"Debonair" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you are right," said the cure. "But, que voulez-vous? the saints are debonair, and have been flesh themselves, and know man's frailty and absurdity. 'Tis the Bishop of Avignon sent ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... as the traditional young Greek god and possessed of a godlike propensity to do as he liked and the devil take the consequences. Already Ned Holiday's younger son had acquired something of a reputation as a high flier among his own sex, and a heart breaker among the fairer one. Reckless, debonair, utterly irresponsible, he was still "terrible Teddy" as his father had jocosely dubbed him long ago. Yet he was quite as lovable as he was irrepressible, and had a manifest grace to counterbalance every one of his many faults. His soberer brother Larry worried ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... seen him so perturbed. He usually approached these conflicts with his father with a passing grimace, exhibited sufficient repentance to get what he wanted, and emerged more debonair than ever. It was disturbing to see ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... morning of her arrival, and I went alone to meet her at the railway station. I was early there and, as I was walking up, awaiting the train, I heard someone speak my name. I turned and there, immaculate, serene and debonair as ever, was ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... consulted his watch; he was five minutes late. He halted in the middle of the foyer, gazing round. There was the usual collection of officers on leave or out of hospital, British, Overseas, American, all of them out for a good time and debonair. There were the usual rows of expectant girls, wondering whether their men had forgotten the appointment or whether the fault was theirs in mistaking the place of rendezvous. Here and there through the crowd worried and assertive literary ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... so bright and gay, Oh, years! that slip so fast away, Keep her, I pray thee, fresh and fair, Dainty, bewitching, debonair, For life is but a holiday When ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... indeed," answered Le Gros, "I for one will not fire a single cartridge. All the same, he was a debonair prince, and once gave me a groat to drink his health when he saw me ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... gnarled hands, his unkempt, bristling hair, His garb uncouth, his bearing ill at ease, His lack of all we prize as debonair, Of power or will to shine, of art ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... was a case of mutual attraction. He swung his tail and crest before her, comeliest and most debonair of all her suitors; and she, with an engaging smile, swung a responsive tail at him. Crest she had none, and, of course, her tail could not compare with his in beauty. The higher we get in the natural orders, the more distinctly does decoration become a feminine ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... expert, wrestling with Carrie over the problem of the new spring dress. They never guessed that the commonplace man in the frayed old smoking-jacket had banished them all from the room long ago; had banished himself, for that matter. In his place was a tall, debonair, and rather dangerously handsome man to whom six o'clock spelled evening clothes. The kind of a man who can lean up against a mantel, or propose a toast, or give an order to a man-servant, or whisper a gallant speech in a lady's ear with equal ease. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... doorway wore velveteen trousers of green, old and faded, a black jacket rusty, with the sleeves patched, and a scarlet sash tied loosely about the waist. On the back of her cropped yellow curls was a velveteen cap, rakishly tipped, and she stood debonair beneath the folds of the curtain with a laugh on ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... how debonair The new moon shone when we said good-bye? How it listened and smiled when we parted there? I shall hate the new moon until I die— Hate it for ever, nor think ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... now, but black and silver in the moonlight—stood for some seconds quite motionless, his head low, his broad and massive antlers thrust forward, his feet planted firmly and apart. Ominous in his stillness, he waited till his light-stepping and debonair adversary was within twenty feet of him. Then, with an explosive blowing through his nostrils, he launched himself forward ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... scholars contain no empty compliment. Elizabeth was a great sovereign and in some essential particulars, a very great national leader. This daughter of Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn the debonair, was born a heretic in 1533. Her father was then defying both Spain and the Pope. Within three years after her birth her mother was beheaded; and by Act of Parliament Elizabeth herself was declared illegitimate. ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... knows how he lookt when, with grace debonair, He began first to court—rather late in the season— Or when, less fastidious, he sat in the chair Of his old friend, the Nottingham Goddess ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... vertical furrow between the brows and a little dragging line at each corner of the mouth below the fair moustache forbade the familiar mockery in his pleasant face. In moments of repose the cross of strain, almost suggestive of a squint, appeared in his blue eyes. He was no longer debonair, no longer the lightly laughing philosopher, the preacher of paradox seeing flippancy in the Money Article and sorrowful wisdom in Little Tich. He was morose and irritable. He had acquired a nervous habit of secretly rubbing ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... and be debonair: for ours is a particular case. We are not like the men of St. Neot or the men of St. Udy, who are for ever importuning Thee upon the least occasion, praying at all hours and every day of the week. Thou knowest it is only ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... at all times, was this Cavalier, an optimist he, from the curling feather in his broad-brimmed beaver hat, to the spurs at his heels. Handsome, gay, and debonair was he, with lips up-curving to a smile beneath his moustachio, and a quizzical light in his grey eyes, very like that in Bellew's own. Moreover he wore the knowing, waggish air of one well versed ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... in the old days. But for his 19th century garb, he might have just stepped down from a frame—a gallant by Fortuny, who loved the awakened animal in man. The poise was careless, but graceful, and the smile was debonair. His eyes were holding Gretchen's. A moment passed; another ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... her girlishly frail body so arrogantly well gowned, she had in some way touched his lethargic imagination. She showed herself to be of finer and keener fiber than the sordid demireps with whom he had to do. Shimmering and saucy and debonair as a polo pony, she had seemed a departure from type, something above the meretricious termagants round whom he so often had to weave his accusatory webs ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... of children sweet and fair, To you will come suave debonair, Fortune robed in shining dress, Bearing ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... pocketbooks, entered the ballroom. First came Marya Dmitrievna and the count, both with merry countenances. The count, with playful ceremony somewhat in ballet style, offered his bent arm to Marya Dmitrievna. He drew himself up, a smile of debonair gallantry lit up his face and as soon as the last figure of the ecossaise was ended, he clapped his hands to the musicians and shouted up to their gallery, addressing the ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... this temper, sirs, Mood it and brood it in your breast; Or if ye ween, for worldly stirs, That man does right to mar his rest, Let me be deft, and debonair, I am content, I do ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... shadow, Florence Baker's face dropped into her hands. When at last she glanced up another couple, likewise immaculate of attire, likewise debonair and smiling, were seated at the little table. She turned to her companion. His cigar was still glowing brightly. He ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... self, Monty was now almost a physical wreck, haggard, thin and defiant, a shadow of the once debonair young New Yorker, an object of pity and scorn. Ashamed and despairing, he had almost lacked the courage to face Mrs. Gray. The consolation he once gained through her he now denied himself and his suffering, peculiar as it was, was very ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... and lessons hardly learnt, of which this mocking piece of silver symbolised the end and the reward. In that minute he saw Honoria and George, himself and Lizzie Pezzack as figures travelling on a road that stretched back to childhood; saw behind them the anxious eyes of his parents, Sir Harry's debonair smile, the sinister face of old Squire Moyle, malevolent yet terribly afraid; saw that the moving figures could not control their steps, that the watching faces were impotent to warn; saw finally beside the road other ways ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... his intellect had not caused him to be feared as a demon. His glance, more penetrating than his bistouries, looked straight into your soul, and dissected every lie athwart all assertions and all reticences. And thus he went along, full of that debonair majesty that is given by the consciousness of great talent, of fortune, and of forty years of a ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... have forgotten now. Not easily do we meet beauty walking The world to-day in all the body's pride. That's why I'm here—a stable-boy to camels— For in the circus-ring there's more delight Of seemly bodies, goodly in sheer health, Bodies trained and tuned to the perfect pitch, Eager, blithe, debonair, from head to heel Aglow and alive in every pulse, than elsewhere In this machine-ridden land of grimy, glum Round-shouldered, coughing mechanics. Once I lived In London, in a slum called Paradise, Sickened to see the greasy ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... glittering in and out of a lawn apron. One tress of her abundant hair was grey, which stood out against the dark background of the rest and gave her a serene purity, an austere strength, but yet like a nun's coif seemed to make the face beneath more youthful, and like a cavalier's plume more debonair. She could not have been over thirty-five when Mark first knew her, perhaps not so much; but he thought of her as ageless in the way a child thinks of its mother, and if any woman should ever be able to be to him something ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... And know that some have wrong'd Diana's name? Whose name is it, if she be false or not, So she be fair, but some vile tongues will blot? But you are fair, ay me! so wondrous fair, So young, so gentle, and so debonair, As Greece will think, if thus you live alone, Some one or other keeps you as his own. Then, Hero, hate me not, nor from me fly, To follow swiftly blasting imfamy. Perhaps thy sacred priesthood makes thee loath: Tell ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... only the strong hand, the bold eye, the ready tongue; kneel to her, and she will scorn and contemn you. What woman, think you, would prefer the solemn, stern-eyed purity of a Sir Galahad (though he be the king of men) to the quick-witted gayety of a debonair Lothario (though he be but the shadow of a man)? Out upon thee, pale-faced student! Thy tongue hath not the trick, nor thy mind the nimbleness for the winning of a fair and lovely lady. Thou'rt well enough in want of a better, but, when Lothario comes, ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... trim-set, alert; fleet of foot, and springy all over. In games he was facile princeps, seeming to make his effort always in the right way and without exertion, as if by an instinct of physical masterdom. His universal success in such matters helped to give him an easy debonair manner which was in itself winning. So physically complete a youth has always a charm. In its very presence there is a sort of sympathetic expression, such as comes with ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... the stripling, calm and cool and debonair, With a weird array of raiment and a wondrous wealth of hair, With a lazy love of languor and a healthy hate of work And a cigarette devotion that would shame the turbaned Turk. And he called his father "Guv'nor," ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... beside the garden-pool A Venus rises in the grove, More suave, more debonair, more cool Than ever burned ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... (he was hardly a doctor even in name) hastened downtown in response to a message from the American executor, and was told of the will which had been filed in England, the home land of the testator. To say that this debonair, good-looking young gentleman was flabbergasted would be putting it more than mildly. There is no word in the English language strong enough to describe his attitude ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... a free, debonair, and courtly sort of behaviour, which we formerly had found them in, to so strict a gravity as they now received us with did not a little amuse us, and disappoint our expectation of such a pleasant visit as we used to have, and had now ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... subterfuge. Now, look here, ask her again, and be more debonair and dashing this time. What you want is to endue her with the spirit of revelry. Perhaps you'd better go to the bar first and have a dry ginger-ale, and then you'll feel more in the ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... one, not having prior knowledge of the fact, would have guessed that he had the slightest personal interest in the affair. There was danger of his even over-doing the attitude of indifference. But he escaped it, and was exactly as smiling, debonair and courtly as if he were in his box at the theatre watching the development of some quite other dramatic performance. He has all the courage of his race, and his long ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... alert mind swiftly encompassed the pitiful awakening that was coming to this joyous home-comer. Before she could master her emotions, he was disappearing over the brass rail at the end of the observation-car; even as he waved her a debonair farewell, she caught the look of surprise and puzzlement in his black eyes. Wherefore, she knew the ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... By chance arrived a damsel at the place, Who was (though mean and rustic was her wear) Of royal presence and of beauteous face, And lofty manners, sagely debonair: Her have I left unsung so long a space, That you will hardly recognise the fair. Angelica, in her (if known not) scan, The lofty ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... Harcourt, "but in the fashion that befits gentlemen—with a bold face, a gay tongue, and a fine coat well carried. Remember, Dick, look up, and no snivelling! Tell your ill-fortune and you bid for more. 'Tis Monsieur Debonair that owns the tavern." ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... buffalo and antelope and crept through the underbrush of countless coulees for deer. For two years he furnished the Northern Pacific dining-cars with venison at five cents a pound. He was a sure shot, absolutely fearless, and with a debonair gayety that found occasional expression in odd pranks. Once, riding through the prairie near the railroad, and being thirsty and not relishing a drink of the alkali water of the Little Missouri, he flagged an ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... mitigated by the fact that certain of those friends who had known him at his highest point of success still esteemed him as a character. Mr. Power was one of these friends. His inexplicable debts were a byword in his circle; he was a debonair ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... words were a cue—which they probably were—Judge Marshall entered the room at that moment, making a great effort to be as jaunty, debonair, and "young for his age" as he must have thought he looked when he made his entrance when the real game ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... paper were produced by the ship's executive officer and passed around the circle. Hardly a word was spoken during this procedure, the usual debonair Bill Witt slouching against the hull of the Dewey, a picture of abject despair. It took only a few minutes to prepare the slips and they were collected by Officer Cleary, who in turn deposited ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... forming a separate people, and to their hopes of once more becoming, sooner or later, an independent nation. Queen Hildegarde, during her husband's sojourn at Casseneuil, in 778, had borne him a son whom he called Louis, and who was afterward Louis the Debonair. Charlemagne, summoned a second time to Rome, in 781, by the quarrels of Pope Adrian I with the imperial court of Constantinople, brought with him his two sons, Pepin, aged only four years, and Louis, only three years, and had ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... Column, and most of the performers were A.S.C. men. The most popular vocalist turned up on his own, however, viz. Captain the Maclean, of Lochbuie (of the 19th Hussars), who is quite an artist in his way. This gay, debonair Scotsman is simply worshipped by the men. One of the latter (himself holding the D.C.M. and the French Medaille Militaire for conspicuous bravery at Landrecies) told me Maclean was the bravest man he had ever seen; he is always at the head of a rush whether on horseback or ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... eastward that we were travelling now. I at once spurred alongside Raffles, as he rode, bronzed and bearded, with warworn wide-awake over eyes grown keen as a hawk's, and a cutty-pipe sticking straight out from his front teeth. I can see him now, so gaunt and grim and debonair, yet already with much of the nonsense gone out of him, though I thought he only ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... backed up to the door with much gong-clanging, and the capable young medico, in his white linen coat, ready, active, confident, with his smooth face half debonair, half grim, danced ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... waking, I beheld her there Sea-dreaming in the moted air, A Siren sweet and debonair, With wristlets woven of colored weeds, And oblong lucent amber beads Of sea-kelp shining in her hair. And as I mused on dreams, and how The something in us never sleeps, But laughs or sings or moans or weeps, She turned,—and on her breast and brow I saw the tint that ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... moment von Herzmann's mouth dropped open. He knew the jig was up! Almost immediately, however, he regained the debonair, easy grace of a splendidly poised loser. He bowed to Larkin, who stood with mouth agape ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... them with a shrug of indifference and a smiling face. And down the aisle that opened to him he went—debonair and easy—until he stood before the Throne. There he bent knee for an instant; then, erect and unruffled, he looked the King defiantly ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... ither crews be debonair, But we 've a weird to dree, I wis we maun be bumpit sair By boaties two and three: Sing stretchers of yew for our Toggere, Sith we ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... broad-blown, debonair, passed him, in a costume of sterling and royal magnificence, copied from a portrait of Francis First whom he in feature resembled. At his side, with gold cymbals in her hands, went a figure in floating ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... hope had brought a pink flush to her cheek and a moist brilliance to her eye. You could not help thinking, had society not made her what she was, how fresh and fair and debonair a little maiden she would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... glared very ferociously at the new-comers, at Griffo of the Claw, that had lost him one toss already, and at the woman who rode beside him so gay and debonair in her mannish habit—the woman he had slighted, the woman who had, as he guessed, baffled his plans once, and had now come, as he might be very sure, to baffle them again. It was plain to him that he had lost the day. It needed no great tactician, no strategist, to perceive that the ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Germany. But what prospect had he of ever returning—with the frontiers closed and ingress and egress practically barred even to pro-German neutrals? Many a night in the trenches I had a mental vision of Francis, so debonair and so fearless, facing a firing ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... sager sing) The frolic wind that breathes the spring Zephyr, with Aurora playing, As he met her once a-Maying— There, on beds of violets blue And fresh-blown roses wash'd in dew Fill'd her with thee, a daughter fair, So buxom, blithe, and debonair. Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee Jest, and youthful jollity, Quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles, Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles Such as hang on Hebe's cheek, And love to live in dimple sleek; Sport that wrinkled Care derides, And ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... back. This debonair, self-reliant fellow could not be Billy! But as a hasty glance down the line revealed only half a dozen straggling women, and beyond them, no one, William decided that it must be Billy; and taking brave hold of his courage, he hurried after the blue-eyed ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... him—knew, and yet could hardly believe her eyes, her ears, her instincts—could not realize that in this rough, disordered, unkempt figure, with the torn clothes and the dark stains on his ragged sleeve, she saw the handsome, graceful, debonair lover of her girlhood, the recreant bridegroom who had left her on the very ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... there'll be a vacant seat in the sergeant's mess;' and so the afternoon wears away and the landscape is littered wi' shell cases, but high in the air, glitterin' in the dyin' rays of the sun, sits the debonair ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... and try this temper, sirs; Mood it and brood it in your breast; Or if ye ween, for worldly stirs, That man does right to mar his rest, Let me be left, and debonair; I am content; I do ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... mocked in friendly fashion; though forsooth betwixt the laughter he looked on her somewhat ruefully. And ever, ere he parted from her, he made occasion to kiss her hands; and she suffered it smiling, and was debonair to him; whereas she saw that he was of good will to her. In such wise then wore the ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... was in the church built by St. Nicaise, or Nicasius, in 401, that Clovis was baptized and crowned in 496. This ancient building, doubtless of simple Roman proportions, was rebuilt in the reign of Louis the Debonair in 822, when Ebon ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... together in the long ago? She was sister to him—just another one of his problems— and nothing more. "Report on the job as soon as possible, Moira," he called to her from the gate. Then the gate banged behind him, and with a smile and a debonair wave of his hand, he was striding down the little camp street where the dogs and the ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... low and kissed his fingers to the girl. Then he led the way out of the room, fine and gallant and debonair, a villain every ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... to let pass and who, without his employer's knowledge, had made bold to secure the device for his personal profit. In the meanwhile, ignorant that Robert Morton was cognizant of his cupidity, he was as debonair as if he had nothing on his conscience. He made himself useful in every possible direction, and on parting from Bob at the train declared he should look forward with the greatest anticipation to their future business association together. How the young man longed to confront the knave with his crime! ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... bring consolation to Archie. A sudden bright light had been vouchsafed to Archie, and he now saw an admirably ripe and fruity scheme for ending his troubles. What could be simpler than to toddle down one flight of stairs and in an easy and debonair manner ask the chappie's permission to use his telephone? And what could be simpler, once he was at the 'phone, than to get in touch with somebody at the Cosmopolis who would send down a few trousers and what not in a kit bag. It was a priceless solution, ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... accompanying Mrs. Craigie on the long voyage to Southampton was a Lieutenant Thomas James, a debonair young officer of the Bengal Infantry, who made himself very agreeable to her and with whom he exchanged many confidences. He was going home on a year's sick leave; and at the suggestion of his ship-board acquaintance he decided to spend the first ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... I paid off our cabman and sauntered into the Recherche in the most debonair manner ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... You are a debonair man of the great world; and yet you are still American, in that you are ab-om-i-nab-ly rich. [She laughs sweetly.] The settlement—Such matter as that, over which a Frenchman, an Italian, an Englishman might hesitate, you laugh! Such ...
— The Man from Home • Booth Tarkington and Harry Leon Wilson
... tumult of the protozoa. He came back, as usual, brown, alert, and keen-eyed—eager for work, confident of some new victory, for he was an investigator of weight and standing among the younger men of science. On the street he was indistinguishable from other debonair young men of good social position; in his laboratory he was a master, absorbed, reticent, ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... as he came up the cement path to the house, was a figure of the new era which was in time to be so disastrous to stiff hats and skirted coats; and his appearance afforded a debonair contrast to that of the queer-looking duck capering: at the Amberson Ball in an old dress coat, and chugging up National Avenue through the snow in his nightmare of a sewing-machine. Eugene, this afternoon, was richly in the new outdoor mode: motoring coat was soft gray ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... Minister. Journalist, politician, captain of Blue Devils, Franco-American Commissioner, now the youngest of the French peace commission, Tardieu, more than any one else supplied the motive energy that carried the treaty to completion. Debonair and genial, excessively practical, he was the "troubleman" of the Conference: when difficulties arose over the Saar, or Fiume, or reparations, Tardieu was called in to work with a special committee and find a compromise. Not a regular member ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... my wife," volunteered Markel, with a debonair wave of his pudgy hand, and trying to make his voice ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... cruel stepmother, the fair Stepdaughter, kind and leal, The bull and bear so debonair, The ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... The mustache is still there —the one which Sue once laughed at; but it has lost its silky curl and stands straight out now from the corners of his mouth, its points reaching almost to the line of his ears. There is, too, beneath it a small imperial, giving to his face the debonair look of a cavalier, and which accentuates more than any other one thing his Southern birth and training. As you follow the subtle outlines of his body you find too, that he is better proportioned than he was in his early manhood; thinner around the waist, broader across the shoulders; pressed ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... to release subjects from their oath of allegiance to the legally appointed ruler? No one; and you ought to know it.... Renounce the hope of putting me in a convent and of shaving my head, like Louis the Debonair, and submit yourselves; for I am Caesar! If you don't, I shall banish you from my empire, and scatter you over the surface of the earth like the Jews.... You belong to the diocese of Mechlin; go to your bishop; take your oath before him, obey the ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... than two full chariot-lengths ahead of the Green, which came second. The Red was third, which comforted Colgius a little. As Palus passed the judges' stand he threw up an arm, with a gesture so boyish, so debonair, so graceful, so altogether characteristic of Commodus, that I felt a qualm all over me. And a second gesture of exultation as he vanished through the Gate ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... 830 for uttering some words too true for an age unaccustomed to the perpetual veracity of our newspapers. Count Wala, who was also an abbot, had the misfortune to speak of Judith of Bavaria as "the adulterous woman," and when her husband, Louis le Debonair, came back to the throne after the conspiracy of his sons, the lady naturally wanted Wala killed; but Louis compromised by throwing him into the rock of Chillon. This is what Wala's friends say: others say that he was one of the conspirators against Louis. At any ...
— A Little Swiss Sojourn • W. D. Howells
... aside at the first opportunity and ask him——But—it! how could he do that? These were his intimate friends. He knew them well, more than well, with one exception, and he——Well, he was the handsomest of the lot and the most debonair and agreeable. A little more gay than usual to-night, possibly a trifle too gay, considering that a man of Mr. Blake's social weight and business standing sat at the board; but not to be suspected, no, not to be suspected, even if he was the next man ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... Leonard, readily. Both were quite unconscious of any discrepancy in their statements as they silently thought over the impression he had made. He was the same handsome, confident Tom Endover, but there was something gone,—and was there not something in its place? Had that gay courtesy, that debonair good fellowship, changed into something more finished, but harder and more conscious? Was there a suggestion that his old careless charm had become a calculated and a clearly appreciated facility? Lucy Eastman did not formulate the question, and it did not even vaguely present ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... near here?" asked Tony, thinking it was their turn to ask questions of this debonair little stranger, who evidently belonged to rich people, because her brown curls were tied back with a huge pink ribbon, a dainty white pinafore covered her pretty gingham dress, and her feet were shod in ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... vast harem, of which all the doors are open to every man, and whose fair inmates are all alike impressionable to the charm of intrigue or to the chink of gold. But, in simple earnest and reality, I have heard the wildest and most debonair amongst you—once convinced of the honour and innocence looking from a woman's eyes—stand up in defence of these when libelled in her absence, with a zeal and a stanchness that ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... her form sweet as her face, But now what change has taken place! This "sack coat" hides all maiden grace. Although men's clothes are always vile, The coat, the trousers and the "tile"! Some sense still lingers in each style. But women's garments should be fair, All graceful, gay and debonair. And if they lack good sense, why care? O JULIA, cease to wear a sack, A garb all artists should attack, In which both sense ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 16, 1892 • Various
... properties of this long-bodied breed are apt to refer smilingly to the Dachshund as "the dog that is sold by the yard," and few even of those who know him give credit to the debonair little fellow for the grim work which he is intended to perform in doing battle with the vicious badger in its lair. Dachshund means "badger dog," and it is a title fairly and squarely earned in his ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... community or his race; while the native woman who aspires to dress herself like a white woman has very commonly the purpose of attracting the attention of the white men. I think the young Indian man I recall as the best dressed, most debonair, and most completely "civilised," was living in idleness upon the bounty of the white trader whom every one knew to be his wife's paramour, and was impudently ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... clearer view of the man. What he saw sent a shiver through him. A great change had come over his friend. His untidy dress,—always so neat and well kept; his haggard eyes and shambling, unsteady walk, so different from his springy, debonair manner, all showed that he had been and still was under some terrible mental strain. That he had not been drinking was evident from his utterance and gait. This last discovery when his condition was considered, disturbed him most ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... evening. "Not only all eyes, all hearts were charmed, Miss Forrest. Never even in the palmiest days of Washington society have I seen more elegant and becoming a toilet, and as for your singing,—it was simply divine." The doctor looked, as well as spoke, his well-turned phrases. He was gallant, debonair, dignified, impressive,—"a well-preserved fellow for forty-five," as he was wont to say of himself. He anxiously inquired for her health, deplored the state of anxiety and excitement in which they were compelled to live, thanked heaven that there were some consolations vouchsafed them in their ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... handkerchief to his stinging eyes. Whoever could have seen him now must have failed to recognize the radiant Gianapolis so well-known in Bohemian society, the Gianapolis about whom floated a halo of mystery, but who at all times was such a good fellow and so debonair. He took up his hat and gloves, turned, and resolutely strode to the door. Once he glanced back over his shoulder, but shrugged with a sort of self-contempt, and ascended to the top of ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... York, he took her "for laither for fairer"—laith being equivalent to loathly—"till death us do part." And with failing heart, but still resolute heart, she faltered out her vow to cleave to him "for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness or health, and to be bonner (debonair or cheerful) and boughsome (obedient) ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... answered, pluming himself and speaking in his softest tones. 'And the most charming, I assure you, the most debonair of men. But do I ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... the table's further end I see In his old place our Poet's vis-a-vis, The great PROFESSOR, strong, broad-shouldered, square, In life's rich noontide, joyous, debonair. His social hour no leaden care alloys, His laugh rings loud and mirthful as a boy's,— That lusty laugh the Puritan forgot,— What ear has heard it and remembers not? How often, halting at some wide crevasse Amid the ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... to-night, Arthur Mifflin, an exemplary young man off the stage, had been warmly applauded for a series of actions which, performed anywhere except in the theater, would certainly have debarred him from remaining a member of the Strollers' or any other club. In faultless evening dress, with a debonair smile on his face, he had broken open a safe, stolen bonds and jewelry to a large amount, and escaped without a blush of shame via the window. He had foiled a detective through four acts, and held up a band of pursuers ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... celebrated incident of his career is that one winter's night he took off his wadded silk garment to evince sympathy with the poor who possessed no such protection against the cold. Partly because of his debonair manner and charitable impulses he is popularly remembered as "the wise Emperor of the Engi era." But close readers of the annals do not fully endorse that tribute. They note that Daigo's treatment of his father, Uda, on the celebrated occasion of the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... wish I could go with them," said Judy, impulsively, as the young leader of the band took off his hat and waved them a debonair "good-bye." "How I ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... to ask at the delivery window. These are very inexpensive and in use generally by the Italian population of Lambertville, who are accustomed to rent them in common—one box to three or four families. She had noticed Strollo when he had come for his mail on account of his flashy dress and debonair demeanor. Strollo's box, she said, was No. 420. Petrosini showed her the envelope of the letter found in Strollo's pocket. The stamp indicated that it had been cancelled at Lambertville on July 26. When she saw the envelope she called Petrosini's ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... Mayer's voice on the phone brought back a slight, faint echo of the thrill. What he said was matter-of-fact and colorless—he had warned her that it would be—just if she was comfortable and everything Was all right. She tried to answer it with debonair brevity; show the right spirit, bold and undismayed, of the dauntless woman to the ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... pace. So did Arthur Updyke. It was rather to be expected of Arthur, however. His duties at the City Drug Store seemed to encourage a debonair lightness of conduct. He treated his blond ringlets assiduously from the stock of pomades; he was as fastidious about his fingernails as we might expect one to be in an environment of manicure implements and nail beautifiers; it was his privilege to make free with the varied ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... Seeking in azure what it lacks in space, And sees a young and finely chiselled face Filled with foretastes of wisdom yet more rare; Touching and yet untouched—unmeasured grace! A breathing credo and a living prayer— Yet of the earth, still earthy; debonair The while in heaven it ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... more foolish than anyone has ever looked since the world began. I could hardly ask to be conducted off the premises like the honored guest. Nor would it do to retire by the way I had come. If I could have leaped the hedge with a single bound, that would have made a sufficiently dashing and debonair exit. But the hedge was high, and I was incapable at the moment of achieving a debonair leap ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... three things which drive the goodman from home, to wit, a dripping roof, a smoking chimney and a scolding woman.[11] Wherefore, fair sister, I pray you that in order to keep yourself in love and good favour with your husband you be unto him gentle, amiable and debonair. Do unto him what the good simple women of our country say has been done unto their sons, when the lads have set their love elsewhere and their mothers cannot wean them from it. It is certain that when fathers and mothers be dead, and stepfathers and stepmothers ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... the van, armed with a fowling-piece. Halley himself walked at the head of the middle column, a youthful, debonair Frenchman, carrying only a cane, which he swung jauntily as he followed the jungle trail. When the soldiers arrived at a few feet from the main body of the natives, Iotete advanced and cried ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... crowd an Ordinary Seaman, tall and debonair and sleek of hair, bade osculatory farewell to a mother, an aunt, ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... battlefield. Good looks, physical delicacy, and becoming clothes had as yet no recognized place on the trail. The Gillespies were boldly and blithely bringing them, and unlike most innovators, romance came with them. Nobody had gone out of Independence with so confident and debonair an air. Now advancing through a spattering of leaf shadows and sunspots, they seemed to the young men to be issuing from the first pages of a story, and the watchers secretly hoped that they would go riding on into the heart of it with the white arch of the prairie schooner and the pricked ears ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... to him by the Brahmanas; he now figures as the prototype of earthly kings, leading the armies of the gods to war against the demons when occasion requires, and passing the leisure of peace in the enjoyment of celestial dissipation. His morals have not improved: he is a debonair debauchee. Brahma the Creator, a more popular version of Prajapati, is still too impersonal to have much hold on the popular imagination; the same is the case with Agni the Fire-god. Plainly there was a vacancy for a supreme deity whose character ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett
... looking at the sputtering night lamp until it made his eyes ache. His head dropped forward on the foot of the bed, and he sank into a heavy, distressful slumber. He was dreaming of Adriance's concert in Paris, and of Adriance, the troubadour, smiling and debonair, with his boyish face and the touch of silver gray in his hair. He heard the applause and he saw the roses going up over the footlights until they were stacked half as high as the piano, and the petals fell and scattered, making crimson splotches on the floor. Down ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... not Neville's should be, after all, the last word, but Pamela's. Pamela, who seemed lightly, and as it were casually, to swing a key to the door against which Neville, among many others, beat; Pamela, going about her work, keen, debonair and detached, ironic, cool and quiet, responsive to life and yet a thought disdainful of it, lightly holding and easily renouncing; the world's lover, yet not its servant, her foot at times carelessly on its neck to prove her power ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... words had not his ear been strained to the utmost. He did hear all, and his wasted face flashed with the wrath of a young man, then grew pale and stern as he turned to watch his wife. She stood apart from the others talking to Sir Jasper, who looked unusually handsome and debonair as he fanned ...
— The Abbot's Ghost, Or Maurice Treherne's Temptation • A. M. Barnard
... had assembled at length, the dinner was in full swing. It would have been hard for any onlooker to have guessed that so much misery and heart-burning were there. Sir Charles, smiling, gay, debonair, chatted with his guests as if quite forgetful of the silent watchers by the railings outside. He might have been a rich man as he surveyed the tables and ordered the waiters about. True, somebody else would eventually pay for ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... understand one another. And Teresa, unclean and abandoned old hulk though she was, had stood by this girl when she came to us flying out of the wrack like a lost ship. "Dear, dear, dear"—I remembered scraps of her talk—"the good Lord is debonair, and knows all about these things. He isn't like a man, as you might say": and again, "Why bless you, He's not going to condemn you for a matter that I could explain in five minutes. 'If it comes to that,' I should say—and I've often noticed that a real gentleman likes you all the better for speaking ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... to the hands which pushed him away. It charmed him that this tall, spirited creature was taking things in a debonair way. He thought it splendid that she should talk of an adventure and of entering into the spirit of it. If she had made a fuss and tried to escape and refused to eat supper with him, there would have been some pleasure in conquering, ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... II. is dead. He was a prince of many virtues, and many great imperfections; debonair, easy of access, not bloody nor cruel; his countenance fierce, his voice great, proper of person, every motion became him; a lover of the sea, and skillful in shipping; he loved planting and building, and brought in a politer way of living, which passed to luxury and expense. He ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... first with outrageous contumely, the second with silent contempt, and the third with a respect born of vague disquietude and anxiety for the morrow. A squatter—just or unjust, generous or avaricious, hearty or exclusive, debonair or harsh—should be a strong man; this was a weakling; and my soul went forth in genuine compassion ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... into the strong, haggard face,—a smile crept out on her own, arch and debonair like that of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... bed, still furious. After a while she was able to understand something of this fury. The world was upside down, wrong end to. Dennison, not Cunningham, should have acted the debonair, the nonchalant. Before this adventure began he had been witty, amusing, companionable; now he was as interesting as a bump on a log. At table he was only a poor counterfeit of his father, whose silence was maintained admirably, ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... it surely was, spreading the satin folds of his grandmother's crimson gown in mocking courtesy. Moreover it was not the awkward, ragged elfish little gipsy who had tormented his debonair boyhood with her shy ardent worship of himself and his daring exploits, but instead a winsome vision of Christmas color and Christmas cheer, holly-red of cheek, with flashes of scarlet holly in her night black hair and eyes whose unfathomable dusk reflected ...
— When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple
... careless, unperturbed. His stories were amusing Pasquale, and the old ruffian had a fondness for anybody that could entertain him. But back of his debonair gayety Steve nursed a growing unease. He was no longer dressed in the outfit of a cowpuncher, but wore a gray street suit and a Panama straw hat. Culvera had caught only a momentary glance at him the night they had faced ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... la valse legere, The free, the bright, the debonair, That stirs the strong, and fires the fair With joy like wine of vintage rare— That lends the swiftly circling pair A short surcease of killing care, With music in the dreaming air, With elegance and grace to spare. Vive! vive la ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... seemed to have completely laid hold of the little group of men gathered round the body of Sir Geoffrey Kynaston; to have bereft them of all reasoning power and thought, to have numbed even their limbs and physical instincts. It was only a few minutes ago since they had left him, careless and debonair, with his thoughts intent upon the business, or rather the sport, of the hour. His laugh had been the loudest, his enjoyment the keenest, and his gun the most deadly of them all. But now he lay there cold and lifeless, with his heart's blood staining the green turf, ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... unhurt from his sheriff's errand, there would have been no message at all, and silence would have been sweeter than this certainty of evil. This messenger, reticent, awkward, embarrassed, brought her news of Dan Anderson—of the boy whom she had loved, of the man she loved, debonair, mocking, apparently careless, but, as she herself knew, in his heart indomitably resolved. Now he was gone forever from her life. He was dead! She could never see him again. Ah! why had they not used the days of this life, so brief, so soon ended? It ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... I to forget her—but then, alas, my heart would have ceased to beat, and I should be dead!" Pale and red he grew. He recked not of his own great worth. For all there agreed that so handsome a warrior had never come to the Rhineland, so fair of body, so debonair was he. ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... occupied one-half of the small tent next the Miners' Retreat, and the youthful operator instantly recognized his debonair visitor. ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... certain things about Chester Hunt that Josie could not help admiring, archvillain though she knew him to be. His good looks of course she must approve of, his debonair grace and easy bearing; but what she respected about him was his quick grasp of a situation. She saw the moment he recognized the fact that he was in the same room with his long lost stepbrother and his wife he became convinced the game was up and he must make the best of it and ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... flying column of the hospital was preparing to set out in search of wounded men on the firing line under direction of Lieut. de Broqueville, son of the Belgian War Minister. The Lieutenant, very cool and debonair, was arranging the order of the day with Dr. Munro. Lady Dorothie Feilding and the two other women in field kit stood by their cars, waiting for the password. There were four stretcher-bearers, including Mr. Gleeson, an American, who has worked ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... a cheerfulness that staggered me. He, too, was gay; almost debonair. A gardenia was in his lapel. He was vogue to the last detail in a form-fitting gray morning-suit that had all the style essentials. Almost it seemed as if three valets had been needed to groom him. ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... undertaken to march, and he meant to march, that was all. In the front with which he veiled his suffering there was no lessening of his old careless confidence—if his dash had hardened into endurance it wore still an expression that was almost debonair. ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... to the other end. But I uplifted this, for I was vain of my strength in those days, and the distance was not so great but that shortly his hands managed to grip hold upon the deck planks, and a moment later he stood beside me, complacent and debonair as ever, in the dense shadows of ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... it seemed to Blair as though the sparkle had fled from the glasses, the gleam of candlelight from the silver. Across the cloth he had watched her—girlish, debonair, and with a secret laughter lurking in her eyes. And yet he had not had a chance to exchange half a dozen ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... troubled about his old friend. She had been so generous, so debonair, such a gay ...
— If You Touch Them They Vanish • Gouverneur Morris
... frequently Puss than Tabitha; for all of which she was deeply grateful. Still, she could not help wishing that Tom's name could have been Jerome. That did sound so splendid! But Tom in her eyes was just as nice as Jerome Vane, even if he was solemn and shy while Jerome was laughing and debonair. ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown |
