"Coxcomb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dragon had him," muttered King AEetes to himself, "and the four-footed pedant, his schoolmaster, into the bargain. Why, what a foolhardy, self-conceited coxcomb he is! We'll see what my fire-breathing bulls will do for him. Well, Prince Jason," he continued aloud, and as complacently as he could, "make yourself comfortable for today, and tomorrow morning, since you insist upon it, you shall try your ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... like Rastignac, the 'English system' at my finger-ends, and I very soon saw myself without a penny. I fell at once into that precarious way of life which industriously hides cold and miserable depths beneath an elusive surface of luxury; I was a coxcomb without conquests, a penniless fop, a nameless gallant. The old sufferings were renewed, but less sharply; no doubt I was growing used to the painful crisis. Very often my sole diet consisted of the scanty provision of cakes and tea that is offered in drawing-rooms, or one of the countess' ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... story illustrative of the practice of carrying one's reading around with one is that which is told of Professor Porson, the Greek scholar. This human monument of learning happened to be travelling in the same coach with a coxcomb who sought to air his pretended learning by quotations from the ancients. At last ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... blushing shun Some coxcomb's raillery; Nor own for once thou thought'st on one, Who ever ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... 'Tis all in vain, deny it as I will. 'No, such a genius never can lie still;' And then for mine obligingly mistakes The first lampoon Sir Will or Bubo makes. Poor guiltless I! and can I choose but smile, When every coxcomb knows me by my style? Cursed be the verse, how well soe'er it flow, That tends to make one worthy man my foe, Give virtue scandal, innocence a fear, Or from the soft-eyed virgin steal a tear! But he who hurts a harmless neighbour's peace, Insults fallen worth, or beauty in distress; Who loves ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... "This coxcomb says he was sent specially by Sir Henry to obtain from you some papers of great moment, which will ensure his immediate release. He bears Sir Henry's signet, and the knave ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... committed, instantly returned home, and resuming his usual dress, again went to the Dean, when he was very cordially received. "Ah, George," said he, "I am so glad to see you, for here has been an impudent coxcomb, bedizened in silks and gold lace, who wanted to pass himself off for you; but I soon sent the fellow about his business; for I knew you to be always a plain dressed and honest man, just as you now ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... beg pardon, ma'am.—[Reads.] does also lay her open to the grossest deceptions from flattery and pretended admiration—an impudent coxcomb!—so that I have a scheme to see you shortly with the old harridan's consent, and even to make her a go-between in ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... by the wishes of his mother and the lady's father designed for Celinda, who loves Bellmour, nephew to Lord Plotwell. A coxcomb of the first water, Sir Timothy receives a sharp rebuff when he opens his suit, and accordingly he challenges Bellmour, but fails to appear at the place of meeting. Celinda's old nurse, at night, admits ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... and impressive localities in the Rockies lies around Mt. Wetterhorn, Mt. Coxcomb, and Uncompahgre Peak. Here I have found the birds confiding, and most wild animals so tame that it was a joy to be with them. But this was years ago, and now most of the wild animals are wilder and the birds have found that man ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... foul ill-favoured brute, A fevered age's most repulsive fruit, The murderous coxcomb, the assassin sleek? Stranger comparison could ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 23, 1892 • Various
... extremely vulgar manner of the pamphleteers, who were very often the same persons. Lyly himself exhibits both styles in Euphues; and if Pap with a Hatchet and An Almond for a Parrot are rightly attributed to him, still more in these. So also does Gabriel Harvey, Spenser's friend, a curious coxcomb who endeavoured to dissuade Spenser from continuing The Faerie Queene, devoted much time himself and strove to devote other people to the thankless task of composing English hexameters and trimeters, engaged (very much to his discomfiture) ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... While sans culottes stoop up the mountain high, And steal from me Maria's prying eye. Blest Highland bonnet! Once my proudest dress, Now prouder still, Maria's temples press. I see her wave thy towering plumes afar, And call each coxcomb to the wordy war. I see her face the first of Ireland's sons,[110] And even out-Irish his Hibernian bronze; The crafty colonel[111] leaves the tartan'd lines, For other wars, where he a hero shines; The hopeful youth, in Scottish senate bred, Who ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... practice. I told a lie of him. I came boldly up to the master, and told him that M'Gill had in my hearing cursed him in a most shocking manner, and called him vile names. He called M'Gill, and charged him with the crime, and the proud young coxcomb was so stunned at the atrocity of the charge that his face grew as red as crimson, and the words stuck in his throat as he feebly denied it. His guilt was manifest, and he was again flogged most nobly and dismissed the school for ever in disgrace, as a most ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... heartless; for, suppose Jules 45 a coxcomb as much as you choose, still, for this mere coxcombry, you will have brushed off—what do folks style it?—the ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... you are an impertinent young coxcomb, sir," cried the doctor indignantly. "Hideous, indeed! ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... purchase of the most effeminate futilities. He chose to lay aside his hat and wear a scarlet fez of her embroidering; but by superficial observers this was necessarily liable to be interpreted less as a compliment to Lucy than as a mark of coxcombry. "Guest is a great coxcomb," young Torry observed; "but then he is a privileged person in St. Ogg's—he carries all before him; if another fellow did such things, everybody would say he ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... Tancred, having returned to his original opinion of her. There was not enough womanhood in her for ordinary elemental jealousy; as for passion, he had decided that she was as innocent of understanding as she was incapable of inspiring it. A sentimental coxcomb might beat a precipitate retreat because he thought or fancied that his hostess was in love with him, and he would probably call his ridiculous conduct chivalry; it was more becoming in a gentleman to ignore the painful circumstance. For all these ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... looking-glass—who is far too well satisfied with his own good looks to think of anything or anybody else! Again and again you have said that, Gertrude White. You told me, rather than marry a self-satisfied coxcomb, you would marry a misshapen, ugly little man, so that he would worship you all the days of your life for your condescension ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... letters are simply laughable, especially his characters of contemporaries. He, however, was an amiable and good-natured man, and had sufficient humanity to regard dissent as an impediment to his recognition of intellectual or moral worth. Parr was an arrogant old coxcomb, who