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Braggart

noun
1.
A very boastful and talkative person.  Synonyms: blowhard, boaster, bragger, line-shooter, vaunter.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Braggart" Quotes from Famous Books



... 29, 1841, Henry A. Wise uttered "a motley compound of eloquence and folly, of braggart impudence and childish vanity, of self-laudation and Virginian narrow-mindedness." After him Hubbard, of Alabama, "began grunting against the tariff." Three days later Black, of Georgia, "poured forth his black bile" for an hour and a half. The next week ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse

... people hardening to Spartan lineaments in the fire, iron men to meet disaster, worshippers of a discerned God of Laws, and just men too, thinking to do justice; he has Bull on the eye, the alternately braggart and poltroon, sweating in labour that he may gorge the fruits, graceless to a scoffer. And this is the creature to whose tail he is tied! Hereditary hatred is approved by critical disgust. Some spirited brilliancy, some persistent generosity (other ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... way of holding your own, and still you never thrust yourself forward, which is something I cannot understand, for, as a rule, if a person does not push himself right ahead, he does not get there. Modesty may be all right, but, in most cases, the modest fellow gets left. Not that I believe in the braggart and blowhard, but a chap must have nerve to put himself ahead if he wants to keep in the game. I have seen lots of inferior individuals get a start on those with ability simply because they had the gall to sail ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish

... Impious braggart, you forget; God is not your conscript yet; You shall learn in dumb amaze That His ways are not your ways, That the mire through which you trod Is not the high white ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke

... his laugh like a stallion's neigh, shouted at the top of his voice and made terrifying gestures: but he only half believed what he was saying: it was all for the pleasure of talking, giving orders, being active: he was a braggart of violence. He knew the cowardice of the middle-classes through and through, and he loved terrorizing them by showing that he was stronger than they: he was quite ready to admit as much to Christophe, and to laugh over it. Graillot criticized everything, ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... had been gathering round her until at last, formed into a faction, they gave themselves out as the Queen's party, and by adopting a high-flown, turgid, and mysterious style of phraseology, and assuming bombastic and braggart airs of authority, coupled with an affectation of capacity and profundity, obtained for themselves from the wits of the Court and city the nickname of The Importants, under which they figured until absorbed a few ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... the Cambridge farce or comedy on contemporary literature, the Return from Parnassus (1602?). The University wits laugh at Shakespeare,—not an university man, as the favourite poet, in his Venus and Adonis, of a silly braggart ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang

... interest that is due to her." Not since Saul and the men of Israel were in the valley of Elah fighting with the Philistines has so unexpected a champion arisen. With brush and pencil this Dutch painter will do even as David did with the smooth stone out of the brook: he will destroy the braggart Goliath, who, strong in his own might, defies the forces of ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers

... braggart," said the glover in high wrath; "thy loves and thy battles are alike apocryphal. If thou must needs lie, which I think is thy nature, canst thou invent no falsehood that may at least do thee some credit? Do I not see through thee, as I could see the light through ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... southern ones are cowards; there is, however, great danger here in embroiling yourself with such characters, the pistol and bowie knife being instantly resorted to if the quarrel becomes serious. I saw this braggart on several occasions afterwards, but he evidently kept aloof, and was disinclined to venture in the part of the room I occupied. I ascertained that he kept a dry goods store in King-street, and was a boisterous fellow, often involved ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell

... no evidence to convict the poor soul, suspicion, that is worse than conviction, must so fix upon him that he's afraid to sleep his nights in his bed at home, but must go where never a braggart loon ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... and Moth.] In the folios the direction is, enter Braggart and Moth, and at the beginning of every speech of Armado stands Brag, both in this and the foregoing scene between him and his boy. The other personages of this play are likewise noted by their characters as often as by their names. All this confusion ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson

... ARMA'DO (Don), a pompous, fantastical Spaniard, a military braggart in a state of peace, as Parolles (3 syl.) was in war. Boastful but poor; a coiner of words, but very ignorant; solemnly grave, but ridiculously awkward; majestical in gait, but of very low propensities.—Shakespeare, Love's Labour ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... deed, we should say, is prefaced by Grettir's first dealings with the supernatural, which characterise this Saga, and throw a strange light on the more ordinary matters throughout. The slaying of the bearserks is followed by a feud which Grettir has on his hands for the slaying of a braggart who insulted him past bearing, and so great the feud grows that Grettir at last finds himself at enmity with Earl Svein, the ruler of Norway, and, delivered from death by his friends, yet has to leave the land and betake himself to Iceland again. Coming ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris

... receives the accolade from Beranger. The Gazette—the hypocritical Gazette de France—now yearns for republican state forms, universal franchise, primary meetings, et cetera. It is amusing to see how these disguised priestlings now play the bully-braggart in the language of Sans-culottism, how fiercely they coquet with the red Jacobin cap, yet are ever and anon afflicted with the thought that they might forgetfully have put on in its place the red cap of a prelate; they take for an instant from ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... braggart! With this form I tear off the mask which belied my courage. Vengeance is at hand, and ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger

... the prominent terrorists had settled profitably on the offices which Bonaparte had multiplied throughout France, and were therefore dumb: but some of the less favoured ones, angered by the stealthy advance of autocracy, wove a plot for the overthrow of the First Consul. Chief among them were a braggart named Demerville, a painter, Topino Lebrun, a sculptor, Ceracchi, and Arena, brother of the Corsican deputy who had shaken Bonaparte by the collar at the crisis of Brumaire. These men hit upon the notion that, with the aid of one man of action, they could make away ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... were brought to give in their adhesion to their old master. Liberal promises, indeed, had been made by the emperor, in the name of his grandson Charles, who had already been made to assume the title of King of Castile. But the promises of the imperial braggart passed lightly with the more considerate Castilians, who knew how far they usually outstripped his performance, and who felt, on the other hand, that their true interests were connected with those of a prince, ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott

... praise-pipes of babes and sucklings," answered Gibbie; "but it does not follow that they can give advice. Don't you remember your mother saying that the stripling David was enough to kill a braggart giant, but a sore-tried man was wanted to ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... that time in Avignon a man who controlled the populace. All these terrible leaders of the Midi have acquired such fatal celebrity that it suffices to name them for every one, even the least educated, to know them. This man was Jourdan. Braggart and liar, he had made the common people believe that it was he who had cut off the head of the governor of the Bastille. So they called him Jourdan, Coupe-tete. That was not his real name, which was Mathieu Jouve. Neither was he a Provencal; he came ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... men Who sought to kindle flames of border war Have in confusion failed yet, once again, Their braggart plans dissolved in ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke

... appear before him, and the prince entered the royal justice chamber with the air of a braggart, smiling contemptuously at the learned judges who were seated to right and left of his majesty, ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa

... Prussian and Anti-Prussian alike, flung up their caps, with unanimous LEBE-HOCH, at the news of Rossbach, has often been remarked; and indeed is still almost touching to see. The perhaps bravest Nation in the world, though the least braggart, very certainly EIN TAPFERES VOLK (as their Goethe calls them); so long insulted, snubbed and trampled on, by a luckier, not a braver:—has not your exultant Dauphiness got a beautiful little dose administered her; and is gone off in ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle

... be all one,' retorted Gotthold roughly. 'When I see a man, come to years of wisdom, who speaks in double-meanings and is the braggart of his vices, I spit on the other side. "You, my friend," say I, "are not even a gentleman." Well, ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Enemies called them maudlin and hypocritical, these tears; but that was nowise the complete account of them. On the whole, there did conspicuously lie a dash of ostentation, a self-consciousness apt to become loud and braggart, over all he said and did and felt: this was the alloy of the man, and you had to be thankful for the abundant gold ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... of their boastings, with the shouting of their own braggart ineptitudes, they hypnotize themselves so thoroughly that they are quite unable to hear the counsel that sane wisdom whispers ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke

... sister to 'Terrible', seventy-four, (Yo ho! for the swing of the sea!) And ye sank her in fathoms a thousand or more (Alas! for the might of the sea!) Ye taunt me and sing me her fate for a sign! What harm can ye wreak more on me or on mine? Ho braggart! I care not for boasting of thine — A fig for ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae

... universal cockiness, a rise in pretensions, a comforting feeling that the Republic was a success, and with it, its every citizen. This change made itself quickly obvious, and even odious, in all the secular relations of life. The American became a sort of braggart playboy of the western world, enormously sure of himself and ludicrously contemptuous of all other men. And on the ghostly side there appeared the same accession of confidence, the same sure assumption of authority, though at first less self-evidently and offensively. The ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken

... rather for distribution than for concentration. The party so formed had, indeed, little ground save personal animosity upon which to fight; and its ablest exertions could only seize upon a doubtful insult to a braggart sea-captain as the pretext of the war it was Walpole's ambition no less than policy to avoid. From 1726 until 1735 the guiding spirit of the party was Bolingbroke; but in the latter year he quarrelled with Pulteney, ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski

... to-morrow at the latest. You remember that we have challenged the Count; to fight him is my affair, and I have sent a challenge. Since duelling is prohibited in Lithuania, I am going to the borders of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw; the Count, of course, is a braggart, but he does not lack courage, and will appear without fail at the appointed place. We will settle accounts; and, if God grants me his blessing, I will punish him, and then will swim over the Lososna, where the ranks of my brothers await me. I have heard ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz

... not distinguish a word, his talk was braggart, domineering, and there was a strong flavor of drink in its composition. But even so, there was a relentless ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum

... preparation for war is included in them. He who is blinded by the semblance of power and cannot resolve to act, will never be able to make political preparations for the inevitable war with any success. "The braggart feebleness which travesties strength, the immoral claim which swaggers in the sanctity of historical right, the timidity which shelters its indecision behind empty and formal excuses, never were more despised than by the great Prussian King," so H. v. Treitschke ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi

... stupid excuse was even more degrading! In wine is truth, and the truth had all come out, "that is, all the uncleanness of his coarse and envious heart"! And would such a dream ever be permissible to him, Razumihin? What was he beside such a girl—he, the drunken noisy braggart of last night? Was it possible to imagine so absurd and cynical a juxtaposition? Razumihin blushed desperately at the very idea and suddenly the recollection forced itself vividly upon him of how he had said last night on the stairs that the landlady ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... the object of his dutiful devotion. She disdained the attentions of the most potent prince if his addresses were not honorable. Nor would she bestow her love on one of whom she was not proud. She would not marry a coward or a braggart, even if he were the owner of ten thousand acres. The knight was encouraged to pay his address to any lady if he was personally worthy of her love, for chivalry created a high estimate of individual merit. The feudal lady ignored all degrees of wealth within her ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord

... consciously or otherwise, put a curse on everything he touches? Doctor Bataille affirms it; indeed this quality of malediction has been specially dispensed to the nation of heretics by God himself; so says Doctor Bataille. Since the British braggart began to embattle Gibraltar, having thieved it from Catholic Spain, a wind of desolation breathes over the whole country. An inscrutable providence, of which our witness is the mouthpiece, has elected to set apart this rock in order that the devil and ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite

... battle of Queenston Heights Sheaffe succeeded Brock in command of the British, and Smyth succeeded Van Rensselaer in command of the Americans. Sheaffe was a harsh martinet and a third-rate commander. Smyth, a notorious braggart, was no commander at all. He did, however, succeed in getting Sheaffe to conclude an armistice that fully equalled Prevost's in its disregard of British interests. After making the most of it for a month he ended it on November 19, and began manoeuvring round ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood

... but fair," answered Prince John, "and it shall not be refused thee. If thou dost beat this braggart, Hubert, I will fill the bugle with ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker

... years ago Mr. Edward Everett came up from the wilds of Devonshire to study law with Braggart and Pushem, in Chancery Lane. He was placed to board, by a prudent mother, with a ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various

... men, how he himself—as witness his sword "packed like a hand-saw"—had kept at bay and put to flight now two, anon four, and then seven, and finally eleven of his assailants. We all can see, too, the roguish twinkle in Prince Hal's eyes as the braggart knight embellishes his lying tale with every fresh sentence, and are as nonplussed as he when, the plot discovered, Falstaff finds a way to take credit for his cowardice. Who would not forgive ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... shepherd whom he saw, "Pray show me, man, the robber's place, And I'll have justice in the case." "'Tis on this mountain side," The shepherd man replied. "The tribute of a sheep I pay, Each month, and where I please I stray." Out leap'd the lion as he spake, And came that way with agile feet. The braggart, prompt his flight to take, Cried, "Jove, ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine

... love—no, not that; I was going to kill for hate. And while I never had killed a man, and in my heart of hearts did not wish to kill a man, since I had to kill one, named Daniel, even though he was a bully, a braggart and an infernal over-stepper it was pleasanter to think that I should kill him in hot blood rather than ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin

... darkness into the light at that moment, looking burly, and insolent, and braggart, as was ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell

... Democratic leaders smiled a languid, cowardly assent, and let the enemy prepare for war. And war came. It might have been prevented; it might, beyond all doubt, have been limited and crushed; but the hand of the braggart South had been so long on the throat of the doughfaces, that they dared not move, and the doughfaces were in power. The country at large has had to pay dearly for that old doughface love for the South; it is paying every day in lives ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... be it observed in passing); and, placing these typified traits in juxtaposition in their conflict and contrast, struck the spark of comedy. Downright, as his name indicates, is "a plain squire"; Bobadill's humour is that of the braggart who is incidentally, and with delightfully comic effect, a coward; Brainworm's humour is the finding out of things to the end of fooling everybody: of course he is fooled in the end himself. But it was not Jonson's theories alone that made the ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson

... foes, came upon me to eat up my flesh, they stumbled and fell' (Psalm xxvii. 2). Is it fanciful to hear in that triumphant chant an echo of Goliath's boast about giving his flesh to the fowls and the beasts, and a vision of the braggart as he tottered and lay prostrate? Observe, too, the contemptuous reiteration of 'the Philistine,' which occurs six times in the four verses (48-51). National feeling speaks in that. There is triumph in the sarcastic repetition of the dreaded name in such a connection. This was what one of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... ruler am I to this people, Their tongues are all too bold—nor have they yet Been tamed to due submission, as they shall be. I must take order for the remedy; I will subdue this stubborn mood of theirs, This braggart spirit of freedom I will crush, I will proclaim a new law through the land; ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

... prowesses, and supremacy in his craft: his inmost heart says to him, "Leave thy friends to speak of these; if possible, thy enemies to speak of these; but at all events, thy friends!" He feels that he is already a poor braggart; fast hastening to be a falsity ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... with some ill-gotten gold," said Miguel, sullenly, yet with unmistakable fear of the old man. "Besides, it was only to frighten him, the braggart. But since thou fearest to touch ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte

... speak truth, cousin, I do not feel in any very gentle frame of mind," rejoined the squire; "my ire has been roused by this insolent braggart, my blood is up, and I long ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... not undertake—or, undertaking, cannot perfect. But in this I have imitated their folly, brave Saracen, that in talking to thee of what thou canst not comprehend, I have, even in speaking most simple truth, fully incurred the character of a braggart in thy eyes; so, I pray you, let ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... weapon raised. The astonished ruffian hesitated, and then fell back a step. She followed. She backed him step by step into the middle of the bar-room, and then, while the wondering crowd closed up and gazed, she gave him such another tongue-lashing as never a cowed and shamefaced braggart got before, perhaps! As she finished and retired victorious, a roar of applause shook the house, and every man ordered "drinks for the crowd" in one and the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... the starry wing, that canst not soar, Confused power, still seeking, still unblest; For ever clutching to a braggart breast The hope portentous and the worldling's lore. Furiously futile, with a raucous roar Thy dizzy moments mock th' eternal quest; To feverish ends, by factions fierce distrest, Toiling, ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth

... was the companion of bullies and boors. He shared their work and their sports, but he never stooped to their vulgarity. He very seldom drank with them, and they never heard him speak an oath. He could throw the stoutest in a wrestling match, and was ready, when brought to it, to whip any insolent braggart who made cruel use of his strength. He never flinched from hardship or danger, yet his heart was as soft and tender as a woman's. The great gentle giant had a feeling of sympathy for every living creature. He was not ashamed to rock a cradle, or to carry a pail of water or an armful of wood ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... during the war, as will be seen from the following instance. There lived at Bucharest a certain Lieut.-Colonel Prince Sturdza, who was a noted braggart and brawler and an inveterate enemy of Austria-Hungary. I did not know him personally, and there was no personal reason for him to begin one day to abuse me publicly in the papers as being an advocate of the Monarchy. I naturally took not the ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin

... was no braggart, has put it on record that his conception of history was more just than that of Hume, Robertson, Voltaire, and Gibbon. It is perfectly true that his conception was different from theirs, his execution was different, and he does not address ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison

... fellow they say, "He hoert de Flegn hosten," "He hears the flies coughing." If a man is full of great schemes, he is told, "In Gedanken foert de Bur ok in't Kutsch." "In thought the peasant, too, drives in a coach." A man who boasts is asked, "Pracher! haest ok Lues, oder schuppst di man so?" "Braggart! have you really lice, or do you only scratch yourself as ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... art but a great braggart; but get your way, I will find out the truth by myself. Come now, answer me clearly, if you do not wish me to dye your skin red. Will the Great King send us gold? (Pseudartabas makes a negative sign.) Then our ambassadors are seeking to deceive us? (Pseudartabas signs affirmatively.) These ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... sides. Their tight leather belts held many a knife or clumsy pistol. Their walk on the street was a reckless swagger; and a listener who could understand French could catch in their loud conversation many a scornful sneer or braggart defiance ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... and body, as he watched his haphazard audience follow him in his moods and changes, ran the quiet magic of Art Satisfied. It is a noble braggart madness, this glorification of a cheap art by ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various

... Raymond, peppy jade? The braggart Lew, the simple Joe? And where the Irish servant maid That Jimmie Russell used to show? Charles Sweet, who tore the paper snow? Ben Harney's where? And Artie Hall? Nash Walker, Darktown's grandest beau? Into the ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams

... Palmyre's fate more satisfactorily, yet he could not forego an opportunity to indulge his pride by following up the threat he had hung over Agricola to kill whosoever should give Palmyre to a black man. He referred the subject and the would-be purchaser to him. It would open up to the old braggart a line of retreat, thought the ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... at the time with M. de Saintonge, and he muttered, with a sneer, that it was not difficult to see the end, or that within the year the young braggart would sink to be a gaming-house bully. I said nothing, but I confess that I thought otherwise; the lad's disposition of his money and his provision for the future seeming to me so remarkable as to set ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman

... my drawing-room." And she was almost frightened by the thought that that skull opposite to her was absolutely impenetrable, and that it would go down to the grave unpierced with all its collection of ideas intact and braggart. ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett

... him confess that his own Casildea was more beautiful by far than the La Mancha knight's Dulcinea. Don Quixote suppressed a scornful smile that threatened to betray him, and controlled the feelings that the boasting errant's words provoked, while wondering at the braggart's audacity. He slyly expressed a doubt, however, that the valiant knight Don Quixote of La Mancha had let himself be vanquished by any living being. The Knight of the Grove then gave a description of Don Quixote which in every ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... has fallen off, and when they have been behind the scenes and found how bare and gloomy was the framework of the scene they admired. All illusions may be gone; the hero may have sunk into the cowardly braggart; the saint into the hypocritical sinner; the noble aspirant into a man whose mouth alone utters but empty words which his heart can never feel; but still true love remains, "nor alters where it alteration finds." The duration of this passion, the constancy ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... Shall the braggart shout For some blind glimpse of Freedom, link itself, Through madness, hated by the wise, to law, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... a swaggering, braggart air, "we're going to give the rebels the almightiest thrashing they've had yet! To wade in their blood as deep as I've waded to-night in this mud and water, ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge

... I accuse wise Laska, Whose words find access to a monarch's ear, Of a base, braggart lie? It must have been Her spirit that appeared to me. But haply 170 I come too late? It has itself delivered ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... "How now, braggart? What evil occupation brings thee about my house? What unlucky hankering, sirrah, brings thee, I say, a-robbing of my grounds and poultry-yards? Methinks thou hast but a sorry employment ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... characters of the Parasite and the Captain. If this is a fault, the fault is the ignorance of the Poet; not that he intended to be guilty of theft. That so it is, you will now be enabled to judge. The Colax is {a Play} of Menander's; in it there is Colax, a Parasite, and a braggart Captain: he does not deny that he has transferred these characters into his Eunuch from the Greek; but assuredly he does deny this, that he was aware that those pieces had been already translated into Latin. But if it is not permitted {us} to use the same characters as others, how can it any more ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence

... sir, depend on it." Beaumaroy's air was suddenly confident, almost braggart. Mr. Saffron nodded approvingly. "But, anyhow, I can't very well start till ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony

... fine, vapid, empty words. The true material age is the stupid Chinese age, in which no new or grand revelations of nature are granted, because they are ignorantly and insolently repelled, instead of being diligently and humbly sought. The difference between the ancient fiction of the mad braggart defying the lightning and the modern historical picture of Franklin drawing it towards his kite, in order that he might the more profoundly study that which was set before him to be studied (or it would not have been there), happily expresses ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens

... saw there I saw at court, and worse, and more. Low fear Becomes the guilty, not th' accuser; then Shall I, none's slave, of high born or rais'd men Fear frowns, and my mistress, Truth! betray thee To th' huffing braggart, puft nobility? No, no; thou which since yesterday hast been Almost about the whole world, hast thou seen, O Sun! in all thy journey vanity Such as swells the bladder of our court? I Think he which made your waxen garden, and Transported it from Italy, to stand ...
— English Satires • Various

... himself, "I want me this braggart hewn to pieces, and then the rest beaten;" and added, aloud: "Ax! ax! chop! chop! and work for my profit!" Whereupon the ax leapt forward, and dealt such a blow upon Sir Paul that it pierced through his helmet, and clave him to the saddle. Then ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various

... above mentioned as killed by the sheep man, was a typical rough, dark, swarthy, low-browed, as loud-mouthed as he was ignorant. He was a braggart, but ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough

... its maker as a master craftsman of imaginative genius and extraordinary manual skill. A goldsmith and sculptor, he was also a soldier, and did service as a fighter and engineer in the wars of his time. Of high personal courage, he was a braggart and a ruffian, who used the dagger as freely as the tools of his craft. His many qualities and complex personality are revealed in his "Autobiography"—one of the most vivid and remarkable records ever penned. He began the work in 1558. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... manly charms leads an Empress who in turn leads an empire. Half suspicious and wholly unconvinced, he questions and demands the exact number of invulnerables that can be placed in line; and is forthwith assured, with braggart Chinese choruses, that they are as locusts, that the whole earth swarms with them, that the movement is unconquerable. Still unconvinced, the false eunuch takes his departure, and then the Throne decrees and counter decrees ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... it; what I call a sincere man. I should say sincerity, a deep, great, genuine sincerity, is the first characteristic of all men in any way heroic. Not the sincerity that calls itself sincere; ah no, that is a very poor matter indeed;—a shallow braggart conscious sincerity; oftenest self-conceit mainly. The Great Man's sincerity is of the kind he cannot speak of, is not conscious of; nay, I suppose, he is conscious rather of insincerity; for what man can walk accurately by the law ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... to me. He effected it not, of course, openly, but in some disguise. I am sufficiently, however, in his confidence—any man may be that with so audacious a braggart—to deter him from renewing his attempt for some days. Meanwhile, I or yourself will leave discovered some surer home than this, to which you can remove, and then will be the proper time to take back your daughter. And for the present, if you will send by me a letter to enjoin her to receive ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... announcement of the death of the king of France ends the embassy, and the lovers are put on a year's probation of constancy. In the subplot, or minor story, the play is notable for the burlesquing of two types of character—a pompous pedantic schoolmaster, and a braggart who always speaks in high-flown metaphor. These two, happily contrasted with a country curate, a court page, and a country clown with his lass, make much ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken

... from Laurel Hill, and began its tedious tramp across the fifty miles of wilderness that lay between that point and Fort Duquesne. It was headed by Major Grant, a noisy, blustering braggart, who, hankering after notoriety rather than seeking praise for duty well and faithfully done, went beyond the limits of his instructions; which were simply to find out all he could about the enemy, without suffering the enemy to find out more than he could help about himself, ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady

... our bravest, but in vain, Can'st thou sit tamely, with the field unfought, And see this braggart glory in his gain? Where is thy god, that Eryx? Hath he taught Thine arm its vaunted cleverness for naught? To us what booteth thy Trinacrian name, Thy spoil-hung house, thy roof with prizes fraught?" Entellus said: "My spirit is the same. Fear hath ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... follow, Aremberg allowed himself to commit the grave error for which he was so deeply to atone. Disregarding the dictates of his own experience and the arrangements of his superior, he yielded to the braggart humor of his soldiers, which he had not, like Alva, learned to moderate ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... nevertheless hung like Damocles' sword over the head of every samurai and often assumed a morbid character. In the name of Honor, deeds were perpetrated which can find no justification in the code of Bushido. At the slightest, nay, imaginary insult, the quick-tempered braggart took offense, resorted to the use of the sword, and many an unnecessary strife was raised and many an innocent life lost. The story of a well-meaning citizen who called the attention of a bushi to a flea jumping on his back, and who was forthwith cut in two, for the simple and questionable ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe

... told him, as I did, that he was a thick-skinned idiot and braggart, he looked amazed. But I left him to his surprise, and took what precautions I could against the newspaper falling into the hands of Miss Rossano. We all travelled to London together at her request, and I had some difficulty in persuading Brunow ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray

... therefore with regret that on my return I found him in this respect greatly changed: he had become a severe critic of nearly everything American; his earlier expectations had evidently been disappointed; we clearly appeared to him big, braggart, noisy, false to our principles, unworthy of our opportunities. These feelings of his became even more marked as the Spanish-American War drew on. Whenever we met, and most often at a charming house which both of us frequented, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... very jaws of death! Fain would I have all men thus tortured out of their proud and tyrannous existence! ... their strength made strengthless, their arrogance brought to naught, their egotism and vain-glory beaten to the dust! Ah, ah! thou that wert the complacent braggart of love,—the self-sufficient proclaimer of thine own prowess, where is thy boasted vigor now? ... Writhe on, good fool! ... thy little day is done! ... All honor to the Silver ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... son of the Basha none dared to laugh outright save his father and Sakr-el-Bahr. But there was no suppressing a titter to express the mockery to which the proven braggart must ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... difficult to ascertain whether the Filipino is a brave man or a coward. On one side, we see any braggart terrify a multitude; and on the other, some face dangers and death with unmoved spirit. When one of them decides to kill another, he does it without thinking at all of the consequences. A man of Vigan killed a girl who did not love him, six other persons, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin

... the neck of a bottle. Here, one had a mouth plugged with shot, and a beard as stiff as though it were made of rope. Another that he turned over was a German he had once heard speak at a diggers' meeting—a windy braggart of a man, with a quaint impediment in his speech. Well, poor soul! he would never mouth invectives or tickle the ribs of an audience again. His body was a very colander of wounds. Some had not bled either. It looked ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... frank, natural, outside ideas, full of the show and glitter, and I could not see beneath the surface. I did not know then that it might take more courage to refuse to fight and face the looks and scorn of some people than to go and meet an adversary in the field, after the braggart fashion of some of our French neighbours, whose grand idea of honour is to go out early some morning to meet an enemy about some petty, contemptible quarrel, fence for a few moments till one or the other is pricked or scratched, and ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn

... we know not how long before, he was a sort of staple character, no set of Miracle-Plays being regarded as complete without him. And he was always represented as an immense swearer and braggart and swaggerer, evermore ranting and raving up and down the stage, and cudgelling the spectators' ears with the most furious bombast and profanity. Thus, in one ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... Within the circle Lanciotto charmed Round Rimini with his most potent sword!— Fellows whose brows would melt beneath a casque, Whose hands would fray to grasp a brand's rough hilt, Who ne'er launched more than braggart threats at foes!— Girlish companions of luxurious girls!— Danglers round troubadours and wine-cups!—Men Whose best parts are their clothes! bundles of silk, Scented like summer! rag-men, nothing ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker

... tyrants, plunderers, but suits not me: Shall I, the terror of this sinful town, Care, if a liveried lord or smile or frown? Who cannot flatter, and detest who can, Tremble before a noble serving-man? O, my fair mistress, Truth! shall I quit thee For huffing, braggart, puffed nobility? Thou, who since yesterday hast rolled o'er all The busy, idle blockheads of the ball, Hast thou, oh, sun! beheld an emptier fort, Than such who swell this bladder of a Court? Now plague on those who show a Court in wax! It ought to bring ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope

... your people's welfare keep your love! My heart is true: I know that braggart nation, Whose sordid instincts, cold and pitiless, Would cut you off, and drown your Council-Fires. I would defend you, therefore keep me here! My love is yours alone, my hand I give, With this good weapon ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair

... always quarreling with their neighbors and with one another, no birds are so little calculated to excite pleasurable emotions in the beholder, or to become objects of human interest and affection. The kingbird is the best dressed member of the family, but he is a braggart; and, though always snubbing his neighbors, is an arrant coward, and shows the white feather at the slightest display of pluck in his antagonist. I have seen him turn tail to a swallow, and have known the little pewee in question to whip him beautifully. ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs

... been more written about and fought over than those of Amerigo Vespucci. Some will have it that he went only two voyages, and say he was a braggart and a vainglorious fool if he said he went more. Others think that he went at least four voyages and probably six. And most people are now agreed that these last are right, and that he who gave his name to the great ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall

... for a while they suffered it to stay; But with such insolence it flourished there, That, out of patience with its braggart's air, They bade it prove its claims ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... shading the quaintest of Dutch landing-places, where the leaf-speckled shadow of a shipwright just passing away at the further end might be the shadow of Russian Peter himself. So, the doors of the great patent safe at last close upon me, and I take boat again: somehow, thinking as the oars dip, of braggart Pistol and his brood, and of the quiet monsters of the Yard, with their 'We don't particularly want to do it; but if ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... me: Shall I, the terror of this sinful town, Care if a liveried lord or smile or frown? Who cannot flatter, and detest who can, Tremble before a noble serving-man? O my fair mistress, Truth! shall I quit thee 200 For huffing, braggart, puff'd nobility? Thou, who since yesterday hast roll'd o'er all The busy, idle blockheads of the ball, Hast thou, O Sun! beheld an emptier sort, Than such as swell this bladder of a court? Now pox on those who show a court in wax! It ought to bring all courtiers ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al

... as a nun is she, One weak chirp is her only note, Braggart and prince of braggarts is he, Pouring boasts from his little throat: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink; Never was I afraid of man; Catch me, cowardly knaves, if ...
— Twilight Stories • Various

... means of just influence in society, whilst those means continue unimpaired. The public judgment ought to receive a proper direction. All weighty men may have their share in so good a work. As yet, notwithstanding the strutting and lying independence of a braggart philosophy, Nature maintains her rights, and great names have great prevalence. Two such men as Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox, adding to their authority in a point in which they concur even by their disunion in ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... the Eagle-hunter, The valiant fate-confronter, The soldier brave, and blunter Of speech than BISMARCK's self? This bungler all-disgracing, This braggart all-debasing. This spurious sportsman, chasing No nobler prey ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various

... overdressed. His uncle had probably provided him with plenty of spending money, for he was jingling some coins in his pocket. His money and his natural cheek had evidently made him "solid" with Banbury and the others, for they seemed to be upholding his braggart insolence. ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster

... is good for fifty thousand dollars. Let no braggart go away and say he has bluffed the bank, ...
— Wild Bill's Last Trail • Ned Buntline

... elsewhere, and you will have a good picture of Father Louis Hennepin, a man whose books describing his travels, real or imaginary, had, in their day, the widest popularity in Europe. Though he was an unconscionable braggart, and though he had no scruples about falsifying facts, yet, as the first person to publish an account of the Falls of Niagara, and as the discoverer and namer of the Falls of St. Anthony, he is fairly entitled to a place in ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson

... aerial spiral, and mounts and mounts till his pursuers grow dizzy and return to earth again. It is quite original, this mode of getting rid of an unworthy opponent,—rising to heights where the braggart is dazed and bewildered and loses his reckoning! I am not sure but it is ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... The aged warrior counsellor, as Starcad here and Master Hildebrand in the "Nibelungenlied", is one type of these persons, another is the false counsellor, as Woden in guise of Bruni, another the braggart, as Hunferth in "Beowulf's Lay". At "moots" where laws are made, kings and regents chosen, cases judged, resolutions taken of national importance, there are discussions, as in that ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... the vice or folly of the shallow-minded; so if you would not be thought so avoid boasting or affectations of any kind. The truly wise man is modest, and the braggart and coxcomb are ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost

... absurd to call either of them a great commander, but it is indisputable that they all had great parts in great wars. Benningsen can scarcely be called a good general of the second class, and he is mostly spoken of as a foolish braggart and boaster; but it is a fact that he did some things at an important time which indicated his possession of qualities that were highly desirable in a general who was bound to act against Napoleon. Having, in 1807, obtained command of the Russian ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... presenting the necklace, though unauthorized by Shakespeare, had the full approval of the company, and set them in good humour to receive Major Camperton as Armado the braggart. Nothing calculated to stimulate jealousy occurred again till the fifth act; and then there arose full cause ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... even knew what it was about. During the course of the Revolution there were thirty thousand Hessians in the British armies in America, and, as their owners, the German princelings, received L5 apiece for them it was a profitable arrangement for those phlegmatic, corpulent, and braggart personages. The Americans complained that the Hessians were brutal and tricky fighters; but in reality they merely carried out the ideals of their German Fatherland which remained behind the rest of Europe in its ideals of what was fitting in war. Being uncivilized, they could ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer

... remember how, a thousand times, bottle in hand, you made game of the miserly old governor, bidding him by all means rake and scrape together as much as he could, for that you would swill it all down your throat? Don't you remember, eh?—don't you remember?' O you good-for-nothing, miserable braggart! that was speaking like a ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... sense, his eyes half-closed, He on a mighty dray-horse dozed: Fate never could a horse provide So fit for such a man to ride, Nor find a man with strictest care, So fit for such a horse to bear. Hung round with instruments of death, The sight of him would stop the breath 1590 Of braggart Cowardice, and make The very court Drawcansir[270] quake; With dirks, which, in the hands of Spite, Do their damn'd business in the night, From Scotland sent, but here display'd Only to fill up the ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... boasted the Day, and you toasted the Day, And now the Day has come. Blasphemer, braggart and coward all, Little you reck of the numbing ball, The blasting shell, or the "white arm's" fall, As ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... Love is no braggart: lust and fraud and hate Vaunt their vile strength when shame unveils them: love Vaunts not itself. I spake not uncompelled, And blushed not out ...
— Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards • Algernon Charles Swinburne



Words linked to "Braggart" :   egoist, egotist, swellhead, brag, proud



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