"Bragging" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... so without bragging, I have been judged a fairly good officer in my time. I can give an order, I can obey an order, I can see that an order is obeyed; but outside the realms of discipline, and in the common complications of life, I have never felt myself to be very much at ease! The whole ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... went on blundering, and bragging and boring, quite unconsciously. And so he will, no doubt, go on roaring and braying, to the end of time or at least so long as people will hear him. You cannot alter the nature of men and Snobs by any force of satire; as, by laying ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... lunch?" So there they have been lunching within on what they brought with them; for nothing in our house could they touch, of course! They brought themselves a PICKNICK lunch, with Madeira and Champagne to wash it down. Why, gentlemen, what do you think, but a set of them, as they were bragging to me, turned out of a boarding-house at Cheltenham, last year, because they had not peach-pies to their lunch!—But here they come! shawls, and veils, and all!—streamers flying! But mum is my cue!—Captain, are these girths to your fancy now?' said the landlord, aloud; then, ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... friend," said the old huntsman; "ere I drink to better acquaintance with any one, I must be well pleased with what I already know of him. We will see thy hawks fly, and if their breeding match thy bragging, we may perhaps crush a cup together. —And here come grooms and equerries, in faith—my lady ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... defence of their country in this her hour of danger and of need. As a child, I loved to see the colors of the holiday-soldiers flapping in the wind and flaunting in the sun on "muster-day." Nay, was not an uncle of mine (he is an old man now, and is fond of bragging of the brave days of old, when he was a gay and gallant sunshine-soldier) the standard-bearer of a once famous company of fair-weather soldiers?—dead now, most of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... hear this story, say so," demanded Shadow. "These little boys got to bragging what each could do. Says one, 'I kin climb our apple tree clear to the top.' Says the other, 'Huh! I can climb to the roof of our house.' 'Hum,' says the first boy, 'I can climb to the roof of our house, an' it's higher'n ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer
... delicate, narrow-minded woman, with no open vulgarity about her, but simply ignorant of the fact that bragging of one's distinguished relatives had fallen into disuse. Her daughter, was like her in manner, with the likeness imposed by having such a mother, but much more largely made in mind and body, pleasant-looking, healthy, high-browed. Sophia ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... life had not been a happy one for her. She was reserved and watchful and cold as ever, but Harthouse easily saw that she was ashamed of Bounderby's bragging talk and shrank from his coarseness as from a blow. He soon perceived, too, that the only love she had for any one was given to Tom, though the latter little deserved it. In his own mind Harthouse called her father a machine, her brother ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... speake againe; Thou runaway, thou coward, art thou fled? Speake in some bush: Where dost thou hide thy head? Rob. Thou coward, art thou bragging to the stars, Telling the bushes that thou look'st for wars, And wilt not come? Come recreant, come thou childe, Ile whip thee with a rod. He is defil'd That drawes ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... it, than for a Man of really good Belongings, and whose Lineage is as old as Stonehenge (albeit, for Reasons best known to Himself, he permits his Pedigree to lie Perdu), to hear an Upstart of Yesterday Bragging and Swelling that he is come from this or from that, when we, who are of the true Good Stock, know very well, but that we are not so ill-mannered as to say so, that he is sprung from Nothing at all. I think that if the Heralds were to make their Journeys now, as of Yore, among the Country ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... she cried, with a little thrill of terror in her voice. She knew that Ormsby was a man of precise statement, and not given to exaggeration or bragging. ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... Sara. Doesn't Disraeli's action say, as delicately as possible, that I am wasting my time over small men? I have been altogether too easy of access. Simplicity and consideration are thrown away on the Snookses and the Pawkinses! With these gentry, one must be a vulgar, bragging snob, or they think ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... death took him to the house of Hades, his sons divided his estate and cast lots for their shares, but to me they gave a holding and little else; nevertheless, my valour enabled me to marry into a rich family, for I was not given to bragging, or shirking on the field of battle. It is all over now; still, if you look at the straw you can see what the ear was, for I have had trouble enough and to spare. Mars and Minerva made me doughty in war; when I had picked my men to surprise the enemy ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... that it is nothing wonderful to camp out or walk; and do not expect any one to think it is. We frequently meet parties of young folks walking through the mountains, who do great things with their tongues, but not much with their feet. If you will refrain from bragging, you can speak of your short marches without ...
— How to Camp Out • John M. Gould
... manners and customs, to draw portraits and to preserve the memory of curious incidents. Thus shone, in the twelfth century, Orderic Vital, author of an "Ecclesiastical History" of England[309]; Eadmer, St. Anselm's biographer[310]; Gerald de Barry, otherwise Geraldus Cambrensis; a fiery, bragging Welshman, who exhibited both in his life and works the temperament of a Gascon[311]; William of Malmesbury,[312] Henry ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... inference that he had wasted his time, or else the guilty conscience of the novelist in me imagines such an inference. But however this may be, there is certainly no question concerning the intention of a correspondent who once wrote to me after reading some rather bragging claims I had made for fiction as a mental and moral means. "I have very grave doubts," he said, "as to the whole list of magnificent things that you seem to think novels have done for the race, and can witness in myself many evil ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... do I? I fancy I would. I should be too big a coward to run away, for then I should have to come back to face you, which would be worse, you know. I'm not going to do any bragging, however. Deeds, deeds. Not till I have laid out a Johnny, or he has laid me out, can I take rank with you after your rout of the man of millions. I don't ask you to believe in ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... tremblingly broke off a hunch of pudding and took a huge bite. His wife, anxiously watching his face, saw it assume a look of perplexity, followed by one of disgust. Johannes gave a great snort of contempt. "Lieber Gott!" he cried, "and this is what Peterkin is always bragging about!" ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... too, for he is bragging all over the town how he put one over on you, and that you're on the loose somewhere, worse than ever, too shamefaced to show up in ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... Sandra grinned at Hilton. "I simply can't conceive of anything more maddening than to have a lot of something Temple Bells hasn't got and not being able to brag about it because nobody—not even I—would know what I was bragging about!" ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... "I'll tell of a little conquest of my own. I use it because it is the first that comes to my mind, not that I'm given to bragging about my success in these matters. I suppose you've seen the opera at ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... a bragging or a bullying tone Archibald Graylock was accustomed to elevating his voice so that the men at the bookkeepers' desk could easily hear all he said; perhaps he could not help being loud in his ways, but there were those who said he did it simply to make an impression on his ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... The tongue of the 'King of the Jews' waggeth no longer in profane bragging against Caesar. Let ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... bragging captain, a sort of Bobadil or Vincent de la Rosa. Captain Bessus, having received a challenge, wrote word back that he could not accept the honor for thirteen weeks, as he had already 212 duels on hand, but he was much grieved that he could not appoint an earlier ...
— 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.
... to me if, to all future posterity coming after us, the word 'Macleod' don't shut up their jaws from bragging of British valour just about as tight as the death-squeeze of a boa-constrictor round a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 23, 1841 • Various
... ease?—all trouble would discard; As priests in gen'ral anxiously desire; Their plan howe'er I never can admire, And should not choose at once to take the town, But by the escalade obtain the crown; In LOVE I mean; to WAR I don't allude: No silly bragging I would here intrude, Nor be enrolled among the martial train: 'Tis Venus' court that I should like to gain. Let t'other custom be the better way: It matters not; no longer I'll delay, But to my tale return, and fully state, How our receiver, who misused his mate; Was put in purgatory to be cured, ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... knew that in France bragging is the beginning of action. However, he had no more faith than Christophe in an immediate movement: it had been too loudly proclaimed, and the Government was on its guard. There was reason to believe that the syndicalist strategists ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... with a wave of his hand. "Beside you none will work because of your bragging!" he exclaimed, impatiently. "You are a good enough riverman when you mind your business, but there are plenty as good—and some better. What ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... impressions. It is like a change of cookery. The flavor of the dish is fresh and uncloying to each. The English probably tire of their own snobbishness and flunkeyism, and we of our own smartness and puppyism. After the American has got done bragging about his independence, and his "free and equal" prerogatives, he begins to see how these things run into impertinence and forwardness; and the Englishman, in visiting us, escapes from his social bonds and prejudices, to see for a moment how absurd ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... Striving in vain his cloud of debt to clear, At last He woke to find his foolish dreaming past, And all his best-of-life the easy prey Of squandering scamps and quacks that lined his way With vile array, From rascal statesman down to petty knave; Himself, at best, for all his bragging brave, A gamester's catspaw and a banker's slave. Then, worn and gray, and sick with deep unrest, He fled away into ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... main. Should such an attempt be made, the police would be compelled to make a desperate resistance, and serious consequences would certainly ensue. There is a curious contrast between the state of the "Three and Four Year Olds" yesterday and to-day—between the bragging of the one and the cowed look of the other. There is also something of amusement, were not the entire question all too serious, in the sudden and contemptuous withdrawal of the troops to-day, after ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... than redeemed; and that very action, as much as any other whatever, manifests the goodness of his nature, a nature most excellently formed to goodness; and it was ingeniously said of him, that he had his virtues from Nature, his vices from Fortune. As to his being a little given to bragging, a little too impatient of hearing himself ill-spoken of, and as to those mangers, arms, and bits he caused to be strewed in the Indies, all those little vanities, methinks, may very well be allowed to ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... love—was at her command. She called her suitor "Isidore:" this, however, she intimated was not his real name, but one by which it pleased her to baptize him —his own, she hinted, not being "very pretty." Once, when she had been bragging about the vehemence of "Isidore's" attachment, I asked if ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... in buckskin leggings and moccasins, with a knife at his belt and too much whisky beneath it, amused a crowd by a loud proclamation of his own reckless and redoubtable character and a louder appeal for a chance to put it in action. It was a droll bit of bragging and merely intended, as the chronicler informs us, to ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... burning before the tent reserved for the headmen of the camp sat Simba, Cazi Moto, and Mali-ya-bwana. The bone of the saurian lay before Simba, who was bragging. ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... Terpsichore or that of Melpomene, which is a heathen custom and not to be tolerated here. If she's so fond of living in church we can quote to her Hamlet's advice to Ophelia—'Get thee to a nunnery!' Why, Bess, I was mortified to death the other night when Bradley dined here, he's all the time bragging about his menagerie, and I tried to bluff him out and make him believe we were waited on by angels in disguise, and you know what happened. He came, saw, and I was regularly knocked out. You let us in; we waited ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... put down the hand-mirror with which she was surveying her back hair, and blushed. "There!" she said, "I forgot all about the fact that you weren't born on a farm, too. But then, you can share ours for a year, so I'm not going to apologize for a word I've said, even if I have been bragging because ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... boat left the San Martin on such an errand he would fling Florez into the sea. Oquendo's advice would have, perhaps, been the safest if the Duke could have taken it. There were still seventy ships in the Armada little hurt. The English were 'bragging,' as Drake said, and in no condition themselves for another serious engagement. But the temper of the entire fleet made a courageous course impossible. There was but one Oquendo. Discipline was gone. The ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... contests, and a change of mounts for the entire outfit on reaching the martial field. We had herded the horses the night before, and the vaqueros were halfway to the ferry when we overtook them. Uncle Lance was with us and in the height of his glory, in one breath bragging on Enrique and Pasquale, and admonishing and cautioning Theodore and myself in ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... had been rather bragging to the other Cocks, and only a few minutes later he spoke with pride of the time when "our" shiny egg should hatch. "For," he said, "Mrs. Dorking and I have been quite alone here as far as our own people are concerned. It is not strange that we should feel a ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... the Air and the Climate chang'd for the better! Have you a Mind to talk my Reason away, or make a Jest of my zeal for Truth? This is the old way of prating and vaunting in Ireland, that used to make me, and every Friend to it sick of such unmeaning Declamations. We are such Fools as ever to be bragging of our Soil and our Linens, our Wealth and our Plenty, our Weather and our Climate, as if we strove to bring over a greater ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... disgust. "Please don't speak of it," he added hurriedly and with none of the bragging tone he had shown in all the previous conversation. His face quite changed. "I admit it's an unpardonable weakness, but I can't help it. I am afraid of death and I dislike its being talked of. Do you know that I am to a ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... rhetoric, and organised sentimentality, may drive their people to war, but the day draws near when they cannot keep them there; and how shall they face the pure nations of the East when the day comes to do it with but equal arms? I had seen Ireland in my own time turn from the bragging rhetoric and gregarious humour of O'Connell's generation and school, and offer herself to the solitary and proud Parnell as to her anti-self, buskin following hard on sock; and I had begun to hope, or to half-hope, that we might be the first in Europe to seek unity as deliberately as it had ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... checkers, which they had played together since they were knee high; in fact, Betty did nearly everything well, from baking pies to painting the birch bark walls of her room. But these things were insignificant in Colonel Zane's eyes. If the Colonel were ever guilty of bragging it was about his sister's ability in those acquirements demanding a true eye, a fleet foot, a strong arm and a daring spirit. He had told all the people in the settlement, to many of whom Betty was unknown, that she could ride like an Indian and shoot ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... hear what the common people had to say. My gorge rose at the man again and again; but I was a tolerable actor in those days, and restrained myself very well. When he went at last he clapped me on the back, as if it were I who had done all the bragging. ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... and after a great deal of bragging he fights the "most dreadful battle that ever was known," his adversary being the knight "just come from Turkey-land," with the inevitable result that the Turkish knight falls. This brings in the Doctor, who suggests the ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... be termed a local Will-o'th-Wisp. He has been everything by turns, and nothing long. Now, a lean faced lad, "a mere anatomy, a mountebank, a thread bare juggler, a needy, hollow-ey'd, sharp looking wretch;" now acting the pert, bragging youth, telling quaint stories, and up to a thousand raw tricks; now tumbling and adventuring into manhood with yet the oil and fire and force of youth too strong for reason's sober guidance; and now—well and now—finding the checks of time have begun ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... here and brag all night. However, you won't mind a body bragging a little about his country on the fourth of July. It is a fair and legitimate time to fly the eagle. I will say only one more word of brag—and a hopeful one. It is this. We have a form of government which gives each man a fair chance and no favor. With us no ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... possibly cut off the one without touching the other, so he bethought him of another plan. He would at any rate sew up the bragging lips that had caused so much trouble and told so many lies ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... see your toes all doubled up, even if the water is muddy," said Nipsy, and rushed at him to punish him for bragging. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... have a great mind to give up Burns. There is certainly a bragging spirit of generosity, a swaggering assertion of independence, and ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... Rebecca. "Many a law, many a commandment have I broken, but my word, never." "Die," cries Balfour of Burley to the villain in "Old Mortality." "Die, hoping nothing, believing nothing—" "And fearing nothing," replies the other. This is the old and honourable fine art of bragging, as it was practised by the great worthies of antiquity. The man who cannot appreciate it goes along with the man who cannot appreciate beef or claret or a game with children or a brass band. They are afraid of making ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... of parchment does not make science. I don't fear the men of the schools. I study animals in the fields and the stable, without bragging. I haven't my equal for raising them, nor for knowing ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... to mend matters by a little advice: "You mustn't blush, my dear Mrs. Dyckman. If I were in your place I'd go around bragging about it. To have been a Greek dancer, ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... It is a very delightful stage of civilization where people's shells are still soft, if they have shells at all. There is an accessibility, a breeziness and camaraderie about even the prominent men—the bulwarks of business and public life. We are accused of bragging and "boosting" in the West. I am afraid it is true. They are the least ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... we were a few in number, in comparison with our enemies, when we had neither Erle nor Lord (a few excepted) to comfort us, we called upon God, we took Him for our protector, defence, and onlie refuge. Among us was heard no bragging of multitude or of our strength or policy, we did only sob to God, to have respect to the equity of our cause and to the cruel pursuit of the tyraneful enemy. But since that our number has been multiplied, and chiefly since my Lord Duke his Grace ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... exquisite literary drama, turning on some plot of love or tale of seduction, and there was alongside of this a popular sort of farce known as the Commedia dell' Arte, in which only the outline of the plot was sketched, and the characters, usually typical persons as the Lover, his Lady, the Bragging Captain, the Miser, would fill in the dialogue and such comic "business" as tickled the ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... said Thomas. 'I know one or two little things about that cat that would not do to be told, and she knows that I know them. Never you fear but that I can shut her up in a moment. I heard that she was going about bragging that she would get square with you for something you said to her one day, but I didn't feel called upon to ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the sugar vat in which two thousand ears of corn were to be steamed. Pliny Pickett was in charge, with Ulysses Watts, sheriff, and Coroner Bogle as assistants. They had fired up already, and were sitting blissfully by in the blistering heat, bragging about the sort of meal they were going to purvey, and speculating on whether the imported band would play enough, and how the ball games would come out, and naming over the folks who were expected to arrive from ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... it!" and, laughing, with a glance back at the gaily lighted house, Burns sent the car on her course. "You two are always bragging up the married life," he remarked as the Green Imp gathered speed, "but it strikes me you're pretty eager to get away from the glories of your ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... word with boasting, though I am not good at bragging, that it is I who shall gain the victory over the son of Daman, ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... Irishman does anything great he does not go bragging of his ability as another man would. He merely ...
— The New Pun Book • Thomas A. Brown and Thomas Joseph Carey
... artistic self-revelation than any monologue that Browning ever wrote. The ghosts, the raps, the flying hands, the phantom voices are infinitely the most respectable and infinitely the most credible part of the narrative. But the bragging, the sentimentalism, the moral and intellectual foppery of the composition is everywhere, culminating perhaps in the disgusting passage in which Home describes Mrs. Browning as weeping over him and assuring him ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... would have been alive and well this day but for the deed you done, which broke his poor old heart; the Lord have mercy on him. And who is to blame but your own self for being in this place at all? You not only done the man to death, but you must go about the bush bragging of it to strangers, and twisting the halter for your own neck like a born idiot; and that's what you are, in spite of your roguery ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... All-America teams played their first game of cricket on the Sydney grounds, Messrs. Spalding, Wright, Earl and George Wade doing the greater part of the bowling, and this game resulted in a victory for the All-Americas by a score of 67 to 33. I had been bragging considerably during the trip in regard to my abilities as a cricketer, and was therefore greatly chagrined when I struck at the first ball that was bowled to me and went out on a little pop-up fly ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... round and see who is happy, who enjoys life about you? Look at that peasant going to the mowing; is he contented with his fate?... What! would you care to change places with him? Remember your mother; how infinitely little she asked of life, and what a life fell to her lot. You were only bragging it seems when you said to Panshin that you had come back to Russia to cultivate the soil; you have come back to dangle after young girls in your old age. Directly the news of your freedom came, you threw up everything, forgot everything; you ran like ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... of mean motives," and by the cruel spirit of the utterances. A nation engaged in a life and death struggle should not be treated in a tone of flippant and contemptuous serenity. The British press had chosen "to impute the lowest motives, to cull out and exult over all the meanness, and bragging, and disorder which the contest has brought out, and while we sit on the bank, to make no allowances for those who are ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... He to be glad of The clash of the war-glaive— Traitor and trickster And spurner of treaties— He nor had Anlaf, With armies so broken, A reason for bragging That they had the better In perils of battle On places of slaughter— The struggle of standards, The rush of the javelins, The crash of the charges, The wielding of weapons— The play that they played ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... shall slay today with my mace! There is not the slightest doubt in this." While Vrikodara, O monarch, was uttering these words in a loud voice, thy fearless son of true prowess answered him, saying, "What use of such elaborate bragging? Fight me, O Vrikodara! O wretch of thy race, today I shall destroy thy desire of battle! Mean vermin as thou art, know that Duryodhana is not capable, like an ordinary person, of being terrified by a person like thee! For a long ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... on Drusie, who had neither said nor done anything to justify Hal's scornful remarks. But he was too annoyed to be fair, and as a punishment for what he chose to call Drusie's bragging, he tucked his bat under his arm, and told them that he was not going to play with them ...
— A Tale of the Summer Holidays • G. Mockler
... in this advertisement to which Miss Pillbody's modesty took exception; but Mrs. Crull insisted upon them in a way that permitted no refusal. The little bit of bragging was the principal thing, she said. She had always observed that people are inclined to believe bragging advertisements, though they openly profess that they can't be taken in by them. As for the satisfactory references, she would undertake to give them, if they were required—which, of ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... are conceited only if they show their feelings, as, for example, does W. Wherever he goes W. seeks to occupy the center of the stage, brags of his achievements and his fine qualities. "I am the kind" is his prefix to his bragging. W. thinks that everything he does or says is interesting to others, and even that his illnesses are fascinating to others. If he has a cold he takes a remarkable pride in detailing every pain and ache ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... which rendered the bragging of our writers over the victory somewhat plausible. Thus they could say with an appearance of truth that the enemy had 63 guns to our 54, and outnumbered us. In reality, as well as can be ascertained from the conflicting evidence, he was inferior in number; but a few men more or less mattered ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Barbary. But what am I saying, miserable being that I am? Am I not he that has been conquered? Am I not he that has been overthrown? Am I not he who must not take up arms for a year? Then what am I making professions for; what am I bragging about; when it is fitter for me to handle the distaff than ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... winter? They were a handsome string, as I remember, too handsome to market readily. Mrs. Leary has a passion for precious baubles, Archie," the Governor explained. "A brilliant career in picking up such trifles; a star performer, Red, if you don't mind my bragging of your wife." ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... stock-jobbers, of ill-famed debauchees, of used-up old, fast men; a doubtful crowd of suspicious characters, half-known, half gone under, half-recognized, half-cut, pickpockets, rogues, procurers of women, sharpers with dignified manners, and a bragging air, which seems to say: "I shall rend the first who treats me as ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... few days later he had listened eagerly to the sharp, crackling sound of guns and the rumbling thunder of cannon, so near that the air seemed to vibrate. He and another little boy had stood and talked in high, quick tones, bragging and predicting breathlessly the result of the battle as they ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... the use Of this bragging up and down, When three women and one goose Make a market in your town!" Every Scald Satires scrawled On ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the fame of noble men, whose [Sidenote: The enuious manne.] vertue farre surmounteth the[m], and passeth al other. Thenui- ous man seketh to depraue, the worthinesse of fame in other, [Sidenote: The igno- raunte.] his bragging nature with fame of praise, not decorated. The ignoraunte and simple nature, accordyng to his knowlege, iudgeth all singularite, and tempereth by his owne actes the praise of other. But the fame of these ...
— A booke called the Foundacion of Rhetorike • Richard Rainolde
... Ormond, wash the paint off and come out as Jimmy Spence. Then Sidney Ormond's fame would have been secure, for they would be always sending out relief expeditions after him and not finding him, while I would be growing old on the boards and bragging what a great man ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... He must have been strongly tempted to retort: "I wasn't whacked, so sucks!" and to describe that picturesque incident when he smashed the prefects' cane, for his milk was the praise of men. But he had to choose whether, by a little honourable bragging, he should gratify his desire for glory, or by a martyr's silence he should give himself the satisfaction of playing a fine hero. The latter was the stronger motive. He kept silence, and only hoped that his valorous deeds ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... had a good many excitements already—the march away of the troops, and the wild enthusiasm and the shouts of 'A Berlin!' I don't think there was a soul in the crowd who was not convinced that the Germans were going to be crumpled up like a sheet of paper. It was disgusting to hear the bragging in the studio, and they were almost furious with me when I ventured to hint mildly that the Prussians were not fools, and would not have chosen this time to force France into a war if they had not felt that they were much better prepared for it than Napoleon ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... cultivate a new faith. The girl's own faith was wonderful. It couldn't however be contagious: too great was the limit of her sense of what painters call values. Her colours were laid on like blankets on a cold night. How indeed could a person speak the truth who was always posturing and bragging? She was after all vulgar enough, and by the time I had mastered her profile and could almost with my eyes shut do it in a single line I was decidedly tired of her perfection. There grew to be something silly ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... be seriously worried about the Home Office," returned Latimer serenely. "By this time they have a full statement of the case—except, of course, for my direct evidence that I heard the doctor actually bragging of his achievement. I had a long interview with Casement before I left London this morning, and he said he would go round directly after breakfast. He evidently arrived just too late to prevent the order ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... imputation of bragging, and certain that slang was vulgar, whatever billiards might be, bore herself still more loftily, and resolved to snub him explicitly if he addressed her again. But he did not; for they presently came to a narrow iron gate in the wall of the park, ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... "I am not bragging; I could have killed you. I supposed it was necessary only to frighten you. It was my mistake and a ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... things swarmed over her. Wilbur sat on the verandah with her and scarcely took his eyes of adoring wonder from her face. She had sent the little girls to bed early. They had told all their playmates and talked incessantly with childish bragging. They seemed to mock her as with peacock eyes, symbolic ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the professor decisively. "Be sensible, and take what is really the best way. I am not bragging when I say that I am one of the most likely men living to ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... tallest of them all, "that will do. We are tired of hearing you bragging about yourself, you little turkey cock! You may not be afraid of us, but remember we are not afraid of you, either! You are alone, you know, ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... teacher talked to the children of Benvenuto Cellini. That time they laughed. What a bragging, blustering, brave, lovable fellow she made of the old artist! Concerning him also she invented anecdotes. There was one of a German music teacher who had a room above Cellini's lodgings in the city of Milan that made the boys guffaw. Sugars McNutts, a fat boy with red cheeks, ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... still being uttered when goody Liu had already crawled up. She too was highly amused. "Just as my mouth was bragging," she observed, "I got a ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... to his readers duller than Holland cheese and more tiresome than homespun. To 1594, too, belongs the tragedy of "Dido," probably left incomplete by Marlowe, and finished by Nash, who shows himself here an adept in that swelling bombast of bragging blank verse of which he affected to disapprove. A new edition of "Christ's Tears" also belongs to this busy year 1594, which however is mainly interesting to us as having seen the publication of the work which we are ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... predicted. No contributor need hope to cover two pages of a periodical with what might be adequately said in one, unless he assumes his editor to be as foolish as himself. The Spartans exiled Ctesiphon for bragging that he could speak the whole day on any subject selected; and a modern magazine is of little value, unless it has a Spartan ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... her husband and herself as poor. The part futile jealousy and envy play in life will not be underestimated by those who will candidly view their own feelings when they hear of the success of those who are near them. One of the reasons that ostentation and bragging are in such disfavor is because of the unpleasant envy and jealousy ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... which was about twenty feet square, men, women and children had packed themselves. The air was foul, and the smoke from the blazing pine knots, having no direct outlet, rolled and curled and sank. The savages sprawled around the fire, bragging and boasting and lying as was their wont of an evening. Near-by the medicine man, sorcerer so-called, beat upon a drum in the interest of science and rattled bears' claws in a tortoise-shell. A sick man lay huddled in skins at the farthest end of the hut. His friends and relatives gave him ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... similar sort. Thirteen Egyptian provinces determined all at once to be free, and to set a magnificent example to the rest of mankind. They assembled their wise men, and concocted the most ingenious constitution it is possible to conceive. For a while they managed remarkably well; only their habit of bragging was prodigious. The thing ended, however, in the consolidation of the thirteen states, with some fifteen or twenty others, in the most odious and insupportable despotism that was ever heard of upon the face ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... was first in the wrong, the Christians of Tanjore took care to be most so. They called in the interposition of Government, and sent up such petitions and memorials as I never saw before or since; made up of lies, invectives, bragging, cant, bad grammar of the most ludicrous kind, and texts of Scripture quoted without the smallest application. I remember one passage by heart, which is really only a fair specimen of the whole: 'These missionaries, my Lord, ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... saying, among our people, that the German and Low Dutch fortune-tellers are the best known. They have had, or pretend to have had, witches in New England; but no one, hereabouts, puts any faith in the pretence. It is like all the bragging of ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... their best clothes and in high spirits, were exhilarating, and with many whoops and much "hollering," we climbed the yard fence, and, disdaining a road, of course, set out down the hill across the field, taking long strides, each one bragging loudly of what ...
— The Long Hillside - A Christmas Hare-Hunt In Old Virginia - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... burst hareem!... Bragging of possessions.... They feel you. They feel your clothes, George, to see ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... the same. We drifted apart then for a while. She got a job at an automobile place, and I was working at home. I remember the night she came to me—I was all alone. Pop had got a three-line part somewhere and was bragging about it at all the bars in Broadway. Stella came in quite suddenly and ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... did not see the least inconsequence in carrying on a dozen intrigues at the same time with other women. Sordello, one of the best known poets of this period, was charged by a contemporary with having changed his mistress over a hundred times, and he himself, impudently bragging, proclaims that ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... tear, Striving in vain his cloud of debt to clear, At last He woke to find his foolish dreaming past, Beheld his best-of-life the easy prey Of quacks and scamps, and all the vile array That line the way, From thieving statesman down to petty knave; Yea, saw himself, for all his bragging brave, A gamester's catspaw and a banker's slave. Then, worn and gray, and sick with deep unrest, He fled away into the oblivious West, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... Frank, in an excited whisper, "we have a splendid chance to immortalize ourselves. If that is a grizzly, and we should be fortunate enough to kill him, it would be something worth bragging about, wouldn't it? If I ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon
... seemed to settle on me. This bragging did not make me angry, and I had no longer any wish to contradict him. It may have been the result of the fall, but my mind had stopped working. I heard his voice as one listens casually to the ticking ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... Before dining we pay a second visit to the host, who is still busy digesting the President's Message. Obviously, the longer he has it under consideration, the worse he finds it. He has nausea from its bragging, his head aches with its loudness, and its emptiness fills him with wind. We are at our wits' end to prescribe for him, and take our leave with grave commiseration, telling him that we, too, have had it, but that the symptoms it produces in the North are a reddening ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... them in the army, and sent them to the commanding officers with medals of honour round their necks, and special recommendations to promotion in their hands. They hoped to become Marshals of France in no time. Pauvres diables! they were soon glad to hide their decorations, and cease bragging about street-fighting and barricades, for the regulars relished neither their swaggering stories nor the notion of being set aside by such parvenus; and they got so quizzed, snubbed, and tormented, that they were happy at last to slide into their places as simple soldats, and ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... drop of drink make me do all that?" says the giant. "Well, well, I can well understand that a drink like that can do a bit of bragging. And after that," says he, looking at the wrecks of houses, and all the broken things scattered about—"after that," says he, "you can boast of me for a thousand years, and I'll have ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... was the idol of his bragging old regiment and of the bragging brigade which for the last six months he had commanded. He was the idol, not because he was good and gracious, not because he spared his soldiers or treated them as fellow-citizens, but because he had led them to victory ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... is how ye show your gratitude for the hospitality I offer you. Ye are ill-mannered guests. For a whole hour have ye been insulting me with your bragging wagers. Well, know this,—you, Sir Emperor, and ye, his knights; if to-morrow ye do not all of you make good your boasts, I will have your heads ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... lengthen his gaff, perhaps, put a cloth or two in his mizzen, and call it a spanker, settle away the peak till it sticks out over his taffrail like a sign-post, and then away he goes upon a wind, with his helm hard-up, bragging what a weatherly craft he has, and how hard it is to make her even look ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... right and perfectly safe. Georgianna thinks the world of her. And, Captain Whittaker, I don't like to hear these people talk of you as they do. I don't like to read such things in the paper, that you were only bragging in order to be popular, and meant to shirk when the time came for action. I know they're not ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... wonders of Mr. Katterfelto. This kind of rhodomontade is very finely expressed in English by the word puff, which in its literal sense, signifies a blowing, or violent gust of wind, and in the metaphorical sense, a boasting or bragging. ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... an Englishman—were bragging about their rival methods. The Britisher was holding forth on the system of prompt payment carried out by his people—no trouble, no fuss, no attempt to ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... be among nice things and swell people. And look what a chance I've got! Why, one of our glove girls married a Pittsburg—steel maker, or blacksmith or something—the other day worth a million dollars. I'll catch a swell myself some time. I ain't bragging on my looks or anything; but I'll take my chances where there's big prizes offered. What show would a ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... and I drove to Ira, Ohio, to visit Mr. Cranz and take advantage of his invitation to inspect his nut planting. At this moment I believe that his invitation was made with the subtle purpose of bragging about his excellent crop of Thomas black walnuts and filberts. The trees were originally planted by squirrels and later grafted by Mr. Cranz. They grow at the bottom of a huge hill or escarpment 200 feet high at the top of which is his planting of 20 mollissima chestnuts. It's a long ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association |
