be, she never utters a word of open complaint, but quietly and gracefully performs her duties, accepting without a murmur the paltry salary which the bumptious petroleum-merchant condescends to ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... impress of our aesthetic journalism is stamped upon the still unformed minds of youths. Here, too, the teacher sows the seeds of that crude and wilful misinterpretation of the classics, which later on disports itself as art-criticism, and which is nothing but bumptious barbarity. Here the pupils learn to speak of our unique Schiller with the superciliousness of prigs; here they are taught to smile at the noblest and most German of his works—at the Marquis of Posa, at Max and Thekla—at ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche |
