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Pompous   /pˈɑmpəs/   Listen
Pompous

adjective
1.
Puffed up with vanity.  Synonyms: grandiloquent, overblown, pontifical, portentous.  "Overblown oratory" , "A pompous speech" , "Pseudo-scientific gobbledygook and pontifical hooey"
2.
Characterized by pomp and ceremony and stately display.  Synonym: ceremonious.



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"Pompous" Quotes from Famous Books



... wholesome food. Moreover, here the wolf awakes the reverberating echoes of the forest with its dismal howl; the raccoon, opossum, and squirrel pass their lives in sportive gambols; the wild and the ocellated turkeys strut about, pompous in manner, as if conscious of their handsome plumage, while the timid deer and shaggy-coated bison roam over prairies or through woodland glades, as yet unacquainted with the report of the white man's ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart

... Extreams in the Stile of Humour, one of which consists in the Use of that little pert Phraseology which I took Notice of in my last Paper; the other in the Affectation of strained and pompous Expressions, fetched from the learned Languages. The first savours too much of the Town; the other ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... whose children he had set aside, and whom by the comparison of this act of piety, he hoped to depreciate(53) in the eyes of the people? The very example had been pointed out to him by Henry the Fifth, who bestowed a pompous funeral on Richard the Second, murdered by order of ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole

... neither among them nor among those writers who are peculiarly the delight of the spuriously literate: Sallust, who is less colorless than the others; sentimental and pompous Titus Livius; turgid and lurid Seneca; watery and larval Suetonius; Tacitus who, in his studied conciseness, is the keenest, most wiry and muscular of them all. In poetry, he was untouched by Juvenal, despite some roughshod verses, and by Persius, despite his mysterious ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... modesty; and was ever afterwards plunged into active business, which brought him into rough contact with politicians and men of business of all classes. The result was that he formed a manner calculated to shield himself and keep his interlocutors at a distance. It might be called pompous, and was at any rate formal and elaborate. The natural man lurked behind a barrier of ceremony, and he rarely showed himself unless in full dress. He could unbend in his family, but in the outer world he put on his defensive armour of stately politeness, ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... the sense that he selected his joyful experiences and ignored his painful ones, but in the sense that his joyful experiences selected themselves and stood out in his memory by virtue of their own extraordinary intensity of colour. He did not use experience in that mean and pompous sense in which it is used by the worldling advanced in years. He rather used it in that healthier and more joyful sense in which it is used at revivalist meetings. In the Salvation Army a man's experiences mean ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton

... appears in Best Society a provincial in whose conversation is perceptible the influence of much reading of the Bible. Such are seldom if ever stilted or pompous or long-worded, but are invariably distinguished for the simplicity and dignity ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... heads proclaim the task commenc'd. Upon his throne with magisterial brow The teacher sits, round casting frowning looks As the low giggle and the shuffling foot Betray the covert jest, or idleness. Oft does he call with deep and pompous voice, The class before him, and shrill chattering tones In pert or blundering answers, break the soft And dreamy hum of study, heretofore Like beehive ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various

... is all. There will be a storm—a newspaper storm. The embassies will be busy; in the English Parliament some pompous fool will ask a question, and be snubbed for his pains. In the Chambre the newspaper men will rant and challenge each other in the corridors; and it will blow over. In the meantime we have got what we want, and we can hide it till we have need of it. Your Reverence and ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman

... her, amused, yet bewildered, through the wide archway into the more brilliantly lighted drawing-room. It was a magnificent apartment, containing a half dozen people. The one nearest the entrance was a man of middle age, exceedingly pompous and dignified, who immediately arose to his feet, expectantly. Miss Coolidge cordially extended ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish

... railway carriage until the last minute; she sent all manner of absurd messages, to the Great Horatio; she told Christine to be sure, to give him her love; she kept up a running fire of chaff and banter till the train started away, and a pompous guard told her to "Stand back, there!" and presently the last glimpse of Christine's pale little face and Jimmy's worried eyes had been swallowed up in the darkness ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres

... by, however, for such display to have the anticipated effect. The Virginian legislators penetrated the intention of this pompous ceremonial, and regarded it with a depreciating smile. Sterner matters occupied their thoughts; they had come prepared to battle for their rights, and their proceedings soon showed Lord Botetourt how much he had mistaken them. Spirited ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving

... windows to this very day. I coughed and sat bolt upright on the bench with unnecessarily loud intimations of my presence. The fringe of black lashes did not even lift. I rose and with great show of indifference paraded solemnly five times past that window; but, in spite of my pompous indifference, by a sort of side-signalling, I learned that the owner of the heavy lashes was unaware of my existence. Thereupon, I sat down again. It was a bit of statuary and a very pretty bit of statuary. As the youth said, there was no law against looking at a bit of statuary in this ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... directly into her governess's parlour, and told her that she had some thoughts of reading to her companions a fairy tale, which was also given her by her mamma; and though it was not in such a pompous style, nor so full of wonderful images, as the giant-story; yet she would not venture to read anything of that kind without her permission; but, as she had not absolutely condemned all that sort of writing, she hoped she was not guilty of a fault in asking ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding

... Mr Gould in the drawing-room when he went down, and the old gentleman asked him after his progress in study, and what profession he intended to adopt, in a pompous and condescending way; but it was only a few sentences, for there were other gentlemen there, who came up and button-holed him seriously, and with whom he seemed to hold portentous conversation, politics, perhaps, or shares, ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough

... language; and stepping into his house, it being by this time dark, he ordered one of his servants to take a light, and to go along with the man and see him safe home. Ion, it is true, the dramatic poet, says that Pericles's manner in company was somewhat over-assuming and pompous; and that into his high bearing there entered a good deal of slightingness and scorn of others; he reserves his commendation for Cimon's ease and pliancy and natural grace in society. Ion, however, who must needs make virtue, like a show of tragedies, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... ample expanses of bare legs; they had no notion of riding, but managed to stick on somehow by clinging to pommel and mane, banging here into a sedate Judge of the High Court, with an apologetic "Sorry, sir, but this swine of a pony won't steer;" barging there into a pompous Anglo-Indian official, as they yelled to their ponies, "Easy now, dogs-body, or you'll unship us both;" galloping as hard as their ponies could lay legs to the ground, cannoning into half the white inhabitants of ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton

... know, brother, what I have told you; and that does not effect many cures. All the excellency of their art consists in pompous gibberish, in a specious babbling, which gives you words instead of reasons, ...
— The Imaginary Invalid - Le Malade Imaginaire • Moliere

... his son Lord Simon, who suffered on Towerhill. It is of free-stone, and, I suppose, about thirty feet high. There is an inscription on a piece of white marble inserted in it, which I suspect to have been the composition of Lord Lovat himself, being much in his pompous style: ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell

... the rain which immediately fell, served not so much to extinguish the flames, as the violent wind which then arose contributed to kindle them. Those of Achen, proud of that action, appeared next morning on their decks, letting fly their pompous streamers, and shouting, as if already they were victorious. But their insolence was soon checked; the cannon from the fortress forced them to retire as far off as the isle of Upe. In the mean time, seven poor fishermen, who had been out all night about their employment, and were ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden

... caustic merciless mirth Was leveled at pompous shams. Doubt not behind that mask There dwelt the soul of a man, Resolute, sorrowing, sage, As sure a champion of good As ever rode forth ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... president of a club of wits, immediately wrote Love without Stockings (1772), in which a plot of the most abject triviality is worked out in strict accordance with the rules of French tragedy, and in most pompous and pathetic Alexandrines. The effect of this piece was magical; the Royal Theatre ejected its cuckoo-brood of French plays, and even the Italian opera. It was now essential that every performance should be national, and in the Danish ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... to dinner in solemn procession. We admire the preternatural solidity of the furniture and the plate. The hostess is a fine woman, "with neck and nostrils like a rocking-horse, hard features and majestic headdress." Her husband, large and pompous, with little light-colored wings "more like hairbrushes than hair" on the sides of his otherwise bald head, begins to discourse on the British Constitution. We now know as much of Mr. Podsnap as we shall know at the end of the book. But it is ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers

... the most affectionate remembrance of his pupil, mentions several instances of the gaiety of spirit with which he used to take revenge on his tormentor, Lavender, by exposing and laughing at his pompous ignorance. Among other tricks, he one day scribbled down on a sheet of paper all the letters of the alphabet, put together at random, but in the form of words and sentences, and, placing them before this all-pretending person, asked him gravely ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore

... diverting in the extreme to observe the pompous grandiloquence in the advertisements of the amusement-furnishing public, about Christmas and New-Year. Sublimity glares from the theatrical hand-bill, and the menagerie affiche. Curiosities, then, have a 'most magnanimous value.' I remember, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various

... culture, fond of literature, and endowed with a taste for poetry. He had been known occasionally to celebrate events pertaining to the kingdom, or the royal family in several stanzas of a classic, somewhat pompous, style. But although people had tried to persuade him to publish them, he never would consent ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds

... which subsequently were adopted, the French court had entirely thrown aside the traditions of good-fellowship and patriarchal affability which existed in the time of Henry IV., and which the suspicious mind of Louis XIII. had gradually replaced by the pompous state, forms, and ceremonies which he despaired of being able ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... I've got an order for you," said an acknowledged well-known rebel citizen, as he entered the head-quarters of the General commanding the Third Brigade of the First Division of the Ohio. From the pompous manner of the Tennesseean, the General didn't know, for a moment, but that he was about being ordered under arrest by the citizen. The General merely replied in his ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett

... along with no pompous paradoxes, shines in no glittering tinsel of a fashionable phraseology; is neither fop nor sophist. He has none of the turbulence or froth of new-fangled opinions. His style runs pure and clear, though it may often take an underground course, ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold

... full of weeping, He faltered in his walk; Tom never shed a tear, But onward he did stalk, As pompous, black, and ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... obliged to set some one over their public affairs, it was fitter they should give that privilege to any one rather than to him; they made an assault upon him in the temple; for he went up thither to worship in a pompous manner, and adorned with royal garments, and had his followers with him in their armor. But Eleazar and his party fell violently upon him, as did also the rest of the people; and taking up stones to attack him withal, they threw them at the sophister, ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus

... unflinching. It is hard that I should part with my precious sons in mean warfare, but the fates will have it so, and I am equal to the call of fate." Thus the sovereign nation. Those who have no very pompous notions are willing to recognize the savage grandeur of our advance; but I cannot help thinking of the lonely graves, the rich lives squandered, the reckless casting away of human life, which are involved in carrying out our mysterious ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... and exalt their own country and the heroic deeds of their ancestors, without even admitting the possibility of rivalship on the part of any other nation, can easily be accounted for; while to foreign critics the same poems, which inspire Polish readers with patriotic enthusiasm, often appear pompous and void of that simplicity, which is the true ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson

... antidote against the opium of time... The greater part must be content to be as though they had not been, to be found in the register of God, not in the record of man... But man is a Noble Animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing nativities and deaths with equal luster, not omitting ceremonies of bravery, in the infamy of ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... thou flatter thyself with belief that I am to be deceived by thy pompous declamation? I know the motive of all this pretended patriotism, I am well informed of the aim of all this vaunted prowess; and I came, not to fight the battles of King Edward, but to punish the proud usurper of the rights of Bruce. I have ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... crying and shaking, she was gone, and Abner Sawyer went with stumbling feet to the privacy of his work-shop, his face death-white. The pompous illusions of his little world were tumbling to ruins ...
— Jimsy - The Christmas Kid • Leona Dalrymple

... that they are one-sided; but still true according to the possibilities of truth when caught from an angular and not a central station. There is even a pleasure as from a gorgeous display, and a use as from a fulness of unity, in reading a grand or even pompous laudatory oration upon a man like Leibnitz, or Newton, which neglects all his errors or blemishes. This abstracting view I could myself adopt as to a man whom I had learned to know from books, but not as to one whom I ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... return to Spain, and made formal application to the pope to confirm it. [11] In addition to the princely honors already conferred on the Great Captain, he granted him the noble duchy of Sessa, by an instrument, which, after a pompous recapitulation of his stately titles and manifold services, [12] declares that these latter were too great for recompense. Unfortunately for both king and subject, this was ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott

... Chevalier,' thought he, recalling the night when he had run up so large a debt. It was at a carousel at the gipsies arranged by some fellows from Petersburg: Sashka B—-, an aide-de-camp to the Tsar, Prince D—-, and that pompous old——. 'How is it those gentlemen are so self-satisfied?' thought he, 'and by what right do they form a clique to which they think others must be highly flattered to be admitted? Can it be because they are on the Emperor's staff? Why, it's awful what fools ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy

... they ate together in the kitchen. It did not seem so gruesome with Lite there, and she told him some funny things that had happened in her work, and mimicked Robert Grant Burns with an accuracy of manner and tone that would have astonished that pompous person a good deal and flattered him not at all. She almost recovered her spirits under the stimulus of Lite's presence, and she quite forgot that he had threatened her with ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower

... find that she was in fashion's crowd, on parade in a show place—and such a show place! Jewellers' windows gleamed along the path with remarkable frequency. Florist shops, furriers, haberdashers, confectioners—all followed in rapid succession. The street was full of coaches. Pompous doormen in immense coats, shiny brass belts and buttons, waited in front of expensive salesrooms. Coachmen in tan boots, white tights, and blue jackets waited obsequiously for the mistresses of carriages who were shopping inside. The whole street bore the flavour of riches and show, ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser

... "fine old English gentleman," was my grand-uncle Rumgudgeon, but unlike him of the song, he had his weak points. He was a little, pursy, pompous, passionate semicircular somebody, with a red nose, a thick scull, (sic) a long purse, and a strong sense of his own consequence. With the best heart in the world, he contrived, through a predominant whim of contradiction, to earn for ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... that if he was sad he was most melodiously sad. He throve; he became a professor; his wife bore him five children. His native city has done him what honour she could, ousted his surname in favour of her own, set up a pompous monument in the Cathedral Church (where little Selvaggia heard her dull mass), and dubbed him once and for all, L'amoroso Messer Cino da Pistoja. That should suffice him. As for the young Selvaggia, I suppose her bones are dust ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... little older, but as black and pompous as ever, stood in the doorway, and a portly figure, with yellow, shining face, on the ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess

... religion, of the purest, loftiest kind; fruitful, too, of good, the only real test of true religion. The deep humility, the trustful appeal, the feeling of dependence, the consciousness of weakness, of sin, and the longing for deliverance from them—these are all very different from the pompous phrases of empty praise and sterile admiration; they are things which flow from the heart, not the fancy, which lighten its weight of sorrow and self-reproach, brighten it with hope and good resolutions, in short, make it happier and better—what no mere ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin

... men: twining for them the first wreaths they had ever won, but wreaths less liable to wither and far more lasting in their kind, than some which were graven deep in stone and marble, and told in pompous terms of virtues meekly hidden for many a year, and only revealed at last to executors ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... stout, and pompous gentleman, sat under a palm in the gorgeously furnished drawing-room of his big house at Notting Hill. Mrs. Grindley, a thin, faded woman, the despair of her dressmaker, sat as near to the fire as its massive and imposing copper outworks would permit, and shivered. ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome

... as abhorrent to me as gin to a reclaimed drunkard; but oh dear! it would be so nice to squelch that pompous imposter. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley

... intended for publication, or else more fervid and elevated in tone. In this latter respect, however, the best platform speaking of today differs from the models of the preceding generation, wherein a highly dignified, and sometimes pompous, style was thought the only fitting dress for a public deliverance. Great, noble and stirring as these older masters were in their lofty and impassioned eloquence, we are sometimes oppressed when we read their sounding ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... nature waits the dread event. From wassail rising rather late, Awarding Jove arrives in state; O'er yawning graves looks many a league, Then yawns himself from sheer fatigue. Lifting its finger to the sky, A marble shaft arrests his eye— This epitaph, in pompous pride, Engraven on its polished side: "Perfection of Creation's plan, Here resteth Universal Man, Who virtues, segregated wide, Collated, classed, and codified, Reduced to practice, taught, explained, And strict morality maintained. ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile

... were early taught to endure the Yoke of Domination, and have been, as it were, wrapt up in the Customs and Ways of Arbitrary Rule; who in a Word, never tasted that living and Flowing Spring of Eloquence and Liberty; we commonly, instead of Orators, become pompous Flatterers, for which reason, I believe a Man Born in Servitude, may be capable of other Sciencies, but no Slave can ever be an Orator, since when the Mind is depress'd and broken by Slavery, it will never dare to think, or say any thing bold. All its Vigour evaporates of it self, ...
— Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley (1712) and The British Academy (1712) • John Oldmixon

... Hanover, and afterward King of England. He received commission in the course of a few months from the elector to visit England, having been warmly invited thither by some English noblemen. On his return to Hanover, at the end of six months, he found the dull and pompous little court unspeakably tiresome after the bustle of London. So it is not to be marveled at that he took the earliest opportunity of returning to the land which he afterward adopted. At this period he was not yet twenty-five years old, but already famous as a performer on ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris

... cannot help admiring the Russian Government for the insight, enterprise and sound statesmanship with which it lost no time in supporting the scheme (discarded by us as worthless), and this it did, not by empty-winded, pompous speeches and temporising promises, to which we have so long been accustomed, but by supplying capital in hard cash, for the double purpose of enhancing to its fullest extent Russian trade and of gaining the strategic advantages of such an enterprise, ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... of his early boyhood—he was not prepared for the excess of irritation that arose in his heart on witnessing the total estrangement of the retainers of his family. For the mortification of seeing a fine new house, with gorgeous furniture, and a pompous establishment, he came armed to the teeth. But no presentiments had forewarned him, that at Lexley the living Althams were already as much forgotten as those who were sleeping in the family vault. The sudden glow that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... said the tall and thin Mr. Taylor, with a pompous tone, "in having so early an opportunity of making ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... ran to the rebuilt fire. The little man reposed by it calmly smoking. They sprang at him and overwhelmed him with interrogations. He contemplated darkness and took a long, pompous puff. "There's only one of me—and the devil made a ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane

... confess. It would hardly be possible to achieve a more splendid success with the prescribed subject and the material at hand. It is the subject itself that must be deemed to be of the lower and less interesting order. It necessitates the pompous exhibition of the Virgin and Child, of St. Peter and other attendant saints, united by an invisible bond of sympathy and protection, not to a perpetually renewed crowd of unseen worshippers outside the picture, ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips

... menials; but you gain nothing by this kind of pride in India. They only conclude that you are not an asl, or born, saheb, and rejoice that at any rate you cannot take away their right to do obeisance to you. And you cannot. Your very bhunghie does you a pompous salutation in public places, and you have ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... was right, that a similar expedition, if made with the same force, would probably fail. General D'Aguilar knew that rather better than Lord Grey, and did not need a pompous despatch from the Colonial Office to inform him of it. But the general did not mean to attempt the same thing with the same force, and therefore sent for aid where he might naturally have expected to derive the little he sought. There ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... of the junior Senator from Pennsylvania, attributed to his late colleague President Harding, summarizes very aptly his strength and his weakness. One can very easily admire him and, when he drops the mask of dignity, which seems almost pompous in so diminutive a figure, one cannot help liking him. But in spite of his successes,—which his enemies attribute to luck, and he probably attributes to intellectual superiority,—he has never quite achieved greatness ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous

... an awful rage, Val," said Denham, when he came to me after a thorough search had seemed to prove that the prisoner had eluded the vigilance of the sentries. "He swears that some one must have been acting in collusion with the pompous blackguard, and that he means to have the whole of our Irish boys before him ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn

... your hats for you as a friend, some of those other fellows would have knocked them off, so I did for you an act of greatest kindness, for every one removes his hat when the Governor General passes." He also informed us that the special occasion for this rather pompous parade was the execution of some criminals at a park or prison not far away, and that this was ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly

... humbly recommend my soul to the extensive mercy of that Eternal, Supreme, Intelligent Being who gave it me; most earnestly at the same time deprecating his justice. Satiated with the pompous follies of this life, of which I have had an uncommon share, I would have no posthumous ones displayed at my funeral, and therefore desire to be buried in the next burying-place to the place where I shall die, and limit the whole expense ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... his thick neck in pompous courtesy, she caught with a shiver the odour of pomade on his black half-kinked hair. He stopped on the lower step, looked back with smiling insolence, and gazed intently at her beauty. The girl shrank from the gleam of the jungle in his ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon

... to his horse, he cantered heavily away, not forgetting to wave a pompous farewell to Angele. De la Foret was smiling as he turned to Angele. She looked wonderingly at him, for she had felt that she must comfort him, and she looked not for this sudden change ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... proceeding to bury his own comrades, adorns the body of Pallas and sends it back to Etruria. Then he bargains with Turnus' ambassadors for a twelve-days truce, during which both parties celebrate pompous funerals, the finest of all being that ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... was a pompous Spaniard, obese, with bristling brows and moustaches, who wrinkled his forehead ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry

... thoughts were so rich at times that to me they were more like a mosaic of variegated and richly colored stones and jewels. I felt always as though I were in the presence of a great personage, not one who was reserved or pompous but a loose bubbling temperament, wise beyond his years or day, and so truly great that perhaps because of the intensity and immense variety of his interests he would never shine in a world in which the most intensive specialization, and that of a ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser

... hackish, most of what he chronicles is actually suit-speak — the obfuscatory language of press releases, marketroids, and Silicon Valley CEOs rather than the playful jargon of hackers (most of whom wouldn't be caught dead uttering the kind of pompous, ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... time, and of helping to get through with the unavoidable fighting-jobs which they organize, seems to inspire the same rhetoric in every age, and to reproduce the same set of conventional war-images. The range of feeling is narrow; the enthusiasm for great generals is expressed in pompous commonplaces; even the dramatic circumstances of a campaign full of the movement and suffering of great masses of men, in bivouac, upon the march, in the gloomy and perilous defile, during a retreat, and in the hours when wavering victory suddenly turns and lets ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... imperial Past is dead: The air is full of its dissolved bones; Invincible armies long since vanquished, Kings that remember not their awful thrones, Powerless potentates and foolish sages, Impede the slow steps of the pompous ages. ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson

... the day of August 10, which overthrew the throne, the pompous mausoleums must be destroyed upon its anniversary. Under the Monarchy, the very tombs were taught to flatter kings. Royal pride and luxury could not be moderated even on this theatre of death, and the bearers of the sceptre who had ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... Imagine the slow, pompous, large-mouthed way in which the red-faced, handsomely-built man pronounced these words, and you realize why the poor ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... his gait, No pompous tone his word; No studied attitude is seen, No palling nonsense heard; He'll suit his bearing to the hour, Laugh, listen, learn, or teach. With joyous freedom in his mirth, And candor ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams

... Sheridan, whose tombstone is beneath our feet. That great portrait painter Sir Joshua Reynolds is responsible for the position and design of Goldsmith's medallion, which spoils the architecture, and is so high that even classical scholars rarely attempt to decipher Dr. Johnson's pompous inscription. The cynical English lines, which the poet Gay wrote for his own tablet close by, are far ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith

... a beautiful view from the windows—so much better than ours at the pompous old Bristol, looking out on ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips

... reticence, and pompous bows make me feel as if they saw through me and ridiculed my ways. They make me feel as if my expensive clothes and ways ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... suit Professor Henderson to have his plans upset in this fashion. Nor did he care to give a detailed description of his ship to officers of the war department. He had many valuable inventions that were not patented. So he determined to outwit the pompous ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood

... the tutor, was overjoyed at her coming, and, as master of the pageants preparing for the amusement of the queen, assumed a pompous importance greatly at variance with his ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison

... incantations dost thou trust, And pompous rites in domes august? See mouldering stones and metal's rust Belie the vaunt, That man can bless one pile of dust ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various

... there was nothing ridiculous; but we fancied his description of Streatham village truly so; when we read that he called it Luogo assai popolato ed ameno[Footnote: A populous and delightful place.], an expression apparently pompous, and inadequate to the subject: but the jest disappeared when I got into his town; a place which perhaps may be said to possess every other excellence but that of being popolato ed ameno; and I sincerely believe that no Ferrara-man could have missed making ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... renunciation. It was not as though my divinity had a penny of her own, or I could earn an honest one. I had explained to Raffles that she was an orphan, who spent most of her time with an aristocratic aunt in the country, and the remainder under the repressive roof of a pompous politician in Palace Gardens. The aunt had, I believed, still a sneaking softness for me, but her illustrious brother had set his face ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung

... the Robins, too, is a continuous delight; and from its pompous and high-sounding dialogue a skilful adapter may glean not only one story, but one story with two versions; for the infant of eighteen months can follow the narrative of the joys and troubles, errors and kindnesses of Robin, Dicky, Flopsy ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant

... to side; But as in graceful act, with awful eye Composed he stood, bold Benson[389] thrust him by: 110 On two unequal crutches propp'd he came, Milton's on this, on that one Johnston's name. The decent knight[390] retired with sober rage, Withdrew his hand, and closed the pompous page. But (happy for him as the times went then) Appear'd Apollo's mayor and aldermen, On whom three hundred gold-capp'd youths await, To lug the ponderous volume off ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope

... when slumber's chains had bound Mr. Magee in his New York apartments, he was awakened by a pompous valet named Geoffrey whom he shared with the other young men in the building. It was Geoffrey's custom to enter, raise the curtains, and speak of the weather in a voice vibrant with feeling, as of something he had prepared himself and was anxious to have Mr. Magee try. So, when ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers

... these men, their voyages and their battles, their faith and their valor, their heroic lives and no less heroic deaths, that I write this book; and if now and then I shall seem to warm into a style somewhat too stilted and pompous, let me be excused for my subject's sake, fit rather to have been sung than said, and to have proclaimed to all true English hearts, not as a novel but as an epic (which some man may yet gird himself to write), ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... willing to leave it for a rectory, if one were offered, with 500 pounds a year. Mr. Alker is an Irishman, and is about 42 years of age. He is rather tall; is genteelly fashioned, has good features, wears an elegantly-trimmed pair of whiskers, has pompous, odorous, Pall Mall appearance, is grandiose and special, looks like a nineteenth century Numa Pompilius, would have made a spicey Pontifex Maximus, ought to have lived in Persia, where he might have worn velvet ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... Even James Auberly, pompous, stern, and ungenial though he was, appeared to entertain some such thoughts, as he sat by his own fireside, one such night, in his elegant mansion in Beverly Square, Euston Road, London; and smiled grimly over the top of the Times newspaper at ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne

... the subjects which were peculiarly their own, and, after eliciting their remarks, continued to complete the treatment of the theme with adequate ability, though in a manner authoritative, and, as Endymion thought, a little pompous. What amused him most in this assemblage of youth was their earnest affectation of public life. The freedom of their comments on others was only equalled by their confidence in themselves. Endymion, who only spoke when ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... And now, if you like to go on, pray do—I'm ready to hear you.' While I was speaking, he stared at me in a state of helpless astonishment; when I had done, he began to bluster again—but it was a pompous, dignified, parliamentary sort of bluster, now, ending in his pulling your unlucky marriage-certificate out of his pocket, asserting for the fiftieth time, that the girl was innocent, and declaring that he'd make you acknowledge her, ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins

... lovely that even the horses seemed to enjoy it, and for some reason "Uncle George" was less pompous and more gentle than usual. Perhaps the anxious faces of the ladies touched his heart, or he may have been softened by the knowledge of the perils his young masters ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers

... whether we were in the right path, I sent to a village to inquire. The headman, evidently one of a former Casembe school, came to us full of wrath. "What right had we to come that way, seeing the usual path was to our left?" He mouthed some sentences in the pompous Lunda style, but would not show us the path; so we left him, and after going through a forest of large trees, 4-1/2 hours south, took advantage of some huts on the Kifurwa River, ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone

... beggary, and set him upon his father's throne. Here was an easy way of repaying two of them. If they really desired that wild land beyond the seas, where only savages lived, and where the weed which his pompous grandfather had disliked so much grew, why they should have it! So he carelessly signed his royal name and for a yearly rent of forty shillings "all that dominion of land and water commonly called Virginia" was theirs for the space ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall

... and pompous vanity were aroused. "Tink dis nigger can't shoot, eh? You-alls just watch an' Chris ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... once told the following story of Colonel W., who had been elected to the Legislature, and had also been judge of the County Court. His elevation, however, had made him somewhat pompous, and he became very fond of using big words. On his farm he had a very large and mischievous ox, called "Big Brindle," which very frequently broke down his neighbors' fences, and committed other depredations, ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure

... the instructions in his last will, he was laid out barefoot in the robe and cowl of a Capuchin monk. Subsequently his remains were taken to Parma, and buried under the pavement of the little Franciscan church. A pompous funeral, in which the Italians and Spaniards quarrelled and came to blows for precedence, was celebrated in Brussels, and a statue of the hero was erected in the capitol ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... reading, the rustle and murmur of people kneeling, and then they all rose and there was the solemn buzz of voices repeating the Creed with a curious lulling sound to her ear. There was old Mr. Danforth with his spectacles on, reading with a pompous tone, as if to witness a good confession for the church; and there were Squire Lewis and old Ma'am Lewis; and there was one place where they all bowed their heads and all the ladies made courtesies—all of which ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various

... Feast of the Rose Garlands was painted for the high altar of the church of San Bartolommeo, belonging to the German Merchants' Exchange, and close to their Pondaco.[73] In it we find a very considerable influence of Italy in general, and Giovanni Bellini in particular; it is a splendid and pompous parade piece, and probably the portraits of the German merchants which it contained were the part of the work which was most successful, as it was certainly that most congenial to Duerer's genius. The Christ among the Doctors, dated 1506, and now in the ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore

... He was severely ridiculed by his contemporaries for these concessions. "He descended now and then to lower disquisitions," wrote Dr. Johnson," and by a serious display of the beauties of 'Chevy Chase,' exposed himself to the ridicule of Wagstaff, who bestowed a like pompous character on 'Tom Thumb'; and to the contempt of Dennis, who, considering the fundamental position of his criticism, that 'Chevy Chase' pleases and ought to please because it is natural, observes that 'there is a way of deviating ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... was pompous and patronizing the next evening when he met Richard at dinner; but Mr. Harley was no less kind. Richard submitted himself to Mr. Harley's patronage, for in it he recognized the inalienable right of a father-in-law. Mrs. Hanway-Harley on that dinner occasion did not pretend to the rugged, high good ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... have no doubt (for he had a sense of humour), the manner of my address, which nervousness had made somewhat pompous. ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard

... repentant mood Unhappy Peter Wilson stood, When, with pompous face, self-centred, Willoughby the critic entered — He of whom it has been said He lives a century ahead — And sees with his prophetic eye The forms which Time will justify, A fact which surely must abate All longing ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle

... said the King, "to counter-order her execution until your preparations are complete." Nevertheless, when the time came, Miao Shan showed nothing but disdain for all this worldly show, and to all advances replied only: "I love not these pompous vanities; I swear that I prefer death to the so-called joys of this world." She was then led to the place of execution. All the Court was present. Sacrifices were made to her as to one already dead. A Grand ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner

... show this clearly: "You are the pre-eminent man of the school which is effete and which has nothing more to do, but you are not the man of a new school! Thalberg is this man—herein lies the whole difference between you two." Who can help smiling at this combination of pompous authoritativeness and wretched short-sightedness? It has been truly observed by Ambros that there is between Thalberg and Liszt all the difference that exists between a man of talent and a man of genius; indeed, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... large, huge, bulky, massive, immense, gross, voluminous, capacious, extensive; pregnant; arrogant, overbearing, lordly, magisterial, pompous; bombastic, grandiose, grandiloquent, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... Bishop," we see a man, good and simple, the son of peasants. This man, thanks to his intelligence, has raised himself to the rank of bishop. During all his life he has suffocated in this high ecclesiastical position, the pompous tinsel of which troubles him to such an extent that the cordial and sincere relationship existing between him and his old mother, who is so full of respect for her son, is broken off. After his death he is quickly forgotten. The old mother, now childless, when she walks in the fields ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky

... Squire Rawson attended, solemn and pompous with a superfluity of white shirt-front. Brief as was the examination, it revealed to Keith an astonishing state of ignorance of the simplest things. It was incredible to him that, with so many hours of so-called study, so little progress had been made. He stated this in plain language, and ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page

... affectation in the dialogue, and a pedantic ring in the sentences of new-fangled philosophy.[251] Even in the three critical dialogues that Diderot added to the play, Lessing cannot help discerning the mixture of superficiality with an almost pompous pretension. Rosenkranz, it is true, finds the play rich in fine sentences, in scenes full of effect, in which Diderot's moral enthusiasm expresses itself with impetuous eloquence. But even he admits that the hero's servant is not so far wrong when he cries, "Il semble que le ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... head proudly on one side, and spread himself in a very pompous manner; then, as he had seen his master do, broke the finest rose from the bush, and put the stem in his bill; then looked at his gay-colored coat in the glass, and felt as grand as ...
— The Nursery, No. 103, July, 1875. Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various

... said, so loudly that a man in the next box leaned over, and then as "Siegfried's Trauermarsch" sounded, the coffin was carried in pompous procession from the building. There was a brief conflict between the ushers and a lot of women over the flowers on the stage, and every one, babbling and relieved, went out into the daylight.... The widows waited ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... been spent in promotion of doctrines beneficial to mankind. This, sir, is the happiness which I now enjoy, and for which those who never shall attain it, must look for an equivalent in lucrative employments, honorary titles, pompous equipages, and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson

... friendly and soft laughter became really appreciative when they saw him tackle the chairs. There were two imposing and pompous gilt chairs at the front of the box, filling it, elbowing all minor, human chairs out of the way. The Prince turned and looked at them, and turned them out. He would have none of them. He was not there to be a superior person at all; he was there ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton

... orange-tree. But his nephew, taking advantage of his absence, began chasing the pretty butterfly. The courtiers knew that he would one day be in power, and, eager to gratify his whims, assisted in the wanton sport: ministers the most pompous, members of council the most profound, climbed on trees, and capered through the meadows,—one would have supposed them mad. But the royal insect, so familiar with the king, was for all others the most ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)

... especially in matters of art, which mankind accomplishes without any very clear idea how it is done, because everybody takes a hand in them. But this is not applicable to the romance of rustic manners: it has existed in all ages and under all forms, sometimes pompous, sometimes affected, sometimes artless. I have said, and I say again here: the dream of a country-life has always been the ideal of cities, aye, and of courts. I have done nothing new in following the incline that leads civilized man back to the charms of primitive life. ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand

... during Elizabeth's reign described it as the most splendid, most magnificent royal palace of any to be found in England or any other kingdom, and the details which he gives seems to bear this out. More especially was he struck by what a later verse writer described as "that most pompous room called Paradise", a room which, according to the ducal description, "captivates the eyes of all who enter by the dazzling of pearls of all kinds", and "in particular there is one apartment belonging to the Queen, in which she is accustomed ...
— Hampton Court • Walter Jerrold

... hammering away, with the handles of their knives, as if they were so many trunk-makers. They are applauding a glee, which has just been executed by the three 'professional gentlemen' at the top of the centre table, one of whom is in the chair—the little pompous man with the bald head just emerging from the collar of his green coat. The others are seated on either side of him—the stout man with the small voice, and the thin-faced dark man in black. The little man in the chair is a most amusing personage,—such ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... the regiment, a portly man, and a little inclined to be pompous, in a peculiarly English tone said: "Possibly, you know, our young American friend would like to ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin

... bald-headed man of sixty. A typical, small-town, New England best-family banker, reserved in pose, unobtrusively important—a placid exterior hiding querulousness and a fussy temper. JOHN JUNIOR is his father over again in appearance, but pompous, obtrusive, purse-and-family-proud, extremely irritating in his self-complacent air of authority, emptily assertive and loud. He is about forty. RICHARD, the other brother, is a typical young Casino and country ...
— The First Man • Eugene O'Neill

... was actually engaged on a history of music, which he subsequently published in five ponderous volumes. To him we are also indebted for a biography of Johnson, which appeared after the death of that eminent man. Hawkins was as mean and parsimonious as he was pompous and conceited. He forbore to partake of the suppers at the club, and begged therefore to be excused from paying his share of the reckoning. "And was he excused?" asked Dr. Burney of Johnson. "Oh, yes, for no man is angry at another ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... thicken: the people in court, from Simon Crood, pompous and aloof in his new grandeur of chief magistrate, to Spizey the bellman, equally pompous in his ancient livery, were already open-mouthed with wonder at the new and startling development. But the sudden advent of the young and pretty ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher

... bring you the money," said I. For to say the truth, I was rather pompous and important about my charitable deeds, and did not dislike playing the part of Sir Bountiful in the cottages. In this case, too, it was a kindness not to take the woman back to the hall, for she had left the sick child alone; and when I arrived ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... which was just emerging from barbarism. They enriched the libraries by the books which they had rescued from the barbarism of the Turks, and contributed much to the eclat of the court of Moscow by the introduction of the pompous ceremonies of the Grecian court. Indeed, from this date Moscow was often called a second Constantinople. The capital was rapidly embellished with palaces and churches, constructed in the highest style of Grecian and Italian architecture. From Italy, also, mechanics were introduced, ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... even now, with that pompous fool the American alcalde from Monterey, a wretch who knows nothing of the country or the people, but who helped the other American to claim me. I tell thee, Francisco, like as not it is all a folly, some senseless blunder of those Americanos that imposes ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... hours of festive relaxation, the young M.P. will be properly qualified for discussing those social questions which form the chief part of every aspirant's political baggage. Being gifted with a happy power of enunciating pompous platitudes with an air of profound conviction, and of spreading butter churned from the speeches of his leaders on the bread of political economy, he will be highly thought of at meetings of political leagues of either sex, or of both combined. It is necessary ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various

... you have no conception how weary I am of the whole thing, of the shame and the struggling and the hatred. To see those people coming into the box one after the other to witness against me makes me sick. The self-satisfied grin of the barristers, the pompous foolish judge with his thin lips and cunning eyes and hard jaw. Oh, it's terrible. I feel inclined to stretch out my hands and cry to them, 'Do what you will with me, in God's name, only do it quickly; cannot you see ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris



Words linked to "Pompous" :   pomp, pomposity, pretentious



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