"Brag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... him!—He sailed away From a leaking ship, in Chaleur Bay,— Sailed away from a sinking wreck, With his own town's-people on her deck! "Lay by! lay by!" they called to him. Back he answered, "Sink or swim! Brag of your catch of fish again!" And off he sailed through the fog and rain! Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart By the ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... succeed in the North, and that the war will be indefinitely prolonged. I say "No," and that however mad and villainous the North is, the war will finish by reason of its not supplying soldiers. We shall see. The more they brag the more I ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... that easily enough, but you'll never live to brag about it. If the officers don't hang you, Hank Hazletine will make daylight shine through your hide! He is only ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... times I have confessed to you, talking of my talents, my utter inability to remember in any comprehensive way what I read. I can vehemently applaud, or perversely stickle, at parts; but I cannot grasp at a whole. This infirmity (which is nothing to brag of) may be seen in my two little compositions, the tale and my play, in both which no reader, however partial, can find any story. I wrote such stuff about Chaucer, and got into such digressions, quite irreducible into 1 1/5 column of a paper, that I was perfectly ashamed ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... all names can tickle the town, Anacreon, Tom Little, Tom Moore, or Tom Brown, [1]— For hang me if I know of which you may most brag, Your Quarto two-pounds, or your Twopenny ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... cards, so apparently the dog finds even an unsuccessful chase to be the second best joy he knows. Look at him, tense and motionless with excitement, as he watches the noisy chatterer overhead! No doubt the squirrel will brag to all his acquaintances of how he openly defied and triumphed ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... without knowing his parents, and without their inviting you? Don't you know what that sort of thing means out here? Chelles did it to brag about you at his club. He wants ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... many years received a yearly grant from the seducer by way of compensation for the wound to his honour, so it would seem at least from his chatter, though I believe it's only drunken talk. It's simply his brag. Besides, that sort of thing is done much cheaper. But that he has a sum of money is perfectly certain. Ten days ago he was walking barefoot, and now I've seen hundreds in his hands. His sister has fits of some sort every day, she shrieks and he 'keeps her ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... one; though, by vast odds, the most terrific of all mortal disasters have immemorially and indiscriminately befallen tens and hundreds of thousands of those who have gone upon the waters; though but a moment's consideration will teach, that however baby man may brag of his science and skill, and however much, in a flattering future, that science and skill may augment; yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom, the sea will insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest, stiffest frigate he can make; nevertheless, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... first kilt than a gentleman of education and travel and some repute for sobriety. I noticed I was opposite the house of a poor old woman they called Black Kate, whose door was ever the target in my young days for every lad that could brag of a boot-toe, and I saw that the shutter, hanging ajee on one hinge, was thrown open against the harled wall of the house. In my doublet-pocket there were some carabeen bullets, and taking one out, I let bang at the old woman's little lozens. ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... that theft is entirely within human scope. The king is barbarously murdered. In Hamlet the graceless usurping uncle declares that "such divinity doth hedge a king," that treason cannot endanger his life. But the speaker is run through the body very soon after the brag escapes ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... all egomaniacs before him. He wants to brag. We get into a Subterro Jetjeep and drive about twenty miles through the underground countryside to the entrance to a cave guarded by some extra tall Subterrors. Hitler the Third leads us into the spelunker's nightmare and we finally come ...
— Operation Earthworm • Joe Archibald
... to this figure may afford a mode of explanation in parsing, whenever they are introduced by a preposition, and not by a nominative: as, "A kind of conquest Caesar made here; but made not here his brag Of, came, and saw, and overcame"—Shak., Cymb., iii, 1. That is,—"of having come, and seen, and overcome." Here, however, by assuming that a sentence is the object of the preposition, we may suppose the pronoun I ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... including his neighbours' nerves; he has no mercy or pity or consideration for anyone serving him, and yet he's the kindest heart towards children and animals, and the good he does to them is about the only thing he don't brag about." ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... most, and they were those pretty little upstarts who talk at random, and brag about their vice, and whom one could soon not leave a leg to stand upon, were one to take the trouble, have related their impressions to me with ironical complaisance, and I found nothing in what they told me that reassured me, nor could I discover anything ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... lots of time to tell each other all they knew. Eliphalet, he got to know a good deal about the girls she went to school with, and Kitty, she learned all about his family. He didn't tell her about the title for a long time, as he wasn't one to brag. But he described to her the little old house at Salem. And one evening toward the end of the summer, the wedding-day having been appointed for early in September, she told him that she didn't want ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... Her easy rest of love and peace, I was the latest who awoke. I sighed at passion's mad increase. I strained the traitors to my heart. I said, 'We vex them; let us cease.' I would not play the common part. Tamely I heard the Southrons' brag: I said, 'Their wrongs have made them smart.' At length they struck our ancient flag,— Their flag as ours, the traitors damned!— And braved it with their patchwork-rag. I rose, when other men had calmed Their anger in the marching throng; I rose, as might a corpse embalmed, Who hears God's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... taken the mare and come over here this morning, the rascally police with their search-warrant might have been down upon Mr. Kearney without a warning. They were all stiff and cold enough at first: they are nothing to brag of in the way of cordiality even yet—Dick especially—but they have asked me to stay and dine, and, I take it, it is the right thing to do. Send me over some things to dress with—and believe me your ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... to the group of sailors, "you were precious full of your brag about climbing, and saying I couldn't. But I did, and now let's see ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... is n't a matter of geography. There's not a village in the United States that does n't have its classes. The more loudly they brag of their democracy, the greater the distance from ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge
... her peculiar institutions; as Kilo took the ever-joking Toole seriously, so she took the ever serious doctor good-naturedly, but not too seriously. He was "jist Doc Weaver," and Kilo reserved the right to laugh at him in private, and to brag about him to strangers, and they were apt to "joke" him about his beliefs. As he was sensitive and dreaded the rough raillery of his neighbors, he kept his enthusiasms to himself. He was like an overcharged ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... no telling what a fellow of Link's stamp might do. He is just fool enough to brag about what he hoped to do rather than go and do it. It's an outrage that he should ...
— Dave Porter At Bear Camp - The Wild Man of Mirror Lake • Edward Stratemeyer
... said, with his shrewd smile, "never brag of catching a fish until he is on dry ground. I've seen older folks doing that in more ways than one, and so making fools of themselves. It's no use to boast of anything until it's done, nor then, either, for it speaks ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... little valiant, great in villainy! Thou ever strong upon the stronger side! Thou fortune's champion, thou dost never fight But when her humorous ladyship is by To teach thee safety! Thou art perjured too, And sooth'st up greatness. What a fool art thou, A ramping fool; to brag, and stamp, and sweat, Upon my party! ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... have found the cheerful southern city, with its Parliament and its colleges, and all the teeming life and restless energies of the Gascon race, not unlike a kind of warmer and more brilliant Scotland, full of national brag and gallantry, a congenial sphere. He had been for a long time shedding complimentary verses, sonnets, dedications, about him after the manner of the time, serving out to everybody who was kind to him a little immortality in the shape of classic thanks or compliment: ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... stenographer in a factory that made tin cans. She liked that work. She could make her fingers dance along the keys. When she read a book at home she didn't think the writer amounted to much if he made mistakes about punctuation. Her boss was so proud of her that he would brag of her work to visitors and sometimes would go off fishing leaving the running of the business ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... much to brag on, but I could see she understood, though she only shook her head and wouldn't speak. But great Moses, she was ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... recommendation that Governor Lincoln appointed the Chief Justice—a suggestion which Governor Lincoln used to repel with great indignation. The Governor was also a good farmer, especially proud of his cattle. Each of them liked to brag of their crops and especially of the produce of their respective dairies. Governor Lincoln was once discoursing to Devens and me, in our office, of a wonderful cow of his which, beside raising an enormous calf, had produced the cream for a great quantity of butter. Mr. Devens said: ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... then tie ribbons around it, and hang it up in the parlor, and kneel down to it as a relic of the past. He says that people who have got old ruins ought to be very thankful that there is any of them left, but it's no use in them trying to fill up the missing parts with brag. ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... chain o' slavery on every citizen of this fair land. Bryant told 'em that sixteen to one would do the work, and what did they say? Huh, they said he was a fool and didn't know how to figure. I tell you if he was a fool, Solomon was a idiot. Who was the'r brag man up in Yankeedom?—why, Abe Lincoln—an' what did he ever do but set back in the White House and tell smutty jokes, while the rest o' the country was walkin' on its uppers, eatin' hardtack, sweatin' blood, an' spittin' out minnie-balls. That man"—Wrinkle swallowed as he pointed the ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... have commenced their old game of brag, by puffing their ticket as a national and conservative ticket, the very thing they denied. Now let us look into the soundness and nationality of the HEAD of the ticket. We have before us a copy of a work published in 1839, by Robert Mayo, M. D., entitled, ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... day, when the last sod was dropped into place on the roof, and Garth carried Natalie inside. Strictly considered, the house was not very much to brag about, perhaps; for it slanted this way and that like the first pothooks in a child's copybook; but Garth, fired by Natalie's enthusiastic praises, could not have been prouder if he had completed ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... her rival's picture at six hundred miles' distance. He added, too, the account of his buying her, and what he gave her, which, considering the rank of the purchaser, and the merits of the purchase as he set them forth, I think he had no great reason to brag of, when the first price, according to his report, was only one thousand ducats—a much greater proof of his economy than his passion."[118] Among many extraordinary relations and expressions his letters ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... sofas, divans, ottomans; occupying them are clusters of men, old and young, wise and simple; in their hands are cards spotted with diamonds, spades, clubs, hearts; the favorite games are whist, cribbage, and brag. Lounging in arm-chairs or sauntering among the marble-topped tables, amused with the scene, are the comparatively few, who, instead of having hands in the games, for the most part keep their hands in their pockets. These may be the philosophes. But here and there, ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... annoyed that Kalashnikov and the dark fellow Merik talked together and took no notice of him at all, behaving exactly as though he were not in the room. And he wanted to talk to them, to brag, to drink, to have a good meal, and if possible to have a little fun with Lyubka, who sat down near him half a dozen times while they were at supper, and, as though by accident, brushed against him with her handsome shoulders and passed her hands over her broad hips. She was a healthy, active ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... of those who have them brag about them," said Jimmy. "And I know that the men who work for him, from the superintendent down to the yard boy, believe in them and say so, and would tear to pieces a man who says they aren't the best. That's good enough for me. Know anything about cars? Um-m-m-mh! I reckon I don't ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... that Doria was awkwardly situated; Kheyr-ed-Din held the interior position, and that leader was a great believer in the adage that "if Brag is a good dog, Holdfast is a better." He was well aware of his numerical inferiority, and in consequence refused to listen to the frenzied appeals of the excited Moslems to be led against the Christian dogs. It may seem a contradiction ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... I was weak enough to be angry at such Events, I took care, that my Ill-humour, shou'd be as useful to the Publick, as my good cou'd have been. I ever despised undeserved Grandeur, and misapplied Power, and therefore few People in high Posts, or even Kings or Queens, or Ministers, cou'd ever brag much of my Condescension, in speaking a good Word for them to Posterity, or endeavouring to blind the Eyes of the present Times, by Printing either lies or Truths in their Favour. 'Tis true, I almost as seldom gave them any Proofs of my Spite; partly ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... not their profession. Haply some hapless man hath conscience, And for his conscience lives in beggary. They say we are a scatter'd nation: I cannot tell; but we have scambled [25] up More wealth by far than those that brag of faith: There's Kirriah Jairim, the great Jew of Greece, Obed in Bairseth, Nones in Portugal, Myself in Malta, some in Italy, Many in France, and wealthy every one; Ay, wealthier far than any Christian. I must confess we ...
— The Jew of Malta • Christopher Marlowe
... done. Seymour and the Thames squadron were to stay in the Straits and watch Parma. From every attainable source food and powder were collected for the rest—far short in both ways of what ought to have been, but, as Drake said, 'we were resolved to put on a brag and go on as if we needed nothing.' Before dawn the admiral and he were again off ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... about thet boy. 'Is father 'ad a barrer, thet were what 'is father did for a livelihood, an' 'is mother were up afore the beaks for poppin' shirts what she'd took in to wash. Well, I ain't one to brag, but my father were a 'air-dresser's assistant in Pimlico. Pretty well up, too, 'e was. The way 'e'd shive yer were sutthin' to see. Shivin'? Yer couldn't call it shivin'; it were gen'us, thet's what it were. Speccilation rooined 'im. 'E stawted a small plice of 'is own, and bust. Then 'e took ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... Major Partridge! He will talk all day if he can coax some one to listen to him. He is over there now visiting with Bob White. What those two can find to talk so much about is a mystery to me! It is real funny to listen to them! They both brag about the big things they have done or ...
— Exciting Adventures of Mister Robert Robin • Ben Field
... born weak? These people who behaved themselves and got on, he sneered, were calm, commonplace temperaments who found no difficulty in controlling their baser instincts. They did right simply because they found it easier than to do wrong. Their virtue was nothing to brag about. It was easy to be good when not exposed to temptation. But for those born with the devil in them it came hard. It was all a matter of heredity and influence. One's vices as well as one's virtues are handed down to us ready made. He had ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... Morrison o' the Morrisons had only to reach his hand to her and say, 'Coom, lass!' But noo that she is back wi' head high and notions alaft, he'd no accept her! She's nowt but a draft signed by Sham o' Shoddy and sent through the Bank o' Brag and Blaw! No! He'd no' accept her! And now back wi' ye to yer tickety-tack! I hae my orders, and the Queen o' Sheba might yammer and ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... "every one says that there's nothing you haven't gone through and nothing you haven't seen, and don't you even know what this gauze is? Will you again brag ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... anything whatever; he may be wholly useless and a cumberer of the earth; he may even be known to be a consummate scoundrel. No matter. While he can steer clear of the penitentiary his vote is as weighty as the vote of a president, a bishop, a college professor, a merchant prince. We brag of our universal, unrestricted suffrage; but we are shams after all, for we restrict when we ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... want to see the tailless monkeys," added Dwight, as he joined them. "We'll have a procession to brag of, for nearly everybody's going ashore. Mr. Malcolm's to lead the van with the children, he says, and Mrs. Campbell is to close up the rear of his section, while mother follows with ours. They've been laughing about it over there. Ah, there's Bess beckoning! Be sure and join ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... does not brag much, ye see, I kin offer him small wages," said Dan'l, with a wink. "It's kinder takin' him at his ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... like fun on a morning like this. There were plenty of big worms, too, in the old watering-pot, tough as worms should be after a good scouring in a heap of wet moss. Just another five minutes and he'd get up, and when he met Adela at breakfast he could brag about what a good one he was at early rising, and show her all ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... the devil do I care about his opinions? let him preach and stick to his controversy with Father Tom—from whom he hadn't so much to brag of—but as for you, Fergus, you are, to spake plainly, a thorough ass. What d—d stuff you have been letting out of you! Go and find, if you can, some purer world for yourself to live in, for, let me tell you, ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... these it is immature—and incidentally, untrue—for anybody to brag that an unprepared America, single-handed, and with one hand tied behind its back, can hold off the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the capital just at the turn of doubling? Soon it grew irksome even to think of you; yet still when I did, I said, 'Life is long, I shall win riches; he shall share them some day or other!'—Basta, basta!—what idle twaddle or hollow brag all ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... saying with the Spaniards, Artes inter haeredes non dividi. {25b} Yet these have inherited their fathers' lying, and they brag of it. He is a narrow-minded man that affects a triumph in any glorious study; but to triumph in a lie, and a lie themselves have forged, is frontless. Folly often goes beyond her ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... began to drive her the very first week she was here. Gilbert is my sister Julia's son, and a fine young fellow he is. It ain't good manners to brag of your own relations, but I'm always forgetting and doing it. Gil was a great pet of mine. He was so bright and nice-mannered everybody liked him. Him and Anne were a fine-looking couple, Nora May. Not but what they had their shortcomings. Anne's nose was ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... to bear the brunt, And check the German Kaiser's stunt, We still can brag, and wave the flag, But send the British ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens
... at billiards as well as most men. Look here now! Daly's dead. We can't bring him to life again, can we? If you shoot me, you'll be nothing to the good, and have every spare man in the three colonies at your heels. This is a game of brag, though the stakes are high. I'll play a card. Listen. You shall have a hundred fivers—500 Pounds in notes—by to-morrow at four o'clock, if you'll let Mrs. Knightley and the doctor ride to Bathurst for the money. What do ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... ruffled pork-butcher. 'Our best men never got it out of books. Now, you tell me—you've got a spiflicating style of talk about you—no brag, you tell me—course, the best man wins, if you mean that: now, if I was one of 'em, and I fetches you a bit of a flick, how then? Would you be ready to step ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... my nineteenth year," said Simeon. "I'm no' big for my age, I ken; but I can throw ony man that I get grups on, and haud ony beast whatsomever. I can ploo wi' the best an' maw—Weel, I'm no' gaun to brag, but ye can ask Maister Golder—that is an elder o' your ain, an' comes at least twa Sabbaths afore every Communion ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... reform a man from without. Natural selection will have its way: the shiftless and the lazy must go to the wall. If you could kill them off, now, that might do some good. The class that needs help is not like us—not that we are anything to brag of: they've not had our chance. It's very well to say, give 'em a chance; but that's no use unless they take it, which they won't. 'Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow.' If they wouldn't, you are bound to respect their right of choice. ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... the medal of Congress," replied Hal warmly. "A soldier who wears that doesn't need to brag." ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... evacuation, took over all the equipment and installations the Fenris Company had abandoned, and tried to make a living out of the planet. At least, they stayed alive. There are now twenty-odd thousand of us, and while we are still very poor, we are very tough, and we brag ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... as at Pignerol, were cut off from all communication with each other. Says Saint-Mars, 'Since receiving your letter I have warded the pair as strictly and exactly as I did M. Fouquet and M. Lauzun, who cannot brag that he sent out or received any intelligence. Night and day two sentinels watch their tower; and my own windows command a view of the sentinels. Nobody speaks to my captives but myself, my lieutenant, ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... heard of an old saying at my home," I replied, "which ran something like this, 'Brag is a good dog, but ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... Phocion, who did not speak at all, was a great deal nearer hitting the mark than Demosthenes. (Laughter.) He used to tell the Athenians—"You can't fight Philip. You have not the slightest chance with him. He is a man who holds his tongue; he has great disciplined armies; he can brag anybody you like in your cities here; and he is going on steadily with an unvarying aim towards his object: and he will infallibly beat any kind of men such as you, going on raging from shore to shore with all that rampant nonsense." Demosthenes ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... and said the same in fewer words, and so I bid them good-morning. I told them, too, that if some of those people who made so much noise didn't look out, they would get turned off the place, just as Venus and her gang got turned off last year. The fact is, they are trying to play brag, as such people often will; but they will all go to work in a few days, ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... tell Allee and when we go to bed we'll just remind the angels that we don't need so much looking after now that we're living here. I'll never forget how s'prised Hec Abbott was when he found out that we'd all been 'dopted together. I wonder what Hec is doing about now? He can't brag any more about the good times they have at his house. We are just—what in the world is that coming ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... TO BOUNCE. To brag or hector; also to tell an improbable story. To bully a man out of any thing. The kiddey bounced the swell of the blowen; the lad bullied the gentleman ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... the little lad. "Not much to brag of, however. Merely bobbish, pretty bobbish. In answer to your second question, I take pleasure in informing you," he added, "that I ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... Christian humility to his fellow townspeople, had yet so much human heat and pride glowing like embers in his old heart as to feel strong within him a bitter jealousy and sense of wrong toward whatever young upstarts should intrude themselves, and venture to brag of a love for his flesh and blood which might claim precedence over his own. Doubtless the feeling was unworthy of him, and he would, when the time came, play his part generously and well; but, so long as the matter ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... which they borrow from one another, and the use to which they put them. Thus the French, borrowing 'hablar' from the Spaniards, with whom it means simply to speak, give it in 'habler' the sense of to brag; the Spaniards paying them off in exactly their own coin, for of 'parler' which in like manner is but to speak in French, they make 'parlar,' which means to prate, to chat. [Footnote: See Darmesteter, The Life of ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... in Canada, the land beloved of God; We are the pulse of Canada, its marrow and its blood: And we, the men of Canada, can face the world and brag That we were born in ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... the tense wait for "Fritz's master stroke." You seldom hear them talk of their "bad luck," And suffering has not spoiled their ready wit, And oh! you'd hardly doubt their fighting pluck, When each new operation shows their grit; Who never brag of blows for England struck, But only yearn to "get ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 29, 1919 • Various
... Theodore Hook much nowadays? Does the generation which loves to follow the trail with Allan Quatermain, and to ride with a Splendid Spur, does it call at all for the humours of the days of the Regency? Do those who have laughed over "The Wrong Box," ever laugh over Jack Brag? Do the students of Mr. Rudyard Kipling know anything of "Gilbert Gurney?" Somebody started the theory some time ago, that this was not a laughter-loving generation, that it lacked high spirits. It has been maintained that if a writer appeared now, with the rollicking ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... of a mind that's a sewer; Well, 'e knows what it is, for I'll lay 'e's bin there. And you'd make a 'orse into cat'smeat on skewer. My eye, but just ain't you a nice-spoken pair! I ain't goin' to foller you two like a shadder, Your 'eads is a darned sight too swelled up with brag. If you don't want to bust and go pop like a bladder, Why you'd best take my tip—put 'em both in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 14, 1892 • Various
... out of the room which Betty and I share, after putting away my things, nurse opened the nursery door and beckoned me in: "Miss Nannie," she said impressively, "I'm kinder worried 'bout your pa. He's never had no appetite to brag of; but for a week past he's been eatin' like a bird. Mornin' after mornin' he ain't touched nothin' but his tea, an' I'm afraid something's wrong. I don't want to frighten you, my dear, but I thought by ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... it ain't no more but fair that he should be allowed to speak for himself. Now if I say that accordin' to the best o' my knowledge and belief, what I offer you is the right kind o' help, you won't think it's brag or bluster, I hope?' ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... for he had all along believed that a fellow who could lift his hand to strike a small girl must be a coward at heart, no matter how much he might bluster and brag. ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... road to be looked to: the woods beyond the blacksmith's shop that uster be; the fringe of alder and buckeye by the crossing below your house—p'ints where they kin fetch you without a show. Thar's two ways o' meetin' them thar. One way ez to pull up and trust to luck and brag. The other way is to whip up and yell, and send the whole six ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... said the brown rat. "It's awful the way you people out here in the country brag about relationship. ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... Hannah Straight Tree, "hear her brag because she has a white memory! If the teacher praised me, I should be ...
— Big and Little Sisters • Theodora R. Jenness
... to observe in the shy philosopher a temperament which must have commended itself to Mr Arnold almost as strongly as his literary quality, and very closely indeed connected with that—the temperament of equity, of epieikeia, of freedom from swagger and brag and self-assertion. And here, once more, the things receive precisely their right treatment, the treatment proportioned and adjusted at once to their own value and nature and to the use which their critic is intending to make of them. For it is one of ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... last men in the world to brag was Lieutenant Carroway. Nothing but the great thirst of this morning, and strong necessity of quenching it, could ever have led him to speak about himself, and remember his own little exploits. But the farmer was pleased, and said, "Tell us ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... man; "I aint no brag Bible scholar." He put on a look of droll modesty. "I used to could say the ten commandments of the decalogue, oncet, and I still tries to keep 'em, in ginerally. There's another burnt house. That's the ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... when he runs and kills his quarry with a club. Here we have the essence of the matter. The hunter is proudest of his achievement in which he has not had the help of deadly weapons. Unconsciously he will brag and glow over that conquest wherein lay greatest peril to him—when he had nothing but his naked hands. What a hot gush of blood bursts over him! He goes back to his barbarian state when a man only felt. The savage ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... is the weak people who bluster like the northwind, and storm and brag. Strong people are usually quiet. There is an old saying that "if you are right you can afford to keep your temper, and if you are wrong you cannot afford to lose it." Be gentle. You will win more that way than ...
— Fifty-Two Story Talks To Boys And Girls • Howard J. Chidley
... and v.), used affectedly, like "humour," in many senses, often very vaguely and freely ridiculed by Jonson; humour, disposition, whims, brag(ging), hector(ing), etc. ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... on March 2, 1682, the two valets, who had hitherto occupied one chamber at Exiles as at Pignerol, were cut off from all communication with each other. Says Saint-Mars, "Since receiving your letter I have warded the pair as strictly and exactly as I did M. Fouquet and M. Lauzun, who cannot brag that he sent or received any intelligence. Night and day two sentinels watch their tower; and my own windows command a view of the sentinels. Nobody speaks to my captives but myself, my lieutenant, their confessor, and the doctor, who lives eighteen ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... five hundred knights own him lord." "I will encounter him," said Sir Gareth; "for if he be good knight and true as ye say, he will scarce set on me with all his following; and man to man, I fear him not." "Fie!" said the damsel, "for a dirty knave, ye brag loud. And even if ye overcome him, his might is as nothing to that of the Red Knight who besieges my lady sister. So get ye gone while ye may." "Damsel," said Sir Gareth, "ye are but ungentle so to rebuke me; for, knight or knave, I have done you good service, nor will ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... fair Leslie, Return to Caledonie! That we may brag we hae a lass There's nane again ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... got any more like him?" mused Mr. Clodd. "Could do with a few about this neighbourhood. What is it you want to say about him, then? Merely to brag ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... lady. And I must say, you can keep on slicing off nice little carrot-slices of guineas and doubloons for an extraordinarily inexhaustible long time. And innumerable asses can collect themselves nice little heaps of golden carrot-slices, and then lift up their heads and brag over them with fairly pan-demoniac yells of gratification. Of course I don't see any green in your eye, dear Libertas, unless it is the smallest glint from the carrot-tips. The gleam in your eye ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... gold and silver, man and woman, For things that's raided, made, dug, or human, 'Meriky's the coming nation; She's-bound to conquer all creation! Per'aps you call this brag and bluster; No, 'taint nuther, for we muster The best of brain, the mighty dollar; We'll lead on, let ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... natives whom he did not appreciate. Rightly or wrongly, he took a strong dislike for Brother Jonathan as Brother Jonathan existed, in the rough, five and forty years ago. He was angered by that young gentleman's brag, offended by the rough familiarity of his manners, indignant at his determination by all means to acquire dollars, incensed by his utter want of care for literature and art, sickened by his tobacco-chewing and expectorations. So when Dickens gets to "Niagara ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... responded Baldy, cheerfully. "I don't blame him a mite. I brag on the spunk of him. Him an' me'll git on ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... "All right, Uncle Sam, brag away. Everything over there is ten times bigger and better than here—the apples are the size of pumpkins, and the brooks are so wide you can't see across them, and it takes you years to ride round a single farm! We know! You needn't ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... hers, and his touch renewed the sense of marvelling exultation which the deliberate survey of their adventure always roused in her.... It was characteristic that she merely added, in her steady laughing tone: "Or, not counting the flat—for I hate to brag—just consider the others: Violet Melrose's place at Versailles, your aunt's villa ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... but a tale of outside scribes, to explain the taking off between night and morning of a perfectly well man (or divinity)—not sanctified with official and Tokugawal benediction; and no wonder. The tale and the event was not one to brag of. And the lady ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... pour soft speeches into another's ear; and the Sarpent has keen senses. He knows I love him, and that I speak well of him behind his back; but a Delaware has modesty in his inmost natur', though he will brag like a sinner when ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... brag about 'home brewing' any more," said another, "or 'home tailoring,' or 'home shoemaking.' Why all this talk ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... "Brag no more, Old England; consider you are but an island! Order back your broken battalions! home, and repent in ashes! Long enough have your hired tories across the sea forgotten the Lord their God, and bowed down to Howe ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... the Old Testament, and found pleasure in thinking of the objections which were contained in them. Also, I read some of Hume's Essays; and perhaps that on Miracles. So at least I gave my Father to understand; but perhaps it was a brag. Also, I recollect copying out some French verses, perhaps Voltaire's, in denial of the immortality of the soul, and saying to myself something like "How ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... are foolish people who assume that gushing women are shallow, but this is jumping at conclusions. A recent novel gives us a picture of "a tall soldier," who, in camp, was very full of brag and bluster. We are quite sure that when the fight comes on this man with the lubricated tongue will prove an arrant coward; we assume that he will run at the first smell of smoke. But we are wrong—he stuck; and when the flag was carried down in the rush, he ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... is the only man that finds good in it which others brag of, but doe not, for it is meate, drinke, and clothes to him. No man opens his ware with greater seriousness, or challenges your judgment more in the operation. His Shop is the Randenvous of spitting, where men dialogue with their noses, ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... 'ad laid one," he replied. "And it began to brag so much about it that I couldn't stand it, so I took the egg, and it looked so lonely all by itself in my 'and that I took the others to ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... of his valor. As soon as she had praised my handful of flowers, my pocketful of nuts, or little string of fish they palled upon me and I began immediately to feel an uneasy sense of disappointment, of disillusion, knowing I had miserably failed. The bombastic brag to my mother and her praise were a kind of mockery and falsehood. Illusion followed illusion, defeat followed defeat, yet the morrow was ever to be their healer and compensation. How often have I been soothed by the waveless waters of the Charles river, its whispering ripples scarcely ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... seemed to me anything to brag of. Dad says the Spanish-American War grew a crop of newspaper-made heroes, manufactured by reporters who really took more risks and showed more nerve ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... big guns under a mattress of boughs, or a painted canvas made to represent the earth, so that flying scouts above can't see where the battery is located. Well, perhaps now Harmony, in making all this brag is only trying to hide their gap. Camaflouge they call it, I believe. But we'll proceed to see what Parsons has got up his sleeve. You watch me get him to guessing. If he gets in the way of the cannonball I shoot ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton
... down there," said an experienced orchardist to me the other day. We were talking about the recently started theory that the best bearing orchards are to be found on the low lands of the prairies. "You just wait and see if these brag orchards ever bear another crop! It will be as it was after the severe winter of 1874 and '75, when the following autumn many of our orchards bore so profusely. The succeeding year the majority of the trees were as dead as smelts, and the balance never ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... as your master, who is? Am I in the habit of keeping any of my harmless fellow-creatures at a distance? I despise the cant of modern Liberalism; but it's not the less true that I have, all my life, protested against the inhuman separation of classes in England. We are, in that respect, brag as we may of our national virtue, the most unchristian people ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... little better, even if it's nothing to brag about," he told her. "Sit over there at one side so that the men can crawl in past you. I'll need ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... relief to have some one admit that Chicago is in the East," he laughed. "No, I don't brag about the West. It's a good country, and it will be better when we have approximated more to Eastern conditions. We are undeveloped as ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... the river as fast as they can," said Willet, "but they'll do no more business with us. I don't want to brag, but you can't find three better paddlers in the wilderness than we are, and with a mile start we ought soon to leave behind any number of warriors who have to run through the woods and follow the windings ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... have your beer because you like it. The whisky was only brag. And if you and me are to remain friends, Mr Gilbey, youll get up ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... 'You needn't brag about it,' returned Fledgeby, disappointed in his desire to heighten the contrast between his bed and the streets. 'But you're always bragging about something. Got the ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... it bein' my opinion that where a man's a born gentleman he's got a heap of reason fo' to be grateful but none to brag," said Cavendish. ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... of the motives that stimulates them;—the eclat of having made the largest crop with a given number of hands, is also a powerful stimulant; the southern newspapers, at the crop season, chronicle carefully the "cotton brag," and the "crack cotton picking," and "unparalleled driving," &c. Even the editors of professedly religious papers, cheer on the melee and sing the triumphs of the victor. Among these we recollect the celebrated Rev. J.N. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society |