abused the respectful kindness he received, and took his pipe into drawing-rooms. I pass over the Duke of Bridgewater, because he was early crossed in love by a most beautiful girl, could not bear the sight of a flower even growing, and passed life ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... Claudia was the envy of all the women, the handsome Vincent was not less the envy of all the men present. "Puppy"; "coxcomb"; "Jackanape"; "swell"; "Viscount, indeed! more probably some foreign blackleg or barber"; "It is perfectly ridiculous the manner in which American girls throw themselves under the feet of these titled foreign paupers," were some of the low-breathed blessings bestowed ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... well to draw back You are wise to avoid discomfiture. This lady is not for you. When she is won, it will be by some bold and gallant gentleman, and by no mincing squire of dames, no courtly coxcomb, no fop of the Luxembourg, be his experiences of dalliance ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... Georges was incapable of receiving lasting impressions unless they were continually renewed; Sidonie, for her part, had no power to inspire any noble or durable sentiment. It was one of those intrigues between a cocotte and a coxcomb, compounded of vanity and of wounded self-love, which inspire neither devotion nor constancy, but tragic adventures, duels, suicides which are rarely fatal, and which end in a radical cure. Perhaps, had he seen her again, he might have had a relapse of his disease; but the impetus of flight ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... generally. He had nourished his experience on French novels; he had corrected it by various friendships; he had crowned it with the confession that one could never tell what the sex meant one way or the other. But this fact remained—he was a coxcomb, and, whenever he owned himself puzzled, it was on a single ground only—how seriously was the lady at stake affected by his charms? Feeling, as he did, the infinite inequality that existed between men, and conscious of his own reputation as a leader among them, it was not ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... Gentleman. I make free to tell you in a Word, if this passes, there's an End of good Manhood in the King's Dominions. How must all the Important Quarrels, which happen in Life, among men of Honour, be decided? Must a heedless sawcy Coxcomb frown, or tread upon a Gentleman's Toes with Impunity? No, I suppose, the great Cause of Honour must be determined by the womanish Revenge of Scolding; and when two Peers or Gentlemen have had some manly Difference, they must chuse their Seconds from ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... Exit Boy.] Mr Taylor, I shall turn the better bill-man[A], and knock that little coxcomb of yours, if you do not answer ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... matter what limbs of the dramatis personae were sheered away by the frame. It would not be the act of a true friend to Rossetti's memory to pretend that these drawings, of which for the next ten or fifteen years he continued to produce a great number, were without faults of a nature which any coxcomb could perceive, or without eccentricities which an untrained eye might easily mistake for faults; but this does not in the least militate against the fact that in two great departments of the painter's faculty, in imaginative sentiment ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... boy, reserved and naughty; As a youth, a coxcomb and haughty; As a man, for action inclined; As a greybeard, fickle in mind.— Upon thy grave will people read: This was a ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... the classes. About his Greek I can't say much; but I will construe him in Latin any day. A more supercilious little prig, (giving himself airs, too, about his cousin, Miss Raby, who lives with the Doctor,) a more empty, pompous little coxcomb I never saw. His white neck-cloth looked as if it choked him. He used to try and look over that starch upon me and Prince the assistant, as if he were a couple of footmen. He didn't do much business in the school; but occupied his time ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a form most pleasing to the author, was not listened to; for in the distance Folly tossed the coxcomb of Panurge, and the author wished to seize it; but, when he tried to catch it, he found that it was as heavy as the club of Hercules. Moreover, the cure of Meudon adorned it in such fashion that a young man who was less pleased with producing a good ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... been attracted by such a man as Johnson, and to have kept faithful to his worship in spite of rebuffs and snubbings innumerable. Macaulay speaks of Boswell as an altogether contemptible person—as a coxcomb and a bore—weak, vain, pushing, curious, garrulous; and without wit, humour, or eloquence. But Carlyle is doubtless more just in his characterisation of the biographer, in whom—vain and foolish though ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... more trivial ills to quote, The freshly-furnished house that shines, The coxcomb's fashionable coat, Both brushed and polished "to the nines," Both yielding to some fatal flaw; A crack; a fiend who plays the flute; Both, both examples of the law Of Rift within ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 3, 1892 • Various
... root with the other jog, which means to shake, ("A. S. sceac-an, to shake, or shock, or shog.") Shog has nothing whatever to do with shaking, unless when Nym says to Pistol, "Will you shog off?" he may be said to have shaken him off. When the Tinker in Beaumont and Fletcher's "Coxcomb" says, "Come, prithee, let's shog off," what possible allusion to shaking is there, except, perhaps, to "shaking stumps"? The first jog and shog are identical in meaning and derivation, and may be traced, by whosoever chooses, to the Gothic tiuhan, (Germ, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... head) surmeti. Cover (roof) tegi. Cover kovrilo. Covet avidi. Covetousness avideco. Covey kovitaro. Cow bovino. Coward malkuragxulo. Cowardice malkuragxeco. Cowherd bovgardisto. Cow shed bovinejo. Cowl kapucxo. Cowslip verprimolo. Coxcomb dando. Coy rezerva. Coyness rezerveco. Cozen trompi. Crab kankro. Crack (split) fendi. Crack (noise) kraki. Crackle kraketi. Cradle lulilo. Craft ruzo. Craft (vessel) sxipeto. Crafty, to be ruzi. Crafty ruza. Cram (of food) ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... gone, when my thoughts reverted to Emily Bingham. I was not such a coxcomb as to fancy her in love with me; yet certainly there was something in the affair which looked not unlike it; and though, by such a circumstance, every embarrassment which pressed upon me had become infinitely greater, I could not dissemble from myself a sense of pleasure at the thought. She ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... man, whose father had made a large fortune in London, as an army- contractor. He seemed to emulate the manners of young Englishmen of fortune. He was a good-natured fellow, not without information or literature; but a most egregious coxcomb. He had been in the habit of attending the House of Commons, and had once spoken, as he informed me, with great applause in a debating society. For this he appeared to have qualified himself with laudable industry: for he was perfect ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... night, and in the ball-room, it was curled, and then it was full of amatory conquests; and, as he was captain in the Cavalry Volunteers, on field days his hair was straight and lank—martial ardour gave him no time to attend to the fripperies of the coxcomb. These are but small particulars, but such are very important in the character of a great man. With his hair curled, he was jocular, even playful; with it lank, he was a great disciplinarian—had military subordination ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Pen's novel from the fact that Messrs. Finucane, Bludyer, and other frequenters of the Back Kitchen, spoke of Mr. Pendennis (and not all of them with great friendship; for Bludyer called him a confounded coxcomb, and Hoolan wondered that Doolan did not kick him etc.) by the sobriquet of Walter Lorraine,—and was hence enabled to give Fanny the information ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... different personage, and I marvelled at the power of transformation owned by a few yards of cloth cut after a certain pattern. The spirit of my costume penetrated my very skin and within ten minutes more I had become something of a coxcomb. ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... later, to deprecate his daughter's coming out to India, says to Philadelphia 'You know very well that no girl, tho' but fourteen years old, can arrive in India without attracting the notice of every coxcomb in the place; you yourself know how impossible it is for a young girl to avoid being attached to a young handsome man whose address is agreeable to her.' If there was any handsome young man in Philadelphia's case, ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... unprovoked attack of Doctor Lobelia, had, in order to disguise himself, exchanged his clerical garb for a friend's blue coatee bedizzened with metal buttons; and also had erected a very tasteful and sharp coxcomb on his head, out of hair usually reposing sleek and quiet in the most saint-like decorum; and then, at the bid from the pulpit-stump, out stepped Mr. Sprightly from the opposite spice-wood grove, and advanced with a step so smirky and dandyish ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... probable Consequence; where there was a Puppy, of Quality, in the Case, who had, even without Provocation, drawn his Sword on the poor passive PAMELA. Far from bearing a Thought of exciting an abler Resentment, to the Danger of a Quarrel with so worthless a Coxcomb, how charmingly natural, apprehensive, and generous, is her Silence (during the Recital she makes of her Sufferings) with regard to this masculine Part of the Insult! as also her Prevention of Mrs. Jewkes's less delicate Bluntness, when she was beginning to ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... together, could not bear to stay in the country, and went off to my uncle, forbidding me ever to mention her name in a letter; and,—" "Well! well!" rejoined the father, somewhat softened, "but he need not have turned puppy and coxcomb because he was crossed in love. Pshaw!" added the good farmer, giving a mighty tug with his paddle at a tough mullein which happened to stand in his way, "I was crossed in love myself, in my young days, but I did not run off and turn tailor. ...
— Town Versus Country • Mary Russell Mitford
... always sewing for him, and three hundred and sixty-five suits of clothes: so many suits, all pictured in a Book; a valet enters every morning, proposes a suit, which, after deliberation, with perhaps amendments, is acceded to, and worn at dinner. Vainest of human clothes-horses; foolishest coxcomb Valori has seen: it is visibly his notion that it was he, Bruhl, by his Saxon auxiliaries, by his masterly strokes of policy, that checkmated Friedrich, and drove him from Bohemia last Year; and, for the rest, that Friedrich is ruined, and will either shirk out ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... pupil and your humble friend, To celebrate in female strains The day that paid your mother's pains; Descend to take that tribute due In gratitude alone to you. When men began to call me fair, You interposed your timely care: You early taught me to despise The ogling of a coxcomb's eyes; Show'd where my judgment was misplaced; Refined my fancy and my taste. Behold that beauty just decay'd, Invoking art to nature's aid: Forsook by her admiring train, She spreads her tatter'd nets in vain; Short was her part upon the stage; Went smoothly on for half a page; ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... remarked as a noteworthy circumstance that popular English monarchs have been more exposed to such dangers than others who were cordially disliked. It is not hatred that has prompted these assassins so much as imbecile vanity and the passion for notoriety, misleading an obscure coxcomb to think ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... several Thousand Years old; by examining which you may perfectly discern, how Nature makes a Poet: Another you have taken from a meer Natural, which discovers the Reasons of Nature's Negative in the Case of humane Understanding; what Deprivation of Parts She suffers, in the Composition of a Coxcomb; and with what wonderful Art She prepares a ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... When he has mended what Fluellen calls his 'ploody coxcomb,' he will take out a summons against me ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... learning in England, his Lordship mentioned Hermes, by Mr. Harris of Salisbury[1022], as the work of a living authour, for whom he had a great respect. Dr. Johnson said nothing at the time; but when we were in our post-chaise, he told me, he thought Harris 'a coxcomb.' This he said of him, not as a man, but as an authour[1023]; and I give his opinions of men and books, faithfully, whether they agree with my own or not. I do admit, that there always appeared to me something of affectation in Mr. Harris's manner of writing; something ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... vanity; on this account he determined on a journey to Paris, when Paris was the center of politeness; he there learnt to dress, to dance, and to move his hands gracefully in conversation; and returned a most consummate coxcomb. But after a very few years he relapsed into ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... Ostrov. In his youth, he had been a captain in the army, where he was noted as a noisy quarrelsome fellow; transferred thence to the civil service, he proved himself a thorough master of the art of petty tyranny, a bustling coxcomb and a blockhead. Age had done little to improve his character. He had been some time a widower, had long retired from the service, was less given to quarrels and coxcombry, but more trivial and teasing. His chief happiness consisted in drinking ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... have any tediousness and obstinacy to bestow on anybody. Lastly, I never will hear the biography compared with Boswell's except under vigorous protest. For I do say that it is mere folly to put into opposite scales a book, however amusing and curious, written by an unconscious coxcomb like that, and one which surveys and grandly understands the characters of all the illustrious company ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... have been taken in, for never were such attentions; but I knew the fickle sex too well. He went away to his regiment two days ago, and I trust I shall never be plagued with him again. He is the greatest coxcomb I ever saw, and amazingly disagreeable. The last two days he was always by the side of Charlotte Davis: I pitied his taste, but took no notice of him. The last time we met was in Bath Street, and I turned directly into a shop that he might not speak ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... in Lord Cadurcis' favour. It is difficult, indeed, to convey an idea of the exertions and achievements of Captain Cadurcis; no Paladin of chivalry ever executed such marvels on a swarm of Paynim slaves; and many a bloody coxcomb and broken limb bore witness in Petty France that night to his achievements. Still the mob struggled and were not daunted by the delay in immolating their victim. As long as they had only to fight against men in plain clothes, they were valorous and obstinate enough; but the moment that the crests ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... said the professor, with great assumption of dignity, "that you now see the necessity of forbidding that impertinent young coxcomb the house." ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... good enough for that, thought Caponsacchi, and in this spirit he took the vows. He did his formal duties, and was equally diligent "at his post where beauty and fashion rule"—a fribble and a coxcomb, in short, as he described himself to the judges at the murder-trial. . . . After three or four years of this, he found himself, "in prosecution of his calling," at the theatre one night with fat little Canon Conti, ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... golden-winged woodpecker, with his crimson crest, his broad black gorget, and splendid plumage; and the cedar-bird, with its red-tipt wings and yellow-tipt tail and its little monteiro cap of feathers; and the blue jay, that noisy coxcomb, in his gay light blue coat and white underclothes, screaming and chattering, nodding and bobbing and bowing, and pretending to be on good terms with every songster of ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... his shoulders; and every other preparation being made, we set out last Thursday, at seven in the morning; my uncle, with the three women in the coach; Humphry, well mounted on a black gelding bought for his use; myself a-horseback, attended by my new valet, Mr Dutton, an exceeding coxcomb, fresh from his travels, whom I have taken upon trial — The fellow wears a solitaire, uses paint, and takes rappee with all the grimace of a French marquis. At present, however, he is in a ridingdress, jack-boots, leather breeches, a scarlet waistcoat, with gold binding, a laced hat, a hanger, a ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... book an entirely profitless and monstrous story, in which the principal characters are a coxcomb, an idiot, a madman, a savage blackguard, a foolish tavern-keeper, a mean old maid, and a conceited apprentice,—mixed up with a certain quantity of ordinary operatic pastoral stuff, about a pretty Dolly in ribbons, a lover with a wooden leg, and an heroic locksmith. For these ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... at his unwillingness to acknowledge any talent amongst them, though he himself was a man of that plodding description who neither ever had done, nor ever could do any thing to entitle him to claim distinction of any sort. The young Coxcomb who next entered, was a direct contrast to the last applicant, both in person and manner. Approaching with a fashionable contortion, he stretched out his lady-like hand, and in the most languid and affected tone imaginable, inquired for The Idler. "That, Sir," said Margin, "is amongst the works ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... under the sun. If I have a right to choose my acquaintance, and—at the club, let us say prefer the company of a lively, handsome, well-dressed, gentleman like young man, who amuses me, to that of a slouching, ill-washed, misanthropic H-murderer, a ceaselessly prating coxcomb, or what not; has not society—the aggregate you and I—a right to the same choice? Harry was liked because he was likeable; because he was rich, handsome, jovial, well-born, well-bred, brave; because, with jolly topers, he liked a jolly song and a bottle; because, with gentlemen sportsmen, he loved ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... letter which he had sent her. "Poor wretch," she said, twirling round the little bit of paper in her fingers, "how I could crush her with this!—and it is for a thing like this that she must break her heart, forsooth—for a man who is stupid—a coxcomb—and who does not care for her. My poor good Rawdon is worth ten of this creature." And then she fell to thinking what she should do if—if anything happened to poor good Rawdon, and what a great piece of luck it was that he had left ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to a good Genius to grasp at too much. "A certain Magistrate (says Bruyere) arriving, by his Merit, to the first Dignities of the Gown, thought himself qualified for every Thing. He printed a Treatise of Morality, and published himself a Coxcomb." Universal Genij and universal Scholars are generally excellent at nothing. He is certainly the wisest Man, who endeavours to be perfectly furnished for some Business, and regards other Matters as no ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... is exquisite, George! I have seen nothing like her in my time," lisped a superb coxcomb, attired in a splendid civilian's suit of Pompadour and silver, to a young cornet of the Life Guard ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... And I knew another man, a truly great seer, who saw a white fool in a visionary garden, where there was a tree with peacocks' feathers instead of leaves, and flowers that opened to show little human faces when the white fool had touched them with his coxcomb, and he saw at another time a white fool sitting by a pool and smiling and watching the images of many fair women floating up from ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... have you know, sir, that, young or old, there has never been a time in my life when I was afraid to speak my mind to an ignorant coxcomb—yes, sir, an ignorant coxcomb, if you had as many titles as slaves could ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... tedious peace, as a new peace may be relied on during the throes of a bloody war, to tranquillize its wounds. Consequently, when the arrogant Louvois carried a war to the credit of his own little account on the national leger of France, this coxcomb well knew that a war was at any rate due about that time. Really, says he, I must find out some little war to exhaust the surplus irritability of this person, or he'll be the death of me. But ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... the newest stranger—the lion of the day, the gorgeous journeyman tailor from Quincy. He was a simpering coxcomb of the first water, and the "loudest" dressed man in the State. He was an inveterate woman-killer. Every week he wrote lushy "poetry" for the Journal, about his newest conquest. His rhymes for my week were headed, "TO ...
— Editorial Wild Oats • Mark Twain
... I was right glad to have the opportunity of making their closer acquaintance over a flask of excellent wine. My father's prejudices had led me to believe that a King's officer was ever a compound of the coxcomb and the bully, but I found on testing it that this idea, like most others which a man takes upon trust, had very little foundation upon truth. As a matter of fact, had they been dressed in less warlike ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hodge-podge; all meats are alike, all are one to a fool. His exercises are commonly divided into four parts, eating and drinking, sleeping and laughing; four things are his chief loves, a bauble and a bell, a coxcomb and a pied-coat. He was begotten in unhappiness, born to no goodness, lives but in beastliness, and dies but in forgetfulness. In sum, he is the shame of nature, the trouble of wit, the charge of charity, and the ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... foppery was never cured; it was the bad stamina of the mind, which, like those of the body, were never rectified: once a coxcomb, and always a coxcomb. ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... answer so little to his mind, was almost bursting with rage. "Proceed with caution!" he cried. "You talk as if the thing could be entertained, or as if I had cause to fear the coxcomb! On the contrary, I intend to teach him a lesson a little confinement will cool his temper. You must give me a letter, my friend, and we will clap him in the Bastille for ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... in construction, is a masterpiece of graceful and elegant satire. It is entitled "Count Nulin," and describes the signal discomfiture of certain designs meditated by the count (a most delightful specimen of a young Russian coxcomb) against the virtue of his hostess, a fair chatelaine, at whose country-house the said count passes a night in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... given a distinct account of the methods he practised upon Peg. Her brother would now and then ask her, "What dost thou see in that pragmatical coxcomb to make thee so in love with him? He is a fit match for a tailor's or a shoemaker's daughter, but not for you that are a gentlewoman?" "Fancy is free," quoth Peg; "I'll take my own way, do you take yours. I do not care for your ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... would you have me a coxcomb—make me contemptible in my own eyes, by boasting with the hope of ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... knavery, and sicken to loathing at the noise and nonsense of self-important folly. When the hollow-hearted wretch takes me by the hand, the feeling spoils my dinner; the proud man's wine so offends my palate that it chokes me in the gullet; and the pulvilised, feathered, pert coxcomb, is so disgustful in my ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... he continued. "That coxcomb of a marquis always trailing his dignity in the dust of mid-road to worry with a common dog like La Chesnaye—pish! Hold your self-respect in the chest of your jacket, man! 'Tis the slouching nag that loses the race! Hold ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... despair, Mrs. Ponsonby or Mary would have interposed; but the ladies of Beauchastel laughed and encouraged him,—all but Isabel, who sat in the window, and thought of Adeline, 'spighted and angered both,' by a Navarrese coxcomb, with sleeves down to his heels, and shoes turned up to his knees. She gave herself great credit for having already ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to travel. His lips whitened, he was upon the point of speaking his mind, but managed to check himself in time. Harkness's personality rasped him to the raw, and he had for days struggled against an utterly absurd but insistent desire to seize the little coxcomb by the throat and squeeze the arrogance out of him as juice is squeezed out of a lemon. There is flesh for which one's ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... sword to Louis XVI., not to involve myself in party intrigues. I therefore decided to "emigrate." Brussels was the headquarters of the most distinguished emigres. There I found my trifling baggage, which had arrived before me. The coxcomb emigres were hateful to me. I was eager to see those like ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... need not trace the tale;—nor the one weakness of his so mighty love; nor the inferiority of his perceptive intellect to that even of the second woman character in the play, the Emilia who dies in wild testimony against his error:—"Oh, murderous coxcomb! What should such a fool Do with so good ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... which he had ta'en my little lady's hand at their first meeting, and he saith, "Comrade, for thou hast e'er been my true and loyal comrade, Marian—sweet comrade-cousin—this is the matter that doth eat my heart. Dost think there is aught between Patience and that young coxcomb?" ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... was no doubt questionable propriety to say that 'nature lost her legs in paradise, and has not found them since,' or that 'an angel might preach such doctrine as was commonly preached till his wings dropped off without doing any good,' or to tell us that 'he once went to Jesus as a coxcomb and gave himself fine airs.' But it is far more easy to laugh at and to criticise the foibles of the good man than to imitate his devotedness to his Masters service, and the moral courage which enabled him to exchange the dignified ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... knew it, and intended to let his friends know it also; for next season he would give a grand entertainment, get Spread and Co. to throw a marquee over the lawn, and see if Major Cant would come—the Captain rather thought he would; or the Hon. Sam. Dummy—the coxcomb, who, when asked to dine with Alderman Fig, in Bloomsbury Square, said his horses never crossed Tottenham Court Road—Stinkomalee and the Brutish Museum savouring too much of the "people" for the exquisite;—but the Captain winked, and said he knew how the Dummy would get out of the fix—he ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... his natural son, and report said too that he was soon to marry the lovely niece of the governor; but the destinies were altogether of a different way of thinking. His character may be despatched in a few words—he was a vain coxcomb, his whole soul lay in his gorgeous uniform, and he had a mortal antipathy to ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... scholar-dress that once arrayed him, The charm Admitto te ad gradum, With touch of parchment can refine, And make the veriest coxcomb shine, Confer the gift of tongues at once, And fill with sense the vacant dunce. Trumbull's Progress of Dullness, Ed. ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... of a woman, which is the only picture on the walls. His age is about thirty-five his figure thin and very upright and his clean-shorn face thin, upright, narrow, with long and rather pointed ears; his dark hair is brushed in a coxcomb off his forehead. A faint smile hovers about his lips that Nature has made rather full and he has made thin, as though keeping a hard secret; but his bright grey eyes, dark round the rim, look out and upwards almost as if he were being crucified. There is something about the whole of him that makes ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... miss, by fancy, face, and gown, Render'd the topping beauty of the town, Draws every rhyming, prating, dressing sot, To boast of favours that he never got; Of which, whoe'er lacks confidence to prate, Brings his good parts and breeding in debate; And not the meanest coxcomb you can find, But thanks his stars, that Phillis has been kind; Thus prostitute my Congreve's name is grown To every lewd pretender of the town. Troth, I could pity you; but this is it, You find, to be the fashionable wit; ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... [Within] Mome, malt-horse, capon, coxcomb, idiot, patch! Either get thee from the door, or sit down at the hatch: Dost thou conjure for wenches, that thou call'st for such store, When one is one too many? Go, get thee from ...
— The Comedy of Errors • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... for pride's eviction, A coxcomb claims a high distinction. Not to one age or sex confined Are coxcombs, but of rank and kind; Pervading all ranks, great and small, Who take and never give the wall. By ignorance is pride increased; They who assume most, know the least. Yet coxcombs do not, all alike, Our ridicule ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... like a fool, a coxcomb; he shall have annual means to buy him Books, and find him cloathes and meat, what would he more? Trouble him with Land? 'tis flat against his nature. I love him too, and honour those gifts ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... is a coarse man. He is not delicate enough for your niceness; because I suppose he dresses not like a fop and a coxcomb, and because he lays not himself out in complimental nonsense, the poison of female minds. He is a man of sense, that I can tell you. No man talks more to the purpose to us: but you fly him so, that he has no opportunity given him, to express it to you: and a ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... solacement, were it only of a stomachic character, is undeniable enough. That he was vain, heedless, a babbler; had much of the sycophant, alternating with the braggadocio, curiously spiced too with an all-pervading dash of the coxcomb; that he gloried much when the Tailor, by a court-suit, had made a new man of him; that he appeared at the Shakespeare Jubilee with a riband, imprinted "Corsica Boswell," round his hat; and in short, if you will, lived no day of his life without doing and saying ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... sentimental, jealous, and boundlessly fond of himself. His wives, too, are foolish enough to worship him, until—there is an egg in the nest. That event makes them wise. They understand this strutting coxcomb, and quietly turning their backs on him, leave him ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... groped through life without the vision of Beatrice, seeking to satisfy his blind desire, as perhaps Dante after Beatrice's death did also, with the lower love and scorning the loveless asceticism of the monk. The Church encouraged its priest to be "a fribble and a coxcomb"; and a fribble and a coxcomb, by his own confession, Caponsacchi became. But the vanities he mingled with never quite blinded him. He walked in the garden of the Hesperides bent on great adventure, plucked in ignorance hedge-fruit and feasted to satiety, but yet he scorned the achievement, ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... went back to his clubmates, and told them the result of his talk with Otto. He said the latter was not a coxcomb or a dandy, but one of the best humored fellows he had ever met, and if he had been driven to showing his temper on the street that morning it was the result of their rudeness, and not Otto's ill will. The other boys quite agreed with what their captain said, and he was asked ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... plumed director to the ambassador of Cappadocia. The imperial ambassador was not in waiting, but they found for Austria a good Judean representation. With great judgment his highness the Grand Duke had sent the most atheistic coxcomb to be found in Florence to represent, at the bar of impiety, the house of apostolic majesty, and the descendants of the pious, though high-minded, Maria Theresa. He was sent to humble the whole race of Austria before those grim assassins, reeking with the blood ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... Bulstrode (232) passes his winter at the court of Boulogne, and then is to travel with two young Shrewsburys. I was overtaken by Amorevoli and Monticelli, (233) who are here with me and the Viscontina, and Barberina, and Abbate Vanneschi (234)-what a coxcomb! I would have talked to him about the opera, but he preferred politics. I have wearied Amorevoli with questions about you. If he was not just come from you, and could talk to me about you, I should hate him; for, to flatter me, he told me that I talked ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... our bark to find fault with the tackling, when he knows not the shrouds, I'll down into the hold, and fetch out a rusty pole-axe, that saw no sun this seven year, and either well baste him, or heave the coxcomb overboard to feed cods. But courteous gentlemen, that favor most, backbite none, and pardon what is overslipped, let such come and welcome; I'll into the steward's room, and fetch them a can of our best ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... intense admiration for his wit, general character, and personal appearance. Had he been a stranger to you, I should, of course, have insinuated an opinion that he was a fool, a coxcomb, and the very plainest young man I had ever seen. That is the way of the ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... command of the Federals was a young coxcomb of a captain with a waxed mustache and blond hair. As long as he felt uncertain about the strength of the assailants, he had remained extremely quiet and prudent; but now that they had driven the rebels back without allowing ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... coxcomb, cousin. Hark! ha, ha! [Laughing.] [Bells ring a joyful peal.] Some one has changed my music. Heaven defend! How the bells jangle. Yonder graybeard, now, Rings a peal vilely. He's more used to knells, And sounds them grandly. ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... of man's life during both eras are here contrasted in every gradation. Thus we have the child as he was, the child as he is, commencing his education, and his entry into manhood; the coxcomb and dissipated man of former times, and the man of the present era, following the road leading to his own happiness and the good of others; middle age—the man struggling to draw the load up the hill with painful efforts, the other man engaged ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... Metcalfe would resent for his sister, when his sister resented not for herself. Had she demanded her brother's protection and resentment, that would have been another man's matte, to speak in Lord M.'s phrase: but she herself thought her brother a coxcomb to busy himself undesired in her affairs, and wished for nothing but to be provided for decently and privately in her lying-in; and was willing to take the chance of Maintenon-ing his conscience in her favour,* and getting him to marry when the little stranger ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... reader suppose that he was either a superannuated coxcomb or a driveling dotard. He was a man of sense and feeling, but his passion for Julia had, for the time, changed all his manner and habits.—He saw that she was a young and lovely woman, about to give herself to the arms of a man thrice her age; and he wished to ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... him for fierce and pertinacious where a defaulting creditor was concerned. One only course remained him: to force matters with Wilding's widow. For days he refrained, fearing that precipitancy might lose him all; it was his wish to do the thing without too much coercion; some, he was not coxcomb enough to think—coxcomb though he was—might be ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... wearing a look of such innocence and candor! O father! I loved her, and I, the experienced man of the world, allowed myself to be deceived by that young girl, who knew nothing of the world, and was yet such an accomplished hypocrite! Think not that I was a mere idle coxcomb, arrogantly basing his expectations upon his wishes. No, she deceived me, she disappointed me! You should have seen her at that fete which you gave to the Electoral Prince. How tenderly she leaned upon my arm, as we walked through the greenhouse, with what glowing cheeks, with what a blissful ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... denote the ridiculous portions of the young creed. Though the author has no view of this class of sentimental or termagant politicians except on their ludicrous side, he exposes that side with a brilliant remorselessness which is refreshing in this age of universal cant. Though something of a coxcomb himself, he has no mercy on the fop turned politician and theologian. The mistake of his satire on Young Ireland consists in overlooking the reality of the wrongs under which that country groans, and the depth and intensity of the passions roused. In regard to style the author is a mannerist. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... from the city of San Francisco beyond. To the south and west of the Foreign Countries, States Buildings and Gardens, a graceful contour of hills extends, sloping onward to Golden Gate, and having a coxcomb of pine and eucalyptus. Broad vistas of city, forests, water, hills and mountains present themselves at every point. Gray, green, blue and lavender vistas come into view through portal, colonnade, ...
— The Architecture and Landscape Gardening of the Exposition • Louis Christian Mullgardt
... scandal. That the winsome little minx had her legion of lovers from the day she set foot in Marseilles, at the age of thirteen, we know; but it was not until Freron came on the scene that her volatile little heart was touched—Freron, the handsome coxcomb and arch-revolutionary, who was sent to Marseilles as a Commissioner ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... Jerusalem's acquaintance in Leipzig. Jerusalem called Goethe a Geck, a coxcomb, a description which, as we have seen, was not inapplicable to him in his Leipzig days. Jerusalem was a friend of Lessing, who highly esteemed him, and after ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... not asked you this question without a cause, said they; for a great number of others who have passed this way from your country of Touraine seemed as mere jolt-headed doddipolls as ever were scored o'er the coxcomb, yet spoke as correct as other folks. But there has been here from other countries a pack of I know not what overweening self-conceited prigs, as moody as so many mules and as stout as any Scotch lairds, and nothing ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... begetting on some one), I would answer your scurrilities in Print; but this I disdain, sirrah. Good stout Ash and good strong Cordovan leather are the things fittest to meet your impertinences with;" and so I held out my Foot, and shook my Staff at the titivilitium coxcomb; and he was so civil to me during the rest of the evening as to allow me to pay his clog-shot ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... done? Mr. Carstairs, because his great need of his daughter grows upon him, conceives an unusual plan. He will send an ambassador to Hunston—unaccredited, of course, a man, young, not married, who—don't think me a coxcomb—but who might be able to arouse the daughter's interest. This ambassador is to go on Mr. Carstairs's own yacht, the name, of course, being erased, so that the daughter may not recognize it. He is to meet the young lady, ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... time, I tell you, the coxcomb! It's no manner of use his poaching round our way and making sheep's-eyes at the wench.... The coverts are watched! If he comes too near, it means ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... locket in his bosom, he wiped his eye and sighed again. Beneficent Disseminator of blessings to all Thy creatures, how great and universal must be that sweetest of Thy tyrannies which can hold in thrall the free and the bond, the simple swain and the polished coxcomb, the lover in the heyday of reckless passion and the husband of maturer years. But indeed, sir, I wander from the point. How mingled and imperfect are all our sublunary joys. Maledicity! he exclaimed in anguish. Would to God ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... beauteous feathers found, Left by a peacock on the ground. When in the gaudy plumage dress'd, The shallow thing his fortune bless'd; With stately gesture strode along, And boldly join'd the peacock throng; Who, his impertinence to pay, First stripp'd him, and then chas'd away. The crest-fall'n coxcomb homeward sneaks, And his forsaken comrades seeks; Where'er he comes, with scorn they leave him, And not a jackdaw will receive him. Says one he had disdain'd, at last, "Such as thou art, thou mightst have pass'd, And hadst ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... Amperes, whom she had known intimately. She was still living in the same house that they had inhabited together, when Mr. Mohl kindly gave them the benefit of his more practical sense in household management. Madame Mohl was rather severe about Jean Jacques Ampere, whom she called a "young coxcomb," and "an egotist." She was not sentimental, and had no sympathy with or pity for the love so long faithful to Madame Recamier; nay, I thought I could detect in her strictures the unconscious feminine jealousy of a lady whose salon had been forsaken by one of its "lions" for a ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... off nor at all disturb the cloak. Eying him more closely, one discerns that he has no shirt-collar, and that what little is visible of his shirt-bosom seems not to be of to-day nor of yesterday,—perhaps not even of the day before. His manner is not very good; nevertheless, he is a coxcomb and a jackanapes. He avers himself a naturalized citizen of America, where he has been tutor in several families of distinction, and has been treated like a son. He left America on account of his health, and came near being tutor in the Duke of Norfolk's family, but failed for lack of ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... I said with a gulp, for it was an awful knockdown to a coxcomb of a chap like I was, who had reckoned on the fine feathers and spurs and the rest ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... must, fair lady," replied Foster; "excuse my freedom, but, by blood and nails, this is no time to strain courtesies—you MUST go to your chamber.—Mike, follow that meddling coxcomb, and, as you desire to thrive, see him safely clear of the premises, while I bring this headstrong lady to reason. Draw thy ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... your Art, and do not carry your Eloquence in your Face: And above all Things, beware of hard Words; for who but an empty Coxcomb ever made a verbose Declamation to his Mistress? By such Methods you may raise her Abhorrence more probably than ...
— The Lovers Assistant, or, New Art of Love • Henry Fielding
... like disputants, when reasons fail, Have one sure refuge left—and that's to rail. Fop, coxcomb, fool, are thunder'd through the pit; And this is all their equipage of wit. We wonder how the devil this difference grows, Betwixt our fools in verse, and yours in prose: For, 'faith, the quarrel rightly understood, 'Tis civil war with their own flesh and blood. The threadbare author ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... from your father's letter to me, I was taught to expect a well-bred modest man as a visitor here, but now I find him no better than a coxcomb and a bully; but he will be down here presently, and shall ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith
... imagine himself afflicted with the dreadful disease with the long Latin name, the meaning of which he does not by any means comprehend? And did not the poems of our friend Bavius Blunderbore, Esq., which were of "a low and moderate sort," cause you to giggle yourself wellnigh into an asphyxy,—calf and coxcomb as he was? Is not ——'s last novel a better antidote against melancholy, stupendously absurd as it is, than foalfoot or plantain, featherfew or savin, agrimony or saxifrage, or any other herb in old Robert Burton's pharmacopoeia? ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... 'Meddling coxcomb!' he exclaimed, 'what is there in him that commands the attention and respect that I fail to obtain with ten times ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... ladies like washerwomen, and gentlemen liking Wapping publicans—of course, unsentimental, unfashionable Mr. Opie denounced the degeneracy of his competitor's style. 'Lawrence makes coxcombs of his sitters, and they make a coxcomb of him.' Still 'the quality' flocked to the studios of Messrs. Hoppner and Lawrence, and the rival easels were long adorned with the most ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... degradation, as it is called by the pedants, the rhetoricians, the imbeciles, and all that filthy brood of bigots, of knaves, and of sharpers, who sanctimoniously slaver gall upon glory, who assert that Pascal was a madman, Voltaire a coxcomb, and Rousseau a brute, and whose triumph it would be to put a ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... Latin, yet his posterity rise up and call him blessed. Milton, like More, observed the rules of the game, which allowed practices condemned in the modern literary prize-ring. He calls Salmasius a poor grammarian, a pragmatical coxcomb, a silly little scholar, a mercenary advocate, a loggerhead, a hare-brained blunderbuss, a witless brawler, a mongrel cur; he reproaches him with the domestic tyranny put upon him by that barking she-wolf, his wife, and winds up with an elaborate comparison (not wholly unfamiliar ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... so in terms which told me something that I hope above all things, and yet dare not believe, for, God knows, I am no coxcomb, Arabella. He said... but first let me tell you how I was placed. I had gone aboard his ship to demand the instant surrender of your uncle whom he held captive. He laughed at me. Colonel Bishop should be a hostage for his safety. ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... influenced by the importunity of every idle acquaintance, who may talk to her of the necessity of her daughter's being taken notice of in public, of the chances of an advantageous establishment, of the good fortune of Miss Y——, or lady Angelina X——, in meeting with a coxcomb or a spendthrift for a husband; nor will she be moved with maternal emulation when she is further told, that these young ladies owed their success entirely to the superiority of their accomplishments: she will consider, for one moment, what ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... two or three adjuncts, as Peter Kipperson, a "march of intellect" man, Erpingham, one of Spoonbill's companions in debauchery, Ellen Fitzpatrick, one of his victims, Dr. Greendale's successor, Charles Pringle; and Zephaniah Pringle, a literary coxcomb of the first order. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various
... sense of his own genius, and in a very amiable frame of mind, altogether. In this mood, he joined the family at dinner; after which meal, a few glasses of brandy added fire to the smouldering element within him, and straightway he blazed forth: a gallant, a coxcomb. In this frame of mind, he always admired himself excessively, took stock of his burly legs and brawny shoulders, and smiled sentimentally before the mirror, at ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... also was yet handsomer than he had been, more set and manly, though still he affected his coxcomb party-coloured dress with the turned-up shoes of which the points were fastened by little golden chains beneath the knee. Still he was a fine man with his roving black eyes, his loose mouth and little pointed beard from ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... complex; its analysis, I fear, may baffle us. It must have seemed to you—as it certainly seemed to Mistress Winthrop—that he made a mock of her; that in truth he was the impudent, fleering coxcomb she pronounced him, and nothing more. Not so. Mock he most certainly did; but his mockery was all aimed to strike himself on the recoil—himself and the sentiments which had sprung to being in his ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... very centre and summit of social grandeur, she will at once aspire to reign over all hearts—often because it is out of her power to be the happy queen of one. Dress and manner and coquetry are all meant to please one of the poorest creatures extant—the brainless coxcomb, whose handsome face is his sole merit; it was for such as these that women threw themselves away. The gilded wooden idols of the Restoration, for they were neither more nor less, had neither the antecedents ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... to the cigar itself. Yet, going on to describe a journey to Hastings, sitting "on the roof in front" beside an acquaintance, he says, notwithstanding the enjoyment of dashing along, anecdote and jest going merrily on, "we had the annoyance of a coxcomb perched on the box, infecting the fresh air which Heaven had sent us, with the smoke of his abominable cigar," which looks as if his real objection was to ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... fashionable society showed him many samples. Jo knew that 'young Laurence' was regarded as a most eligible parti by worldly mamas, was much smiled upon by their daughters, and flattered enough by ladies of all ages to make a coxcomb of him, so she watched him rather jealously, fearing he would be spoiled, and rejoiced more than she confessed to find that he still believed in modest girls. Returning suddenly to her admonitory tone, she said, dropping her voice, "If you must have a 'vent', Teddy, go and devote yourself to one ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... it. There's the devil upon devil. Oh, the pride and joy of heart 'twould be to me to have my son and heir resemble such a duke; to have a fleering coxcomb scoff and cry, 'Mr. your son's mighty like his Grace, has just his smile and air of's face.' Then replies another, 'Methinks he has more of the Marquess of such a place about his nose and eyes, though he has my Lord what-d'ye-call's mouth to a tittle.' Then I, to put it off as unconcerned, come ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... What springs of feeling it has opened! Goldsmith's books are influences and friends forever, yet the five thousandth copy was never announced, and Oliver Goldsmith, M. D., often wanted a dinner! Horace Walpole, the coxcomb of literature, smiled at him contemptuously from his gilded carriage. Goldsmith struggled cheerfully with his adverse fate, and died. But then sad mourners, whom he had aided in their affliction, gathered around his bed, and a lady of distinction, whom he had only dared to admire ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... since the night of Allan's party, and two of the fellows whom he met there—Armstrong and Gillespie—became his friends at College and the Howff. He swaggered before them as he had swaggered at school both in Barbie and Skeighan, and now there was no Swipey Broon to cut him over the coxcomb. Armstrong and Gillespie—though they saw through him—let him run on, for he was not bad fun when he was splurging. He found, too, when with his cronies that drink unlocked his mind, and gave a free flow to his ideas. ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... always were. Great pains were taken to form the manners of the children, and we never observed an instance of rudeness in any one of them, though they were as full of life and spirits as the wildest English school-boys. John the Chinaman afforded them much amusement: he was a great coxcomb, and therefore fair game for the boys; they used to surround him and pretend to pull his long tail; but they never actually pulled it, but merely teazed him a little, and then ran away. These little traits seem worthy of notice, as they belong to a style of education quite different ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... 'you never thought yourself old till you listened to the impudent trash of that coxcomb ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... formed to grace the pulpit, but the Shop; The 'Counter', not the 'Desk', should be his place, Who deals out precepts, as if dealing Lace; Servile in mind, from Elevation proud, In argument, less sensible than loud, Through half the continent, the Coxcomb's been, And stuns you with the Wonders he has seen: ''How' in Pompeii's vault he found the page, Of some long lost, and long lamented Sage, And doubtless he the Letters would have trac'd, Had they not ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... very hard not to color, thus forfeiting all his pretensions to the character of a self-possessed man of the world and elegant coxcomb; but this is equally forlorn with his attempt not to observe the mischievous glance and satirical lip of the ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... is there they will not choose, If only you will but oppose their choice?) Till Beppo should return from his long cruise, And bid once more her faithful heart rejoice, A man some women like, and yet abuse— A Coxcomb was he by the public voice; A Count of wealth, they said as well as quality, And in his ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... take your piercing eyes! It's hard I cannot prosper in a game That every coxcomb plays successfully. —So here you are still, though your loving ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... after his retreating figure. "You d——d, insignificant, snuffy little coxcomb! I'm a d——d sight better doctor than you are. If the Government sends you again, poking your long nose among my people, I'll make a surgical case for you to examine at home at your leisure, ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... it—in my case, Signora. Everybody knows that we have been very good friends; and that I have not been coxcomb enough to have ever hoped to be aught more to you, having been protected, as they all know, from such danger in the only way in which a man could possibly be protected from it," said Ludovico, ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... you; I see Mary in her usual nook—the recess by the old harpsichord—and my dear father bringing in this happy letter from your son! I must confess this romantic kind of fancy-sketching makes me feel rather oddly: very unlike what I felt a few months ago, when I was a mere coxcomb—indifferent, unreflecting, unappreciating, and fit for nothing better than to hold pins at my lady's toilet. Well, it is now made evident to me that we never know the blessings bestowed on us until we are separated from the possession of them. Absence ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... you have paved the way, With your confounded fantasies, to more Immoral conduct by the fancied sway Your system feigns o'er the controlless core Of human hearts, than all the long array Of poets and romancers:—You're a bore, A charlatan, a coxcomb—and have been, At best, no better ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... myself—this business of Hector and Blanche kept Spencer and me away last dispensary day; and partly it was that young coxcomb, Henry Ward, thought it not worth while to trouble me about a simple epidemic. Simple epidemic indeed!' repeated Dr. May, changing his tone from ironical mimicry to hot indignation. 'I hope he will be gratified with its simplicity! I wonder how long he would have gone on if it ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge |
